We the membership of UAW local 1097 (Rochester, NY) do fully support all efforts to rid our organization of criminal individuals in the leadership, and eliminate all practices, policies, and structures that have allowed corruption to flourish. The recent FBI investigation has led to the indictment, arrest, and conviction of at least a dozen former UAW officials. Those corrupt officials did break the trust invested in them by the rank and file membership, and violated the solemn oath of office they undertook. The damage goes beyond the millions of dollars those criminals embezzled for petty self-enrichment, at the expense of the very workers they were sworn to represent; the loss of reputation and good will cannot easily be repaired, and will haunt our organization for decades to come.
We believe that many other changes need to be enacted to rid the UAW of the systemic causes that allowed corruption to grow like a cancer in our organization. One of the most unethical structures that needs to be thoroughly scrapped, and redesigned, is the current appointment system. The International UAW is rife with cronyism and nepotism. Placing friends and family in appointed positions welcomes corruption. We believe ALL and any UAW representative with authority in contract negotiations, and or the grievance procedure, must be elected. That is the only way to guarantee accountability to the membership they serve, with democratic, secret ballot, elections.
We strongly believe that we need to eliminate the intimidation and coercion of open floor votes for officer elections. Independently monitored secret ballot elections will begin to restore faith in our internal UAW leadership elections, and will endow the election winner(s) with legitimate authority. We demand secret ballot elections for Union authorization votes, we demand secret ballot elections for our Federal, State, and local civilian elections, and we now demand that our organization be held to the same standard and hold secret ballot voting for officer elections.
We believe that the pay of UAW International leadership and staff must be connected to the average pay of the workers in the industry they represent. No pay raises should be voted in for leadership if the average pay of the workers are falling. We need to have this connection established to insure that the leadership truly does feel the pain of the floor worker directly.
We know many other remedies to cure the cancer of corruption will be forwarded to the next UAW Constitutional Convention. Yet the one fix that the Justice Department mandated must be put out for the rank and file to debate and vote on is the proposal for direct election of UAW officers.
We feel that this is a necessary first step, “one member, one vote”, towards eliminating corruption in our Union. Therefore the leadership and membership of UAW local 1097 proudly supports the proposal for direct election of officers. The motion to support direct election of UAW officers was presented, debated, and voted on at the monthly membership meeting for UAW local 1097 Tuesday March 16, 2021; the membership unanimously voted YES to support direct elections.