United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) president Marc Perrone announced his retirement May 13. The same day, the union announced his successor, chosen in a special meeting of the international executive board: Milton Jones, previously international secretary-treasurer.
Jones has been a UFCW member for forty-five years, starting as a teenage courtesy clerk at a Kroger grocery store in Alabama. He is the union’s first African American president. The executive board narrowly elected him over Mark Lauritsen, head of the meatpacking and food processing division.
UFCW has 1.3 million members in the United States and Canada, mainly in grocery and meatpacking. International presidents are supposed to be elected by delegates to the union’s conventions, which occur every five years.
But this makes four presidents in a row who were first chosen by its international executive board between conventions, following their predecessors’ retirements. Perrone, for instance, was appointed by the board in 2014, then formally elected at the 2018 convention, where he ran unopposed.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that the UFCW has created a long-lasting legacy of accumulating power and holding onto it in a small group of people,” said Eric Marcuz, a Safeway worker and UFCW Local 8 member in Northern California. “They’ve really doubled down on it over time.”
Most UFCW members were unaware they were about to get a new president. While several candidates jockeyed for votes behind the scenes, including Jones and Lauritsen, the UFCW reform organization
Auteur: Lisa Xu
