The System is Rigged: Reform in the UFCW

“UFCW International’s system is rigged to keep rank-and-file members’ voices quiet, just as CEOs and corporations rig the workplace to keep workers’ voices quiet,” said Iris Scott to a packed hotel suite during a press conference at this year’s Labor Notes.

Scott is a rank-and-file member of the United Food and Commercial Workers who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the union for illegal convention delegate apportionment. The lawsuit brought by Scott alongside fellow UFCW member Kyong Barry is the biggest step so far taken by the nascent UFCW reform movement.

UFCW’s membership is only a fraction of the more than 50 million workers who work in the industries covered by its jurisdiction.

UFCW is the fifth largest labor union in the US, with approximately 1.1 million members with a jurisdiction covering industries including grocery, food production, meatpacking, retail, cannabis, warehousing and chemical industries, and which also organizes some healthcare, pharmacy, and food service workers. These industries are not only some of the most essential to society, representing a huge amount of the commercial sector, but also unjustly considered to be “unskilled” or “low-skill” work. To unionize these jurisdictions would be to unionize some of the lowest paid workers in the US.

But UFCW’s membership is only a fraction of the more than 50 million workers who work in the industries covered by its jurisdiction. UFCW’s membership could be much bigger, but decades of bureaucratic, top-down, business friendly, and blatantly anti-worker behavior on the part of UFCW officers and staff has reduced the union’s reputation and influence with its own members and been a brake on making serious investments in new organizing.

Within its own ranks many members have low union consciousness or outright negative opinions of the union, after years of poor contracts with real wages and benefits cut while the union brass receives six-figure checks and bonuses on the members’ dime, and the treasury banks around $50 million annually which could be spent on hiring thousands of additional new organizers.

The last twenty years have brought a string of corruption and embezzlement scandals as well as a steady flow of Unfair Labor Practice allegations. The biggest problem is transparency. In 2002 UFCW brought forward a lawsuit with the intent of establishing their right to keep the union constitution away from members and the public. Though that suit failed and UFCW reluctantly complied to post the constitution online, it pointed to a reticence for accountability that persists in the union today. Still, any member who requests a copy of a local’s bylaws is looked upon with suspicion.

Now many of the new workplaces UFCW takes an interest in organizing have chosen to create independent unions rather than hitch their wagons to UFCW’s horse. But a strong, fighting, democratic UFCW could be a major force in the labor and worker power movement, if it undergoes a revitalisation from the bottom up.

If UFCW were utilizing its full potential as one of the largest labor unions in the US by being a strong power for their members and other workers in their jurisdiction, the US labor movement would be significantly strengthened. Just the grocery sector alone would be a vital reinforcement. Imagine the millions of grocery workers nationwide going on strike simultaneously. How much quicker could the entire capitalist system be shut down than for such a key economic lynchpin to be pulled? Even just a strike among Kroger workers would have a widespread impact, creating massive leverage for the union to win significant improvements for UFCW/Kroger workers. A strong and fighting UFCW could do more than just weakly call against the proposed Kroger/Albertsons merger, they could organize against it. If the merger were to go through, despite the undemocratic mega-monopoly that would be created therein, an energetic UFCW could use the situation to fight for a national contract and bargaining table, not only raising the standards of grocery jobs across the country but coalesce the power of millions of workers into a force that could actually stand against corporations and their CEOs and officers.

A New Approach

Though there have been attempts at reform movements in UFCW in the past, none have gotten very far. Some locals, like 3000 in Seattle, are more progressive and democratic than others, but by and large there is low member engagement within the union. The latest reform push is spearheaded by a non-profit called Essential Workers for Democracy (EW4D). Formed through funds of the sale of former worker housing owned by Retail Clerks local 1001 in Bellevue, WA, EW4D’s mission is to increase rank-and-file democracy throughout all unions. They have a special focus on UFCW now as they play the role of facilitator between reform-minded rank-and-filers in disparate locals, connecting members who want to change their union and workplaces, as well as providing resources and support to those groups. Though some have derided EW4D as an outside force, not a grassroots reform movement, they play an essential role.

The Twitter account “Reform UFCW” is the closest thing to a true member-led movement at the moment. People who look to revitalize their UFCW locals are hampered by the bureaucratic nature of leadership, and are isolated from other workplaces in their local and even more so from other locals, making a robust, nationwide, grassroots reform campaign a non-starter. By creating a network between local reform groups and assisting them with advice, skills training, resources, and peer connection, EW4D is helping lay the foundation of a true reform push in UFCW.

The recent lawsuit against UFCW bears this out. The lawsuit is brought by two UFCW members in different locals, with the funding of EW4D. Iris Scott of UFCW 1459 in Massachusetts and Kyong Barry of UFCW 3000 in Washington State are bringing the suit to challenge UFCW’s current system of appointing convention delegates. The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), the Federal law which oversees the governance of labor unions, makes it a clear point that every member of a union has an equal right to vote.

UFCW’s current convention delegate appointment system illegally undercuts this by having a range of delegates per thousand whereby locals of one thousand members or less, like Scott’s local 1459, receive 2.0 votes per thousand while locals of 55,000 or more, like Barry’s 3000, only receive 0.5 votes per thousand. Furthermore another provision of the UFCW Constitution automatically awards local top officers delegate and voting status, without any opportunity for the rank-and-file to challenge them with an election, further disenfranchising them.

