UE’s General Executive Board is made up of the General Vice Presidents (UE Regional Presidents), Regional Vice Presidents, Regional Financial Secretaries and five at-large delegates from each region, along with the three national officers: the General President, General Secretary-Treasurer and Director of Organization.
The GEB meets three times a year to decide on issues that come up between conventions, with shorter conference calls or video conferences between meetings as necessary. Each year the GEB also approves a budget for the National Union, and oversees spending throughout the year.
Each region also elects two Trustees, and one Alternate Trustee, who are responsible for auditing the books and records of the regions and the national union three times a year, and safeguarding the property of the union.
In 2019, the UE national constitution was amended to create a financial task force, made up of the General Secretary-Treasurer, the Regional Presidents, and an additional GEB member and Trustee from each region.
*denotes Financial Task Force member
Eastern Region
Donna Morgan, Regional President*
Prior to her election as regional president, Donna Morgan worked for Rehabilitation Services in the state of West Virginia as a senior examiner, doing quality assurance for social security disability claims. She has been a member of UE for 11 years, including six years as president of UE Local 170. Prior to serving as local president she was a chapter vice president and then chapter president. She enjoys collecting antiques and doing cross stitch sewing, but says “best of all I enjoy a good fight with employers who mistreat their employees.”
Darrion Smith, Regional Vice President
Darrion Smith is a youth program educational assistant in the Child and Adolescent Unit of Central Regional Hospital in Butner, North Carolina, a state psychiatric hospital which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. He joined UE in November of 2011, and has held the positions of UE Local 150 DHHS chairperson and Eastern Region trustee. “We are a powerful union where every union member’s voice counts and is respected,” he says. “Thank you for allowing me to serve you.”
Scott Slawson, Regional Secretary-Treasurer
Scott Slawson is the president of UE Local 506 at Wabtec in Erie, Pennsylvania. He has been a UE member for 16 years, and prior to being elected president served as alternate union steward, union steward, alternate chief steward, and divisional chief steward.
Jim Borowski
Jim Borowski is a head operator at the Buckeye Pipeline Corporation Port Reading, New Jersey, which operates two deep water ship docks, six barge berths, two tug boat fueling locations, two pipelines out of the facility and one pipeline into the facility. He has worked at the facility since 1984 and has been the president of UE Local 106 since 2008, two years after it was organized. He is a NJ State Certified EMT and currently serves as the captain of his local Volunteer First Aid Squad. He is also an engineer for the local Volunteer Fire Department, and will be beginning his 18th year serving as an elected official (Councilman) of his community.
Margaret Dabrowski
Margaret Dabrowski is a 911 dispatcher for the city of New Britain, Connecticut, and vice president of statewide UE Local 222, which represents a variety of municipal and board of education workers across the state. She has been a union member since 1998, and a UE member since the Connecticut Independent Labor Union affiliated with UE as Local 222 in the early 2000s. In addition to serving as local vice president, she has been the president of her sublocal “forever,” and has served as a Local 222 trustee and executive board member, and as a trustee of the Northeast Region. She has eight cats and one dog.
Bud Decker
Bud Decker is a melt operator at Kennedy Valve in Elmira, New York — “I actually melt raw metal into liquid and we then pour it into molds to make things like fire hydrants and other valves for the water works industry.” He has been a member of UE Local 329 for 35 years and currently serves as a chief steward. He has also held the positions of vice president, recording secretary, and safety steward.
Antwon Gibson*
Antwon Gibson is a maintenance technician at Wabtec in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, and president of UE Local 610 since 2011. Prior to being elected president, he served as divisional steward and vice president. He has been a member of UE for 16 years. He describes himself as “politically independent” and encourages all members to “truly hold any and all political figures accountable whichever way possible.”
Elizabeth Jesdale
Elizabeth Jesdale is a demo coordinator for Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier, Vermont, where she creates recipes and shows customers how to use a wide variety of natural and local foods, though since March 2020 she has been a “gatekeeper,” ensuring that all customers are wearing face coverings and sanitizing the grocery carts. She has been a member of UE Local 255 for 17 years, and has served as president, vice president, recording secretary, chief steward, steward and trustee of her local, and as secretary-treasurer and president of UE’s Northeast Region. She says, “I strongly believe the way to have a strong local and a strong union is to involve as many members as possible.”
Western Region
Charlene Winchell, Regional President*
Charlene Winchell worked at Aramark in La Crosse, Wisconsin for 31 years as a garment soil sorter, sorting all the garments that came into the facility in proper order so they could be washed, dried and pressed and returned to the customer. She helped bring UE into the shop in 1996 and served as UE Local 1121’s first president. She has also held the positions of vice president, steward and treasurer for Local 1121 and was elected president of the Western Region in 2019.
