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The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.
by Jake Scarponi
Last month, the UAWD reform caucus held its first national convention since taking power in the nation’s fifth largest union. While UAWD’s rise to power over the last two years has been impressive, the convention revealed a deep division over what political strategy the caucus should take up moving forward. For socialists, the dominant tendency of bread-and-butter reformism in UAWD which avoids clear political fights is insufficient to lead UAW on a collision course with not merely individual bosses or union bureaucrats, but the capitalist order as a whole.
While not the first caucus of its kind even within the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) is the latest organized expression of discontent with the UAW’s old guard.
The Reuther Caucus – later, the Administration Caucus (AC) – has, until recently, wielded nearly unbroken hegemonic power in the UAW for decades. Its style of “business unionism” (which Burns and Foster define well) has dug the UAW into a deep rut of class collaboration and concessionary contracts, particularly in critical manufacturing locals.
UAWD was not the first caucus to campaign for direct elections of officers on the UAW’s International Executive Board (IEB), but a massive corruption scandal resulted in the UAW being placed under federal monitorship. A referendum on direct elections was imposed by the state, and UAWD used this opening in its “One Member, One Vote” campaign. After UAW members voted in favor of direct elections, UAWD swept all seven seats that its Members United slate contested, including that of current President Shawn Fain. UAWD also experienced some reform victories at the UAW’s most recent Constitutional Conventions – for example, strike pay accumulating immediately rather than starting at day eight – for which it needed to run delegation candidates and coordinate votes.
Political conditions thus far have allowed the caucus to move from one central objective to the next: win the right to direct elections; run a slate and win a majority on the IEB; bring amendments to the Constitutional Convention; strike at the Big Three auto manufacturers to begin to reverse decades of concessions. But this string of victories has fulfilled UAWD’s initial plans so successfully that next steps are now unclear. And so, without an immediate, unifying goal around which to mobilize and recruit UAW members, political tensions have sharpened within UAWD.
The question of UAWD’s direction and purpose is of utmost importance for socialists to evaluate – this is not the first iteration of “reform caucus unionism,” and we must ask ourselves whether this approach is truly an effective tool for activating layers of the working class into direct struggle against the organized forces of capital. To be effective, the caucus must be a useful space for generative political struggle and the organizing of workers.
These tensions were especially prescient heading into UAWD’s first in-person convention in Southfield, Michigan, where the caucus voted in a set of elections for half of its Steering Committee (terms are two years and staggered annually). A second portion of its annual membership meeting will occur at a later date wherein other business will be taken up. Much of the resolutions on the table will deal with similar political questions as were raised in the recent elections.
The TDU Effect
UAWD is often summarized as “Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), but for the UAW.” We should ask ourselves, then: where did TDU come from, and how does it situate itself in the labor movement today?
TDU, like Labor Notes and the Bread and Roses caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), shares some lineage and certain ideological traditions rooted in the ideas of Hal Draper’s Independent Socialist Club. Historically, TDU has fought similar fights as UAWD, pushing back against corrupt business unionism and uplifting rank-and-file demands. But even though TDU is largely run by socialists, it has avoided clearly expressing a socialist politics, instead limiting itself to a populist critique of bosses and bureaucrats to drive procedural democratic reforms while focusing on building unity around “bread and butter” economic issues. Social justice unionism doesn’t escape the grasp of TDU, Labor Notes, or Bread and Roses, but there lacks a coherent vision for or concerted effort towards politicizing the trade union movement on the questions of socialism and class conflict.
Furthermore, and despite the caucus’s focus on member democracy within the larger union, TDU’s model of reform caucus unionism is driven heavily by the caucus’ staff and top elected leadership. The actual membership of TDU meets only once a year at its convention, a meeting which arguably serves more as a training hub for developing organizing skills and a showcase of unity rather than a forum for caucus members to make decisions about their role in the labor movement. Case in point: Teamsters Mobilize was met with hostility for bringing a resolution on Palestinian solidarity, and one Teamsters Mobilize member was banned from TDU for openly criticizing the latter. Rather than consider in good faith and challenge competing visions for TDU, its inner circle is determined to stifle debate under the pretense that “politics don’t belong here.”
But isn’t that determination inherently political? Isn’t declaring that TDU’s focus is “not [on] issuing report cards or attacks against our coalition partners” as Sean O’Brien publicly courts and donates members’ money to reactionary electeds political? Is TDU actually “independent” from Teamsters leadership if there’s no room for critique? Isn’t the act of TDU members deciding to launch Teamsters Against Trump as a strictly TDU-unaffiliated campaign undeniably political?
These are political decisions – relating both to internal union politics and broader, national politics – and the intentional “papering over” of such disagreements and dynamics in TDU is a concerted, top-down political action. Labor Notes performs a similar “papering over” when it invites Mike Miller – UAW Region 6’s director, known for repressive leadership and historic AC alignment – as a guest alongside UAWD reformers. Some Bread and Roses members similarly resist debate about DSA’s approach to labor solidarity work, but the status quo that Draper’s theories have enjoyed does not mean theirs is some kind of “neutral” outlook on the work itself; it’s political, and has every right to be deliberated. Dancing around politics is a recipe for letting our strategies stagnate and inviting the easy cooptation of our reform movements by elements of the old guard we swore to struggle against.
