In the first "decision bargaining" session with GE since the company's September 18 announcement of plans to close the Fort Edward, NY plant, UE Local 332 representatives delivered a powerful opening statement, and gave the company a five-page information request.
(Local 332's bulletin to its members, reporting on the meeting, can be downloaded as a PDF file at the link below.)
If GE carries out its plan to close the electrical capacitor plant one year from now, it will cost the jobs of 178 UE members, as well as some 20 non-union salaried employees. The local and national union are commited to fighting for this jobs by all available means.
UE was represented in the Thursday meeting by Local 332 President Scott Gates, Business Agent Angel Sardina, Vice President Carol Dudley, Chief Steward Mark Rock, Recording Secretary Kim Little and Executive Board Members Sonny Gooden, Bruce Ostrander, Roger Harrington, and Chris Little, UE International Rep. Gene Elk, UE Northeast Region President Peter Knowlton, and UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend.
The union's opening statement said, in part:
"GE’s heartless proposal to close our plant will – if carried out – be a disaster for most of the 200 workers and their families. UE knows from the bitter experience of other GE plant closings that your plant closing will cause countless hardships, and even some genuine personal tragedies, among our members and their families. The opportunities and life prospects of many of our members’ children will be altered, for the worse, if GE wrongly decides to carry out its preliminary plan to close our plant.
"Moreover, GE has poisoned our communities by dumping PCBs and other toxins into the Ft. Edward site and the Hudson River. When the extent of this environmental disaster was fully uncovered in the 1970s, GE at first worked tirelessly to deny the impact of such toxin dumps and then GE Chairman Jack Welch fought a long legal battle with the EPA to evade the company’s responsibility to clean-up the Hudson River. But the company and even Jeff Immelt today can no longer deny that GE, at this site, created one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.
"You poisoned our river and our towns and now you want to create an economic disaster by shuttering our plant and running out of our community...
"UE rejects your plan to close our plant and destroy our jobs and our livelihood and will do everything in our power to convince you to rescind last week’s plant closing announcement. Our plant has been profitable for many years and our skilled workforce cannot be easily replaced. After creating an environmental disaster, GE has a responsibility to our community keep 200 decent jobs while it continues to make a reasonable profit here in Ft. Edward for the foreseeable future. You owe at least that much to our members and their families, you owe it to the people of Fort Edward and Warren and Washington counties, you owe it to the people of New York."
