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President Is Ousted in United Auto Workers Election [1]
['Neal E. Boudette', 'More About Neal E. Boudette']
Date: 2023-03-25
Mr. Fain said he intended to be more confrontational in contract negotiations, a position that appealed to members after years of concessions on wages and benefits and following corruption scandals that ended with two former presidents serving time in prison.
“This is the end of company unionism, where the companies and the union work together in a friendly way, because it hasn’t been good for our members,” he said in an interview as the vote count neared completion. “These companies have enjoyed record profits for a decade, and our workers are still regressing and struggling to get by.”
Insurgents aligned with him won a majority of offices on the union’s international executive board — an outcome widely seen as reflecting the members’ desire for significant change at the top of the union.
But Mr. Fain and the new administration have little experience in running the union’s operations.
It was the first election open to all members of the union, part of an effort to wipe out corruption. Previously, the union’s presidents and other senior officials were chosen by delegates to a convention, in which the result was often determined by favors and favoritism and did not always reflect the sentiments of rank-and-file workers.
“I knew our members were fed up,” Mr. Fain said. “It was just a matter of whether they were willing to vote for change, because they’ve never been able to do that before.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/business/uaw-autoworkers-union-election.html
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