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By Henry De Groot
Staff Union Alleges Retaliation at UAW Region 9A
UAW Staff United (USU), the union which represents both UAW international and local organizing staff in Region 9A, is alleging that organizer Alex Chan was the target of retaliation by management when her contract was not extended late last month.
Chan was employed as a “temporary organizer,” a job-title used by the UAW International for its entry-level organizing staff. Temporary organizers are hired for a maximum of three years, and must have their contracts extended every three months.
According to USU, Chan is the first temporary organizer to have their 3-year term cut short by non-renewal since 2019, when some 30 temporary organizers were non-renewed in an apparent response to an attempt by organizing staff to unionize.
That UAW ever relied on the Temporary Organizer job title to classify regular staff organizers is questionable. That UAW has continued the practice more than 18 months after the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) reform slate took power is raising questions from USU and from some DSA members as to whether UAWD leadership is living the values of the reform movement.
USU formed in the spring of 2023 to represent staff organizers in Region 9A, which covers New York City, Long Island, and New England. They began bargaining in August of 2023, and have now been bargaining for a contract for more than one year. USU has filed multiple unfair labor practices alleging that UAW leadership is not bargaining in good faith.
USU will hold a picket today in Manhattan at the Region 9A political conference to protest Chan’s non-renewal and escalate their contract fight.
The Non-Renewal of Alex Chan
Like many DSA members, Chan (she/they), 22, is involved in an almost absurd number of projects. Having joined New York University (NYU) YDSA five years ago, she now serves on the Lower Manhattan Branch Organizing Committee (OC), as the communications coordinator for the NYC-DSA Labor Branch OC, and is also the Managing Editor of Democratic Left, DSA’s national publication.
So when Chan took a job with the UAW organizing NYU academic workers in June of 2023, she was excited to be putting into practice the democratic union values which she had learned in her time in YDSA and DSA.
Chan was employed by the UAW International as what is classified as a “temporary organizer.” The job title was originally meant for autoworkers coming off the shop floor for limited periods to work directly for the union, with their contracts extended every three months with a maximum term of three years. If the organizer did not work out, the campaign ended, or the three years was reached, the autoworker was able to return to their shop floor.
But now, many of the workers filling these temporary roles are coming from the more traditional university-to-union-staff pipeline, being hired directly by the union after proving themselves on a UAW academic campaign or other university-level organizing. And the temporary organizer job-title has become the general entry-level organizer classification for UAW international staff, not a temporary, auxiliary workforce to work on specific campaigns.
When Chan found her own working conditions did not reflect the values she had developed in YDSA and DSA, she was disappointed. But ever an organizer, she got involved in her staff union, USU, to advocate for herself in the same way that she was advocating for her workers. Chan was an active participant in USU, serving on its executive board, and was quoted in an article alongside USU’s president.
Then, on August 30, Chan was notified by email that her employment contract would not be extended.
According to Chan, she was not provided any reason why her contract was not renewed and was not notified first by a phone call from her supervisor, receiving only the email signed “In solidarity” from the Human Resources Department.
“The unique nature of how my non-renewal was handled can really only lead us to believe that retaliation was at play,” Chan told Working Mass.
In a statement released by USU, the staff union held that
“UAW Staff United (USU) strongly condemns the unjust termination of Alex Chan, one of our most active organizers and a vocal critic of the hostile bargaining tactics used by UAW Region 9A in contract negotiations with our union. Chan’s termination is an unmistakable act of retaliation and intimidation, regressive tactics that have no place in the labor movement. The actions of UAW management mirror those of the very employers we fight against, demonstrating a betrayal of the values the union claims to uphold.
Chan’s firing is not an isolated incident. It reflects a broader issue: UAW Region 9A management is showing that any one of our members can be terminated at any time, without cause. USU members include temporary staff organizers, a tiered workforce with few workplace protections and no job security. We are bargaining for reliable employment, a fair wage, and protection from harassment, bullying, and retaliation — basic rights for all workers.”
Brandon Mancilla, the director of UAW Region 9A, did not respond to a request for comment from Working Mass. UAW also declined to comment on personnel matters when asked for comment in an article on the dispute in The Guardian.
From our independent investigation, Working Mass cannot confirm unequivocally that Chan’s non-renewal is an instance of retaliation. There are a number of other factors which may have informed the decision, including that Chan was on a performance improvement plan (PIP) and on her own admission had challenged the decisions of higher-ups.