Convention: Election Results and Their Implications
TDU is not just relevant as a point of comparison to UAWD. Its inner circle and sitting leadership have personal connections to UAWD’s Steering Committee. Ken Paff – founding TDU member and head caucus staff of many years – was consulted during the planning of UAWD’s convention, and was present as a special guest alongside Sean Orr, a co-chair of TDU’s International Steering Committee. Some segments of the UAWD Steering Committee welcome them as mentors; others object to their union politics and seek a different path. The same can be said of the rest of UAWD’s membership.
This schism was decidedly explicit between the two slates running for UAWD Steering Committee offices. The UAWD Call to Action slate drew its program around political independence of the caucus from its IEB candidates as well as the ruling class, increased transparency of the Steering Committee’s closed meetings, membership control over caucus staff, and specific plans for building UAWD at the local level where the old guard persists. That first point includes the right to be critical of the IEB, primarily as it relates to cutting off UAWD’s relationship with Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and Vice President Rich Boyer, both of whom ran on UAWD’s Members United slate and have since grossly mishandled their respective duties and become oppositional towards Fain and the rest of the slate.
The UAWD Strong slate, by comparison, built its image and program around claiming ownership over any and all of the caucus’ accomplishments and structural proposals for building unity and cutting down contention. Both slates are interested in building and empowering the organization, but where one takes strong positions on how to do so, the other would rather avoid political confrontation and deliberation, TDU-style. Unfortunately, Labor Notes’ coverage (co-written by Jane Slaughter, one of several Bread and Roses members who also attended convention as a special guest) might leave the impression that elections were simply between a camp that wants to do rank-and-file organizing and one that seems to want to un-endorse Members United candidates instead.
The latter slate swept the elections it contested, and the tendency it represents maintains a level of incumbency on the Steering Committee. The conclusion of the Steering Committee elections and the moments immediately following made that clear: the MC opened by declaring that “internal politics are over,” an IEB member subsequently echoed refrains for “unity,” and a shirt signed by President Fain was raffled off after he gave his own remarks (the only remarks in recent memory during which he actually named our organization, despite frequent publicized appearances).
The relationship UAWD has with Members United is complicated by the fact that no one expected to win so resoundingly. Conversations about the nature of that relationship did not take place before the elections were won. With two notable exceptions, however, basic principles of the caucus have not been undermined, and UAWD should be proud to have elected leaders so far ahead of just about any officers of the last several decades. Despite some missteps for which he deserves some amount of critique, Fain’s call for a general strike in 2028 is a testament to this integrity. But the IEB question is critical to the reform movement’s future. Avoiding politics in the name of a vague sense of unity serves the interests not of the masses of UAW members, but of the officers endorsed by UAWD who say, “trust me as a free agent to execute your agenda in spite of other political and structural forces pushing me away from it.”
Is the caucus in place to serve its elected officers on the IEB, or are those officers in place to advance the cause of the caucus that elected them? What is that cause, and how is the caucus actively deliberating and intentionally pursuing it?
Beyond Bread-and-Butter Reformism
Socialists must work in support of every democratic reform and wage increase for the workers’ movement, no matter how small. Union reform caucuses could be powerful spaces to engage in generative political struggle and activate members of the working class into conflict against both capitalists and backwards union bureaucrats. But if reform caucuses are failing to meet that purpose and become instruments of simply changing the guard of union leadership, then getting in line behind them for the sake of “unity,” their potential in truly empowering the rank-and-file and advancing the socialist cause is limited. Ultimately, we know that no reform can be durable without the complete undoing of the capitalist system, and we must carry out our work in the labor movement with that understanding in mind.
Is our goal socialism, or is it only a larger, procedurally-reformed labor movement? If we wait for the labor movement to “ripen” for the injection of socialist politics, won’t a depoliticized labor movement be just as vulnerable to the political and economic forces of capital as it has been historically? We must remember that the Congress of Industrial Organizations was only crushed after its unions started to cave to redbaiting under post-war McCarthyism, and we must ask ourselves what could or should have been different in historic episodes such as those.
After all, high wages and fair elections mean little when the world is burning. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the increasing drumbeat towards a war with China, and the ever-exacerbating climate crisis all impose duties on socialists and workers alike which go far beyond issues of the shop floor. These issues require a political approach, which cannot help but bring us into direct conflict with the sharpest edges of capitalist-imperialism.
A political approach will not only build a labor movement capable of weathering the storms capital will inevitably hurl at it, but will enlist the workers’ movement as the main pillar of the socialist fight to overthrow capitalism, our highest goal. It is common sense that we cannot achieve such results accidentally, but must set these principles, strategies, and tactics out explicitly. If the point of socialists supporting the reform caucus movement is to win the unions to socialism, then socialists must bring our socialist politics openly into the reform caucuses and push for them to be adopted into the program of the caucus. It’s not enough to bide our time and wait for reform candidates to lead us by the nose into transformative victories for the working class. Elected leadership can create openings for us to seize on, but ultimately, we must be prepared to agitate the masses into fighting for itself against the ruling class and its business-union collaborators. The workplace is a political domain under capitalism – act like it!
Jake Scarponi is a UAW and UAWD member and a member of Worcester DSA.
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