Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.
The United Food and Commercial Workers, one of the US’s largest unions, has shed members despite seeing its bank account expand over the last decade. A rank-and-file reform movement wants to democratize UFCW and push the union to spend its resources on organizing.
American unions’ members are down, but their finances are through the roof. The labor movement can’t rebuild its dismally low membership unless unions start spending their resources on aggressive new organizing campaigns.
Despite years of employer attacks, unions still have vast resources at their disposal. This moment of worker upsurge is the time to use those assets to fund aggressive organizing.