UAW Retiree Eligibility for Office to Create Convention Friction

When the United Auto Workers convention in Detroit starts next week, the two most recent elected presidents won’t be there.

They’ll remain in federal prison.

And for the first time, the union will select its next leader through a popular vote—a key reform approved by the membership earlier this year, at the behest of a federally appointed monitor, to ward off the kind of corruption that enveloped one of the nation’s oldest labor groups in recent years.

Yet UAW reformers already are crying foul over a decision from the top brass to bar retirees from running, disqualifying at least one ...