However, considering the unique nature of her non-renewal, her outspoken activity in her staff union, USU’s impending plans to escalate its dispute, and UAW’s failure to provide cause for Chan’s non-renewal, retaliation is a definite possibility. If Chan was fired for performance issues or insubordination, why was that not made clear to her in her non-renewal notice when these issues had already been discussed in detail in her PIP?
Chan’s PIP was related to her organizing of resident assistants at NYU, a secondary assignment which she was allowed to take on but encouraged by supervisors to limit to 10 percent of her organizing efforts. When higher-ups at UAW informed the student-workers that the union would not be carrying forward the campaign, Chan expressed her disagreement with the decision at a meeting of the RAs, leading to her PIP. The RAs decided to go forward anyway by filing for an independent union under the name Student Workers at NYU (SWAN), and will hold their vote later this month; if successful, they intend to then affiliate to one of the NYU UAW locals. Chan provided some assistance to the independent SWAN effort, but only on her personal time. So, if Chan was not fired for retaliation, it seems that the only other likely reason is that she was fired for arguing against dropping the RA campaign and continuing to provide it support in her free time.
What is obvious to Working Mass is that Chan’s non-renewal is not the result of some larger economic pinch or strategic shift which is forcing lay-offs, but rather is targeted specifically at Chan. And the non-renewal of a leading member of USU will almost certainly make other USU members think twice about speaking out in favor of their rights.
The non-renewal of Chan is also causing issues for the primary campaign upon which she was working, organizing researchers at NYU. According to Chan, there was no real transition plan in place, and the workers are unhappy that Chan’s employment is being cut short.
Is UAW Living Its Values?
Chan’s case raises uncomfortable questions for UAW, especially now that it is under the leadership of the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) reform movement.
For Brian Murray, president of USU, Chan’s case shows that Region 9A “took advantage of the fact that currently [temporary] workers are at will, that there are no protections, that we’re not under contract with them, and just like a lot of employers, utilize that at will status to let the worker go and try to avoid consequences for retaliation.”
“The overall message is that there is a certain hypocrisy,” Chan said. “UAW touts these values about protecting workers’ jobs, and yet we have very obvious tiers in our own workplace.”
“We have people who dedicate much more than 40 hours a week to organizing and supporting these campaigns. All of USU is extremely dedicated to rank and file organizing, and are so excited to see reform candidates in positions. But it is a really odd situation to work for a union and then tell our members that ‘yeah, your contracts that we fight for you are better than ours.’”
It is not clear why UAW Region 9A and USU have not been able to reach a contract after more than one year of negotiations. What is clear is that the working conditions of temporary organizers, who have basically no job security, would not be something that UAW leadership would accept when bargaining a contract for their own members.
Lack of job security puts workers in a highly stressful and precarious position. While this might be acceptable during a limited probation period at the start of employment, it is hard to argue that lack of job security which lasts more than several months, not to mention three years, is compatible with dignity at work.
Chan told Working Mass that the temporary contract/renewal system can have additional unintended consequences which negatively impact union staff. Staff workers’ healthcare must also be renewed on a three month basis, and sometimes it is not renewed by administrative oversight, forcing workers to pay for medical expenses out of pocket and seek reimbursement from the union.
For Chan, the incident also raises concerns about the state of UAW under Shawn Fain’s leadership.
“One reason why we are putting out all this information is because we are all super supportive of this reform movement, and it’s important that the members know what’s going on behind the scenes and why we’re fighting so hard and what we are fighting for… We believe that [UAW] members should be making informed decisions about what is going on and hold their leaders accountable for bad decisions or decisions that fly under the radar that people are not noticing.”
Staff Versus Members?: Union Staff, Staff Unions, and the Rank and File Reform Movement
The incident at Region 9A raises larger questions about the role of union staff and staff unions in the ongoing efforts to revive the fighting spirit of the labor movement.
