DETROIT – United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain wants to expand the union’s battle from the Detroit automakers to Tesla, Toyota Motor  and other non-unionized automakers operating in the U.S.  The outspoken leader plans to use record contracts recently won after contentious negotiations and U.S. labor strikes with General Motors , Ford Motor and Chrysler-parent Stellantis  to assist in the union’s embattled organizing efforts elsewhere.  “We’ve created the threat of a good example, and now we’re going to build on it,” Fain said Thursday night when discussing Stellantis’ tentative agreement. “We just went on strike like we’ve never been on strike before and won a historic contract as a result. Now we’re going to organize like we’ve never organized before.”  Doing so would greatly assist the union’s bargaining efforts and membership, which has been nearly halved from roughly 700,000 members in 2001 to 383,000 at the beginning of this year. UAW membership peaked at 1.5 million in 1979.  The UAW has previously failed to organize foreign-based automakers in the U.S. Most recently, plants with Volkswagen and Nissan Motor  fell short of the support needed to unionize. The UAW has previously discussed organizing Tesla’s Fremont plant in California with little to no traction in those efforts.  It remains to be seen whether the recent efforts are gaining traction at any other automakers, but Fain has vowed to move beyond the “Big Three” — Ford, GM and Stellantis — and expand to the “Big Five or Big Six” by the time its 4½-year contracts with the Detroit automakers expire in April 2028.