Attempts by Republicans to gut the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to give tax cuts to the rich have so far been defeated — in large part due to strong protests in the streets, at congressional offices, and at town hall meetings. These attacks have actually backfired, resulting in increased enthusiasm for a universal single-payer system (also known as Medicare for All).

Even prior to these most recent attacks, dozens of states under right-wing control opted out of the Medicaid expansion provisions of the ACA — refusing to take money from the federal government that would have provided healthcare for 2.5 million of their poorest residents. There are also increasing attempts to completely defund Planned Parenthood, which delivers essential healthcare services to 2.4 million people, especially low income families.

The U.S. employer-based private health insurance system is a disaster. It treats healthcare as a profit making enterprise rather than a fundamental human right. Despite spending more on per-capita annual medical costs ($9,200) than any other country and twice as much of its gross domestic product (17.9 percent) than any other industrialized nation, the U.S. infant mortality rate remains among the highest of all prosperous countries.

Employers decrease their healthcare bill by shifting costs onto workers. Healthcare costs take away other economic gains union members negotiate at the bargaining table. The ACA did not address containing costs for workers, leaving most Americans vulnerable to financial disaster. Economists estimate that over 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are caused by medical expenses and nearly 80 percent of these people are insured.

The public now recognizes the U.S. healthcare system needs a complete overhaul.  Polling now shows that a majority of the public — and a majority of doctors — now support single payer.  This type of system has been used successfully in Canada for decades, where polls show over 85 percent of the public approves.  This has also taken health insurance off the bargaining table.  

Bernie Sanders made Medicare for All a key part of his 2016 presidential run, putting it on the national agenda. Support for H.R. 676, the Medicare-for-All legislation first introduced by Congressman John Conyers in 2003, has now grown to a record 113 congressional cosponsors, along with having the endorsement of 22 national unions and over 600 local and regional unions. Serious efforts to enact state single-payer systems have gained traction in legislatures in recent years, including in Vermont and California, where UE members have been involved.

While we fight to enact the single-payer system this country needs, we must also resist any attempts to roll back beneficial provisions of the ACA, slash Medicaid, or defund Planned Parenthood. We need to mobilize to claim the basic human right to healthcare for all.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls on state legislatures and Congress to enact single-payer health insurance for all;
2. Opposes all efforts to dismantle the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) or defund Planned Parenthood;
3. Encourages the union to participate in coalitions for universal healthcare, including Labor Campaign for Single Payer, Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP), and Healthcare NOW!;
4. Directs locals to fight for the best possible employer-paid healthcare plan, including:
   1. No changes in plan design, provider groups, or exclusions or limitations unless mutually agreed;
   2. Oppose “consumer-driven healthcare” scams such as health savings accounts (HSAs) and other devices that are designed to financially penalize those who need healthcare;
   3. Paperwork for healthcare or insurance should be done during work time;
   4. Consider union-appointed navigator(s) to assist bargaining unit members with health insurance issues during working hours;
   5. Oppose and prevent cost shifting to workers;
   6. No denial or restriction of healthcare or health insurance based on employment, economic, immigration status, or disability (physical or mental);
   7. Refuse attempts by employers to require any member to pay any portion of the ACA excise tax in 2020;
   8. Adopt a healthcare benefit cost structure which is progressive in nature, based on income, doesn’t unfairly burden lower income workers, and ensures that higher salaried employees and executives pay their fair share;
5. Commits UE to continue our defense of Medicare and Medicaid;
6. Opposes any cuts to Veterans’ Administration (VA) health benefits;
7. Urges locals to contact the local VA to learn what medical benefits are available to our veteran members, and to lobby for restoration of fully funded medical benefits for veterans and their families and preventive testing and screening of all veterans potentially exposed to depleted uranium or other toxins;
8. Encourages locals to support the growing campaign for paid sick days in cities and states across the country;
9. Opposes any effort by employers to replace full-time jobs with part time (under 30-hour) jobs in an effort to avoid the mandate under the ACA for employers to provide health insurance for full-time workers. ​

As record numbers of Americans approach retirement, the right to retire comfortably and with dignity is threatened by attacks on pensions, on Social Security, on wages and on working people’s ability to save.

A shrinking minority of American workers remain covered by defined benefit pension plans, the most reliable form of employment-based retirement plan. A concerted, decades-long assault by corporations has largely wiped out defined-benefit plans in the private sector. In the past few years, anti-labor politicians have stirred up “pension envy” against public sector workers who still have defined-benefit plans, and these are now rapidly disappearing.

Defined-benefit pensions have been largely replaced by defined-contribution plans, which are less costly for employers and more risky to workers. Defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k) and 403(b), were created to supplement defined-benefit pension plans and as a tax shelter for savings by high-salaried managers and professionals, but are increasingly used by employers to replace pensions. Defined-contribution plans do not provide reliable post-retirement income. Their effectiveness is limited by the workers’ ability to save, which has been hindered by declining wages and unsteady employment. And as we saw during the Crash of 2008, these accounts can be decimated by a general economic collapse, as well as by bad investment decisions.

Social Security is the main source of retirement income for most Americans. According to a July 13, 2017 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “For three-fifths of elderly beneficiaries, Social Security provides most of their income; for a fifth, it is their sole source of income.”

Currently Social Security is drawing on the $2.6 trillion surplus in its trust fund, and is projected to fully meet its obligations through 2034. After this time, without a tax increase or other changes, about 77 percent of benefits could be paid using incoming funds. This future shortfall could be largely eliminated by removing the “cap” on income subject to the FICA payroll tax, currently $127,200 per year.  

Removing the cap is one simple and fair solution. Over the 80-year history of Social Security, the prospect of shortfalls has appeared before, and each time it’s been addressed through a bipartisan agreement to raise the payroll tax on employers and employees that funds Social Security. Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have supported such increases to keep Social Security solvent. But present-day Republicans will not even consider such increases, and many corporate Democrats and the corporate media subscribe to the Wall Street-Washington consensus that Social Security is an unwarranted “entitlement” that must be cut or privatized. The record of recent Democratic presidents on defending Social Security is not good.  Both President Clinton and President Obama sought bipartisan agreements with Republicans that would have undermined Social Security.

Medicare, the federal single-payer health insurance plan for those over 65, has also been under attack for years. Inadequate health benefits already force elderly and disabled Americans to spend a large part of their incomes on healthcare. Dismantling Social Security and Medicare is House Speaker Paul Ryan’s major goal, and his plan would replace Medicare with inadequate and shrinking “vouchers” to buy private insurance. As a candidate Donald Trump differentiated himself from other Republicans by opposing cuts to Medicare and Social Security, but he has flip-flopped on so many promises that it is impossible to predict what he’ll do in the future.

Retirement experts advise that, to live in modest comfort, the average worker will need retirement income equaling 75 to 90 percent of pre-retirement income. But Social Security benefits currently replace only about 40 percent of the typical worker’s pre-retirement income. A sensible long-term solution to the retirement income crisis is to expand and improve Social Security, increasing the benefits to ensure that all Americans can look forward to a secure retirement.

