Sep 5, 2021
The Right to Vote for Top Officers: UAW’s One-Member-One-Vote
by Jane Slaughter & Chris Viola, UAW Local 22, Detroit DSA Member
When huge scandals came to light in the UAW, with top leaders stealing millions of dollars, what was the remedy? In addition to jail time for union officials and a few management counterparts, the U.S. Department of Justice decided to monitor the union for six years. But a structural solution was needed. The government looked back to the 1980s, when the Teamsters were under investigation by the Feds. The parties arrived at a consent decree that gave Teamster members, for the first time, the right to vote on their top officers. The idea — which was proposed by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union reform movement — was that member control could lead to a cleaner union.
In December, the Justice Department reached a similar consent decree with the UAW, although they stuck in an extra step. This fall, members and retirees will vote, by mail, on whether to have the right to vote for their top officers: one-member-one-vote. If they vote yes, candidates can run for those jobs in 2022.
The UAW has been run by one political group, the Administration Caucus, since the days of Walter Reuther. The Caucus demands loyalty from local officers for whatever policies it puts forward, and that loyalty is the ticket to a coveted job out of the factory, out of the local, and onto the International staff. It is difficult to find a UAW local whose officers are willing to buck the Administration Caucus, which in recent decades has become almost openly pro-management. In 2007, it negotiated the hated two-tier-wage system at the Big Three, which is still in effect today — though moderated because of member revolt.
DSA member Chris Viola works at GM’s Hamtramck plant making electric Hummers. While laid off earlier this year he organized full-time with Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the rank-and-file group that has been pushing for one-member-one-vote since 2019. He talked about the campaign to win this fall’s vote.
How are UAW officers chosen now, and what is wrong with that system?
Right now we have a delegate system in which the membership of each local votes for delegates to the convention every four years. Those people are tasked with voting for things on the convention agenda, including the executive board members that are presented to them. There are really no options given, no real elections happening, no Candidate A vs. Candidate B. It’s just Candidate A. The executive board says, “Here’s who we want to be president or vice president or treasurer. Vote for them.”
Another problem with the delegate system is that not every local sends their delegates to the convention. There doesn’t seem to be much business being done there, so they’d rather save their money.
How is UAWD getting out the word about this fall’s referendum? What is happening here in the Detroit area?
The Detroit area has the largest concentration of UAW locals, and we’ve been flyering at many plants. People are handing out flyers to people walking into or out of work. We’ve been doing that since May, starting at the Ford Rouge plant. We decided to do it on the 86th anniversary of the Battle of the Overpass to commemorate where union organizers got attacked by company guards for flyering. Luckily we were not attacked and it was enjoyable to interact with other UAW members.
We’ve also been engaging people online. We created a website going over our arguments for why the referendum would be good to pass. There are various unofficial Facebook groups made by groups of UAW members. We are getting the word out, because it’s not happening by the locals.
We have a page where people can sign a pledge to vote for one-member-one-vote, and we’re making phone calls to everyone who signs. We ask them if they’ll talk to friends, come to one of our texting events, hand out flyers inside the plant or outside, put out a resolution in their local.
What kind of response do you get from those calls?
Most are willing to at least do something. It’s a matter of getting people to realize nobody else is going to do it for them. Nobody else can organize the people you know like you can. If you gave me the phone numbers of everybody in the UAW, if I could call them all, I wouldn’t be as persuasive as someone they know personally.
How are members reacting to the idea of one-member-one-vote?
It’s new information for a lot of people. It depends on the local. At the Stellantis Mack Avenue plant , it seemed like new info. At other places people may have already been talking about it. It’s good if you have time to actually talk to people one-on-one.
How are UAW officers reacting? We know they want to keep the current delegate system, and that the Federal monitor has said that they are not allowed to use union funds to campaign on one side or the other.
They say the corruption didn’t have to do with the voting system, it happened because people violated their oaths of office. So I say, “Then why are there so many?” If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, why do you think the same system will work this time?
Either they’re comfy with their positions or the positions they’ve been able to get their family members into. And some, even if it’s not self-serving, are afraid of what happens when people are democratically elected. What happens when the people weigh in, finally? There’s a fear there.
They would like to campaign against one-member-one-vote, and it would be on our time, potentially during work hours. They would argue it’s their fiduciary duty to make sure the membership sticks with the delegate system, which in their eyes has been perfect.
Fortunately, I think they have a bit more of a lift than us. One-member-one-vote is a way to hold people to some kind of standard. The people that were in the Administration Caucus, the ones who were guilty of corruption, there’s no checks and balances, they could just do it. They probably felt they deserved it.
What are your chances of winning?
I think that if we didn’t engage people, it’s fairly possible it could go the other way, but when people are made aware of it and having persuasive conversations with their co-workers, it’s pretty easy to get people on board.
What are next steps after winning the referendum? Besides a clean union, what else do you want?
I think we need a level of member engagement that we don’t currently have, and I don’t see how we can get it without direct elections of top leadership positions. If we can’t even be trusted to have a vote on our leadership, which I would say is the bare minimum for civic engagement, how can anyone say that the membership is trusted to educate each other and prepare for strikes?
If we’re getting serious about engaging the membership, we’re also going to need open bargaining. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I got more involved in DSA. Fellow DSAer, Craig Regester, would occasionally invite folks from the Labor Working Group to LEO’s bargaining sessions over Zoom (and one time just outside of the building in which it was happening).
I remember pacing back and forth during the GM strike in 2019, wondering what the hell was the hold-up. We’d get bargaining updates daily that more or less amounted to “It’s still happening.” I did not imagine the possibility of many of the 49,000 UAW GM workers, and others, being able to listen in on a bargaining session. I’m willing to bet something would’ve happened a lot sooner and a lot more in our favor were that to be the case!
I think once the membership started seeing some wins under our belt, we’d start wondering what else we could influence. Right now DSA has been working alongside other unions on passing the PRO Act and a Green New Deal for Public Schools. Imagine adding the UAW to either of those efforts, or initiating something similar.
After we win the right to vote, we’ll have to prepare for the convention next year. We’ll have to be able to put forth a list of candidates and also amendments and other proposals for people to vote on.
Are there things that give you hope for the future of the union?
The fact that people are engaging with this, that UAWD came to fruition, the conversations about the fact that we need full democracy in the union. I think the labor movement in general is on an upswing, coming from very very low, close to bottoming out. You see news every day that people are caring, sharing about things like the Nabisco strike.
What can DSA members do?
Give money to UAWD. We’re up against the big bags of money of the Administration Caucus and the people who work for them.
Talk to friends and neighbors who are in the UAW. Ask what’s important to them. Point them in our direction. Share 1m1v.org with any UAW member you know.
Get involved in your DSA labor working group or attend organizing workshops that help teach you skills that have been dormant for many years.
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Keep your eyes peeled for a Labor Notes Troublemakers School to be held November 20, where those dormant skills will be taught, and also for DSA’s Organizing 101 series, ditto.
The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to dsausa.org/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities! Detroit DSA’s Labor Working Group meets the 1st and 3rd on Tuesdays at 5PM.
