Teddy Ostrow reports for The Upsurge, a podcast about the future of the American labor movement:
Eric Truss: So what’s different about this time is, the member had a chance to get engaged in what’s called One Member, One Vote, where they were able to do a direct election of their own president and executive board staff.
Teddy Ostrow: That’s Eric Truss, a Ford worker at the Dearborn Truck Plant and the financial secretary of Unite All Workers for Democracy, or UAWD, a rank-and-file reform caucus within the union. Eric is explaining that prior to last year, rank-and-file workers couldn’t actually vote in an election for the union’s top officers. It was done through an undemocratic delegate system. But UAWD organized hard to introduce a One Member, One Vote system within the union. They then ran a slate of candidates, including [Shawn] Fain, a member of UAWD, all of whom won their seats.
Eric Truss: In this case, the members had a chance to do that and they took advantage of it. And because they did and they got to experience Shawn being in office, they got to see a new approach towards how we negotiate—and this has brought more fire to the membership that they’ve never seen.
Listen to more at The Upsurge.