On Wednesday, October 2, members of UE Local 332 in Fort Edward, NY picketed an appearance by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt in Rutland, Vermont. They were joined by members from other Locals in the Northeast Region, Locals 203, 222, 225, 255, and 274, and 222.
Local 332 is fighting GE’s announced plan to close the Ft. Edward plant by September 2014 and move all work to Clearwater, Florida. If GE carries out its plan it will cost the jobs of Ft. Edward’s 178 hourly production workers, represented by Local 332 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), as well as 20 salaried employees.
The GE Ft. Edward plant has operated since the 1940s making electrical capacitors, and workers have been represented by UE since soon after it opened. The plant has been highly profitable for decades. Earlier this year, management gave a party to thank them for the plant’s record performance.
But also beginning in the 1940s and until the 1970s, GE dumped approximately 1.3 million pounds of highly-toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River from Ft. Edward. GE tried for years to evade responsibility for this disaster. A multi-year dredging project to remove GE’s PCBs from the river continues today, as do harmful impacts on the environment and human health. New York’s State Health Department continues to advise against eating fish from the Hudson. The river from Hudson Falls to Lower Manhattan is the EPA’s largest Superfund site, requiring long-term cleanup of contamination.
“Closing our plant will hurt 200 families of GE employees and many more families in our community,” said Local 332 President Scott Gates. “It will have a devastating effect on small businesses in our area, costing many more people their jobs, reducing local services, harming a lot of people.” But Gates said GE has an even larger obligation because of the environmental damage it has caused. “It would be a gross injustice to all the people of our region and of New York State, for GE to take away these jobs and leave us nothing but polluted land and a poisoned river. GE owes us much more. At a minimum, GE has an obligation to keep these jobs here.”
As required by the national contract between UE and GE, the company on September 18 gave the union one year’s notice of its intent to close Ft. Edward. The union and the company are now engaged in “decision bargaining” over the closing, as required by the union contract. “We will fight this with whatever it takes to keep these jobs here,” said Scott Gates.