Rank and File

Auto Worker Delegates Back Union’s Fighting Direction At UAW Convention

June 20, 2026 Dan DiMaggio and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Rank and File, UAW, Unions

Delegates to the United Auto Workers constitutional convention affirmed this week the aggressive direction the union has taken under President Shawn Fain, who took office in 2023 and immediately set the 400,000-member union on a new path, illustrated in bold campaigns like the Stand Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers. The 1,000 delegates who assembled in Detroit voted to increase the money designated for new organizing and to maintain dues at 2.5 hours per month in order to bulk up the strike fund. The union is looking ahead to a projected rematch with the Big 3 on May Day 2028, when contracts covering 150,000 auto workers expire.

Teamsters For A Democratic Union Leaders Explain Their Strategy

June 13, 2026 Eric Blanc, Portside. Strategize! Rank and File, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, Unions, Worker Rights

Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the organization dedicated to rank-and-file organizing within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is one of the most important labor reform organizations in the United States. The group has played a key role within one of the most powerful unions in the country over the years, including in the election of insurgent Ron Carey as Teamsters president in 1991 and then the United Parcel Service (UPS) 1997 strike, as well as the election of current Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and within the UPS contract campaign in 2023.

Respect Is the Foundation Of Organizing

June 9, 2026 Ellen David Freidman, Labor Notes. Organize! Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights, Working Class

Solidarity among co-workers is your source of power against the employer. And one essential ingredient for solidarity is respect. In the workplace we typically don’t experience respect—we experience coercion. No matter how much the boss may call us “partners” or claim “we’re a family here,” the employment relationship is fundamentally undemocratic: The employer makes the decisions, and workers are required to comply. The union must be different in its DNA. Starting with the first building block of organizing, the one-on-one conversation, your goal is to show your respect for your co-workers.

Bring Member Power To The Table By Opening Up Bargaining

June 3, 2026 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. Organize! Contract Negotiations, Rank and File, Transparency, Unions

Since electing new leadership in 2022, Teamsters Local 135 in Indiana has completely changed the way it conducts negotiations. It’s using open bargaining to revitalize the local. Under the previous leadership, a small bargaining team negotiated behind closed doors. Gag orders ensured that members would know nothing about negotiations until an agreement was presented for a vote. “It would be the business agent and a couple of stewards,” says business agent Robert Doolin, who started out in 1998 at a warehouse that supplies Kroger. “I always hated this. The company would always try to put a gag order on negotiations.”

Fighting Autocracy And Corruption

February 26, 2026 Steve Early, New Politics. Strategize! Book Review, Corruption, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions

My first contact with labor reformers in New York City was nearly 50 years ago. Like many rank-and-file dissidents, before and since, these critics of union corruption were prophets without honor in their own local. Teamsters Local 282 was, at the time, one of the most mobbed-up affiliates of a national union then rightly notorious for its organized crime ties. Its members drove trucks full of cement or other building materials to local construction sites, while 282 leaders like Bobby Sasso extorted bribes to insure labor peace or allow non-union operations.

DSA’s ‘Rank-And-File Strategy” Has 60s Roots In Berkeley

February 17, 2026 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Strategize! DSA, Rank and File, Socialism, Unions, Working Class

Some young radicals are still pondering how they should relate, personally and collectively, to the labor movement. Should they try to become agents of workplace change while serving on the staff of local, regional, or national unions? Or should they organize “on the shop-floor”—in non-union shops or as a unionized teacher, nurse, or social worker? And then, later on, seek elected, rather than appointed, union leadership roles? A few years ago, delegates to a national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) debated this latter strategy and then narrowly passed a resolution favoring the rank-and-file route.

Teamsters Highlight Renewed Militancy At 50th Annual TDU Convention

November 16, 2025 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Rank and File, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

At the 50th annual Teamsters for a Democratic Union convention, 550 Teamsters talked about building power in their workplaces, from UPS barns to school bus yards to the San Diego Zoo. They swapped tips on running for local union office and debated TDU’s strategic priorities. A major theme at the convention, held in Chicago November 7-9, was the union’s renewed militancy. Teamsters elected Sean O’Brien in 2021 to head the 1.3-million member union; the TDU-backed O’Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United slate ran under the slogan “new leadership and a new direction.”

TDU At Fifty: From Rank-And-File Rebels To Establishment Defenders

November 9, 2025 Dan La Botz, Counter Punch. Strategize! Rank and File, Teamsters, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which will be celebrating the group’s fiftieth anniversary at its convention being held in Chicago this November 7 to 9, has for decades been known as the voice of reform in the Teamsters Union. But this year there will be those inside and outside the convention hall challenging TDU’s direction and arguing that it has abandoned its ideal. At the center of the controversy is TDU’s support for Teamster president Sean O’Brien who is allied with President Donald Trump. Some Teamsters no longer see TDU as fighting for reform but rather as part of the establishment.