As a delegate to the 2023 UFCW convention, Scott spoke of their disappointment as she witnessed a slate of reform proposals get not just voted down, but booed, insulted, and even made fun of by delegates who were UFCW officers and staff. This illustrative moment showed Scott that reform was not going to come to UFCW internally, as long as the current UFCW officers and their undemocratic system persist. Scott, Barry, and EW4D are bringing this suit to challenge and hopefully change the current delegation apportionment system, and though it does not outright ask for one member one vote, that is the ultimate hope of EW4D’s UFCW project.

One Step At A Time

One member one vote (1M1V) is a powerful tool for member-led union reforms. Both the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers (UAW) won 1M1V and took back their unions from the old, corrupt, business-friendly leadership and instead voted in reform-minded leaders often from rank-and-file backgrounds.

UAW is a particularly recent and salient example—Shawn Fain has become something of a labor celebrity in the last year since his election following the passage of 1M1V, authorizing powerful strikes, winning historic contracts, and making waves with his “Eat The Rich” shirt. Such a policy in UFCW would shift the labor movement into a new gear.

For now the lawsuit is only asking for a fair and equal delegate distribution system, but with hope that it would be a crucial step on the way to 1M1V. But EW4D’s program is not limited to this suit. In addition to the quiet, background work of connecting rank-and-file members across the country looking to reform their locals, they have also begun a pressure campaign agitating for “$30+COLA,” meaning a $30/hr starting wage plus cost of living adjustments for essential workers. Long term goals include getting a national contract for large employers like Kroger and, eventually, one single bargaining table for all grocery and retail workers. EW4D understands the potential significance of a fighting, democratic UFCW—millions of workers in solidarity, enough to create the largest strike in US history, should they be properly organized.

Workers Don’t Trust UFCW

The implicit and explicit practices of UFCW’s leadership that prioritize union officials while disempowering rank-and-file members have led the union to develop to a poor reputation among the working class. Its own members often see it, at best, as a “service union” who exist essentially as an outside entity to “help” the workers. At worst, members despise the union, seeing its officers and attorneys as in bed with the officers and attorneys of the companies they bargain with, feeling the pain of years of bad contracts and being let down at the bargaining table. Outside the union their reputation is no better. UFCW is not-so-quietly referred to as “the worst union,” even (or especially) by labor activists.

In many of the nascently unionizing industries such as cannabis, coffee shops, and smaller grocery chains where UFCW has attempted to intervene, workers have rejected unionizing under UFCW and opted instead to create independent unions. Radical workers trying to unionize explain that they are organizing for actual power in their workplaces, and UFCW doesn’t seem to be the kind of union that would fight for them as hard as they are willing to fight for themselves. UFCW fails to grow, and the UFCW reform movement misses out on new, radical rank-and-filers who have a vested interest in seeing a more democratic and fighting union. Less reform wins, less interest in reform. How can UFCW break out of this cycle?

Help Wanted

The last several years’ upswing in labor militancy has heartened many in the working class, but despite some local grocery worker strikes and efforts to unionize smaller grocers like Trader Joe’s, the movement has not yet extended to the largest section of grocery and retail workers, and others in UFCW’s jurisdiction. UFCW is an extremely significant player in the labor movement, and the further success of the movement depends on UFCW. We can’t expect the tiger to spontaneously change his stripes. Nor can we expect an unbidden grassroots movement. We need dedicated people specifically orienting to UFCW reform as a strategic lynchpin in the labor movement.

We need dedicated people specifically orienting to UFCW reform as a strategic lynchpin in the labor movement.

The UFCW reform movement needs socialists. DSA members and others on the left have been leaders in many other union reform movements, it is now vital to orient to UFCW. Food and retail workers are an essential and huge part of the working class. No labor movement will be able to significantly expand without the organization of the tens of millions of workers in food, grocery and retail industries, and these workers are desperately in need of solidarity.

The UFCW reform movement needs primarily two things: more leaders and a robust network. An influx of even a few dozen highly motivated, highly energetic activists would greatly increase the capacity of both local and national campaigns. Any additional networking infrastructure to connect locals not only with each other but with other unions and a coalition of community supporters would endow UFCW members with a new confidence that they are not alone in their struggle, creating a more viable reform movement. DSA is uniquely positioned to offer both these things. DSA members should strongly consider getting jobs in UFCW shops and joining the reform movement, and DSA Labor should adopt a national plan for UFCW Reform solidarity. An organized push from DSA can rapidly speed up the development of the reform movement.

Furthermore, the UFCW reform movement needs a Marxist core. It is the purview of Marxists to study the material conditions of past struggles to identify the strongest possible tactics. There is a generational memory of movements to reform other unions such as the Teamsters and UAW. With Marxist leadership, reformers in UFCW could bypass many of the mistakes made by previous campaigns to direct energy into effective strategies. If we avoid the hurdles of other reform movements we can transform UFCW into a key vehicle of class struggle.

Photo Credit: Henry De Groot