On Thursday, a meeting of the recently formed Industrial Workers Rank-and-File Group (IWRFG) of Australia unanimously passed a resolution condemning the public death threat against Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman by a high-ranking United Auto Workers (UAW) official.

The postal, factory, trucking and other workers at the meeting expressed their horror over the vile post, depicting Lehman—an officially certified candidate for UAW president, bound and gagged, with a masked man aiming an automatic rifle at his back, in an AI-generated image.

The poster, Raymond L. Jensen Jr., is a highly paid functionary of the UAW apparatus and a prominent supporter of current president Shawn Fain, making clear that this threat carries the implicit sanction of the incumbent union leadership.

Lehman is being targeted because of the socialist platform on which he is campaigning for union president, calling for the abolition of the union bureaucracy, the building of rank-and-file committees in every plant and the transfer of power, and the UAW’s vast resources, to workers on the shop floor. The UAW apparatus is attempting to crush Lehman’s campaign, including through threats of violence, because it knows that the program he is fighting for will win enormous support from workers, throughout the automotive industry and the entire working class.

Workers at the IWRFG meeting noted Lehman’s comment warning that, if a threat of this character can be made openly against a candidate for the UAW’s highest office, “then no worker who challenges the bureaucracy in their own local is safe,” making this an act of intimidation directed not against one individual but against the entire rank-and-file opposition internationally.

The meeting unanimously passed the following resolution:

The Industrial Workers Rank-and-File Group (Australia)

• condemns in the strongest possible terms the death threat issued by Raymond L. Jensen Jr. against Will Lehman, and declares its complete opposition to all such threats, violence and intimidation directed against rank-and-file workers who dare to challenge the trade union bureaucracy.
• endorses the demands advanced by Will Lehman and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC): a full investigation encompassing not only Jensen’s conduct but the knowledge, encouragement or acquiescence of the UAW leadership; a public repudiation of the threat by the UAW; an immediate public statement by the Monitor’s office; the immediate suspension of Jensen from his position without pay pending completion of the investigation, with all appropriate legal and disciplinary sanctions to follow; referral of the matter to the Department of Labor and to federal law enforcement; and affirmative measures to guarantee that the remainder of the 2026 UAW election is conducted free of intimidation.
• recognises that the attack on Will Lehman is not merely a UAW problem or an American problem, but an attack on the democratic rights of the working class internationally. The trade union bureaucracies in every country—including Australia, where union officialdom collaborate to suppress rank-and-file opposition—employ similar methods of intimidation, slander and violence against workers who fight for independent organisations. The defence of Lehman is the defence of every worker’s right to organise free from the threats and retaliation of the corporate-union apparatus.
• declares its solidarity with Will Lehman and his campaign to abolish the UAW bureaucracy and transfer power to rank-and-file committees on the shop floor. The IWRFG recognises in Lehman’s struggle the same fight being waged by workers across Australia—against sell-out enterprise agreements and against the suppression of workers’ struggles and democratic rights by union officials in league with management and the state.
• will fight to circulate this resolution widely and to take up the defence of Lehman as an integral part of the fight to build rank-and-file committees in every workplace in Australia and internationally. We call on workers to register their opposition to this incitement to violence by emailing the UAW at feedback@uaw.org and copying the Will Lehman campaign at info@willforuawpresident.org.

The attack on Will Lehman is an attack on us all. Defend democratic rights! Build rank-and-file committees internationally!

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Following the meeting, factory worker Nicholas told the World Socialist Web Site:

“When I saw the picture posted it made me feel sick to my stomach. There’s no humour in it, and the thing is Jensen and the rest of the UAW leadership are in that position because of workers like Will, workers like myself and any worker who has been or is a member of a union.

“It shows that Jensen and the rest of the UAW leadership are scared of Will. Why else would you threaten him and try to intimidate him?

“They are attacking a worker who is challenging the status quo, who wants to give back to the members and who is not taking a position of sitting in the office, hanging out with management and using the profits made from workers to line their own pockets.

“Will has stated that he intends, if elected as president, to still be on the shop floor with his work mates.

“He has my support and the leadership lashing out has cemented that support.

“Will is an inspiration to workers around the globe to take up the fight and set up rank-and-file committees. I know it’s something I now intend to fight for at my place of work.”