What does it look like when your union amasses wealth, yet union membership continues to decline? Chris Bohner coined a new term for this: Finance Unionism. Here’s what it takes for unions to get back on the track.

as the UAW demonstrates, when a union moves to direct elections of leadership, it is more apt to use its financial assets for strikes and growth.

Workers saw these unions win big gains for actors and workers and knew they needed a powerful revitalized union to do the same. In particular, CREW wants to end an “electoral-college style” system to ratify contracts that don’t respect the will of the majority.

We can reliably anticipate the most common answer: “I worked a summer job in a supermarket for three months. My check showed a deduction for an initiation fee and dues. I never saw the union and can’t remember its name.”

The labor movement is growing not just in the US, but internationally. Swedish workers are standing up to Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, currently the wealthiest billionaire in the world.

Fain is the first UAW President elected directly by the membership under a one member one vote system. His leadership is an example of what you get when union officers are directly accountable to the people they represent.

Our mission at Essential Workers for Democracy is to build a powerful, revitalized, worker-led labor movement one union at a time. To that end, we're working with others in this space like Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) that have been doing this work for years now. Last weekend we attended their convention to learn and share with others doing union revitalization work.