Brandon Campbell was born into the UAW.
Long before serving on the International Executive Board as Region 4 Director, Brandon developed a love and passion for union activistism, attending UAW events with his father as a child.
One of Brandon’s first union memories was attending the inaugural Black Lake Family Scholarship program with his father in 1978. Taking part in these types of union events instilled a strong sense of purpose within him, and he has spent his thirty-plus years in the UAW fighting for the membership at all levels of our union.
Brandon officially began his UAW journey in 1994 when he hired in at the Chrysler plant in Belvidere, Illinois and became a member of Local 1268.
He quickly jumped into union activism at the local. In 1998, Brandon volunteered to become a member organizer for Region 4, eventually co-leading a successful organizing drive in Rockford, Illinois.
In 2005, Brandon was elected committeeperson at the Chrysler Belvidere assembly Plant, representing all three shifts of the body shop and stamping plants. In that role, Brandon was also a member of the local bargaining committee. Three years later, he was elected by his union family to serve as President of Local 1268.
The following year, Brandon was appointed as a Region 4 Servicing Representative, where he provided support to a number of locals across various sectors, including auto, IPS, and TOP. It was during this time that he developed a true passion for bargaining. Brandon prided himself on knowing more about a company’s finances than management themselves, holding companies accountable by accurately costing contracts and calculating benefit actuarial values.
As a Servicing Rep., Brandon fine-tuned his arbitration skills, achieving a rare winning record in both disciplinary and policy cases, and his post-hearing briefs are still used as a guide by leadership in other UAW regions to this day. He also became a go-to mentor for many new and existing staff members in the areas of bargaining, costing, and arbitration.
In 2022, Brandon was elected Region 4 Director in the union’s first-ever direct elections. In addition to his duties as director and as a member of the IEB, Brandon currently serves on the IEB Investment Advisory Committee, the IEB Union Label Committee, and the Appeals Committee. He is also the only regional director who manages a complex training center, the Pat Greathouse Center, in Ottawa, Illinois, which hosts upwards of 3,500 members per year.
In his three-plus years of running the region, Brandon has remained committed to the principles of trade unionism, treating its staff fairly on a balanced budget, making mass improvements to the facility, increasing funds within the region and providing the largest pay increases for the seasonal staff they’ve ever experienced. As an IEB member, he has developed a system to track the International Union’s finances across multiple accounts to establish trend lines that allow him to make informed financial decisions. Brandon hopes to bring this level of detailed analysis to the Secretary-Treasurer’s office, so both the IEB and the membership can have a more developed understanding of our union’s finances.
As a member of the IEB, Brandon has remained committed to fiscal responsibility from day one. He welcomes UAW members to read the Executive Board’s meeting minutes to better understand his track record in standing up for our membership’s principles and using our union’s resources as our membership intends them to be used for - to take on the billionaire class and win better contracts - contracts that provide living wages, affordable healthcare, dignity in retirement, and time away from the boss to enjoy the fruits of our labor.