Members of the United Auto Workers union have overwhelmingly approved selecting their leaders in direct elections.
The historic referendum resulted from a federal corruption investigation that led to the conviction of 11 senior UAW officials and others.
With all votes tallied as of Thursday, almost 64 percent favored direct elections, also known as one member one vote, while about 36 percent wanted to keep the current system of delegates selecting the union’s leadership. A federal court-appointed monitor conducting the election posted the results on his website.
The margin was wider among UAW Local 12 members in Toledo, where 79 percent of voting members backed direct elections.
“Our members spoke, and I’m glad they did,“ said Bruce Baumhower, president of Local 12. ”Now they’ll have a stronger voice in everything that goes on, especially at the international [leadership] level.”
Direct elections received 89,615 votes, while 50,971 wanted delegate voting. The results must be approved by the Labor Department and a federal judge before they are official.
“I feel great because I’ve been fighting for [direct elections] since Ronald Reagan was president,“ said George Windau, a Local 12 member who works at Toledo’s Jeep factory. ”Now, we finally got it.”
Mr. Windau said the near-term goal after winning direct elections will be a “clean sweep” of the union’s top leaders. That will help rebuild credibility in the UAW, he argued — especially when it seeks to organize new workplaces.
Just over 143,000 ballots were received by Monday’s mail-in deadline, and 140,586 valid votes were counted, according to union monitor Neil Barofsky, a New York attorney.
Mr. Barofsky was appointed by a federal judge earlier this year as part of a settlement that avoided a government takeover of the 397,000-member union after the wide-ranging corruption scandal. The vote on direct election of leaders was part of the settlement, and involved mailing ballots in October to active workers as well as the union’s approximately 600,000 retirees.
Currently, union leaders are chosen every four years at a convention, with the delegates picked by local union offices. But the new slate of leaders is picked by the outgoing president, and seldom is there serious opposition.
For most of the past 70 years, one party within the union, known as the Administration Caucus, has managed to hold onto power using the delegate system.
“The delegate system allowed the union leadership to perpetuate itself, and the way to move up in the UAW was to go along to get along, to sort of turn the other way when you saw possible wrongdoing, and keep your place with the in-crowd,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School.
If the direct election victory is finalized, then a vote on leadership will take place before June of next year, when the next UAW convention is scheduled to take place. Mr. Gordon predicted that election is likely to result in “a lot of turnover” among the union’s top leaders — which includes a president, secretary-treasurer, three vice presidents, and eight regional directors.
“This was not a close vote,” Mr. Gordon added. “What this shows is that people who get up at 5:30 every morning and go to work are fed up, and want complete reform. Not just, ‘Here’s the new boss, same as the old boss.’”
Under the delegate system, Local 12’s 10,400 active members and 6,000 retirees would send just 19 representatives to the conference in Detroit every four years, Mr. Baumhower said. Now, he said, everybody in a leadership position — at any level of the union — will be “accountable to the rank and file.”
Turnout for the election was relatively low among Local 12 members: Of more than 16,000 active members and retirees, just 2,330 voted. Mr. Windau attributed that, in part, to a lack of communication about the referendum from UAW headquarters.
The vote and monitor are part of a December, 2020, deal between former UAW President Rory Gamble and ex-U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider in Detroit that held off moves by the government to take over the union.
Mr. Schneider viewed direct elections as a way to hold union leaders accountable for their actions. But Mr. Gamble, who retired earlier this year, said at the time that direct elections would let anti-union groups put out disinformation. He added that the delegate system gives minorities, women, and members outside of the automobile sector a voice in picking leaders.
Mr. Gamble, who was replaced by Ray Curry, was not charged in the federal probe. He has said the union is now clean and will have safeguards in place to prevent the scandal from happening again.
Eleven union officials and a late official’s spouse have pleaded guilty in the corruption probe since 2017, including the two presidents who served before Mr. Gamble, Gary Jones and Dennis Williams. Both were sentenced to prison.
Not all of the convictions were linked. The first wave, which included some Fiat Chrysler employees, involved money paid as bribes from a Fiat Chrysler-UAW training center in Detroit. Jones and Williams were caught in an embezzlement scheme with the leaders taking thousands of dollars of union money to buy golf clubs, booze, lavish meals, and to rent expensive villas in Palm Springs, Calif.
During the probe, Mr. Schneider, who led the investigation, said the corruption was so deep that the federal government may take over the union.
The U.S. attorney’s office said it uncovered embezzlement of over $1.5 million in dues money, kickbacks to union officials from vendors and $3.5 million in illegal payments from executives at Fiat Chrysler who wanted to corruptly influence contract talks.
Unite All Workers for Democracy, a group of UAW members who campaigned for the change, noted all types of UAW workers voted in favor of direct elections, from auto workers, to higher education and local government employees.
“The work of our caucus is just beginning,” Scott Houldieson, chairman of the UAWD, said in a statement. “We invite all UAW members to join us in our fight against concessions, corruption, and [pay] tiers. We will build a union based on solidarity, not partnership with management.”
Information from The Blade’s news services was used in this report.
First Published December 2, 2021, 4:58 p.m.