The drafters and supporters of the Social Security Act of 1935 hoped eventually to significantly increase the benefits, broaden the groups of Americans covered, and add medical care and other benefits. Retirement security, like healthcare, is a fundamental right for all people. We need an expansion of Social Security into a “single-payer” source of adequate retirement income. Our forefathers and foremothers in the labor movement fought for the principle that every person should have the right to retire with dignity and security. Working people need to take up the demand of that earlier generation. Social Security must be expanded to fully live up to its name, and provide true retirement security for all.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls on Congress and the President to address the country's retirement security crisis by expanding Social Security to pay retired workers 75 to 90 percent of their pre-retirement income;
2. Demands that our elected representatives reject all efforts to privatize Social Security, reduce benefits, undermine cost of living adjustments (COLA) or raise the retirement age, and that they return the retirement age for full Social Security to age 65;
3. Calls upon Congress to remove the cap on Social Security taxes so that all contribute the same percentage of earnings to the trust fund, and to tax unearned income (capital gains and investment income) on the same basis as wages and salaries;
4. Demands that our congressional representatives, candidates, the President, and respective state legislators reject all schemes to undermine, destroy or weaken our existing private and public-sector pension systems;
5. Urges locals and regions to actively support struggles to defend the pensions and retirement benefits of both public and private sector workers that are under attack;
6. Calls for the union at all levels to deepen discussions and coalition building with other unions, senior citizen organizations and allies including Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Social Security Works, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and other potential allies to build a broad movement for universal retirement security;
7. Calls upon Congress to require that all public-sector workers are covered by Social Security.

The U.S. faces an increasing income and wealth gap. The proportion of wealth held by the top 0.1 percent is almost as great as in the late 1920s prior to the Great Depression. Since 1980, the average income of the top one hundredth of percent more than quadrupled, while the bottom 90 percent had no change after inflation.  During our current period of “recovery” 95 percent of all growth of has gone to the top 1 percent.

The public good demands a radical readjustment of economic priorities and a redistribution of economic power.

After the economy crashed in 2008, the Bush and Obama administrations bailed out Wall Street bankers who had speculated on homes and mortgages, but never bailed out the homeowners they victimized. Working people’s wealth declined by 28 percent during the Great Recession, largely the result of the destruction of the value of homes. The Obama administration’s stimulus plan was too limited in both scope and duration, did not adequately address the fundamental economic problems of society, and did not result in increased wages for working people. 

Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign raised economic inequality as an important political issue, calling for a vast overhaul of the political and financial systems. In so doing, he excited a new generation of political activists.  In contrast, the Trump administration has given carte blanche to banks and corporations to loot what little wealth the working class has left.

In addition to the increasing gap in income over the last few decades, the racial disparity of wealth has also increased. White families now have 12 times the wealth of African Americans and 10 times the wealth of Latinos. While many people believe that “redlining” – a banking practice which restricted access to credit in working-class, predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods – ended with the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the same policies continue today under different names. Wells Fargo called predatory subprime mortgages “ghetto mortgages.” Loan officers were offered incentives to push subprime mortgages onto African Americans, Latinos, and many other working-class home buyers. African-American wealth dropped 48 percent during the Great Recession. Black Americans lost between $72 and $93 billion in homeowner equity. Latino and African-American families also earn significantly less money than their white counterparts, lagging $13,000 and $20,000, respectively, behind the average white family income. 

Women’s income is only 80 percent of men’s income, with women of color receiving even less. The gender wealth gap is even more significant, with single women’s wealth being only 32 percent of single men’s, and women of color again faring even worse.

Fundamental political changes are needed to reverse this massive inequality of wealth.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Demands Congress:
   1. Enact a federal jobs program to stimulate the economy by raising wages, promoting unionism, providing infrastructural development, and assisting funding-starved state and local governments;
   2. Declare a moratorium on home foreclosures;
   3. Enact legislation that breaks up banks that are “too big to fail;”
   4. Enact comprehensive financial regulations including eliminating offshore tax havens, taxing economic speculation, and reducing corporate political influence;
   5. Reform the tax system by restoring higher tax rates for the wealthy and corporations and passing the Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street transactions;
   6. Enact a guaranteed basic income program;
   7. Address the student loan debt crisis that is impacting the ability of many working people to fully participate in the economy;
2. Calls on regions and locals to:
   1. Participate in local movements that challenge the power of the 1 percent;
   2. Hold educational workshops about wealth, income inequality, and capitalism;
   3. Articulate bargaining goals within a broader economic framework that calls for greater equality;
   4. Encourage elected officials to introduce bills that address wealth inequality, especially to eliminate discriminatory barriers for individuals of color;
   5. Participate in immigrant worker and low-wage worker projects;
   6. Engage in militant resistance to plant closings, layoffs, overwork, two-tier schemes, and other concessions, and to stand in solidarity with other unions engaged in similar struggles;
   7. Encourage elected officials to increase minimum wages in communities with higher costs of living and protest legislation that prevents localities from passing higher minimum wage laws;
   8. Consider the impact of student loans on their their members when drafting contract demands;
3. Encourages members to participate in local economic development initiatives to interject pro-worker perspectives into state and local government, such as Good Jobs First.

The period between UE’s 74th and 75th National Conventions, dominated by the 2016 election cycle and its aftermath, has been the most tumultuous two year period most of us can remember. We experienced the high of having Bernie Sanders as a serious contender for the presidency, a person who advocates much of what UE believes. That was followed by the low of facing two unpleasant options in the November election. Since then, we’ve known the even lower low of Donald Trump’s victory and wins by Republicans pretty much across the board, and the grim consequences of that outcome. However, we’re also seeing the positive impact of what the Sanders campaign brought together and inspired: the growth of a progressive, pro-working class political alternative. 

Working people and the labor movement continue to face daily assault.  Organized labor - barely one-tenth of the workforce today - is the last defensive bastion for working people.  Corporate executives and government leaders know that if they destroy the union movement they wll eliminate one of the last substantial obstacles to their greedy agenda.  

The election of Trump, while very disturbing, should not come as a complete shock. For the past several decades the political establishment in both parties has advanced a set of policies known as neoliberalism that has made life harder for working people. Neoliberalism includes free trade, deregulation, privatization, and dismantling the social safety net, and it has been pursued aggressively by Republican administrations since Reagan, and Democratic administrations starting with Bill Clinton. 2016 brought rebellion in both parties against what Sanders called “establishment politics and establishment economics.” That rebellion took the form, in the Democratic primaries, of the inclusive progressive populism of Sanders, and on the Republican side, the authoritarian, bigoted populism of Trump.

By rigging the process to block Sanders and nominate Hillary Clinton (the ultimate insider and establishment figure), the Democratic Party leadership, aided by the corporate media, sowed the seeds of Trump’s victory. Neither Clinton nor any other candidate from her wing of the Democratic Party could have credibly addressed the concerns that were central to working people of all backgrounds: the loss of economic security, in particular good-paying jobs, at the hands of globalization and runaway corporate power. 

Now working people and the labor movement are assaulted daily by the Trump administration. He has attempted to revoke every pro-labor executive order that Obama signed, has appointed anti-union executives to run the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board, as well as anti-labor federal judges, and has stacked his cabinet with a corporate elite intent on depriving the working class of what little they have left. Trump’s naming of corporate toady Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court virtually guarantees that “right-to-work” will soon be imposed on all public sector bargaining units nationwide. With union membership in the U.S. now down to just 10.7 percent of the workforce, some of our enemies are actively working to liquidate the labor movement entirely.

Trump’s scapegoating of Latino immigrants and Muslims and his open appeals to racism and sexism are deeply troubling. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, made his name politically as an extreme homophobe. Trump’s lifelong disrespect and abuse of women is now well known, and he fully embraced his party’s anti-women agenda.

Early in his primary campaign Trump said he was against cutting Social Security and Medicare, but the 2016 Republican Platform calls for attacking both programs, and House Speaker Paul Ryan is again sharpening his knife to slash Medicare, which has long been one of his goals.  Similarly, Trump promised to protect and extend health insurance to all Americans but then he supported Ryan’s plan to throw 26 million people off of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The situation in many states is not much better. One of the worst effects of the November 2016 election was the Republican “trifecta” in Iowa — the GOP gained control of the state house of representatives, state senate, and governorship and, despite a tremendous fightback by members of UE and other unions and their allies, promptly passed an even worse union-busting law than Wisconsin’s. Additionally, a host of states have passed or are considering other attacks on labor unions, both public sector and private sector.

The good news is that both the American people and the members of UE have responded to these attacks like at no time in recent memory.  From the huge outpouring at the Women’s March and J20, to the rapid response at airports nationwide regarding the Muslim ban, to the mass rejection of Nazism and white supremacy, these mobilizations have demonstrated the true character of Americans and limited the ability of the right-wing to carry out their agenda.  Angry constituents flooding congressional offices, phone lines and town hall meetings nationwide stopped the attempt to destroy the ACA in its tracks.  UE members have not only turned out for these events, they have helped lead the fights at the state level, particularly in Iowa, North Carolina, and West Virginia.

Very importantly, it appears that a pro-worker political structure might finally be forming in this country.  Important parts of the Bernie Sanders campaign apparatus has been transformed into Our Revolution with the intent of both mobilizing around the issues at the core of Sanders’ campaign, as well as providing support for candidates at the state and local level who will fight for those issues.  Within that structure, the unions that supported the Sanders campaign have created Labor for Our Revolution (LfOR). All three UE regions and the GEB have voted to affiliate with LfOR, and we look forward to working through this organization with other unionists committed to building a new pro-working class politics, including backing candidates running on a pro-worker platform.

Until the working class organizes our own political party workers continue to struggle on an unlevel playing field.  We will need to follow the path of independent political action where we support or oppose candidates based upon their actions, not just words or party labels.  Some of these candidates may run as Democrats but we are also now seeing an increasing number of pro-worker candidates running outside the party.  UE locals in multiple states are already preparing to invest time and energy in key races in the 2018 state and congressional elections.

At the same time,  many other forms of mass fightback continue, and deserve continued active involvement of UE locals. These include: Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, the Moral Monday Movement, immigrant justice campaigns, protests in defense of civil rights and against extreme reactionary politics, and others.

We are at a critical juncture in U.S. history where the working class faces both tremendous challenges and tremendous possibilities.  This is not the time to sit back and watch our rights slip through our fingers, because they will unless we fight back. Being active and participating in both the union and the political process is a must, not a choice. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls on the union at all levels to:
   1. Educate and mobilize the membership to defeat the war against the working class;
   2. Support only lawmakers and candidates who take concrete actions to defend working people;
   3. Mobilize the membership and work with allies to elect pro-labor candidates in upcoming elections;
   4. Participate in coalitions, campaigns and events which promote working class issues, including Labor Day and May Day actions, rallies, and marches;
2. Calls on locals and regions to take the rank-and-file message to lawmakers on key issues through petitions, letters, phone calls, emails, lobby visits, visits to state capitols, political action days, town hall meetings, rallies, marches, civil disobedience, and other means;
3. Urges all locals to undertake workplace campaigns to register members and their families to vote;
4. Encourages UE regions, locals, and members to become involved in Our Revolution, and Labor for Our Revolution, Black Lives Matter, Fight for $15, the Moral Monday, and other working-class movements for defense and justice;
5. Calls on the labor movement and our allies to begin the formation of a viable independent working-class party.

Organizing is part of the UE’s DNA. It is how UE brings workers together to build power. It is how we resist and fight back. We organize to win fairness and improved conditions in our workplaces, to get action from our government on issues which are important to working people, and to get our voices heard over media outlets owned and operated by our corporate adversaries.

During this 75th UE national convention, we are pleased to report progress on organizing — even though we are facing substantial employer resistance which is newly emboldened by the Trump administration and Republican control of both houses of Congress. We continue to make tangible progress organizing workers employed by federal government subcontractors, co-op workers, rail crew drivers, and public employees who have been denied collective bargaining rights.

In organizing new members, we continue to face an onslaught of anti-union legislation orchestrated by corporations to weaken workers’ rights. Despite large protests from organized labor and community allies since the 74th convention, three states — West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri — have passed “right-to-work’’ legislation. Reactionary forces in the South and elsewhere are combining attacks on civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, and local minimum wage ordinances. 

In Iowa, Republicans won control of both houses of the state legislature and immediately moved to attack public employee bargaining. Iowa’s union busting legislation now makes it illegal to bargain over healthcare, greatly constricts bargaining on most other subjects, eliminates union dues check-off, and mandates union recertification elections at the end of each contract under which unions must win a majority vote of those employed in each bargaining unit, not just a majority of those voting, to retain the right to represent its members.

The Trump administration’s attack on immigrants makes it more difficult to organize, but also creates new opportunities to work with immigrant workers and organizations who are seeking ways to fight back and gain some measure of security in their workplaces. 

The challenges we face make it even more important that UE continues to develop new methods and models of organizing. Our innovative organizing work and use of militant tactics should continue. Plant occupations, strategic organizing strikes, and the establishment of pre-majority unions and civil disobedience should be selectively used where warranted by conditions in the workplaces.

We will need more trailblazing, along with more new ideas and more new approaches, if we are to turn the tide for working people on the organizing front. In searching for these new approaches and tactics, our union needs the ongoing involvement of UE young activists and rank-and-file volunteers who have assisted in recent organizing struggles. UE should also continue to involve allies in labor and community groups who are willing to join us in on our organizing work.

Workers’ rights to organize and take collective action are human rights. They are fundamental to all democratic societies and therefore we demand that the rights to organize and bargain with employers be restored for all workers.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION ADOPTS THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZING PLAN TO BUILD OUR UNION:

1. UE will organize across the industrial, service and public sectors of our nation’s economy, uniting all workers from a wide range of occupations in the common pursuit of improving the conditions for the working class through the practice of democratic, rank-and-file unionism;
2. UE will build its ranks primarily in existing UE base areas, giving top priority to areas where the existence of viable organizing targets, the availability of staff, the active support of member volunteers and community allies, and other key strategic factors enhance our prospects for success;
3. UE will develop cross-border organizing alliances with unions in other countries and in particular UE will utilize the new UE-Unifor North American Solidarity Project to explore and initiate cross-border organizing work among Canadian and U.S. transnationals, at companies like GE and Bombardier, as well as in other specific sectors and employers; 
4. UE will organize workers at our sister shops, including at corporations such as GE, FCi, PAE and Hallcon/Renzenberger, where we represent workers at multiple sites, and we will put new emphasis on efforts to organize federal contract workers covered by the Service Contract Act;
5. UE will build rank-and-file unions among state, county and municipal employees in states where we currently have public workers under contract, as well as in states where our public employee members are denied the right to collective bargaining, and we will fight to win full bargaining rights for public workers in states where those rights are abridged;
6. UE will defend and support our public-sector locals in states like Iowa as they build organizing campaigns to win recertification elections and maintain representational rights;
7. UE will test new models and methods of organizing in all sectors, including alternative strategies for gaining recognition of the union, as well as strategies for building pre-majority unions in workplaces where formal recognition cannot be achieved in the short term; we will make use of new technologies for data management and communications to strengthen our organizing; we will look for opportunities for joint organizing with other unions and workers’ centers; and we will revive past organizing methods, including recognition strikes and other militant organizing tactics, where appropriate;
8. UE will invite independent unions to join us as the national home of independent, member-run unionism, and we will offer refuge to workers in other unions who are seeking to escape corrupt, undemocratic conditions;
9. UE will build its ranks through internal organizing wherever open-shop conditions exist and will develop new plans and materials to assist locals in states that have adopted “right-to-work” laws or other measures to undermine union strength and security; 
10. UE will involve its rank-and-file members in organizing whenever possible and will take the following steps to encourage more members to help organize the unorganized: 
    1. We will provide training and support for members who wish to become involved in organizing and will provide locals with materials suitable for reaching out to nonunion workers in their communities to find the next organizing campaign;
    2. We will continue joint sponsorship with UE regions and locals of organizing blitzes and other special programs for which lost time and other costs are shared by the national and the region or local to make greater member participation possible;
    3. We will encourage locals to negotiate for better union leave provisions to enable more members to get time off the job to assist in building the union;
    4. We will respect cultural and language differences in our organizing work, and we will continue to reach into our ranks to find more volunteer organizers from diverse backgrounds;
11. UE will continue its successful Young Activist Program to find and develop activists and leaders for the future; we will prioritize young activist involvement in organizing, and we will ask our young activists to occupy the frontline in fighting for workers’ rights.

Racism is one of the greatest evils in our nation, and has always been a roadblock to building a strong labor movement. Racism is a specific form of discrimination based upon the false belief that some groups of people are inherently and biologically superior to others. Racism inside the U.S. developed for the purposes of dividing the working class and justifying the brutal system of coerced labor called slavery. 

The persistence of institutional racism affects all peoples of color, and is evident in the economic and social disadvantages experienced by African Americans in particular. African-American unemployment remains disproportionately high. On average, African Americans are twice as likely to die from disease, accident, and homicide as whites. African Americans are three times more likely to become prisoners once arrested, and serve longer terms. Racism blames the victims of these conditions, rather than blaming the system that creates these injustices.

Donald Trump, who has shafted working people throughout his business career and has stacked his cabinet almost entirely with white, male, anti-worker Wall Street cronies, owes his election in part to pervasive racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Trump’s scapegoating of Latino immigrants and Muslims and open appeals to racism have made our nation a more violent and dangerous place for all working people, especially for Muslims, immigrants, and people of color. He has issued two executive orders banning Muslims from seven countries from entering the country, even those with a green card, and refusing entry of refugees from Muslim-majority countries. He has also given the green light for aggressive deportation of Latino and other immigrants.

Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed in a bar in Kansas in February 2017. Bowie State University student and recently commissioned U.S. Army Second Lieutenant Richard Collins III, an African-American man, was stabbed to death in Maryland by a white supremacist in May 2017. Also in May, two white men, Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, were killed by a white supremacist on a train in Portland, Oregon after stepping forward to defend two girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab, from the supremacist’s racist rant.

The Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and various other organized white supremacist groups operating under the guise of the “alt-right” embraced Trump as their candidate and have been emboldened by his victory. In August 2017, hundreds of these white supremacists descended on Charlottesville for a violent protest which claimed the life of a young woman, Heather Heyer, and injured dozens more. The white supremacists were in Charlottesville to protest the city’s decision to remove a statue of a Confederate leader — a traitor — who believed African-American people should be enslaved, and which was erected in 1924, an era in which the symbolism of the Confederacy was used to promote Jim Crow segregation and Klan violence against African Americans, Jews, Catholics, trade unionists and others.

People of color, especially African Americans, are more likely to be stopped by police, searched, arrested, and become the victims of police and vigilante violence. The murder of countless people of color by police is outrageous. This is not merely the result of individual racist police officers but of a widespread, systematic disrespect for the lives of people of color.

This disrespect is being further stoked by Trump and his administration. In a speech to police on Long Island in July 2017, Trump openly encouraged law enforcement to be violent with those they arrest, repeatedly referring to people suspected of crimes as “animals.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions has halted Justice Department pursuit of court orders to address racist abuses by local police departments.

In response to police violence against African Americans in recent years, Black Lives Matter has become a mass movement. Since the election of Trump, hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to oppose Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” his stepped-up war against immigrants, and the racist far-right. UE stands with all of those who have marched and bravely stood up to hatred, racism, and violence.

Working-class unity can never be taken for granted. Winning depends upon our success in the fight against racism. UE and the wider labor movement is not immune from racism. We must consciously work to overcome racism in our diverse working class. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:  

1. Reaffirms UE’s policies of aggressive struggle against racism and in support of equal rights;
2. Calls on locals to defend our members aggressively against on-the-job discrimination;
3. Calls on locals to develop pressure campaigns against any employers that discriminate against people of color in their hiring practices;
4. Declares its support of workers and their communities’ fight against divisive racist terror;
5. Calls on the leadership of our union to take affirmative action in the development and election of more leaders of color and the hiring of staff of color;
6. Opposes the assault on affirmative action;
7. Calls for continued workshops on racism and discrimination at all levels of our union;
8. Calls for elimination of racial profiling, police brutality, and “stop-and-frisk,” and a repeal of “stand-your-ground” laws;
9. Urges the union at all levels to support and work with local Black Lives Matter groups and other organizations fighting racism and discrimination;
10. Condemns all attacks on the basis of ethnicity and religion, particularly those on Arab-Americans, Muslims and Latinos;
11. Calls on the union at all levels to make our members and communities aware of the increase of hate groups in our country, to provide information to help them to recognize and combat all forms of hate, and to expose racism in the media;
12. Urges regions and locals to set up unity councils on the model pioneered by Local 506;
13. Demands strict enforcement and just punishment for violation of existing anti-discrimination laws;
14. Urges the union movement to expose and condemn racially biased and selective reporting which blames people of color for the poverty they are suffering as a result of government and corporate policies;
15. Urges locals to study the Freedom Manifesto and mobilize their African-American members to attend the National Assembly for Black Liberation. 

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The election of Donald Trump and the takeover of many state governments by right-wing Republicans pose a grave threat to the gains won by the women’s rights movement and in the UE since the 1940s. In the current political climate women need unions now more than ever as the best way to ensure greater earnings, benefits, and protections from discrimination in the workplace.  Until women have full and equal rights, all workers are held back.  

Four out of ten households in the U.S. with children now have a woman as the sole or primary wage earner — the highest level in U.S. history.  However, there remains a huge income gap between women and men.  Nationally, women earn only 80 cents for every dollar men earn.  While this gap is slowly closing, at current rates the gender pay gap will not be erased until some time in the mid 22nd century.  Black women only make 65 percent of what white men bring home, and Latinas only make 58 percent.  

The U.S. is ranked 100th in the world in women’s representation in national legislatures; only 19 percent of the members of our Congress are women.  In Congress, men continue to push bills that eliminate healthcare opportunities for many women, including the defunding of Planned Parenthood, stripping maternity care from mandated health insurance coverage, and gutting Medicaid, which would fall disproportionately on low-income single mothers.  

UE members need to apply ever greater pressure on politicians and bosses to advance and maintain women’s rights. This war against women’s rights needs to stop.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls on the union at all levels to:
   1. Fight legislation that negatively impacts women's and families’ rights;
   2. Bargain for gender equality and to fight women’s oppression in the workplace;
   3. Demand pay equity, recognize the intersection of race and gender, and commit to address pay inequalities at all levels;
   4. Encourage women to assume positions of leadership within their locals, regions, and the national union;
   5. Educate members, all officers, and staff on sexual harassment and develop programs to combat harassment, intimidation and sexist attitudes wherever found;
   6. Develop a harassment policy to be presented at regional councils and national conventions, and develop an ombudsperson training and program to have point people available at regional councils and national conventions; 
   7. Support strengthening workers’ compensation laws in all states with improved provisions on injuries sustained from physical attacks in the workplace;
   8. Press for employer-paid training programs which allow women to upgrade their skills, and to fight for the right of women to enter jobs that have been traditionally reserved for men;  
   9. Renew the fight for employer-funded childcare;
   10. Collect and share with members information about women’s issues;
   11. Support the candidacy of pro-labor women to public office, as well as their placement on committees dealing with legislation on women's issues;
   12. Calls for the formation of a women’s caucus within UE;
   13. Provide quality childcare for meetings and conferences to allow parents and guardians to participate in the activities of the union;
   14. Encourages UE members to engage with organizations fighting for women’s rights;
2. Supports the right of all those seeking gynecological reproductive healthcare, regardless of economic status, to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, to have access to free, confidential, and effective birth control and family planning services, to be protected against forced sterilization, and not discriminated against because of reproductive health issues; 
3. Calls upon Congress to:
   1. Improve and expand the Family Medical Leave Act and ensure all workers receive full benefits;  
   2. Enact a federal paid maternity leave program and a high-quality federal day care program;
   3. Create a welfare system which does not penalize women for staying home to take care of children and which provides a living wage and quality childcare;
4. Directs the General Executive Board (GEB) to investigate and propose feasible programs to subsidize and/or provide union childcare, when available, for UE national meetings to enable members with children to attend.

K-12 public education, one of the most fundamental cornerstones of a democratic society, is under direct attack. Privatization forces are seeking to profit from public education by setting up charter schools that generate profits. At the same time, state legislators are starving public education of adequate funding, driving down the quality of schooling and creating a false perception that public schools provide subpar education.

For-profit testing companies have pushed governments to impose mandatory testing that provides them with significant revenue. High stakes testing pressures teachers and administrators to “teach to the test” or risk financial ruin and puts emotional and psychological pressure on students who are forced to endure tests rather than receiving a comprehensive education. Standardized testing does not measure educational quality. 

Communities of color who have long been underserved by the public education system have become pawns in the privatization debate. An outcome of charters has been to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement and impose racially and economically-based segregation. Data consistently shows that neighborhood schools outperform charter schools. 

The Trump Administration’s proposed changes to Title I funding would redistribute funds from poor schools to schools of choice, charters and private. The plan also drastically reduces the funding from Title II which is designed for teacher development and class size reduction. The Republican plan to cut Medicaid risks the availability of screenings and therapies currently provided to low-income and special education students.

Higher education is also under a privatization attack. Neoliberal reformers are conducting sweeping corporate audits of universities and imposing profit-based models onto higher education. Professors are under tremendous pressure to bring funding into the university, rather than focusing on doing good academic work that will benefit the greater society. The labor protections that professors fought hard to achieve through the tenure system are under threat of being dismantled.

Graduate and undergraduate education is also under threat. State legislators are starving public universities of funding which is pushing the cost of higher education onto the backs of individual students and their families, while university costs have continued to rise due to top-heavy, corporate-style administration. 44.2 million Americans are crippled by student loan debt. Overall student debt is now over $1.3 trillion. Direct Subsidized Loan rates are increasing from 3.76 percent in 2016-17 to 4.45 percent in 2017-18. Inflation adjusted costs of a 4-year undergraduate education have increased 151 percent for a public school education since 1978. For recent college graduates, the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent (as compared to 4.3 percent in 2000) and underemployment is close to 12 percent. It’s no surprise that 11.2 percent of student loans are delinquent or in default. Graduate student loan debt makes up 40 percent of the $1 trillion total debt, with the average of Masters in Education, Science, and Arts being over $50,000 while more and more PhDs are increasingly finding themselves pushed into low wage and contingent adjunct positions. The Trump administration is now proposing an end to subsidizing the interest on student loans, which would raise the cost of college and most negatively affect low-income students.

Public education is facing a crisis perpetuated by testing entities and charter schools that seek to profit off our children's futures. Public schools should be adequately funded with full-time unionized and tenure-protected educators.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Demands Congress: 
   1. Put a moratorium on all student loan defaults, introduce default forgiveness and implement measures so that loans can be repaid at no more than 10 percent of annual income;
   2. Keep funding for Title II intended for professional development, mentoring programs, and class size reduction;
   3. Reduce student loan interest rates to the same rate available for banking entities and mandate that interest will not be accrued until after graduation;  
   4. Amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in order to ensure access to information that enables all graduate students to organize;
2. Demands the U.S. Department of Education: 
   1. Immediately allow borrowers who attended institutions that misled students or committed fraud to seek loan forgiveness; 
   2. Eliminate all high stakes testing;     
   3. Bar the use of taxpayer funded voucher programs that siphon public funds from public schools and funnel them to private and charter schools; 
   4. Expand the number of lower-income occupations that are eligible for student loan forgiveness;
3. Encourages regions and locals to actively lobby state legislatures to:
   1. Fully fund public education;
   2. Preserve tenure systems, and ensure that adjunct receive compensation proportional to full-time faculty;
   3. Disconnect educational funding from property taxation to address economic and racial segregation;      
4. Supports all campaigns that advocate universal access to free higher education.

Immigrants helped build this country and have played a central role in our union since its inception. Employers and the politicians that represent them seek to exploit divisions between immigrant and native-born workers, driving down wages and stripping away hard-won worker’s rights.

The Supreme Court’s Hoffman Plastic Compounds ruling in March 2002 decreed that immigrant workers fired for organizing a union are not entitled to back pay or reinstatement. The court effectively decided that immigrant workers “have no rights that bosses need respect.” Employers now routinely use the Hoffman ruling to fire union activists.

Many UE locals face attempts by employers to use Social Security Administration “no-match” letters, I-9 audits and the E-Verify program to terrorize immigrant workers and attack the union. These programs are based on the Social Security Administration database, which by the agency’s own admission contains over 17 million errors.

U.S. immigration enforcement is discriminatory and racist. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents use heavy-handed raids to terrorize communities and workplaces. A study by the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law showed that in 86 percent of ICE cases in Long Island agents illegally entered people’s homes, used excessive force, threatened unarmed people with weapons and arrested many legal residents and U.S. citizens. President Trump’s plan to hire thousands of new ICE agents and increase their enforcement ability will only increase these abuses and lead to greater terror in our nation’s immigrant communities.

Families are ripped apart in the process. Children who are U.S. citizens remain in the country while parents are jailed and then deported. Since the inception of the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, immigrant communities have been driven further into the shadows. Our immigration detention system locks up hundreds of thousands of immigrants unnecessarily every year, exposing detainees to brutal and inhumane conditions of confinement at massive costs to American taxpayers.

We do not believe that comprehensive immigration reform will happen under the Trump administration. Trump ran on a platform of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hatred, and has begun to implement some of his promises. Plans are underway to construct a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, a waste of billions of dollars that will have no impact on undocumented immigration. His initial attempted ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries is reprehensible and would have affected hundreds of thousands of American residents. Trump’s actions and rhetoric have emboldened the most racist elements on the American right, and have increased fears of violence against immigrants. All of this needs to be resisted by the members of our union.

Denying immigrant workers decent wages and conditions undermines the wages and conditions of all. All workers, regardless of immigration status, must have the right to form unions, to file complaints against unfair treatment without fear of reprisal, to receive unemployment, disability and workers’ compensation benefits, and to have access for themselves and their families to affordable housing, healthcare, education, and transportation. UE must work with other unions, faith and community groups to fight collectively for legalization and against anti-immigrant laws and sentiment.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Demands the federal government impose an immediate moratorium on all ICE raids, arrests, deportations, harassment, seizures, I-9 audits, Secure Communities, the 287(g) and E-Verify programs, and other abuses of undocumented workers;
2. Calls for an end to all political attacks against the sanctuary city movement, and encourages all locals to actively support all efforts in their community to defend immigrants from abuse and harassment;
3. Demands the federal government end their VOICE program, which serves the sole purpose of stirring up anti-immigrant racism, repeal the anti-immigrant so-called “Kate’s Law,” and end all travel bans;
4. Calls for an immediate end to all construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico;
5. Demands that Congress enact immigration reform legislation that:
   1. Includes a legalization program, allowing all immigrants currently living in the U.S. to remain here permanently and without penalty;
   2. Protects worker rights for both current and future immigrants, including overturning the Hoffman Plastics decision;
   3. Prioritizes family unification;
   4. Protects our civil liberties;
   5. Liberalizes political asylum procedures;
   6. Rejects guest-worker programs;
   7. Repeals the REAL ID Act (a federal law expanding requirements for state driver’s licenses and mandating stricter standards for asylum applicants);
   8. Ensures proper access to decent education for all young people in our country;
6. Encourages locals to work with and financially support local immigrant rights coalitions which assist undocumented workers and fight to fix our broken immigration system;
7. Calls on locals with immigrant members to educate employers on the rights of immigrant workers and the employer’s right to resist ICE harassment and intimidation and the perils of ICE’s voluntary enforcement initiatives;
8. Denounces anti-immigrant laws, initiatives, and vigilante hate groups;
9. Urges locals to educate themselves about federal laws related to immigrants and refugees, and to assist their immigrant members in attaining documented status and citizenship if they so desire;
10. Demands that state motor vehicle agencies change policies and programs that make it impossible for immigrants to legally own and operate vehicles;
11. Urges locals to negotiate contract language that:
    1. Protects jobs and contract rights regardless of immigration status;
    2. Allows undocumented workers to update immigration status without loss of rights;
    3. Prevents the employer from taking adverse action in the event of the receipt of a Social Security “no-match” letter;
    4. Prevents the employer from participating in voluntary ICE enforcement programs;
    5. Obligates the employer to refuse entry to ICE agents who do not possess a valid warrant and to notify the union if contacted by ICE;
    6. Requires the employer to supply an independent translator and allow union representation when communicating on important matters with workers not fluent in English;
    7. Makes available copies of the contract in each language spoken by employees;
12. Calls upon the union at all levels to continue to develop an analysis of the real causes of worker migration to the U.S. and elsewhere, and to provide education and materials for members and the community.

The Bill of Rights has never been applied in the workplace, where employers are empowered to maintain near-absolute control. With our constitutional rights shredded by our employers, our modern day rights to organize into unions are also ignored by bosses. Our freedom to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures ends at the gate or front door. Our freedoms of speech and assembly are virtually nonexistent while at work — unless you have a union. 

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in 1935, was the closest that labor would get to a “bill of rights.” This was immediately attacked by the employers through their legislatures and courts. The NLRA provided labor the right to organize, to bargain, and to strike without interference from the employer. For the first time employers were required to recognize and bargain with a union of the workers choice. 

In response to labor’s growing strength, a reactionary Congress amended the NLRA with the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. This restricted the ability of organized labor to organize and deal effectively with the problems that labor faced. The law took away the right of labor to challenge the employer with the use of secondary boycott, made closed shops illegal, allowed states to pass "right-to-work” laws as was recently done in Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky, allowed the President to interfere in strikes, and gave employers more tools to stop workers from organizing. 

No significant progress has been made on the labor rights front in decades, and today employers brazenly violate the law and victimize working people who dare to challenge their complete control by attempting to unionize. In the public sector, many workers are prohibited from bargaining collectively and those who can bargain often lack the right to strike. 

The facts are shocking. Almost 10 percent of workers who engage in organizing are fired by their employers, amounting to tens of thousands every year. Of those union drives that manage to navigate the minefield of employer lawbreaking, only half are won by working people. And of those lucky enough to win, only half will obtain a first union contract. The ranks of those reaching this nearly unattainable pinnacle are then cut in half once again, as only half of those unions winning first union contracts ever win second contracts. The percentage of unionized workers in the U.S. declined from 24 percent in 1979 to 10.7 percent in 2016 (less than seven percent in manufacturing). These levels are the lowest since before the great organizing drives of the 1930s. In other industrial countries, union density is many times higher.  

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charged with protecting our rights, too often merely frustrates our ability to organize, bargain and strike. We now are just beginning to see the impact of the anti-labor appointments of the Trump administration.

Despite the magnitude of the labor rights crisis here in the U.S., the labor movement has been slow to address the problem. For many decades the AFL-CIO ignored this human rights debacle here at home and instead joined with our government all over the globe to promote the myth that American workers enjoyed perfect democracy. 

Labor is also under a coordinated attack in nearly every state that is controlled by the Republican Party. We have witnessed this in Wisconsin and Iowa where the rights of public employees to organize and bargain have been largely throttled. The corporate agenda is to destroy labor rights in both the private and public sector. They wish to turn back the clock to when the robber barons ruled and there was no protection for labor.

Now is the time for a law that protects workers and grants all rights and freedoms under the Constitution. In order to really safeguard workers, the right to associate — the right of working people to have the ability to say under what conditions they will or will not labor — must be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Workers whose rights were fully protected under the Constitution would be free to assemble, speak and associate anywhere and at all times, to organize without employer intervention, to bargain collectively, to strike, to boycott, or to refuse to handle goods. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Calls on Congress to: 
   1. Amend the constitution to include worker rights; and in the meantime to pass legislation giving workers the same constitutional rights to organize without restriction or limitation in the workplace that we enjoy outside the workplace, including substantial penalties for employers who violate these rights; 
   2. Pass legislation that would put in place real penalties for employers that violate the rights of workers;
   3. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act.
2. Urges UE locals to:
   1. Challenge state laws that restrict the rights of workers in the public and private sectors to organize and bargain;
   2. Share information with other unions about the labor rights emergency and the need for real labor law reform; 
3. Calls on our membership to engage in all forms of aggressive struggle including, where appropriate, civil disobedience in order to obtain workplace justice; 
4. Support the movements in all states that call for the expansion of the rights of labor and that would end all restriction on the ability of labor to function freely.

Concerted action in the workplace is an essential feature of rank-and-file unionism. We do not see the union as an insurance agency to which members pay a fee in exchange for the services of high paid business union staff who say they'll “take care of it for you” through legalism, lobbying, and backroom deals. A union is a workers’ organization, built by members who improve their conditions through collective action.

In contract negotiations, this means involvement of the members in developing their demands, and tactics that show support for the bargaining committee and keep pressure on management. Too many union leaders believe the best way to negotiate a contract is to keep their members in the dark and keep them quiet. Our approach is to give the members as much information as possible to engage in action to support their proposals, and develop strategies and tactics to maximize membership participation.

The same is true in dealing with violations of workers’ rights that occur between contract negotiations. Stewards often find the chance of resolving a grievance is greater when members collectively express their discontent to management. Many locals have effectively used such tactics as “mass grievances” signed by every worker in the shop or department, or even delivered to the boss by a mass delegation. Locals find creative ways, while a grievance is going through the formal steps of the grievance procedure, to remind management of rank-and-file support for the union's position. Our reluctance to take our grievances to arbitration grows from our unwillingness to place our fate in the hands of a third party. In some contracts – notably the GE national agreement – our members retain the legal right to strike over a grievance after receiving the company's final answer. The existence of this right, even if infrequently exercised, adds a strong incentive for management to settle.

The UE approach to political action – collective action for political change, rather than attempts to buy influence with politicians through campaign contributions or via paid lobbyists – is closely related to our concept of workplace struggle. For the growing number of our members in the public sector, the two areas of struggle are inseparable. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Directs the union at all levels to educate our members about the necessity, effectiveness, and most useful strategies of workplace struggle, including the purchase and use of books such as the Troublemaker’s Handbook, published by Labor Notes; 
2. Calls on locals to ensure that proper democratic practices are in place to involve members in workplace struggle, including, when appropriate, stewards’ meetings and trainings;
3. Urges greater publicity for gains achieved by our members through workplace struggle in the UE Steward, UE News, local union newsletters, and other union communications;
4. Commits to transparency in all forms of negotiations with the employer.

