A 2022 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans support organized labor, higher than at any point since 1965.

This enthusiasm presents a huge opportunity for workers to organize our workplaces. But one thing standing in our way is a growing $340 million industry of “union avoidance” consultants. Essential Workers for Democracy believes that unions need to spend at least 30% of their budget on organizing. Because the “union avoidance” firms we’re up against are a serious threat.

But I think UFCW has a really long way to go to be a significant part of that wave. 

I know that there's gonna be enthusiasm for some of this, and we're hoping to get as many rank and file members or even union leadership from locals who want to be part of this change in UFCW to be able to show up at the convention in April.

Recently, the union-busting firm IRI Consultants caught notice of our worker-led attempts for more aggressive worker-led organizing.

To market their services, they wrote a blog post about attempts to strengthen the UFCW. They say that the UFCW Executive Board has been “put on notice” that members expect more. They then proceeded to market their services to fight more aggressive unionization pushes.

The UFCW is 1.1 million members strong. That's a huge amount of POTENTIAL member power. Some call UFCW the Sleeping Giant: it's big but isn't flexing its power for members.

We want the International President to have and use the union’s big power to take on employers. Because member employers are giants, too, these days!

One member one vote is a basic democratic principle that every member of a union should get to vote directly for executive officers such as President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Vice Presidents.

While some unions have more insular undemocratic processes, more and more unions are moving toward a one member one vote model. Check out these five big unions that have one member one vote and how they conduct their elections.

If you’re a union member, unfortunately the chances are good that you’ve had, or will have, your heart broken at least once by one of your own leaders.Maybe it happened when you first tried to get active in your union, but found that leaders didn’t welcome you into their inner circle. You wondered whether there was some special skill you lacked, and you ended up confused and self-doubting. Maybe you just gave up.