By Bob Hennelly

In the first direct vote ever by the rank-and-file of the United Auto Workers, members voted by a nearly two-to-one margin for someone other than Ray Curry, the incumbent president. But thanks to the crowded field no one candidate emerged with the 50 percent threshold necessary to avoid a run-off early next year.

Down ballot results were less ambiguous, with challengers running on a reform agenda claiming both national and regional posts. Curry led the vote tally with 39,572 votes, with Shawn Fain, an international UAW administrative representative in the Stellantis Department, running under the Members United reform banner, garnering 38,958 votes and a slot in the run-off.  

Challenger Brian Keller received 14,561, Mark Gibson got 5,627, and Will Lehman got 4,777.

Curry was elected president by the union’s International Executive Board in June 2021 after the retirement of UAW President Rory L. Gamble.

DOWN BALLOT CLARITY

In the contest for International Secretary Treasurer Margaret Mock, running under Fain’s Members United slate got 63,121 votes, easily besting Frank Stuglin who got 38,813. The two International Vice-President spots went to Members United candidates Mike Boston and Rich Boyer. The newly-elected officers will take office Dec. 12.

“This is a real upset victory and upsurge within the UAW that will certainly change the direction of the union — however, the presidential race is decided,"  Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California Berkeley, told the Detroit News.  "This is a historic election. It is a major victory for the opposition, whatever the results. And it puts a real burden on whoever wins the presidency to bring the union together.”

The unprecedented exercise in direct democracy for the UAW, now overseen by a court-appointed independent monitor, was the result of a massive federal criminal prosecution that resulted in at least 15 felony convictions of national and regional union officials, as well as a handful of company executives. 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Fiat Chrysler [FCA US LLC], one of the Big Three automakers, doled out  $3.5 million to cultivate the UAW leadership to betray their membership from 2009 through 2016. “FCA US LLC conspired to make improper labor payments to high-ranking UAW officials, which were used for personal mortgage expenses, lavish parties, and entertainment expenses,” said Irene Lindow, Special Agent-in-Charge with the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, back in March 2021, when the company was hit with a $30 million fine.

Last year, by the wide margin of 140,586 to 89,615, union members voted to have the national leadership selected by a direct rank-and-file vote for the first time in the union’s history. Since the union’s founding back in the 1930s’, the union’s leadership was selected through a caucus and delegate system.

The UAW has close to a million members, including 600,000 retirees who were also eligible to vote. Today’s UAW includes workers not only in the auto industry but in the government sector, legal aid, higher education, hospitals, and nonprofit organizations. The union has more than 400,000 active members and more than 585,000 retired members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. There are 600 local unions under contract, with more than 1,000 different employers.

FALL FROM GRACE

Labor historian Joshua Freeman, a professor emeritus at Queens College at the City University of New York, told the Village Voice recently that the UAW’s bout with corruption scandals was a sad departure from its foundational place in America’s labor history.

“From the mid-1930s through the 1960s, for a lot of people the UAW was a model of an American labor union,” Freeman told the newspaper. “It cracked the fortress of the anti-unionism of the giant companies like GM and Ford [in the years leading up to WWII and during the war]. It was very socially progressive. It was squeaky clean in terms of corruption, and it set standards along with the United Steel Workers for wages and benefits that lots of other union and non-union workers benefited from. It loomed very large in the American landscape.”

But Freeman added that under the leadership of one of its founders, Walter Reuther, the UAW evolved into “a one-party democracy where if you were not nominated by Reuther’s caucus, you did not have a chance.” But now, Freeman says the shift to direct democracy “is moving away from one of the less positive parts of the heritage of the union.

At a September 22nd virtual candidates’ forum Curry did his best to defend his record maintaining that it was his team had cleaned up the union and had added thousands of new members outside the auto industry. “We are the key piece that removed the corruption out of our organization and led to all of the successful reforms that no one seems to remember are taking place today,” he said.

“I am running because I am sick of the complacency of our top leaders,” Fain countered, blasting the UAW leadership for viewing “the [auto] companies as our partners rather than our adversaries” and for feathering their own nests with “wage increases, early retirement bonuses, and pensions,” even as the rank-and-file failed to be made whole after major concessions made during the Great Recession of the late 2000s.

Brian Keller, who got came in third, blasted the union for not reclaiming the concessions the union granted when the American auto industry was on the verge of imploding and even required an unprecedented federal bailout.

“The people that hold office now had over a decade to fix this,” Keller said. “Even after the 16 indictments and the companies making record profits, we continue to receive concessionary agreements. General Motors, back in 2018, made $11.8 billion; in 2019, they made $13.9 billion in net income. Ford made $3.7 billion in 2018, and in 2019 made $21.2 billion. Fiat Chrysler Automotive made $8.1 billion in 2018 and in 2019 made $6.7 billion. So, with these people that hold office now why do we continue to receive concessionary agreements? Why haven’t we got back what we lost?”

MISSING IN ACTION: THE MEMBERS

Just 106,790 ballots were cast out of the one million members eligible to vote. Last month, Will Lehman, who was running for president, filed a federal lawsuit seeking for the election period to be extended due to “widespread reports that workers are unaware of the election” and that the mechanism for mailing ballots out had broken down.

 “An election cannot express the genuine will of the membership where the bulk of the membership has not been notified that an election is taking place at all, and in which numerous eligible members have not received ballots in time to meet the deadlines that have been imposed,” Lehman’s court filing alleged. “Unless action is swiftly taken to guarantee the right to vote, whatever leadership emerges from this election will not be legitimate, ‘duly-elected’ or in any way representative of the rank-and-file members of the union like Lehman.”

The court denied Lehman’s motion.

Run-off ballots will be mailed out January 12 and are due back by Feb. 28, 2023.