What grocery workers are organizing for, and the way they’re doing it, can be a model for working class unionism.

In recent years, reform-minded members of the United Food and Commercial Workers—UFCW, one of the largest unions in the U.S.—have ramped up their campaigns to make their union more democratic and responsive to the needs of its 1.3 million members.

These members have organized toward resolutions at the 2023 convention, including to have direct elections of the international union’s top officers.

They sued the international in the spring of 2024 over other union democracy issues, pointing out how the UFCW allocates fewer delegates to larger locals. 

And they’re leading more vigorous contract fights and campaigns than we've seen in these sectors in decades.

Their fight can tell us a lot about how vital a reform current can be in transforming a union to actually represent its members’ interests, and fight for the working class as whole.