This month, the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) elevated a new international president, Milton Jones, to replace retiring Marc Perrone. On its face, this news doesn’t seem sensational, but criticism has surfaced from labor-friendly publications on whether a union representing 1.2 million workers is as committed to democratic elections as it claims to be.
Who is Milton Jones? He has 45 years of experience within the union, having joined UFCW while working as a grocery store clerk. In the following years, Jones moved into volunteer-organizer status before ascending into three decades of union leadership positions with heavy experience in collective bargaining and, as of 2023, as secretary-treasurer.
In a brief statement, Jones “committed to building upon the legacy of those who came before me” and facilitating collaboration between locals. He doesn’t aim to be a mover and shaker, and he now sits atop a union that has infiltrated many industries, including retail, cannabis, food processing, and healthcare.
Where is the controversy? Not too much pops off the surface of Jones’ reputation as a career union officer. However, his election “victory” is overshadowed by hypocrisy regarding how the UFCW election process is – according to the union’s website – supposedly done via representative democracy during five-year conventions where delegates elect officers, with the next event scheduled for 2028.
By the way, the union announced Jones as the “Newly-Elected UFCW International President,” suggesting an actual election happened.
Not so fast: Labor Notes reports that the union’s international executive board propelled Jones into his new position by a “narrow” margin over another candidate. In doing so, the board bypassed the delegate system and the convention format for the fourth time “in a row.” Labor Notes also quotes one UFCW member as calling this development “unfortunate” and a way of “creat[ing] a long-lasting legacy of accumulating power and holding onto it in a small group of people.”
Meanwhile, another progressive publication, WSWS, criticized Labor Notes for not going far enough to call out “the nakedly anti-democratic character of leadership selection.”
A disreputable union practice: This UFCW dust-up is nothing new. Not only has the executive board bypassed delegate elections on previous occasions, but unions are no strangers to mocking democracy.
Remember how the United Auto Workers (UAW) made a huge show of holding its first-ever direct elections for top leadership positions in 2022? That illusion quickly fell apart amid allegations of voter suppression and a sham election that amounted to a “travesty of democracy.” More tellingly, Shawn Fain won as a “reformer” candidate, and recently, he received his wish to disband the union’s reform caucus while a seasoned union officer resigned amid infighting over how the union is being run.
The takeaway: Milton Jones’ “election” might not make many waves, but it’s part of an established pattern of union leaders holding onto power and their self-preservation tactics. Further, organized labor as a whole is so demonstratively full of examples of corruption that it proves how Big Labor cares much more about those at the top than the workers that unions claim to represent.
As the saying goes, the more things change….?