UE has warned for years that when the government is given powers of domestic surveillance and “counterintelligence,” it can and will use them against ordinary, innocent Americans, particularly those who speak out against government policies, and especially those who represent a credible power base, such as the labor movement. We saw this during the McCarthy period in the 1940s and ‘50s when the combined forces of the federal government, big business, and their business union co-conspirators nearly destroyed the UE and progressive trade unionism.

These warnings are more relevant than ever with the election of Donald Trump. The Trump administration represents a severe threat to civil liberties. Trump has demonstrated a hostility to dissent, praised authoritarian law enforcement and intelligence practices, and scapegoated Muslims and immigrants. Trump wasted no time in issuing a Muslim ban via executive order but was thwarted by massive outpourings of solidarity, including protests at airports and actions by unionized taxi drivers.

Trump’s administration has coincided with a dramatic crackdown on the right to protest. Across the country, state legislators are proposing and even passing laws targeting the right to protest. During Trump’s inauguration, DC police engaged in a mass arrest of hundreds of people, including not only protesters, but also journalists and legal observers. Using guilt-by-association tactics, prosecutors charged 214 protesters with felonies carrying penalties of up to a decade of prison. Prosecutors do not allege that each of these protesters individually engaged in unlawful property destruction, but that by merely being present at the demonstration and participating in chants, such as, “Whose Streets? Our Streets?” they are collectively guilty. One individual has been charged in relation to the inauguration protests who was not even present at the protest, but helped facilitate planning meetings. 

Bosses try to instill fear in workers during union organizing campaigns — that is the kind of fear that the government has tried to spread across society as a whole. People may avoid anti-globalization rallies if they know they are under government surveillance. A union member will think twice about voicing their outrage on a picket line if they know they could face trumped-up terrorism charges or be held liable for the actions of others. Fewer people attend organizing meetings if they suspect that someone in the room could be a police agent.

Even prior to Trump’s election, civil liberties in the U.S. had long been under attack. Documents made public by Edward Snowden revealed that the FBI and NSA are sweeping up the telephone, email, and internet use data of virtually every person in the U.S. Agencies like the FBI, NSA, and CIA, along with politicians in Washington, appear more concerned with persecuting whistleblowers than rectifying the civil liberties violations, human rights deprivations, and war crimes that they expose. 

The FBI continues its role as the political police. Released documents have uncovered that the FBI spied on groups it acknowledged were peaceful, in some cases for decades often under the guise of “counterterrorism.” Those spied on or visited by the FBI include the Occupy movement, School of the Americas Watch, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock Water Protectors, and other environmental protesters. Unsurprisingly, the FBI’s main targets continue to be those who struggle for peace, workers’ rights, economic justice, racial justice, and other progressive causes disfavored by big business. 

The most basic civil liberty is the right to live without fear of being harassed, beaten, or killed. African Americans and other people of color are disproportionately targeted by police and are much more likely than white people to be victims of police harassment and violence. The abundant and growing audiovisual record of law enforcement officers using excessive force against people of color when stopped for traffic or other minor civil infractions documents that race remains a major factor in depriving people of their civil liberties. Movements against police brutality, mass incarceration, and racism, such as Black Lives Matter, have been able to win some gains in recent years. Yet, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is intent on rolling back even the mildest of reforms. 

A growing number of Americans also question the use of the death penalty. When evidence such as DNA testing reveals death row prisoners are innocent, it confirms our justice system is fundamentally flawed. The question of capital punishment is historically of great concern to union members. On numerous occasions our government has framed and executed labor leaders, including the Haymarket martyrs, Industrial Workers of the World leader Joe Hill, immigrant labor activists Sacco and Vanzetti, and the coal miners known as the Molly Maguires. Tom Mooney, who spoke to an early UE convention, and the legendary Big Bill Haywood, were spared the death penalty only after massive campaigns to save them.

The chilling effect of denials of our democratic freedoms curtails political debate within the U.S., limits the ability of all citizens to make democratic choices for the future of our country, and thereby undermines our livelihoods and living standards. It is clear that the fight to protect and regain civil liberties must continue regardless of which party controls the White House.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Opposes any change in the law that would further undermine our right to defend the interests of working people, specifically including changes designed to make picket-line activity subject to federal prosecution;
2. Urges all locals to support organizations such as Defending Rights & Dissent, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the Southern Poverty Law Center;
3. Demands that Congress investigate revelations of political spying and disruption by the FBI and other federal agencies and pass legislation definitively outlawing these practices;
4. Opposes any laws designed to limit the right to protest;
5. Calls for the end of mass arrests and charges against protesters not supported by suspicion of actual individual wrongdoing, and for the charges against the Trump inauguration defendants to be dropped;
6. Calls for legislation to prohibit random or blanket drug testing in the workplace as well as legislation to ban telephone and internet monitoring of employees and to further restrict the use of lie detectors and other surveillance technologies in employment;
7. Opposes preventive detention and Justice Department policies that allow for closed hearings, secret evidence, refusal to name those detained, elimination of attorney-client privilege, and long detentions without bond without any specific articulated reason;
8. Demands that Congress reform the process for placing groups on terrorist lists to ensure that they have sufficient notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond to the charges;
9. Supports legislation to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, supports strong whistleblower protection legislation, and opposes efforts to intimidate or bar the press and other news media from reporting on government activities;
10. Supports repeal of McCarthy-era “speech crime” laws, including the Smith Act and the Subversive Activities Control Act, and opposes exclusion of foreigners based on political beliefs or memberships;
11. Supports the abolition of the death penalty and an end to mass incarceration;
12. Urges locals and regions to support and stand in solidarity with protestors arrested for political protests including J20, including supporting providing legal support to protesters facing charges at the federal and state level.

The loss of a fellow worker on the job reminds us that ensuring a safe and healthy workplace is a constant struggle. Twelve workers per day are killed on the job in the U.S. and countless others are injured. 

It is the union's obligation to encourage and, if necessary, force the boss to correct dangerous situations. Safety must be engineered into all machinery, equipment, and processes. Our elected lawmakers must also acknowledge their role. 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) remains broken and underfunded. OSHA inspections remain abysmally infrequent. When violations are discovered, the agency's fines are far too low and are usually lowered further during the appeals process. 

Speedup and new work technologies cause millions of repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. It is estimated that 62 percent of all workplace injuries result from repetitive motion stress. The federal government needs to re-establish ergonomics standards to deal with the epidemic of repetitive stress injuries crippling American workers. 

Many of the jobs our members perform are dangerous. We are exposed to toxic substances. Our jobs can turn deadly in an instant. Our obligation is to look after the health and well-being of our fellow workers and ourselves through the collective action of our union. But we also must force legislators to adequately protect working people through a strengthening of our nation's health and safety laws. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Calls on locals to:
   1. Make health and safety issues a top priority, both during and outside of contract negotiations; 
   2. Set up strong independent health and safety committees in each workplace; 
   3. Exercise their right to accompany OSHA inspectors on any workplace visits;
   4. Contact the national union before becoming involved with Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP); 
   5. Educate our members to engage in aggressive workplace struggle to address hazards in the workplace, as well as regarding the conditions under which unsafe work can be refused; 
   6. Support local labor-initiated Committees on Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) groups; 
2. Demand lawmakers significantly expand OSHA funding to increase the number of inspectors, along with authorizing OSHA to carry out unannounced inspections, and to have no restrictions on the scope of any inspections at any time, under any circumstances; 
3. Demands that bosses be prosecuted for conditions that lead to severe injury or death on the job and that OSHA sharply increase fines on employers, triple them for repeat violators, and bar the worst violators from government contracts; 
4. Opposes any attempts to further restrict the rights of workers to sue their employers over job related injuries, unsafe conditions, and poisons; 
5. Demands that OSHA apply to all workplaces which do not have equal or better protections under other statutes, including public-sector workers. 

