The year labor took the lead

This past year, there’s been a lot written about the American labor movement’s comeback, particularly after the United Auto Workers’ strike which resulted in a 25 percent wage hike and the end of an exploitative tiered workforce which depressed younger workers’ earnings for a generation. Yet, what isn’t fully appreciated is just how corrupt the UAW had become before Shawn Fain’s election in 2023 that started the turnaround. 

Hopeful minds might ask if the UAW can make a comeback with a bigger, bolder vision perhaps we can do the same as a country after the nadir of Donald Trump and a long-simmering insurrection that still grips our nation as we head into the New Year.

Just a little over a month after the UAW  won it’s unprecedented six-week strike against all three big automakers, the union’s executive board voted to demand an immediate cease fire in Gaza. It had been a lot of years since the union had taken such a stand at a time when the nation’s most prestigious institutions like Harvard found themselves floundering for lack of moral clarity. 

In taking a stand, the union, which between retirees and active workers has a million members, signed on to a petition that had been drafted by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Union (UE) and UFCW Local 3000.

“We members of the American labor movement, mourn the loss of life in Israel and Palestine,” states the petition. “We express our solidarity with all and our common desire for peace in Palestine and Israel, and we call on President Joe Biden and Congress to push for an immediate cease fire and end to the siege of Gaza. We cannot bomb our way to peace. We also condemn any hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, or anyone else.”

“It’s important for labor to get out in front of this,” said Daniel Vicente, director of UAW’s Region 9 and member of the union’s executive board, in an interview. “The UAW has a long history of supporting civil and human rights issues around the world and it’s been a long time since the UAW has taken strong stances. Now, under the new leadership of Shawn Fain and the new executive board we are trying to get back to the basics of what the union was founded on —a stable life for the middle class, not just in the United States but the whole world and peace, because we can only have a peaceful world if people have work.”

The same day that the UAW weighed in, 1199SEIU, the nation’s largest healthcare union with close to a half million members, issued a similar call for “the immediate cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, to allow for urgent humanitarian relief amid the collapse of the territory’s health and other infrastructure.”

“We reiterate our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ attack on October 7, the killings, use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, and kidnappings of Israelis and foreign nationals, 1199SEIU affirmed.  “We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages taken by Hamas and the end to indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israel.

1199SEIU continued. “As healthcare workers, we are deeply troubled by the worsening health and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  Food, water, and medicine are urgently needed to save the lives of Palestinian civilians caught up in this conflict.  We reject the notion that Israel’s attacks on hospitals filled with patients, apartment blocks filled with families, and the deaths of 11,000+ Palestinian women and children are acceptable collateral damage.  We urge an immediate ceasefire.”

While the corporate news media has zeroed in on newly elected President Fain, there’s been less attention to the deep bench of regional leadership who were part of the grassroots revival. Take for instance new executive board members like Vicente, 34, whose wife Iman is Palestinian. The couple have four children and live in western New York.

“I am also a Marine Corps veteran of the war in Iraq and global war on terrorism so I bought into the narrative that we are a just nation that always does the right thing,” Vicente said. “We could be but right now that is not true. It’s not based on the facts. We invest endless amounts of money on the defense budget and we don’t take care of poor communities where you see drug addiction—where the roads are terrible and the schools are underfunded but we have all the money in the world to put into new guidance systems so that we can decimate entire populations. It has to end sometime.” 

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For the UAW, the call for a cease fire in Gaza was just the latest sign of a dynamic revival of one of the nation’s legacy unions that for several years found itself mired in a sprawling corruption probe and criminal prosecution that took down two former UAW presidents and a dozen other union officials as well as auto executives.

Department of Justice prosecutors successfully charged that Fiat Chrysler [FCA US LLC],  spread $3.5 million around to get the UAW leadership to sell out the membership from 2009 through 2016. 

“FCA US LLC conspired to make improper labor payments to high-ranking UAW officials, which were used for personal mortgage expenses, lavish parties, and entertainment expenses,” said Irene Lindow, Special Agent-in-Charge with the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, back in March 2021, when the company was hit with a $30 million fine. The announcement from the DOJ continued, “Instead of negotiating in good faith, FCA corrupted the collective bargaining process and the UAW members’ rights to fair representation.”

As a consequence of the multiple convictions, the once mighty UAW was put under an independent monitor, under the supervision of a federal judge. For all the UAW’s storied history as a legacy union that helped build the middle class and support social justice causes like the civil rights movement, it was not governed by anything like a direct democracy but by a delegate system. In 2021, the monitor put the question to all of the active and retired union members. 140,586 members voted for the right to have the rank and file pick the union’s leadership while 89,615 opted for the status quo.

“I am running because I am sick of the complacency of our top leaders,” Fain said during a virtual candidates forum during the pandemic. Fain, 55, blasted the UAW leadership for viewing “the [auto] companies as our partners rather than our adversaries” and for feathering their own nests with “wage increases, early retirement bonuses, and pensions,” even as the rank-and-file failed to be made whole after major concessions made during the Great Recession of the late 2000s.

Fain’s slate, which saw that their own union leadership had been coopted by a rigged economy that works only for multinationals and the very wealthy, prevailed across the country. 

“I am 34 years old and the director of Region 9 A that represents New York City. Brandon Mancilla is 29 years old,” Vicente said. “So, we were not even alive for the civil rights movement but if you look at their writings and listen to their speeches, they are speaking of the same issues we are dealing with today. We have not gotten better.”

Vicente continued. “I have been told my entire 34 years of life from the time I was a little kid in public school that I live in the best country in the world where if you work hard and buckle down you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps—but as it turns out all the machines that made bootstraps were sold overseas during the Clinton administration and those pathways no longer exist.” 

The militant labor torch has been passed.