Essential Voice
an Essential Workers for Democracy newspaper to share with your coworkers!
Issue #7 - Summer 2026
Labor Notes Workshop: “What To Do When Your Union Breaks Your Heart”
Join our friends at Labor Notes for a monthly workshop on how to navigate being shut out, shut down, or sold out.
TDU: “Kroger Teamsters Unite and Win”
Read how our Kroger Teamster siblings in warehousing won BIG in their latest contract through informing and involving the members. United, they won — and so can we!
Labor Notes: “Grocery Workers File Union Democracy Lawsuit”
Members seeking to transform the United Food and Commercial Workers have added a new weapon to their arsenal: legal action.
The 60 UFCW Officials Making Over $250k/Year (2024)
In 2023, 60 UFCW officials were paid over $250,000 in total compensation — all the way up to $740,892. Altogether, our union spent $20,153,611 in 2023 in combined compensation for the $250k Club.
Zoom Training: “How to Have an Organizing Conversation”
Click here to register for our Zoom training, “Kroger & Albertsons by the Numbers” on Monday, April 7, 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT.
Stop Retaliation: Open Letter to UFCW International
Dear President Perrone, Secretary-Treasurer Jones, and Members of the UFCW International Executive Board: It has come to our attention that retaliatory statements have been made by various representatives of the UFCW in relation to the lawsuit filed by rank and file plaintiffs Kyong Barry and Iris Scott.
Politico: UFCW rank and file sue leadership in increasingly bitter dispute
Rank-and-file members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union International are suing their leadership over what they say is a lack of democratic representation on key issues like a major grocery merger and a decline in organizing expenditures
“Rank-and-file Members Are Waking Their Sleeping Union Giants.”
Grocery workers file federal lawsuit against UFCW International. “UFCW’s system is rigged…”
Jacobin: TDU and the New Labor Insurgency
TDU’s theory of change is that reforms that open up the labor movement to member involvement build worker power. It’s a participatory democracy model that…