“I can­not describe how dis­ap­point­ed I am with the IAM endors­ing Hillary,” says Al Wag­n­er, a jour­ney­man auto tech­ni­cian and mem­ber of IAM Auto­mo­tive Mechan­ics Local 701 in Chica­go. ​“The IAM is a great union and I am very proud to be a mem­ber. But the lead­ers went about this endorse­ment the wrong way.”

The IAM’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of their endorse­ment this ear­ly in the pres­i­den­tial race mir­rors the remarks made by AFT pres­i­dent Ran­di Wein­garten short­ly after her union’s endorse­ment. ​“If you want to shape some­thing, you get in before the pri­maries,” she said. Like the AFT , the IAM endorse­ment was based large­ly on the results of an inter­nal sur­vey of mem­bers — a method that some mem­bers of the union have questioned.

“The IAM will not sit on the side­lines while this fight is so clear­ly under­way,” said IAM Inter­na­tion­al Pres­i­dent Tom Buf­fen­barg­er in a press release . ​“Hillary Clin­ton has been a strong sup­port­er of this union for years and she is now the tar­get of unprece­dent­ed attacks, financed on a scale nev­er seen before. The time to help is when help is need­ed most, and we intend to do just that.”

The Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists and Aero­space Work­ers (IAM) announced Fri­day that it would endorse Hillary Clin­ton as its pre­ferred Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. The machin­ists are now the third AFL-CIO union to endorse a can­di­date, fol­low­ing Nation­al Nurs­es United’s endorse­ment of Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders four days ago and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers’ Clin­ton endorse­ment on July 11.

IAM boasts a mem­ber­ship roll of near­ly 600,000, includ­ing retirees, but says that an inter­nal sur­vey of 1,700 active mem­bers con­duct­ed in ear­ly August, in which 71% of par­tic­i­pants vot­ed for Clin­ton, proves that the Clin­ton endorse­ment is indica­tive of the rank and file’s desire for the 2016 pres­i­den­tial race. But on the IAM Face­book page, with men­tions of Clinton’s asso­ci­a­tions with Wall Street and the fierce­ly unpop­u­lar free trade agree­ments abound, Bernie Sanders has been over­whelm­ing­ly tout­ed as the only tru­ly pro-work­er can­di­date by hun­dreds of mem­bers on the union’s endorse­ment posts .

“Awful choice! I’m with Bernie,” wrote one per­son claim­ing to be a mem­ber on the union’s Face­book page. ​“What a sham! Not in the least bit demo­c­ra­t­ic … – only 1700 out of 500,000 mem­bers is not a major­i­ty. … At month­ly meet­ings, mem­bers talk about the real voice of labor (Bernie Sanders) who BTW is beat­ing her in the CNN [poll] after every meet­ing. You guys need to wake up and lis­ten to your mem­bers,” wrote another.

Asked about the neg­a­tive reac­tion to the endorse­ment, IAM spokesper­son Frank Larkin told In These Times, ​“The social media response can often be biased strong­ly in favor or against the union, depend­ing on the lev­el of coor­di­na­tion. We’re rely­ing on both the opin­ion and sen­ti­ments of mem­ber­ship at [the endorse­ment] meet­ing, as well as the results of the poll that reached out quite sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly to over 2,000 [sic] mem­bers that expressed strong sup­port for Sen­a­tor Clinton.”

Sanders’ pop­u­lar­i­ty — and the post-Clin­ton-endorse­ment out­cry — with­in IAM should not be sur­pris­ing. Since 1989, the union’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee has been the Ver­mont Senator’s top cam­paign con­trib­u­tor. Clin­ton, on the oth­er hand, is cur­rent­ly fac­ing all-time lows in her favor­a­bil­i­ty among vot­ers .

IAM pre­vi­ous­ly endorsed both Hillary Clin­ton and Mike Huck­abee in August 2007, choos­ing a rare dual endorse­ment in order to encour­age all of its mem­bers (an esti­mat­ed one-third of which are Repub­li­can) to turn out to vote. Of course, like the AFT , IAM endorsed then-Sen­a­tor Barack Oba­ma lat­er in Sep­tem­ber 2008 after the Demo­c­ra­t­ic race was firm­ly in Obama’s hands.

With Clin­ton still wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the front-run­ner of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the IAM seems to be try­ing to avoid giv­ing an ear­ly endorse­ment, then lat­er hav­ing to reverse course when a dif­fer­ent can­di­date wins the party’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion as in 2008. But the union could instead hold what In These Times con­trib­u­tor Lois Wein­er pro­posed after the AFT’s 2016 Clin­ton endorsement:

We should pro­pose instead a deci­sion reached by a very dif­fer­ent process: a ref­er­en­dum of mem­bers that fol­lows and is informed by debate in union out­lets. Every local should be charged by the exec­u­tive coun­cil with pro­vid­ing space and place for mem­bers to air their opin­ions. … In this dis­cus­sion the lead­er­ship will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to per­suade mem­bers that endors­ing Clin­ton is the wis­est choice, but it will be oblig­at­ed to car­ry out the will of the mem­ber­ship as expressed in the referendum.

Whether or not the union’s sur­vey was indeed ​“sci­en­tif­ic,” the IAM may have missed the chance to edu­cate and politi­cize its mem­ber­ship through a debate-dri­ven, demo­c­ra­t­ic endorse­ment process.

The IAM is a spon­sor of In These Times. Spon­sors play no role in edi­to­r­i­al content.