The orientation of the labor left both inside and outside of DSA is largely, almost hegemonically, informed by the Rank-and-File Reform Movement (RFRM). The strategy of the RFRM is theoretically expressed by the Rank and File Strategy by Kim Moody, and promoted by Labor Notes through journalism and workshops. Within DSA, while most or all caucuses support the RFRM to some degree, the Bread and Roses caucus plays a leading role in spear-heading the RFRM, including through its majority on the DSA’s National Labor Commission. Within the unions, the RFRM is actualized through reform caucuses like Unite All Workers For Democracy (UAWD), Massachusetts’ Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU), Chicago’s Coalition of Rank and File Educators (CORE), Reform UFCW, and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). The Rank and File Project, a nonprofit which seeks to place activists in union jobs, is perhaps the latest addition to the RFRM. While there are obviously differences between these various groups, there is a large overlapping of personnel and a shared heritage which makes them part of one united political ecosystem, the RFRM. To a lesser extent Jacobin could also be included in the RFRM, although there is not the same ideological lineage.
The RFRM encourages socialists and other activists to take rank and file jobs as opposed to staff organizer jobs, arguing that they are more free to challenge conservative leadership than staff, and also that the masses of the labor movement must be activated in order to build the power necessary to make change. But the RFRM has less to say about what positive role union staff can play in organizing in general and in the reform movement in particular, instead largely including them as part of the larger bureaucracy which is identified as the enemy of the rank and file movement. And it is totally true that union staff do often play a conservative role in labor organizations by supporting right-wing established leaders, and also may pursue their own financial interests over the interests of the members.
The potential of a conflict between staff and members was drawn on by Sarah Hurd, the co-chair of the National Labor Commission in DSA who is also a staff organizer at the Illinois Nurses Association. At a Socialism Conference 2024 panel on the UAW’s plans for a 2028 general strike, which featured UAW Region 9A president and DSA member Brandon Mancilla, USU activists took the mic to challenge Mancilla on their drawn-out contract negotiations and the non-renewal of Chan, which had happened the day before. USU members asked the panel, “How do we ensure that the workers that are going to help build toward a general strike are treated with those values that we believe in?”
Although Mancilla did not respond to the USU organizers, Hurd did weigh in, seeming to pose the issue as a tension between staff and membership.
“There is some real tension here because when you have a truly democratic union there are going to be tensions between your staff union and the other things that the membership wants and needs to spend the limited resources on,” Hurd told the audience. “As staffers, we need to be taking the democracy of the union seriously.”
While these sentiments are true and valid, it is not clear what they have to do with the specific situation at USU and the issue of job insecurity.
Brian Murray, the president of USU and a union organizer at Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU), responded that
“Especially in healthcare or the nonprofit sector, that argument is often weaponized against workers, that their unionization campaign is going to be detrimental in some way, or take away the degree of care and support that the people they serve deserve.
This implied claim, that somehow staff in the UAW, temporary organizers, are somehow separate from membership I think is untrue, given both the fact that they come out of membership, were proven leaders in membership, and the reason that they’re hired on staff is because they were successful in leading these different campaigns.
Region 9A is a pretty staff-heavy model; that’s something that we as organizers would like to see change. We want to see workers in the driver’s seat and leadership, and a lot of our focus of organizing is building that capacity. And I don’t see how this retaliation, or the retaliation of 2019, moves us towards that goal. I would say that it’s a false claim to make that somehow this is benefiting membership at all. Maybe it’s benefiting leadership.”
Brian also relayed that the graduate campaign at Boston College had to be basically abandoned by UAW after the 2019 layoffs.
In hearing responses such as the one from Hurd, for Chan, “It feels very lonely, and I do hold some resentment for it, because as a DSA member, and someone who came from my DSA, I put in a lot of personal effort and time and work into both [DSA and UAW].”
“A main reason why I wanted to work with USU is because I believe so heavily in the power of the labor movement and our duty and ability to build it up. There are so many that are similar to me that want to work in the labor movement, whether it be as a union member or a union staff member. You know, our motivations are to build up worker power in any way we know how to. And I do feel resentment for the sentiment that, you know, it is bureaucracy to want to be union staff, that it is not worth the effort, that it’s not the real labor movement to be union staff. But these are our full- time jobs and our full- time lives, this is kind of all we care about, and we care the most about it.
We are not standing with our comrades who are working these jobs out of passion. There is no careerism at play here. Me doing these interviews, me doing this advocacy is not going to endear me to my former supervisors.
It feels lonely and it feels upsetting to hear people say that. I am 22. I am not standing in the way of union democracy in the slightest. I have no idea what conflict [between staff and members] they could possibly be referring to. Which leads me to think that a lot of DSA members do not know the reality of why our situation is this way. UAW is not in a funding deficit. They were just crowing about how they are spending millions on new organizing.”
