A Collective Approach to Strengthening UE Officer Elections

Our union has undergone profound changes over the past several years. Like generations before us, we must ensure that UE’s founding principle of rank and file control is applied in ways that work for our union in our current era. Effective member-run unionism and the need to build unity across our union to take on corporate forces requires that we evaluate and improve the process of UE national officer elections. We need an election process that maximizes member engagement and allows members in UE locals across the country to make informed decisions about the direction of our union. We need processes that encourage broad, honest and open discussion of the issues confronting our union while discouraging divisive personal attacks. Above all, we need to ensure that our election process helps us to forge unity and build a stronger union, while fostering healthy and vigorous debate over our path forward.

Structural changes in UE, evolving communications technology, the changing nature of the workforces we represent, and recent experience all advocate for a serious rethinking of how we conduct our elections. Although the General Executive Board has made minor changes to try to improve the election process, more substantial changes will require amendments to the UE constitution. A core democratic practice of UE has been that proposals to make important structural changes via constitutional amendments are brought to the regions and locals through a consultative process over the period of several months or longer, usually with the assistance of a task force established by the GEB for this purpose, prior to being brought to a vote. This ensures that important decisions are done thoughtfully and with the full input of UE locals. This process has been used repeatedly in recent decades for restructuring the regions and the GEB as well as changing the dues and per capita formulas.

Such an approach can be used in order to prepare changes in time for the next UE national officer election cycle in 2027. Article 27 of the UE constitution allows for a referendum vote of the locals on constitutional amendments without the need for a convention. This process was successfully used in 2020 in order to temporarily amend the UE constitution to deal with the restrictions brought on by the Covid pandemic. We can enact a deliberative consultation process across the locals and regions over the next twelve months, culminating in a referendum vote in the fall so that amendments will go into effect at the start of the next constitution year in December of 2026.

As always, building unity within UE, especially when faced with the vicious forces currently in power in the country, should be an important consideration in any plans we make. Engaging in an inclusive, collective process across the union on how we want our member-run union to function at the national level is a critical part of ensuring we can indeed build the unity we need.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79^th UE CONVENTION:

1. Directs the General Executive Board to establish a task force on UE national officer elections with the following charge:
   1. Solicit input from UE locals and regions on changes needed to best improve the conduct of UE elections to ensure democratic and civil debate across the union in future election cycles in keeping with the principles of member-run unionism;
   2. Review best practices of national election procedures in other unions;
   3. Draft proposals for constitutional amendments and other changes to present to the January 2026 GEB meeting;
   4. Incorporate input from the January 2026 GEB meeting in order to prepare a presentation for discussion at the spring 2026 regional council meetings;
   5. Incorporate input from the spring 2026 regional council meetings to present a revised proposal to be finalized at the May/June 2026 GEB meeting;
   6. Solicit locals representing at least the constitutional minimum of 25% of the membership to endorse the resulting constitutional amendments and submit them to the GEB prior to the September 2026 GEB meeting so that locals can vote to approve them by referendum and have them become effective December 1, 2026;
2. Directs the GEB and/or national officers to appropriately enact practices that result from the above process which do not require constitutional amendments;
3. Encourages all UE locals to contribute to the union-wide discussion of best practices for UE national officer elections;
4. Calls on UE regions to include time on their agendas at the spring 2026 regional council meeting for a thorough discussion of the task force presentation.