At the UE Eastern Region council meeting, held on Saturday, September 12, over a dozen members of UE Local 256 (MIT-Graduate Student Union) came to the front of the room to report on their difficult contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their contract expired in May, but MIT has refused to meet for more than a few hours at a time, and is insisting on healthcare givebacks and attacking the local’s union shop.

The university administration “has offered us an effective pay cut at the table while paying their graduate workers less than 75 percent of the living wage in Cambridge, which we calculated with MIT’s own living wage calculator,” said Jo Hall, chair of the Local 256 strike committee and the local’s financial secretary. “Despite the challenges we’re facing against such a large, well-resourced employer, these indignities have energized our membership and led many new members to step up to organizing and leadership roles.”

Earlier that week, Hall reported, over 550 graduate workers had gathered to launch a strike pledge campaign, and over 1,000 workers signed the pledge within 24 hours. Delegates from locals across the region, from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania to North Carolina, pledged their solidarity with Local 256.

“We’re confident that we have a membership ready to build towards a broad and militant strike if it comes to that,” said Hall before leading the delegates in a call-and-response chant. She asked, “Are we ready to fight?” before being met with a thunderous, “Damn right!” from the members.

How We Fight, How We Win

In her president’s report, Eastern Region President Janet Gray described some of the steps the region’s leadership has taken to increase rank and file participation, including more regular executive board meetings and the formation of several new committees. She reviewed recent contract struggles in the region, and outlined some of the challenges facing working people, including the health care crisis, the war in Iran, and the anti-worker majority on the National Labor Relations Board.

She said that working people are fed up with politics as usual; many working people voted for Trump to fix their economic problems but the economy just got worse. However, she said, that “doesn’t mean that they will necessarily vote for Democrats.” On a positive note, though, she noted that candidates who are willing to take on the billionaires are winning many Democratic primaries, even when they are being outspent nine- or even 16-to-one by establishment candidates.

Ultimately, she said, the answer to the challenges working people face “is UE,” and the union’s principles of rank-and-file control and aggressive struggle. “By standing together in solidarity, that’s how we fight, that’s how we win.”

Making Employers and Authoritarians Worried

The council meeting also heard from Director of Organization Kimberly Lawson, who gave an update on the union’s organizing work, and General Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker.

Lawson reviewed campaigns with workers in a variety of sectors, including rail crew drivers, grocery workers, and manufacturing workers. She then introduced Sahil Tandale and Emma Kartalia, two leaders from Research and Lab Labor Empowered (RALLE), a UE organizing campaign among 2600 workers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“Hopkins has a nasty history of union busting, fear mongering, and taking advantage of the staff that provide the research that gives them their top-notch reputation,” said Tandale. “Union power is a way we protect ourselves and each other, and make a concrete difference in a time where much of what affects our daily lives feels out of our control. … There is no better time to unionize [than] when things feel precarious and uncertain, because organizing creates certainty and power.”

In his National Officer Report, Dinkelaker spoke about “some of the political nonsense that’s going on” in the U.S. and in the world. “It’s all designed to psychologically wear you down and to make you afraid,” he said, and “fear is what is stopping people from making the first step towards collective action and fighting back.”

In the 1930s, when UE was founded, he said, “people rebelled; they got on the streets.” In response, the government passed laws including the National Labor Relations Act, which provided a legal route for unions to win recognition and force their employer to bargain; the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created a minimum wage and required time-and-a-half over 40 hours in a week; and the legislation which established Social Security. This “New Deal” was passed not out of the goodness of politicians’ hearts, but “in response to the strike waves, people going on the streets and saying we’ve had enough of this.”

Dinkelaker reported that the May Day Strong coalition, of which UE is a part, has produced a new book, This Is How We Win, to help working people think about how to recreate that kind of movement. (See a UE NEWS review of the book here [1].) “It’s time to make the oppressive employers and the authoritarians worried about what is going on,” he concluded.

Keeping Up the Fight

During shop reports, local leaders explained that they had been focused on enforcing their contracts with everyday actions. Many of the delegates explained that it is collective power between the workers that allows them to ensure their workplace runs smoothly and their benefits are actually seen by the members. 

