We believe workers built our society and view our workplaces as critical sites of societal transformation. Empowering our union members to foster better connections within their workplace, in our local, and throughout our labor movement is exactly what’s needed to respond to the harms we suffer as a result of imperialist wars, attacks on democracy, and the rule of corporations. We know we are each other’s best guarantee of safety and that the voices and perspectives of our union members must direct the future of the Nonprofit Professional Employee Union (NPEU).

​

Union democracy has always been a core principle and value for NPEU. Decisions at all levels should be as democratic as possible, with all affected union members always having the opportunity to participate in decision-making.
 

NPEU was founded on, and historically has followed, a model of worker-to-worker organizing. The deep involvement of rank-and-file workers in their own organizing makes NPEU strong, and has been integral to attracting new members and inspiring organizing efforts. We seek to return the union to being member-led.
 

Organizing new units while fighting to preserve existing units has always been central to NPEU’s mission and has been a proven model of success. NPEU has shifted the landscape for nonprofits, making unionized nonprofits increasingly the norm rather than the exception and, along with other unions, NPEU has been rapidly organizing the industry. NPEU should continue to invest in new external organizing. As the U.S. labor movement experiences a historic resurgence, the old top-down model of business-friendly unionism will not work. We demand ORGANIZATION not simply mobilization. It is incumbent that we demystify labor law for individual workers so all union members can defend themselves and we can collectively achieve progress for working people. 
 

NPEU historically has been, and should continue to be, a fighting union. Layoffs, as recently happened at Community Change and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, should be challenged, especially when those impacted are leaders within their units in well-paid union roles. NPEU officers should stand by unit members when they are laid off and work for their reinstatement whenever laid-off employees want to return to their jobs. There is pride in working a union job, and it should be a priority to defend our past wins to ensure a strong foundation for the local. Employers’ explanations for why layoffs are occurring need to be scrutinized and challenged, and should be a rallying moment for the whole local.
 

NPEU officers should work in solidarity with member units and take leadership from those units, not the other way around. NPEU’s rapid expansion over the past five years is due in large part to the organic worker-leaders who are committed to the labor movement. The officers are supposed to be there to provide support, advice, and other assistance to unit members. The staff should never negotiate agreements with employers that go against the wishes of unit members and must reject sidebar conversations without any unit members present as a strategy.
 

Likewise, NPEU officers should follow the lead of members in assisting with a collective bargaining strategy and in formulating the unit members’ goals and demands for their collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). NPEU officers should never sideline or exclude certain members of units in favor of other members. Similarly, NPEU staff should be accountable to the membership and executive board of the local, and refrain from influencing the politics of the union or hand-picking leadership of executive board representatives and officers. Members, not staff, should be taking the lead in bargaining their contracts and should be empowered in decision-making throughout the process.
 

NPEU members all have abilities, skills, and valuable experience to bring to the table. NPEU officers and staff should listen to and collaborate with unit members as equals, should avoid arbitrarily excluding workers from decision-making, and should never act as if they are superior to unit members. NPEU officers and staff should not fear having open conversations with members and should not circumvent the will of the majority. It is our right as a membership to both be radically informed about the affairs of the local AND radically participate in union democracy. 
 

Open and free communication is integral to NPEU’s democratic structure. The NPEU listserv should be a forum for free communication among members. Absent an explicit and democratically approved code of conduct for the listserv, it is not the role of officers to approve or deny messages posted to the list, as has been happening for the past seven months. 
 

NPEU decisions on positions related to US government policy or other matters should be made in a bottom-up, democratic manner involving all members. It is not the place of the officers to limit discussion or exclude members from discussions on these matters. We reject the use of arbitrary and prolonged decision-making processes to exhaust the local’s energy and suppress members’ political vision.

​

It is workers who led NPEU’s historic peak in organizing this decade and it is workers who must steward the continued and stable growth of our local. It is no accident that we have been bound together by the union movement. NPEU must invest in each union member and view their participation in our local as part of a long and generative history in a strong international labor movement. We, the members of MDU, commit to fighting for internal union democracy to honor the struggle of the worker leaders who came before us while also compelled by a moral and historical imperative to organize our fellow workers to ensure a just future for all.