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Direct Elections for Labor Leaders Make for More Militant Unions
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 Dec. 8, 2023 | U.S. UNIONS | The labor movement is rightfully celebrating recent contract victories by the United Auto Workers, Teamsters, SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, which together cover nearly 650,000 workers. An essential thread uniting the campaigns is that the top union officers were all directly elected by the members, a basic democratic right denied to many union members in the United States. As other unions seek to learn lessons from these historic contract fights, a key takeaway is that a vibrant democratic process — “one member, one vote” — is crucial to a revitalized labor movement. … But a review of the constitutions of the twenty largest unions in the United States shows that “one member, one vote” is a right denied to most union members. Of the top twenty unions — representing approximately 13.3 million members and 83 percent of all US union workers — only six have direct elections. Jacobin
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