Inside Your Union, You Have Due Process Rights

July 18, 2025 Cathy Highet, Labor Notes. Strategize! Legal System, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights

Suppose you run for local union office on a reform slate, and nearly win… but then the incumbent leaders trump up charges against you. You’re sure your only crime is challenging them, but they brand your organizing “dual unionism” or “conduct unbecoming a member.” They hold a trial, find you guilty, and suspend your membership. Do you have any recourse? Most unions have an internal discipline process—a way to expel, suspend, or fine members for breaking the union’s rules. Most members have a legal right to due process, and protections against improper discipline, under a 1959 federal law called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.

Engaging Critics Can Create A Stronger Local

May 29, 2025 Paul Ruth, Labor Notes. Organize! Inclusion, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions

Factions often emerge in local unions—and they aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But a local union’s “divided government” can be problematic, especially when a contract campaign is on the horizon. Often “factions” happen when certain members frequently criticize the local leadership, and leaders push back. The division may appear to be hostile, but often the underlying tension comes from frustration and lack of communication on both sides. For union leaders, pushing back against critics is often the natural human reaction. But as the leader of a teachers’ union local, I have found that it’s usually better to be inclusive.

UAW Reformers Close Caucus, Launch New Organization

April 30, 2025 Jane Slaughter and Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. Strategize! Democracy, Labor Movement, Rank and File, UAW, Unions

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the reform caucus in the Auto Workers, voted to dissolve at its quarterly online membership meeting April 27. “It was a heartbreaking decision to come to,” said UAWD founder and chair Scott Houldieson, a 36-year electrician at Ford. “UAWD had become a caucus that is ‘resolutionary,’ and focused more on caucus discipline than on actually organizing workers. Meetings had become dreadful. We can have differences as long as we make a decision and move on.” A majority of the group’s steering committee had brought a resolution calling for the dissolution. It was hotly debated. About half of the caucus membership attended the meeting.

Member-Run Unions

April 20, 2025 United Electrical Radio And Machine Workers Of America (UE), Portside. Organize! Democracy, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Hundreds of workers are crowded into a high-school gymnasium. Their union leaders carefully go through each article of their employer’s last, best and final offer. Hands are raised, questions are asked and answered, and members share their thoughts with their officers and with each other. In the previous two months of negotiations, the union negotiating committee has been seeking language to help curb the company abuses that have become rampant in the plant. The company has not agreed. Each union member weighs whether they will take the company’s offer, and accept ongoing problems in the workplace in exchange for modest economic improvements, or reject the offer and strike for a better deal.

How Rank-And-File Democracy Transformed The Teamsters And UAW

March 3, 2025 Michael J. Goldberg, Power At Work. Strategize! Democracy, History, Labor Movement, Rank and File, Teamsters, UAW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s well known in labor circles that the 2020’s opened with a tremendous resurgence of rank-and-file activism in the workplace. Beginning with 2021’s “Striketober” and sparked initially by the hardships of the pandemic and emboldened by the labor shortages that followed, that upsurge targeted union and nonunion workplaces alike. Among the collective bargaining breakthroughs in already unionized workplaces, two of the most important involved the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). In 2023, the IBT won a historic contract with its largest employer, UPS, without having to follow through on its threat to strike.

From Gripe Sessions To Grievance Tracking

February 7, 2025 Bonny Hulberg, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When I joined my local union, I dove in headfirst and became a steward. I was excited to see how things were run and where I might fall in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t quite what I expected; then again, I had never been in a union before. So I sat back and watched our organizer run our steward meetings, listened to the other attendees—and realized our meetings were gripe sessions, lacking structure and focus. Stewards and members alike were expressing frustrations, but there was little tangible action to address these issues, as far as I could tell.

Leadership In AFSCME DC 37 Is Stifling Rank And File Engagement

August 2, 2024 Duncan Freeman, Labor Notes. Resist! Labor Movement, New York City (NYC), Rank and File, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Members of District Council 37's Local 3005 in New York City say that attempts to mobilize their coworkers over the last two years have been stonewalled and met with apathy by union leadership. Current and former members say that since the pandemic, they have presented proposals to create a membership committee, speak out about city budget cuts, fight for telework rights and other efforts and that all were slow-walked or shot down by the union’s president Jeff Oshins. Most recently, some members have wanted to introduce motions calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and for the New York City Employees' Retirement System to divest from Israeli bonds and securities.

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