Hurd declined to speak with Working Mass for this story.
Whether or not staff are inevitably a break on reform efforts, it is clear that they are an essential part of union work and will not go away anytime soon. Therefore, a crucial task of the rank and file movement, especially as it approaches or takes power, is to articulate how its values of respect, dignity, and democracy apply to union staffers.
Preserving Relations?
The dispute between USU and UAW is also raising questions for some about whether some socialist union activists are betraying their values in order to preserve relationships with the rising reform movement, even if leaders behave questionably.
According to Chan, when she had earlier sought advice from fellow DSA comrades about organizing DSA to support USU’s intended escalations, she “got the sense from some comrades that preserving DSA’s relationship with UAW was more important to them than standing with staff workers at UAW.” And some see Hurd as having provided cover for Mancilla in her response at Socialism 2024.
For Chan, the apparent reluctance of some to criticize UAWD-affiliated leadership raises concerns for socialists in the reform movement.
“[The reform movement] is not just about deifying reform candidates, but also pointing out the issues that need to be resolved. There is a hero worship, for sure. That is not to say [Fain] hasn’t done really amazing things for UAW and also nationally labor and labor unions, but that doesn’t mean that our reform candidates are infallible. Part of the socialist project is running cadre candidates and making sure that they, when elected, are actually accountable to the positions that they took and can continue to be pushed.”
Labor Notes, which is also close to Shawn Fain and UAWD, has not covered the USU-UAW dispute. For Murray,
“Labor Notes has covered some of these more contentious and lightning rod issues in terms of internal union politics. The evidence we’re providing, I think, is pretty compelling. To be consistent, it would be great to see them actually get coverage to this, because this isn’t just a staffing matter, this is trying to root out political retaliation in UAW. We’re trying to ensure that organizers are able to best support the workers that they are organizing with.”
The USU-UAW dispute is hardly the only place where the pressure to avoid criticisms within the RFRM is taking place.
Another source told Working Mass that Labor Notes has been reluctant to publish perspectives which criticize TDU for their failure to strongly criticize O’Brien’s speech at the RNC or come out against the genocide in Gaza.
Furthermore, there has been relatively little criticism within the RFRM of Shawn Fain’s “proud” endorsement of Joe Biden and later endorsement of Harris and speech at the Democratic National Convention. Ben Burgis wrote in Jacobin that Fain’s speech at the DNC was a “light in the darkness,” giving only modest criticism of his over-praising of Kamala and failure to raise the genocide in Gaza. Labor Notes did not cover his speech at all, except by retweeting an article by Alex Press in Jacobin, “Shawn Fain’s DNC Speech Put Stellantis on Notice,” which offered exactly zero criticism of Fain’s proximity to Harris.
At least from the perspective of DSA, which openly calls for a new party and has not endorsed Harris, it seems like there should be a greater criticism of Fain’s proximity to Biden/Harris/Walz.
Another source told Working Mass that Fain is unlikely to attend the UAWD’s convention later this month, and more generally has been keeping the UAWD steering committee at arm’s length. The caucus reportedly has growing internal divisions, in part on the question of how to relate to the Fain administration.
Some friction within the RFRM was probably inevitable, especially as its victorious campaigns have brought it closer to the pressures of being in power in major unions. Still, to continue to make victories it is crucial that the RFRM continues to live out its values in full. That makes it all the more important that any issues or internal disputes are debated openly and democratically, and not kept from the rank and file participants of the RFRM and DSA.
For Murray, the task of taking on UAW’s workplace practices seems an unwanted but necessary task.
“We did not want to go public with this, we were hoping it wouldn’t come to the fact that we’d have to. We love the UAW. We believe in reforming this union and we believe in Shawn Fain’s leadership. We really want to be part of the process of building the fighting union that we know it can be, and it has been previously in the past.”
Still, Murray hopes DSA members will stand with USU in the escalating dispute.
“We would love to see DSA members support USU. I’m a DSA member myself, previously was on the National Labor Committee. I think you can’t have a fighting rand and file, democratic labor movement that at the same time uses the tactics of management against its own staff.
My message to DSA members is, if you believe in rank and file organizing, if you believe in a strong fighting UAW we can’t allow the kind of retaliation we saw in the previous UAW administration to continue.”
Henry De Groot is the Managing Editor of Working Mass.
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