Hundreds of workers are crowded into a high-school gymnasium. Their union leaders carefully go through each article of their employer’s last, best and final offer. Hands are raised, questions are asked and answered, and members share their thoughts with their officers and with each other.
In the previous two months of negotiations, the union negotiating committee has been seeking language to help curb the company abuses that have become rampant in the plant. The company has not agreed. Each union member weighs whether they will take the company’s offer, and accept ongoing problems in the workplace in exchange for modest economic improvements, or reject the offer and strike for a better deal.
After each of the three meetings, held to accommodate the different shifts so every member can participate, workers file out into the hallway, where voting machines are set up, and they cast their votes by secret ballot.
For months, the two local unions in the plant have been preparing their members for the possibility of a strike. At membership meetings and in the union’s monthly newsletter, local officers urge members to save money, to schedule medical appointments before the strike deadline, and to put off large purchases. They explain the measures they have taken to make sure members and their families are taken care of in the event of a long strike: upgrading the kitchen in the union hall so hundreds of meals can be prepared; making arrangements with local healthcare organizations to provide care and access to prescription drugs; talking to local credit unions about extending credit. They answer questions about what a strike would mean and how it would work.
Before the contract expires, the local officers pull all of their stewards into a special meeting to prepare them. The locals have an extensive steward system, with at least one steward in every department. The officers emphasize how important it is for stewards to be constantly talking to the members in their departments, making sure that they are provided with information and that their questions are answered. Four years ago, the locals struck for nine days, but the company has hired hundreds of new workers since then. The local officers encourage the stewards to make a special effort to talk to these new members.
When the votes are tallied, the members have voted to strike. A mass text message goes out. Inside the factory, the second-shift stewards gather the members in their departments and they walk out of the plant. Other members bring picket signs, tents and water. Within half an hour, boisterous picket lines are set up at each of the plant’s six gates. A democratic decision has been made, and the 1400 members unite collectively behind that decision, regardless of how they individually voted.
These workers are members of UE Locals 506 and 618. They work at the giant Wabtec locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania. They have just begun what will end up being a successful ten-week strike against their employer — and they have not only made the decision to strike in a democratic manner, they are carrying out the work of the strike themselves. This is what member-run unions are all about.
UE: A proud history of being a member-run union
UE has always stood for this kind of member-run, inclusive, bottom-up, democratic, rank-and-file unionism. Rank and file control is one of the five core principles of our philosophy of “Them and Us Unionism,” along with aggressive struggle, political independence, international solidarity, and uniting all workers. The preamble to our constitution declares that we “form an organization which unites all workers on an industrial basis, and rank-and-file control, regardless of craft, age, sex, nationality, race, creed, or political beliefs, and pursue at all times a policy of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions.”
When UE was founded in 1936, most of the craft unions that made up the American Federation of Labor (AFL) permitted only highly-skilled white men to join their ranks. The unwillingness of the AFL to organize the millions of workers in mass production industries led to creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s.
UE, the first union chartered by the CIO, was founded by seventeen independent local unions. Each of these local unions had been organized by the workers in the plants themselves, not by outside organizers. They intended to build a strong national union, but one that was run by the members, not staff or top leaders, and they built this into the new union’s constitution and culture.
This is how UE’s first Director of Organization James Matles described the organization of the General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York in his history of UE, Them and Us:
Not a single full-time staff organizer from the UE international union was assigned to the campaign. On the contrary, Local 301 helped the international union. From the founding convention of March 1936 to the convention of September 1937, the local paid $12,217 in dues and initiation fees to the international union. It received back in financial aid a total of $482.50. The difference signified the support UE Local 301 gave UE organizing efforts in tougher territory.
The fact that UE was a member-run union helped us grow quickly — workers led their own organizing drives — and by the end of World War II we were the third-largest union in the CIO. After the war, corporate America, along with its allies in government and even some in labor, worked overtime to destroy UE and other progressive unions. They nearly succeeded, but a committed, involved membership, who knew that the members run this union, helped UE survive — and stick to our founding principles.
