[A newly organized reform movement turned the convention into a
rowdy debate that, for moments, even overruled the top union leaders.
Again and again, members of the Unite All Workers for Democracy reform
caucus (UAWD) and other delegates gathered the numbers to put their
issues on the convention floor. ]
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AUTO WORKERS TURN A CORNER FOR STRIKE PAY AND DEMOCRACY  
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Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter
August 2, 2022
Labor Notes
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_ A newly organized reform movement turned the convention into a
rowdy debate that, for moments, even overruled the top union leaders.
Again and again, members of the Unite All Workers for Democracy reform
caucus (UAWD) and other delegates gathered the numbers to put their
issues on the convention floor. _

Delegates on the convention floor gathered before a debate that
increased strike pay. Although the ruling caucus managed to get the
strike pay increase reversed the following day, this year's
convention—unlike any UAW convention in recent memory—featured ,
Vail Kohnert-Yount

 

Reformers in the Auto Workers won day one strike pay at the union’s
constitutional convention in Detroit last week. They also forced open
debate on the top concession that has weakened the union in the last
15 years—tiered contracts
[[link removed]] that condemn
newer workers to lower pay and benefits beside “legacy” workers
doing the same job.

This was the first UAW convention since a leadership corruption
scandal erupted, reformers won a member referendum last fall to adopt
one-member-one-vote for top officers
[[link removed]],
and the auto industry began a serious transition to electric vehicles.
Held every four years, the meeting has usually been a stale coronation
of leaders. A newly organized reform movement turned the convention
into a rowdy debate that, for moments, even overruled the top union
leaders.

Again and again, members of the Unite All Workers for Democracy reform
caucus (UAWD) and other delegates gathered the numbers to put their
issues on the convention floor. (That is, in between endless speeches
from politicians, glowing videos about top union officers, and other
time-wasting snoozes.)

After debate, the dissenters were often voted down by loyalists of the
Administration Caucus (AC) that has commanded every top office in the
union since the 1950s. But reformers found enough new allies to rack
up some remarkable victories.

Strike pay across the union will now start on the first day of a
strike, instead of its eighth. This will make a huge difference in the
ability of thousands of UAW members to start and sustain a strike.

Jessie Kelly, a skilled moldmaker at GM near Detroit, has seen the
low-paid and the higher-paid ends of the auto workforce. She was a
temp for three years and said, “Strike pay on day one was one of the
most important issues to me coming in. We have a lot of low- and
bottom-tier members who live paycheck to paycheck. It’s hard as hell
for them to go a week with no pay.”

UAWD developed the day one strike pay resolution as a top priority,
and the caucus passed it through locals representing more than 40
percent of the membership. Another part of the resolution included a
strike pay raise from $275 to $400 a week, which top UAW officers
chose to adopt [[link removed]]
before it hit the convention floor.

In campaigns for the union’s top officers, individual donations will
be capped at $2,000 from 2026 on. The constitution committee had
proposed no maximum. This was a spontaneous effort from the floor that
passed with about 70 percent. Supporters spoke to the need to check
the financial sway of top officers and staff, whose salaries are often
triple what members make.

UAWD’s top priority was a constitutional amendment to block
expansion of tiered contracts, and work towards ending tiers entirely.
In a tiered contract, workers hired later do the same job as more
senior workers at far lower pay and benefits
[[link removed]]. After
hundreds of delegates supported bringing the amendment to the floor,
it garnered nearly a third of the vote, much higher than dissidents’
numbers in the past.

AC supporters argued that bargaining was the place to deal with tiers,
and that while they too despised tiers, they needed flexibility to
keep them to avoid other concessions, and longer-term organizing to
cut tiers out. Predictably, the next day newspapers reported
[[link removed]]
that delegates had declined to repudiate tiers, while voting in a 3
percent raise for top officers.

Other key resolutions were forced to the floor for landmark debates.
Yasin Mahdi, three months on strike at CNH Industrial
[[link removed]],
advanced a resolution from the floor to raise strike pay even more:
“We need to come to bargaining with $500 a week, from day one, so
they know we mean to stop the corporate fuckery.” The measure passed
with a two-thirds majority before AC leaders organized to overturn it
a day later.

CIVILITY RESTORED

UAW conventions have been notable for their intolerance of dissent,
even when the number of reformers was small. In 2018 and some prior
conventions, loyalists handed out noisemakers to drown out speakers
who dared to dissent.

This year, whether due to the rising reform movement or because the
union is under a federal monitorship
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the tone was far more civil. Dissidents were rarely booed at the mic,
and due process was largely followed. While frequent challenges and
process points from delegates sometimes led to confusion and griping
on the floor, they also showed a union convention that, for a few
days, stepped beyond the top-down pageants of recent decades.

Willie Holmes is supporting incumbent president Ray Curry for
re-election, but he said, “This is the best convention we’ve had.
All this debate, all this questioning the people up at the front,
it’s holding them to the fire. It might seem raucous. That’s what
convention is supposed to be.

“Every time before, we’d show up and be told, here’s the slate.
Then we’d wait around for three days for it to be over.”

Holmes is local union president at a General Motors axle and engine
parts plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During the union’s 2019
strike at GM, International officers ordered his local to return to
work to fill a military order. Instead, Holmes and his local decided
to stay out on strike. After proving their crucial point in the supply
chain, the local ended tiers in their plant’s contract.

CORRUPTION CREEPS

A few days before the convention, the federal monitor overseeing the
Auto Workers issued a report
[[link removed]]
bemoaning union officers’ failure to cooperate with his
investigations, or even to reply to his requests for information. The
monitor has 19 investigations into corruption ongoing, on top of the
13 UAW officials already convicted and sent (briefly) to jail.

With the important exception of the raise in strike pay, stonewalling
also seemed to be the AC policy for the convention. No UAWD resolution
or constitutional amendment was put on the official docket for
discussion, despite their support from many locals. The proposal to
end tiers was not even printed in the “Submitted Resolutions”
booklet. It was as if the AC expected to replicate past conventions
where it presided with impunity.

Rebranding as the “Mass Caucus,” at least for now, the AC held
daily meetings where leaders laid out the plans for the day. With
future staff jobs and attention for their locals on the line,
delegates were told to follow orders from the top in the name of
“solidarity” and “respecting the union.” One reformer who
attended described the caucus environment as a “captive audience
meeting.”

A troubling sign came with a change approved for the union’s
Membership Advisory Committee on Ethics. This oversight group was
created in 2021 by a random, jury-style selection of eight of the 120
members who applied. A convention majority decided that instead, the
union’s regional directors will now select the members who oversee
their ethics. Without further changes or pressure, the foxes’ pups
might be the ones to guard the coop.

REFORMERS GET ORGANIZED

UAWD [[link removed]] is a reform caucus allying members from the
union’s traditional blue-collar base in manufacturing with the
higher education and legal workers who now make up a quarter of the
400,000-member union. Younger members’ tech savvy was on full
display in the use of Whatsapp updates and chats, with delegates,
alternates, and others able to discuss in real time next steps on the
floor.

The caucus was founded just before the pandemic to fight to replace
convention-based elections with one-member-one-vote, and it gained new
traction when the federal government put the UAW under the monitor.
With UAWD as the main organizers of a “yes” campaign for
one-member-one-vote, last November members voted by almost two-thirds
to adopt the new system
[[link removed]],
and for the first time this fall, officer candidates will have to face
the membership.

Shunte Sanders-Beasley, vice president of a Detroit-area Stellantis
local, said her plant went 89 percent for one-member-one-vote last
fall and that “because of the things that happened over the last 40
years, there’s no connection between the administration and the rank
and file. It’s been a dictatorship. Members want to feel that
they’re involved.”

Perhaps reflecting that disconnect, turnout for the referendum was
low. UAWD members—many of them new to union politics—have spent
this year organizing their local members to pass convention
resolutions and elect delegates on the platform “No Tiers, No
Corruption, No Concessions.”

They are backing a slate called UAW Members United: Shawn Fain, a
dissident international representative for president; Margaret Mock, a
former local shop chair, for secretary-treasurer; and Lashawn English,
a three-term local president, for director of Region 1, one of three
regions in Michigan. Both Fain and English fought imposition of the
dreaded 3/2/120 work schedule
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in their plants.

At a gathering for the slate held in a nearby bar Monday night, Fain
referred to contract concessions the union made in 2009 when Chrysler
and GM were in danger of bankruptcy and said, “Those [concessions]
are still there, even though the companies are making money hand over
fist… We have to set a standard that will make people want to be
part of this union.” Mock mock-apologized for not handing out
backpacks with her name on them, a reference to a recent scandal by
her incumbent opponent giving out goodies for self-promotion.

Bob Bickerstaff, a 39-year member and president of a Toledo Stellantis
(formerly Chrysler) local, thought one-member-one-vote had opened a
new day. “It should have been like this all along,” he said. “We
can’t grow the union without everybody having input to take on the
companies.”

At their morning meetings, UAWD members cheered wins on strike pay and
the hard-won openness of debate. Caucus co-chair Scott Houldieson
said, “We made history yesterday. We passed an amendment from the
floor. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened since the early
1980s.”

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

On the convention’s final day, the Administration Caucus went on the
attack. The daily opening prayer, by Herb Taylor from Local 31, sought
to warn and divide reformers: “I have a message for the young
people: Stop disrespecting this union.” The many older auto workers
who had spoken for reform were apparently not worth mentioning. Some
AC supporters broke from prayer to give a standing ovation.

Next came a charade of kissing up. AC supporters spent practically an
hour nominating a union trustee candidate over and over from the
floor, gleefully defying a rule allowing only two speakers per
candidate.

To make up for lost time, a book of more than 20 resolutions from the
leadership was then approved as a block, without debate. This included
a resolution on electric vehicles (EVs) focused on backing politicians
and tax rebates to steer this growing non-union sector into the UAW,
with hardly a mention of organizing battery and assembly workers
themselves. A UAWD resolution to drive worker-led organizing at EV
plants [[link removed]] never made the floor.

Finally, hours before adjourning, when some delegates had already left
for the airport, AC delegates moved to rescind the $500 strike pay
resolution passed barely a day before. Since that idea had been
submitted by a lowly striking worker on the floor, establishment
allies claimed the move had paid insufficient respect to the “highly
educated men and women” of the leadership and how they chose
resolutions in advance.

In the end, with debate cut off before any objections could be voiced,
delegates voted 421-181 to lower strike pay from $500 back to $400 a
week.

For all the let-downs at the end, Kelly celebrated the convention’s
big step forward: “I was at convention in 2018. After the
convention, I came home and felt sick. That was what I’d been
organizing under, spending all my free time to build up?

“This year, there’s so much more debate. It’s more democratic.
It’s beautiful to see.

“I really believe our membership is so intelligent. We can get so
organized when we need to. But that’s not how we were treated. Now,
you see one day of this, you see how smart we are.”

_Keith Brower Brown is a member of UAW Local 2865 at the University of
California and was a delegate to the convention. Jane Slaughter is a
former editor of _Labor Notes.

* UAW 2022 Convention; Unite All Workers for Democracy;
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