UE Political Action Updates

Meeting in Pittsburgh this week, UE’s General Executive Board discussed the 2024 elections and adopted a statement declaring, “Working people desperately need an independent political organization, based on a political program that can unite us, which can fight for that platform in the electoral arena — in short, a labor party.”

In April of 2023, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a 900-page document called Project 2025. In it, prominent corporate and right-wing operatives have created a comprehensive wishlist for expanding corporate power under a second Trump administration — and a detailed plan for achieving them.

This year’s presidential election is the starkest demonstration yet of how the two corporate parties which dominate American politics prevent working people from using our democracy to improve our conditions.

The only way out of this two-party trap is a strong and politically independent labor movement, with millions more working people organized into unions and other worker organizations independent of the existing political parties. Only then will we be able to force politicians to address the needs of the working class and then hold them accountable once they are in office, not only through elections but through other forms of political action such as marches, strikes, occupations and mass civil disobedience.

UE Local 150 members from the Department of Health and Human Services and the University of North Carolina held a political action day at the state legislature on Thursday, May 16 to urge their representatives to take action to improve working conditions for public-sector workers around the state. Members gave speeches and chanted on the front lawn outside the capitol to call attention to their unlivable wages and working conditions.