Max Fan, a graduate worker in Local 300, said Cornell University was violating protections in their contract like union shop and just cause, but that the members were fighting back. In response, the workers have focused on building a community coalition in the city of Ithaca. That coalition is pursuing a city ordinance which will give “full just cause for all workers regardless of whether they are covered” by a collective bargaining agreement.

Sophie Nighswander of Local 696 described a successful march on the boss after the company threatened to cut members’ hours. The local members occupied the CEO’s office for three hours until the schedules were returned back to normal. Nighswander reported that nobody lost out on hours or pay.

Local 506 President Ryan Mudger reported that after some collective action last spring, the company has been behaving better. Wabtec outsourced some work to Mexico recently but the members were able to push back against the decision and the work has now been brought back to Erie. 

Local 625 Vice President Jeff Kohler, who works at Hitachi Energy, told delegates about the many grievances the members have filed this year. One of the main issues that has come up involved workers being written up for leaving their position for bathroom breaks and other necessities. The local was able to successfully pressure the company into withdrawing all related write-ups.

An Upcoming Year of Bargaining

Delegates from Local 197, Local 228, Local 255, Local 300, Local 506, and Local 667 all reported that they were preparing for contracts to expire in the next year. Erin Hallenbeck and Emily Sanchez from Local 197 said that their membership has been focused on building steward density while also protecting immigrant rights. Hallenbeck said, “Currently, we have over one hundred stewards representing at least 3,000 unit members. We also have been focused on defending the rights of our international workers in the face of discriminatory rulings by the Department of Homeland Security. In the past month, our international workers committee pushed the university to meet the majority of our demands to better support international workers as they navigate complex and shifting visa requirements.”

Jane Shepard O’Connor from Local 228 reported that her local is about to begin another round of bargaining on two topics: wages and health and welfare. She said that currently, members with children cannot afford to pay for their current healthcare plans. She said that in a few weeks, when the members go into negotiations, they will be focused on increasing their wages and improving their health and welfare.

Local 255 leaders Jamie Montague and Genesis Van Dyke celebrated their recent “Hire Genesis” campaign [2] win against the company. The members pressured management into upholding the internal hiring procedures specified in their contract. Montague said that the members were excited by the win and were already preparing for the upcoming negotiations in eight months.

Fritz Geist and Mike Murphy from Local 667 announced that they had successfully won the reinstatement of two fired workers and won a recent fight with management over workplace changes to their timeclocks. Murphy explained that the members have prepared a thorough safety plan in case ICE tries to enter their place of work. Geist also announced that the local is preparing for contract negotiations next year and is forming a bargaining committee and contract action team, to ensure they either, “have a strong new contract or you’ll see us on the picket line.”

National Election Committee and Committee Reports

In a six-way contest, the region elected Darrion Smith, Local 150, and Andy Vasilik, Local 506, to serve on the National Election Committee that will oversee the elections for national officers next year. They will join Delores Phillips, Local 1118, who was appointed to chair the committee by the General Executive Board earlier this month, and two members from the Western Region, who will be elected when that regional council meets later this month.

Three new regional committees gave reports: a website and social media committee, which is taking over the management of the region’s website from a third party; an elections committee, which reviewed the region’s process for elections; and a subregion map and training committee, which made recommendations about how to most effectively hold trainings for locals. In August, the region held a successful financial training which was done in-person in Erie, PA, but also accessible to locals who couldn’t travel to Erie via Zoom. The region plans to hold a similar hybrid training on unity councils in Pittsburgh in October.

Brian Desanto, Local 642, reported on a meeting held with Justin Wagner [3], a candidate for Congress in northwestern Pennsylvania. “He wants to advance a lot of the things that we do,” Desanto said, noting that Wagner supports legislation to strengthen unions and “will hold union-busting companies responsible.” Wagner is a former member of IBEW and an Iraq veteran who stands against unnecessary military actions like the current war in Iran, wants to ban data centers and Flock cameras, and supports Medicare for All. Following a recommendation from the executive board, the council unanimously voted to endorse Wagner.

Delegates also reviewed and accepted a formal “UE Eastern Region Guide” document which explains and clarifies the region’s structure and procedures, made a $1,000 donation to the Deb Gornall/Saladin Muhammad Scholarship Fund, and endorsed the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare.