Here you will find helpful information to better understand UE's history and current role in bargaining with GE. Click on a picture for more info!
70 Years of Struggle
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This pamphlet, written in 2007, tells how GE workers organized the union, won the first UE-GE National Contract with GE, and have battled ever since, to achieve the wages and conditions we now enjoy. It contains valuable lessons for today’s generation of GE workers.
How young women shook up ge in the '70s
In the 1970s, salaried women workers at Erie GE fought important battles for workplace equality, including two strikes in 1974 and ’75 in which they demanded equal pay for equal work. The participants in these struggles were predominantly young women, and they were influenced by the ideas of the feminist movement as well as by UE’s long-established principles of equality and rank-and-file unionism.
young worker militancy in the '70s
“The young people in the shops are involved in a revolt of their own, which is growing day by day… The young worker doesn’t give a damn for the company’s shop rules and he drives the foremen crazy. He comes to work when he feels like it and quits the job at the drop of a hat…” Matles described how young workers were voting down contract settlements and voting out old union officers.
What is the CBC? How and why was it built?
The CBC – the Coordinated Bargaining Committee of GE Unions – is a bargaining coalition of 11 unions that have members who work for GE. Two of the unions – UE and the IUE-CWA – have national contracts that cover all their locals in GE, while the other unions have local contracts. The contracts have common expiration dates, and the unions send negotiators to New York City, where the UE and IUE contracts are negotiated at the same time. For the first two or three weeks in each bargaining round, there are two bargaining tables, where the UE and IUE-CWA each face GE, and the bargaining concludes at one table, referred to as “the small table.” The understanding is that the UE and IUE-CWA contracts then serve as “pattern agreements” for the local contracts of the other unions, and the economic changes and many of the language changes negotiated into the two national contracts are included in each of the local contracts.
GE union meet, begin preparing for 2015 national negotiations
UE had a strong presence at the November 14, 2014 meeting of the Coordinated Bargaining Committee of GE Unions (CBC), held at the UAW Local 647 Union Hall in Evandale, near Cincinnati. GE workers bargain their contracts next June, and the CBC is a bargaining coalition of 11 national unions that represent GE workers. Most of UE Local 506's executive board attended, along with delegations from Locals 332, 618 and 601.
Company’s Former Labor Negotiator Sues GE Over Retiree Health Cuts
GE is being sued in federal court by two retirees who previously held high-ranking positions in labor relations and benefits administration, over the company’s slashing of salary employee retirement health benefits. The plaintiffs are Dennis Rocheleau, GE’s former chief labor negotiator, and Evelyn Kauffman, former senior corporate benefits executive.