Guest Submission: Growing Worker Power
Matt Walters is a produce manager at Pavilions Grocery in Irvine, California and an executive board member of UFCW 324.
Growing worker power and changing the culture of an entrenched, status quo form of leadership is a frustrating and slow process. But it's worth the time and effort it takes to achieve the member power a union needs to be successful and to grow.
I'm a 21-year UFCW member with three generations of union history in my family. In 2003-2004 I was on strike for 5.5 months. I've worked for member-driven change and seen the failures and successes of these efforts.
In 2016, I was transferred to a different store location and was unhappy about this. During the first week at my new store, my union representative, whom I'd never met before, came into the store one morning. My anger at the transfer, along with a general sense of frustration with my local, led to an emotional conversation.
Much of what I expressed to my rep during this conversation mirrors what we are fighting to change with our international union today:
Growing our membership.
Activating members to action.
Politics.
The last one, politics, angered me the most. UFCW made an endorsement in the 2016 presidential election without input from members. The issue wasn't the endorsed candidate, but the fact that we were left out of the process.
I never thought anything would come from this conversation I had with my rep. But in 2018, my rep asked me to work on a campaign for a measure in Anaheim that would increase pay for Disneyland workers. My local represents roughly 3000 workers at Disneyland. I worked on this campaign for about a month before being moved to work on other campaigns. Voters approved this measure, and we were able to take a small bite from the Disney pie.
This experience showed me that when we have a grassroots campaign, we can take on even the largest of companies, and be successful.
As we all know, in March of 2020, the COVID pandemic began to take effect in North America. We all experienced the chaos of the toilet paper shortage, the throngs of people stockpiling food and the viral videos of people’s reactions to masking up. In short, we all faced the haards of this pandemic in a way only our collective industries could.
Our employers raked in record profits, but we faced the hazards.
For a short time, some of our employers did the right thing and gave us extra pay for working in these conditions. But we all know this was just a temporary act for publicity.
My local took up the fight for continued hazard pay through city ordinances. We organized, got people to sign petitions, spoke at council meetings, and lobbied our elected officials. We were able to pass ordinances in several cities in our represented area. Thousands of working people and their families benefited from this increase in pay. The hard work of building worker power through the local political process paid off!
I'm proud of the work I and my local union did to win hazard pay, but I believe we must continue to make UFCW our union. That's why Essential Workers for Democracy and the reforms they are supporting are so important. Because we should control our union at all levels.
After all: We are all the Union!!