More about UE’s history and principles can be found in the 2020 booklet Them and Us Unionism.
Staff-run unions
Too many unions in the United States are run not by their members but by their leaders and staff. Many unions are, in fact, structured to keep their members passive or under control. Members are told that their local president or business agent will “take care of them” — without them having to do anything but pay dues.
“Business unions” — unions that operate like business enterprises — see this as a virtue. Membership involvement takes time and can be messy when members disagree with each other. Instead of taking the time to democratically work through differences, business unions prefer the greater efficiency of simply having staff and top leaders make most decisions. Similarly, when members are asked to do the work of the union, they may have less experience, or not be able to get to it as promptly — they have a whole other full-time job, after all! Easier to just have staff do all of the work, or employ high-paid lawyers and consultants.
In too many unions, lack of membership control goes hand-in-hand with bloated salaries for union officials, few rights on the job, substandard contracts or a lifeless union. When power in a union flows from the top down, the members aren’t in charge, and workers’ needs may not be a priority. Staff-run unions also rarely put a premium on organizing new workers — they may see bringing new members into the union as just making more work for the staff! This is one of the reasons why so few unions have been able to take advantage of the upsurge in worker organizing since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even some unions which fight militantly for their members, organize the unorganized, and engage in broader social struggle for the working class are still run in a top-down manner. The leadership and staff of these unions are often very dedicated individuals, working long hours on behalf of the members and the working class. But the way their unions are structured leaves little room for member participation.
In these kinds of unions, where the only say that members often get is to vote their final contract settlements up or down, member frustration can easily boil over into rejected contracts and strikes that their leadership is uninterested in leading — and for which neither the membership or leadership is prepared.
In contrast, when union members are not only making democratic decisions about their union but actually running the union themselves, they are able to make informed collective decisions about what they need and what they are willing to do, together, to get it.
We are an independent, rank-and-file union. The members run your local. As leaders, you do a disservice if you rely on your staff to run your local.
Start talking with your members. Start educating your members. Start training people to step up as leaders.
We are a rank and file union. Our members run this union and we have to remember that and we have to step up and run our locals. We cannot rely on staff to do that.
—UE Local 506 President Scott Slawson, speaking at the 78th UE Convention (2023).
Revitalization of the labor movement depends on workers
Employers resist unions, but if they have to deal with one, they would rather deal with a union that lacks organizational strength. Management prefers to meet with the union “boss,” whether a staff person or a single elected leader, behind the scenes to cut a deal. This cozy arrangement leaves the members out of the process, keeping the discussion far away from the work area, and reducing the chance of disruption to the work.
Raising an effective challenge to the employer’s economic power can only be accomplished with the active involvement of the members — and that requires that the members are kept informed, asked to take action, and allowed to make decisions.
Today, the labor movement faces many challenges. Union density — the percentage of workers belonging to unions — is at its lowest point in almost a century. Some of the most powerful corporations in the world, such as Amazon, and whole industries, such as tech, remain almost entirely unorganized. Right-wing politicians have succeeded in passing laws weakening unions in state after state, including in once-strong labor strongholds like Wisconsin and West Virginia. More states are now “right-to-work” than not. Public-sector workers have been stripped of their rights in many states including Iowa, Wisconsin, and Florida, and Utah has recently joined North and South Carolina in outright prohibiting collective bargaining in the public sector.
Answers to these challenges will only be developed through the direct involvement of the union rank and file. The revitalization, possibly even the very survival, of the labor movement will depend not on high-paid officials, consultants, or so-called experts, but on the millions of workers who dream of a better life.
Unions worthy of the name have to be run by the members, with members making the decisions and doing the work. Unions are strongest when union members actively participate in the decision-making process and take responsibility for carrying out the work of the union, in concert with staff and elected leaders — when they truly run the union.