UFCW

Meat Packing Factory: “If We Unite As Workers, We Have The Power”

August 16, 2024 Isabela Escalona, Workday Magazine. Organize! Immigrants, Meatpackers, UFCW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Dina Velasquez Escalante is a poultry worker in southwest Minnesota. She spends her workdays inspecting the chicken millions of Americans eat every day. She looks for tumors, stray bones and organs, and removes bile. After six years of hard work and cultivating expertise on almost every position on the line, she’s now in the laboratory testing samples of poultry to ensure the highest quality. As a union steward with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 663 at Butterfield Foods in Butterfield, Minnesota, Escalante is also tasked with ensuring her fellow workers receive fair treatment and safety on the line.

Grocery Workers File Union Democracy Lawsuit

July 11, 2024 Lisa Xu, Labor Notes. Resist! Grocery Workers, Legal System, UFCW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Members seeking to transform the United Food and Commercial Workers have added a new weapon to their arsenal: legal action. Grocery workers Kyong Barry (Local 3000 in Washington) and Iris Scott (Local 1459 in Massachusetts) sued the UFCW April 19 over the undemocratic representation of members at the UFCW Convention, which takes place every five years. There are several charges, but the crux of the lawsuit is that delegates are apportioned across locals in such a way as to deny members equal voice. A favorable ruling would enable reformers in other unions to sue on the same basis. The UFCW is the fifth-largest union in the U.S. after the NEA, SEIU, AFSCME, and the Teamsters.

Can Grocery Workers Take Back Their Union?

April 10, 2024 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Strategize! Grocery Stores, Labor Movement, UFCW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

On a gray October evening, half a dozen insurgents huddle around a table in an upscale diner across the street from Sea-Tac airport, considering their battle plans. “I don’t want to get shot in New Jersey or New York, and those guys will fucking murder us,” says the consigliere. “Yeah,” the boss muses. “They will hella murder us.” “I’m more afraid of some people who have threatened to shoot us out here than those people out there,” says one of the generals. “The chances of us getting shot,” concludes the ringleader, “are fairly high.”/

UFCW Local Leads Fight To Win Strongest Tenant Protections

February 13, 2024 Ty Moore, Labor Notes. Strategize! Housing, Tenant Rights, UFCW, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Grocery and retail workers helped win the strongest tenant protections in Washington state last November for the 100,000 renters in the city of Tacoma. First we had to beat the mayor’s and city council’s attempt to bring a competing watered-down ballot measure. And then we had to overcome a vicious and deceptive landlord opposition that smashed all previous political spending records in Tacoma. “We’ve created incredible goodwill in the community just as we gear up for a tough contract fight,” said Michael Whalen, who helped initiate the campaign as a dairy clerk and shop steward at Fred Meyer.

UFCW Convention: Reformers In Motion

April 25, 2023 Chris Bohner, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Labor Movement, UFCW, Worker Rights and Jobs

The United Food and Commercial Workers is one of the country’s largest unions, with 1.2 million members in the U.S. and Canada, two-thirds of whom work in grocery stores. Like other unions, it has lost membership over the last decade, but it has managed to double its assets. Reformers in the union are asking why. The UFCW caucus Essential Workers for Democracy has proposed a slate of amendments to expand rank and file power in the union and put resources into organizing and strike action. The proposals will be considered at the union’s convention starting today in Las Vegas. The convention is held every five years.

UFCW Reformers Look To 2023

November 3, 2022 Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Organize! Democracy, Grocery Workers, Labor Unions, UFCW

Next April, 1,200 delegates from the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) will gather in Las Vegas for the union’s international convention. A new reform group, Essential Workers for a Democratic UFCW, is gearing up for a fight. The group describes itself as a coalition of rank and filers, local leaders, and not-yet-union workers. Drawing inspiration from the caucuses that have recently won landmark reforms in the Teamsters and Auto Workers, it is pushing for change in three areas: union democracy, new organizing, and coordinated bargaining. The reform group is encouraging rank-and-file supporters to run for convention delegate on its platform. The effort has its strongest public backing from the union’s largest local: Local 3000, formed this year by merging Locals 21 and 1439.

Daily movement news and resources