Eyes will be on the upcoming election of the United Auto Workers in an unprecedented referendum. The results could be game-changing for how the UAW will operate in the future. It could also have a ripple effect throughout organized labor. There’s some poetic justice that the elections open on October 19, the day UAW rebel organizer Jerry Tucker succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Union workers knew about the UAW’s corruption and collusion with corporate management long before their dirty laundry was aired by the Department of Justice.
In the face of negotiated contracts that continued to favor management’s unabated labor-busting strategy, Jerry Tucker and others engaged in their own strategy of stealth organizing inside the plants. They went on to launch the New Directions Movement, an opposition caucus inside the UAW that advocated for better representation along with more democracy, transparency and accountability.