Larry Hopkins, Regional Vice President
Larry Hopkins is a road driver for Hallcon rail crew transportation in Chicago, and president of UE Local 1177, which represents rail crew drivers in Chicago, Northwest and Southern Indiana, Southern and Western Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. He has also served as a steward and vice president for his local and as a trustee for the National Union. He describes himself as “easygoing” and says, “I want to see each and everyone of my fellow Brothers and Sisters succeed in whatever they do.”
Becky Dawes, Regional Secretary-Treasurer*
Becky Dawes has worked for the Department of Human Services for the state of Iowa since 1984 as a child abuse investigator. In 1984, she joined Iowa United Professionals, an independent union which affiliated with UE in 1993 and became known as UE Local 893/IUP. She has held various positions in Local 893, including as a board member representing her sublocal and union steward, secretary and vice president of the statewide local. Since 2005 she has served as president of the statewide local, while continuing in her role as union steward. She has also served on the executive board and as vice president for the Western Region, and currently holds the position of Secretary-Treasurer for the region. She has served on the General Executive Board since 2016.
Ashley Clemons
Ashley Clemons works as a cardiac monitor technician on the COVID-19 unit at Henry Mayo hospital in Santa Clarita, California. “I monitor and interpret patients’ heart rhythms watching for any arrhythmias or changes in the patient,” she explains. She first joined UE Local 1004 in 2015 and became an active member in 2016. She has held the position of recording secretary since 2016; prior to that she also served as a steward. “My first ~real~ UE experience was at Labor Notes a few years back and it really inspired me to be a voice in the labor movement,” she says.
Malik Grant
Malik Grant is a lead technician at Tulip Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and president of UE Local 1135. He has been a UE member since 1993, and previously served as his local’s vice president. He describes himself as a “loyal member” of UE.
Bryan Martindale
Bryan Martindale has been a “proud member” of UE for more than 40 years, since he was hired by Stepan Company in Anaheim, California on August 26, 1980. He has held many leadership roles in the union, including serving as UE Local 1421 president since 2003. He was vice president of District 10 until the districts were combined into regions in 2006. Since then he has served as a member of the Western Region executive board and a member of the General Executive Board since 2007.
Bob Smith
Bob Smith is a carpenter in the maintenance department at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio. Kenyon maintenance workers joined the UE in 1996, and Smith became vice president in 1998 and has been President since 2000. He has also served on the eastern region executive board, and helped with some organizing over the years.
Teresa Willibey
Teresa Willibey is the President of UE Local 735 at C J Automotive in Butler, Indiana. She has been a UE member for 10 years.
Trustees
Don Brown (Eastern Region)*
Don Brown is a safety coordinator at Wabtec in Erie, Pennsylvania and has been a member of UE Local 506 for 20 years. He has held the positions of steward, trustee, chair of elections and chair of the unity council in Local 506. He has been a trustee for the Eastern Region for 14 years and a national trustee for 13 years. He is very active in his church and community.
Lily Moore (Eastern Region)
Lily Moore does data entry and reviews documents for LDRM, the current federal contractor at the National Visa Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She has been a UE member for almost 3 years, and currently serves as a trustee for UE Local 228. She has also served Local 228 as recording secretary and steward. She has participated in a number of UE Young Activist events, including a joint UE-Unifor organizing blitz in North Carolina and canvassing for Medicare for All in Pittsburgh during the 2019 convention.
Gene Pickens (Eastern Region, alternate)
Gene Pickens works for the state of West Virginia and is a member of UE Local 170.
Brian Hudson (Western Region)
Brian Hudson has worked as a road driver for Hallcon in Chicago since August of 2018. In 2019 he became a steward for UE Local 1177, and then joined Local 1177’s executive board as an at-large member. In October of 2020 he was elected chief steward for District 1 of Local 1177.
Delores Phillips (Western Region)*
Delores Phillips is a data clerk for federal contractor Sciolex in Chicago, where she has worked for 21 years and is president of UE Local 1118. She has been a UE member for eight years, and has served as a trustee for the Western Region. “I am blessed and grateful to belong to this organization,” she says.
Juliet Uata (Western Region, alternate)
Juliet Uata works in quality control for FSA Federal, a subcontractor of the federal contractor Sciolex, in Laguna Niguel, California. She joined UE Local 1008 in October of 2016, and is currently the local’s sergeant-at-arms, having previously served as chief steward. She says “I am Polynesian (Tongan), and I couldn’t be more grateful that my first experience with unions started with UE.”