Ege Yumuşak (former member of Local 5118) wrote for the Boston Review:
From the Chicago Teachers’ Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators and the Union Power caucus of the United Teachers Union Los Angeles to the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and UAW’s own Unite All Workers for Democracy, reform caucuses have installed new leadership and are working to make significant changes to culture and practice. Inspired by Kellogg and John Deere workers who voted down tentative agreements and later achieved transformative contracts, other UAW unions—not just at the University of California—have seen rank-and-file no-vote campaigns over the last two years. Meanwhile, UPS Teamsters have built an app to send out bargaining updates to all workers during ongoing contract negotiations, and they are inviting a number of rank-and-file workers into the bargaining room. All these developments—embodying the call for high participation in Rules to Win By—have emerged from rank-and-file militancy, and they point the way to building a more democratic culture of dissent and debate within unions themselves.
Read more in the Boston Review.