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United Food and Commercial Workers President Mark Perrone is expected to announce his retirement this week, according to sources close to the union’s leadership. UFCW has 1.3 million members in the U.S. and Canada, mainly in grocery and meatpacking.

A special meeting of the union’s 55-person International Executive Board has been called for May 13. The board is expected to choose Perrone’s successor there.

UFCW presidents are supposed to be elected by delegates to the union’s conventions, which occur every five years. But the last three presidents have all been chosen by the IEB between conventions, following their predecessors’ retirements.

NO ANNOUNCEMENT

As of May 12, there has been no public announcement by the union of Perrone’s resignation, meaning most UFCW members are completely unaware that they are about to have a new president.

The process has been opaque, with several internal candidates jockeying for votes behind the scenes. The rumored frontrunners include Milton Jones, the international secretary-treasurer; Mark Lauritsen, head of the meatpacking and food processing division; and Ademola Oyefoso, the union’s political director.

Only one candidate, Todd Crosby, has publicly announced that he is running. Crosby is a former president of Local 21 (now Local 3000, the union’s largest local) and the former international organizing director.

Crosby is now on staff with Local 3000, and a key figure in recent initiatives including the successful fight against the merger of Kroger and Albertsons and ongoing coordinated bargaining in grocery on the West Coast. His platform calls for the UFCW to invest more in new organizing, put rank-and-file members on bargaining teams, and coordinate national bargaining with common employers.

Reform-minded members on the Board have been pushing for modifications to the usual process of selecting a new president. They want a secret ballot and a candidate forum in front of the Board. These suggestions are being submitted to Stuart Appelbaum, who is the election chair, and president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), a UFCW affiliate.

The UFCW constitution only stipulates that when the office of President becomes vacant, the Board has to elect a successor by majority vote within 30 days.

The reform organization Essential Workers for Democracy (EW4D) will be hosting a candidate forum tonight, open to UFCW members. Crosby said he will attend, and EW4D asked Appelbaum to invite other candidates as well.

SPOTLIGHT ON UNION DEMOCRACY

EW4D has seized on the opacity of the leadership selection process as well. Their activists have launched a petition to local leaders, including those who serve on the International Executive Board, calling on them to host candidate forums and town halls, and hold a national straw poll.

In addition, they are calling on the UFCW to settle the lawsuit filed by two EW4D activists in April 2024 alleging that the way the union chooses delegates for its conventions violates members’ rights under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). The lawsuit seeks to force the union to proportionally allocate delegates across locals, get rid of the automatic appointment of officers as delegates, and ensure that locals hold delegate elections.

EW4D has been campaigning for direct elections by the membership, otherwise known as one member, one vote. EW4D hosted a call May 7 where reformers from the UAW and the Teamsters spoke about how one member, one vote helped push their own unions in a more fighting direction.

Eric Marcuz, a Safeway worker and a member of UFCW Local 8 in Northern California, said, “A lot of people in the UFCW don't have any idea what the process is. It's just been invisible to us.” One purpose of the EW4D call, which he chaired, was to “shine a light on how it's like in other places."

Since 1994, all UFCW presidents have been appointed by the international executive board in between conventions. Perrone himself was appointed in this manner in 2014, and then formally elected by UFCW delegates at the convention in 2018, where he ran unopposed.

STAKES FOR THE UFCW

Perrone’s administration has been marked by what EW4D and other critics have called “finance unionism,” in which unions hoard assets rather than spending them on union activity. Perrone presided over a doubling of the UFCW’s assets, from $199 million in 2014 to $521 million in 2022.

EW4D, as well as Crosby, are calling instead for aggressive investment in new organizing, strike readiness, and coordinated bargaining—notably in grocery, where contracts for the same employer, like Kroger, are splintered across the country.

Marcuz said, "It's an unfortunate reality that the UFCW has created a long lasting legacy of accumulating power and holding on to it in a small group of people. They've really doubled-down on it over time.

"As a rank-and-file member, you have to ask why it's kept so secret. Why aren't presidential elections highlighted every time they come around? It's obvious there's a certain power structure that's being maintained. It's incumbent on us to put ourselves in the conversation, through the ways that we can do so.”