After three weeks of very difficult contract negotiations and the rejection of the company’s last, best, and final proposal, members of the Joint Bargaining Committee (JBC) unions at GE Appliances Factory Service, which include UE Locals 270, 335, and 707, approved a new three-year agreement on June 24. JBC union members repair home appliances.
The JBC includes IBEW, UE, IAM, and the Steamfitters. Under the JBC bylaws, all local unions’ votes are tallied to determine if the members voted to reject or accept a proposal.
The company lost $31 million in 2025, and its theme for these negotiations was to put it on a “path to break even” — code for concessions. Although the company's last, best, and final proposal did not include wage or benefit concessions, it did tie future wage increases to a new system of performance metrics.
The JBC negotiating committee voted to recommend rejection of the company’s last, best, and final proposal because the wage increases were insufficient, especially for Legacy technicians.
GE Appliances Factory Service has a two-tier wage structure. Competitive Wage (CW) technicians earn on average two dollars less per hour than Legacy technicians. Nearly two-thirds of JBC members in Factory Service are CW technicians.
Another complicating factor in these negotiations was IUE, which has around 160 members in Factory Service. (The JBC has around 330 members.) The GE unions with members in the appliance division bargained together in 2017, after General Electric sold it off, but IUE dropped out of the JBC following that first contract.
Over the years, the JBC has tried to get IUE and the Teamsters (who have around 60 members at Factory Service) to rejoin the JBC, or at minimum, conduct joint negotiations. However, IUE and Teamsters insisted on negotiating separately, to the detriment of all Factory Service technicians. IUE agreed to the company’s metrics in less than a week of negotiations, before the JBC even started bargaining.
After the JBC members voted to reject the company’s last, best, and final proposal on June 4, the JBC reached out to the company to see if the company would meet again. On June 17, the parties met in Louisville and virtually in a day-long negotiations and reached a tentative agreement, which the JBC negotiating committee voted to recommend to its members.
The new agreement still includes metrics, but improved the wage rates of Legacy technicians to match the wage rate increases of the CW technicians in years two and three. More importantly, the JBC negotiating committee achieved its members’ number one survey priority: eliminating Competitive Wages at the end of the three-year agreement.
In the first year of the agreement, CW technicians who are at the top of the wage progression will receive a $1 per hour wage increase. Legacy technicians will receive a $1,000 lump sum payment. CW technicians in progression will move up to the next step of the wage progression (an average five percent increase). In years two and three of the agreement, the technicians must meet the new metrics. If CW technicians in progression meet their metrics, they will move up to the next step of the wage progression. If Legacy technicians and CW technicians at the top of the wage progression meet their metrics, they will receive a $1 per hour wage increase. If they don’t meet their metrics, the CW and Legacy technicians will receive a $0.75 per hour wage increase.
“The members of the JBC worked together and fought a good fight in very adverse conditions,” said Joe Parisi, president of Local 270 in Hartford, Connecticut and a member of the JBC negotiating committee. “The company came into the negotiations with a plan to give the members the least possible. Pay increases would be based on performance metrics that the company created. This was a very difficult pill to swallow for the members. The JBC was able to increase the wages the company was offering the members and reduce the metrics for members to qualify for the increases.
“One bright spot was the elimination, by the end of this contract, of the two-tier wage structure that the company instituted 10 years ago,” added Parisi. “This will put all our members on an equal pay scale.”
Even though the agreement includes the company’s new metrics, the JBC was able to make the metrics less stringent and add guardrails, including prohibiting the company from raising its metrics during the life of the agreement. The company will provide technicians with their metrics on a monthly basis. If a technician believes their metrics are inaccurate, they can grieve it. The company will also meet with the JBC in early 2027 to discuss the possibility of lowering the metrics.
“Throughout the years I’ve been involved with several contract negotiations, this was the toughest one I’ve been part of yet,” said Scott Schindler, president of Local 335 in Buffalo, New York, who participated in the June 17 negotiations. Schindler pointed out that the new metrics “are a very obtainable goal that most technicians are already achieving, or should be able to achieve.”
During the lead-up to the negotiations, the JBC surveyed its members to determine bargaining priorities, and held regular Zoom meetings to prepare for negotiations. The JBC distributed buttons with the slogans “United for a Fair Contract” and “Success is Shared.” The buttons included the four unions’ logos.
“The JBC unions held firm to better all of our positions as technicians, and for that, we are very grateful,” said Jarrod Vanco, president of Local 707 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Throughout the negotiations, UE members received weekly updates and held a Zoom meeting to discuss the company’s last, best, and final proposal. The local unions held in-person voting for the last, best, and final proposal and the tentative agreement.
The UE locals were represented in negotiations by Local 270 President Joe Parisi and Local 335 President Scott Schindler. They were assisted by UE Staff Coordinator John Thompson and UE Field Organizer Kevin White.