The United Auto Workers executive board has acknowledged all of the union’s members will have a chance to decide who holds the top offices in a union tarnished by scandal in recent years.
UAW members were asked to choose between the union’s current system where top officers are filled by delegates to a convention or union-wide election based on one-member, one vote. With 100% of the votes counted, direction election easily prevailed with 63.7% of the vote while the delegate system, which produced the incumbent officers got 36.3% of the votes cast.
Under the direction of the Court-appointed Monitor, UAW members voting in the referendum opted to change to the direct election method of electing all International Executive Board members, the union’s top leadership group.
Union bosses concede defeat
“With just under 14% of total active and retiree membership participating in the vote, the UAW will seek to unify behind the new method of elections. It is time to move forward on behalf of the more than 1 million members and retirees of the UAW in solidarity,” the union said in a statement.
The next step is for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to provide final approval for the results of the referendum. It was this court that approved the establishment and selection of the monitor.
In the meantime, the International Executive Board said it will begin working with members, local unions and the court-appointed monitor to draft the necessary Constitutional changes, and implement policies required for the direct election of officers and regional directors.
Ultimately, all modifications to the UAW Constitution will be adopted by the delegates to the 38th UAW Constitutional Convention to be held July 25-28, 2022.
Support for change widespread
While roughly 144,000 of the union’s 1 million members and retirees, participated in the referendum, support for change was widespread in the wake of the scandal, which sent a dozen union officials to jail and left Fiat Chrysler responsible for a record $30 million fine for bribing UAW representatives in violation of federal labor law.
Union members employed by General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which have critical contracts with the UAW, all voted for change as did graduate students from Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Columbia as well as the University of California.
Perhaps even more telling, union members employed at Volvo Truck and John Deere where the UAW walked out on strike also supported direct election by a substantial margin.
Frank Hammer, a longtime critic of the union’s existing leadership, said he does not expect the union’s existing leadership and the so-called “Administration Caucus,” which has been entrenched at the top of the union for more than 70 years to accept changes making the union more democratic and more responsive to its members.
The independent, court-appointed monitor to which the UAW executive board agreed earlier this year to settle a federal racketeering suit noted in a recent report it found the UAW’s executive board was reluctant to implement reform, Hammer said.
Maybe it’s changed by now, but when I was an SAE member a few years ago, the voting was very weird. A candidate was chosen and we voted for him/her or not. Almost like the national elections where only the votes for the ‘chosen’ candidate are counted. Repeat after me kids, “dem o crat.”
Oh brother, no doubt OLD Jimbo is a card carrying Trumptardlican,
Like the last Republican Administration Jim, the UAW leadership was just as corrupt and a pack of dirt-bag lying grifters. Trump tried to pull a coup and you’ve drank so much of the Trump Kool-Aid that you’ve marinated yourself in blinded stupidity.
Uh, Jim, ever hear of the Electoral College?