Headway for Member-Power in our Union

(right: our rank and file candidate for President back in June, who won 40% of the vote)
My union local of the Carpenters Union is in the San Francisco East Bay. It has a long tradition of militancy. The Local has a strong sense of rank and file pride and as such there is almost always tension between the members and the full-time officials, who are all appointed from above and serve the interests of the union machine itself rather than the carpenters themselves.
This is a report from a fellow carpenter on last night’s union meeting:

For the past 4 months the Local President of our union, the Carpenters’ Union, has been orchestrating an adjournment of the our union meetings directly after the meeting begins. This, supposedly is to allow the members to enjoy the dinner laid on by the union.
We are perhaps the only union Local in the US labor movement that has two union meetings per month. Our second meeting has been under attack for years. The Wildcat strike in 1999, that our Local rank and file led, confirmed that having two union meetings per month was extremely valuable for our members when we are putting up a fight.
Since April, the President, a full-time official with the union, has had one of his people call an adjournment of the meeting as soon as our second monthly meeting begins. Our caucus and the rank and file in particular have watched this cloaked attempt to get rid of our second meeting.
Last night we had a meeting and decided to launch a surprise attack on the President from all directions to demand the return of our second meeting. As it happened tonight, the meeting did break up into pandemonium, with at one point, another union official held onto the mike and refused to pass the mike over to one of our rank and filers who was due to speak. There was a lot of yelling and heat. We forced the question and a motion posed the issue point blank: should this Local cancel its second meeting? We argued in favor of a meal for the members but also we can listen and discuss important issues. The staffers tried to cushion the question by arguing that “we’re just feeding the members” and that the second meeting should be a “social meeting.”
When it came to the vote, not a single voice was raised to vote YES to cancel the second meeting. And for the first time in four months the members were able to get up at our second meeting and raise anything under the sun they wanted to speak about under Good of the Order.
A small victory against the union machine’s dream of a submissive, inactive union membership.