During a wide-ranging discussion at their fall meeting, held on September 3 and 4, UE’s General Executive Board addressed health care, AI, threats to labor rights and democracy, and new federal regulations which impact UE’s international-worker members. The General Executive Board is made up of 16 rank-and-file members who are elected by UE’s geographical regions, plus the three national officers.
General President Scott Slawson opened the discussion with a report on UE’s participation in a strategy conference hosted by National Nurses United at the end of August. He noted that employers are anticipating that their health care costs could jump by as much as 30 percent in the next year, and that the cuts to Medicaid funding contained in last year’s federal budget bill mean that “hospitals will be shutting down at record pace.”
Eastern Region Vice President Sophie Nighswander, Local 696, herself a health care worker, added that although “a lot of the actual cuts haven’t come down yet ... a lot of hospital systems have started closing rural hospitals. It’s our poorest and most underserved communities that are being hit the worst.”
Liam Sherman, Local 1043-Stanford Graduate Workers Union, reported that co-pays for his shop’s insurance are going up between 60 and 200 percent; when the local raised it with their employer, the employer suggested that workers simply go to the emergency room less frequently. Lauren Chua, Local 256 (MIT-Graduate Student Union), said that MIT is currently demanding givebacks on healthcare in negotiations, and “our members are not interested in that in the slightest. It’s incredibly important to everyone in our unit” and “one of our strike issues.”
“We are in the middle of a health care crisis in this country”, Slawson concluded, and the answer is Medicare for All. “What a dream that would be, to get health care off of the bargaining table.”
“Our freedoms are being taken away from us.”
Slawson reported that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced several bills that UE has endorsed, including legislation to implement a 32-hour work week, require employers to provide at least 10 days of paid vacation per year, and put AI in public hands.
The UE president pointed out that, “These are big things that are coming down the pike that we have to think about. Our freedoms are being taken away from us,” especially with the increasing use of AI to power surveillance systems like Flock cameras. “We’ve turned into a surveillance state and it’s only getting worse,” he said.
He also noted that, now that there is a full Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board, the board is set to overturn a raft of pro-worker decisions, all of which would have “catastrophic outcomes” for the labor movement. Director of Organization Kimberly Lawson emphasized the threat posed to tens of thousands of UE members if the Columbia decision, which gave graduate workers at private universities collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act, is overturned.
Western Region Secretary-Treasurer Michael Tomaloff reported that his local, Local 1186 in Madison, Wisconsin, is distributing and collecting “I will vote and fight for labor rights” pledge cards. He highlighted the “and fight” part, making the case that, with threats to voting rights and the potential for “authoritarians at the polling places,” working people may need to take action in the streets to protect democracy.
Lawson also reported that the Trump administration is placing expensive and onerous restrictions on international workers, who make up a sizable percentage of UE’s higher education membership. These include imposing fees of up to $100,000 on the programs that allow these UE members to work, and limiting graduate workers’ time in the country to four years — a time frame that both Chua from Local 256 at MIT and Sherman from Local 1043 at Stanford confirmed is not realistic for finishing a Ph.D. program.
Current UE Organizing Campaigns Cover Thousands of Workers in Diverse Sectors
In her organizational report, Lawson said that UE is working with a group of 1700 rail crew drivers at 300 rail yards across the country who are currently represented by a company union. The workers are employees of PTI, one of the three major companies in the industry, along with Hallcon, where UE has a national contract covering approximately 2,000 workers. (UE also already represents two groups of PTI workers, one in California and Nevada and the other in Colorado.) Lawson reported that, despite the company union recently signing a new contract, workers are still enthusiastically joining UE. She pointed out that some of the campaigns that brought large groups of Hallcon workers into UE took four or five years.
UE Local 1010, the New Seasons Labor Union in Portland, Oregon, is actively working to organize the remaining stores in their chain, she reported. They have organizing committees in eight out of the 12 still-unorganized New Seasons grocery stores, and have reached a majority at one location.
Lawson also reported on the progress of a campaign among 2500 lab workers and researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, as well as other organizing efforts in higher education and in the Wabtec chain.
Turning to collective bargaining, she reported that Local 256, the first of UE’s private-sector graduate worker locals to be negotiating a second contract, is in a tough fight with their employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is not only demanding healthcare concessions, as noted above, but an open shop.
“This is the first time in my experience or in my knowledge that I have seen an employer come after union shop in a successor agreement,” said Lawson, who noted that MIT is “trying to set the stage for all the other grad locals,” threatening union security for tens of thousands of UE members. “The good news is the local’s been fighting back,” Lawson said, and “they’re in active preparations for a strike.”
Three more higher education locals, Local 300-CGSU at Cornell, Local 1103-GSU at the University of Chicago, and Local 1122-NUGW at Northwestern University, will be negotiating second contracts in the spring. Local 256’s struggle, Lawson said, “foreshadows that these contract fights will center on preserving union security.”
Lawson also reported on a recent settlement at Local 115, which she called “an excellent settlement with zero concessions,” and ongoing contract negotiations at Hallcon. Western Region Vice President Larry Hopkins, a Hallcon rail crew driver and president of Chicago-based Local 1177, said that Hallcon’s recent opening of new facilities in Washington State proves that the company has enough money to meet workers’ demands. He reported that the UE bargaining committee is “trying to bring up [wages in] some of the lower [paid] areas, some of the rural areas,” despite management’s efforts to divide workers based on region.
2027 National Officer Elections
Meeting at the same time at the GEB, the UE National Trustees counted the votes for the constitutional amendments which were submitted to locals for a referendum vote in July. The amendments, which consist of modifications to the process for electing national officers, passed by a vote of 171 to 4.
With the amendments set to come into effect in December, the GEB voted to appoint Delores Phillips, Local 1118, as chair of the Election Committee which will oversee national officer elections in 2027. Per the amendments, the other four members of the committee will be selected by the Regional Council meetings in September, two from each region. The GEB also reviewed feedback from the spring council meetings about the proposed election code of conduct, and will make a recommendation to the election committee at the January GEB meeting.
In other business, the board heard reports on UE’s education and international solidarity work and reviewed the final financial report for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which ended in June, and the monthly report for July 2026. The UE Strike Policy was amended to clarify that the formula for strike benefits to locals are based on membership count not per capita, and a task force was formed to review and update UE’s current anti-harassment policy and training programs with the goal of improving both. Director of Organization Lawson pointed out that harassment “is still an issue [in the union] and still needs to be dealt with,” and President Slawson emphasized the importance of taking it on head first, noting that, “Harassing behavior erodes solidarity at all levels, because we start losing trust with each other.”