Bringing Greater Transparency to UAWD about Actions Taken at IEB Meetings

This resolution was passed at the 2024 March Membership Meeting.

Whereas:

• Official minutes of International Executive Board (IEB) meetings are sometimes not made available to the general UAW membership for many months;
• In Article 12, Section 19, the UAW Constitution states that “verbatim minutes” shall be “transcribed immediately” and be available for inspection by all UAW members in good standing “as soon as completed;”
• IEB members who are in the Administration Caucus, independent, or UAWD members have all taken positions during IEB meetings that would’ve been helpful and actionable for rank-and-file UAWD members to know about in a timely manner, to be able to organize around these issues at the Local and Regional level;
• UAWD members on the IEB have taken positions at IEB meetings against key UAWD priorities, such as appointments for new reform-minded UAW staff and funding for aspects of the Stand Up Strike;
• UAWD members have not been able to learn about important positions taken at IEB meetings that pertain to their own workplaces, such as opposition to reinstating the servicing credit for Local 2320 and to voluntarily recognition of UAW Staff United;
• UAWD supports broader reform to make IEB meeting minutes available to all UAW members in an accessible and timely manner.

Be it resolved, that the UAWD Steering Committee (SC) shall establish the following system for internally providing UAWD members information about all IEB meetings:

1. During an IEB meeting, and within the first seven days after the IEB meeting adjourns, the SC, working with any other UAWD members it appoints, shall compile a draft report containing information that is corroborated by at least two UAWD members who were in attendance and have direct knowledge of that portion of the meeting — any member who participates in this process will remain anonymous unless they choose otherwise;
2. The report shall include as much of the following information that can be corroborated and which will ultimately be mandated by the UAW Constitution to be available to all members in meeting minutes (excluding content from official IEB executive sessions):
   1. Titles and summaries of each IEB motion, along with relevant context to understand the significance of the motion;
   2. The breakdown of how individual IEB members voted on each motion;
   3. The outcome of each motion and relevant next steps or impacts it will have;
3. No later than eight days after the IEB meeting has adjourned, the SC shall circulate the draft report for feedback to each of the UAWD members on the IEB, informing them that they have one week to engage in the following process:
   1. Any item that remains unchallenged, meaning no statement has been provided in writing that the item is invalid within one week, will be included in the final report;
   2. Any item that is declared invalid in writing by more than one member, if it can be agreed upon by those members and the original members who corroborated the information, will be corrected as soon as possible;
   3. Any item that is declared invalid in writing by more than one member that cannot be agreed upon with other members will not be included in the final report;
   4. Any UAWD member on the IEB may opt to include a message in the report to provide context or reasoning for any of their votes;
4. Once the report is finalized, and no later than 15 days after the IEB meeting has adjourned, it shall be shared by the SC in the UAWD Slack with the following disclaimer: “This is a confidential report about the IEB meeting prepared by the Steering Committee from information from UAWD members in attendance with direct knowledge. All information in this report has been corroborated by multiple members. The information contained in this report should not be copied or shared publicly.”
5. When the official IEB minutes are published, the SC shall provide an update to the initial report, providing a full overview of relevant information, noting if any information from the initial report was inaccurate, and noting if any member provided inaccurate information;
6. The SC shall conduct the full process above for the February 2024 IEB meeting and shall work to create a backward-looking report, following the process above, of all significant information from other past IEB meetings.