UAW Reformers Are Taking Over Their Union. That’s Good for the Entire Working-Class.
In a historic election, the rank-and-file caucus in the United Auto Workers has won several top positions, potentially even including international president. It’s a landmark victory that anyone who wants a fighting labor movement should celebrate.
A United Auto Workers member holds a sign reading “The UAW Leadership does not support equality or the rights of its members” during a protest at a Labor Day parade in Detroit, Michigan, on September 2, 2019. (Anthony Lanzilote / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
What is the mood at United Auto Workers headquarters today? Day drinking? Shopping for retirement condos? Dunning staff for money to try desperately to win the run-off? Shredding documents?
Reformers in the United Auto Workers are jubilant as they seem set to make a historic change in the top leadership of their union, ending seventy years of one-party top-down rule. As mail-ballot votes were counted this week, it appeared very possible that the UAW Members United slate would eventually take all seven of the seats it contested, out of fourteen on the union’s executive board.
This is nothing short of an earthquake in one of the country’s largest manufacturing unions. The last time anyone was elected to the executive board in opposition to the ruling Administration Caucus (AC) was thirty-four years ago, when Jerry Tucker of the New Directions Movement became a regional director.
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