Public employees provide vital services such as healthcare, sanitation, and education. In many states, including West Virginia, public employees have no legal framework for collective bargaining. North Carolina and Virginia explicitly ban collective bargaining for public employees. Starting with Wisconsin in 2011, and continuing with Iowa in 2017, public employee bargaining rights have been gutted. The right of public employees to collectively bargain remains endangered in numerous other states. 

The right to collectively bargain is essential for workers to improve their wages and working conditions. Collective bargaining rights also enable public workers to fight for better services for the communities they serve. Denial of collective bargaining in the southern states is a vestige of slavery and Jim Crow. 

We are proud that the Southern Workers International Justice Campaign, initiated by UE Local 150, is leading the fight to repeal the prohibition of collective bargaining in North Carolina, as well as Virginia and West Virginia. We are forging unity and solidarity between the labor movement and the civil rights movement. The work of our statewide unions, with their multi-racial membership and leadership, represents a powerful weapon for social progress. 

The most vicious attack on public sector collective bargaining yet occurred this year in Iowa. The Republican governor and legislature were ruthless in their attempts to bankrupt and dismantle the public-sector unions in Iowa. The attack itself was funded by outside sources (the Koch brothers) with a specific aim to rid the state of the unions who are able to organize and mobilize their members and their community. The governor and legislature in Iowa were successful in banning dues checkoff and eliminating all but one mandatory topic of bargaining, wages, for the non-safety bargaining units.  Even there, unions are limited to negotiating a 3 percent wage increase each year or the current CPI, whichever is the lesser.  UE’s Iowa members did not take this assault on their union rights sitting down. Our members emailed, called, and visited their legislators in the communities at town halls, the capitol in Des Moines, and at their homes.  They also participated in rallies at the capitol and public hearings. 

Public-sector collective bargaining rights were won through struggle.  In the 1970s a series of strikes happened across the country at federal, state, and local levels.  These strikers had no legal protection, and could have been terminated for their participation, but worker unity was strong enough to protect their jobs.  Ultimately, public officials decided to “tame” the ferocity of public employees through the offering of collective bargaining rights — usually in exchange for a ban on strikes and forcing workers through legalistic methods of contract settlement such as arbitration.  Although the public-sector labor movement was able to ride on its success for two generations, the new assault began because public officials are no longer fearful of what public employees may do.  In order to restore what rights have been lost, and to bring them to states where they were never won, worker power must be a credible threat to the employer — we must return to a period of widespread workplace agitation.  

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls for the union at all levels to initiate campaigns for public-employee collective bargaining rights which will gain these rights in states where we lack them, retain and strengthen them in states where they exist, including the right to strike, and restore them where they have been stripped away;
2. Demands that the states of North Carolina and Virginia repeal their bans on collective bargaining;
3. Demands that the state of Iowa reverse it’s 2017 changes to collective bargaining law;
4. Supports the Southern Workers Assembly in its call to organize the South;
5. Supports the Southern Workers International Justice Campaign;
6. Supports the education of elected officials and the general public regarding the need for collective bargaining for public employees;
7. Supports work at the international level challenging the violation of public workers’ rights;
8. Calls on locals to mobilize in support of candidates for elected office who will restore and improve collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees.

UE retirees have years of experience in the workplace and in our union, and are valuable allies in the fight against corporate greed.

The Retirees Association of General Electric (RAGE) from Locals 506 and 618 is very active in Erie, Pennsylvania. Hundreds of RAGE members provided important support during GE contract negotiations in June 2015. Their involvement helped UE negotiators gain an increase in the pension for current retirees and beat back company proposals to eliminate company contributions toward post-65 healthcare.

RAGE members attend GE stockholder meetings, push for pension improvements, and meet annually with the company to discuss retiree issues including insurance plan administration and retiree benefit problems. They have also led protests against the privatization of Social Security, gas rate hikes, and other social issues.

Retirees from former Local 1111 in Wisconsin meet monthly, have regular social events and contribute to the social struggles in their area.  They are currently supporting the campaign of Randy Bryce, a union ironworker who is attempting to unseat House Majority Leader Paul Ryan in 2018.

Retirees from former Local 924 in Decatur, Indiana also have an active retiree committee.

Years of unionism has shown us that there is strength in numbers, so joining with other retiree groups make us even more effective. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls on the union to encourage the formation of, and participation in, retiree committees; support the Alliance for Retired Americans, its local affiliates, and other retiree groups; and continue to bargain to improve the benefits for retirees;
2. Calls on all retired members to defend and improve Social Security and Medicare, promote passage of single payer Medicare-for-All health insurance, vigorously defend company-paid health benefits for retirees, and lend support to the contract struggles and other work of locals. ​

America's rail system is woefully underfunded and neglected. The roots of the decline date to the period after World War II when the government chose to focus for purported reasons of national security on building the interstate highway system. Over the following decades passenger rail declined dramatically due to lack of investment in infrastructure, with many commuter lines across America paved over or pulled up for scrap. The U.S. is the world's most automobile-dependent nation. There are roughly three cars, trucks, or SUVs for every four Americans. The highway system is more expensive to maintain, leads to more pollution and keeps us dependent on oil. 

We need to expand our rail transportation system to make it a feasible option for working people. Simply funding new rail lines and infrastructure is not enough. The existing rail infrastructure is in a state of severe disrepair. Rebuilding it would create thousands of jobs and help revitalize our economy. Jobs created from this infrastructure investment should employ workers in the U.S. 

We deserve to live a life in a healthy environment and travel on a world-class rail system. This is why we must support a comprehensive rail transportation system. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Calls on Congress to: 
   1. Adequately fund improvement and expansion of our national rail system and prioritize public ownership of the rails; 
   2. Impose an equipment standardization mandate on manufacturers; 
   3. Expand subsidies for Amtrak, light rail, commuter rail, and higher-speed rail; 
   4. Fund the improvement of existing rail lines to handle high-speed trains; 
   5. Investigate feasibility for Amtrak to have dedicated grade-separated rail lines; 
   6. Oppose single-employee rail crews to ensure public safety and preserve good jobs. 

In June 2015, OSHA acknowledged the need for improved safety standards for healthcare workers and other caregivers, noting the work-related injury and illness rate for hospital workers was nearly twice the national average of all workers.  OSHA has a website to assist hospitals and other healthcare employers in improving safety, but it has failed to enact the additional regulations that are needed and its chronic underfunding limits its ability to enforce the few regulations that currently apply. Hospitals would benefit from decreased workers compensation claims and less lost time from injuries, but the healthcare industry will not improve workplace safety unless pressured to do so.

The Affordable Care Act has created new incentives for healthcare providers to keep costs low and mandates that insurers must spend 80 percent of premiums on patient care.  Without pressure from workers, unions and allied groups, the healthcare industry will attempt to balance its books on the backs of healthcare workers. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:  

1. Demands healthcare workers have a safe working environment with adequate levels of permanent full-time staff who are fairly compensated for their labor;
2. Urges OSHA to enact comprehensive regulations to prevent workplace injuries in hospitals and other healthcare settings;
3. Demands Congress fully fund OSHA to provide necessary funding for enforcement of healthcare workplace safety regulations;
4. Calls on the union at all levels to:
   1. Fight against efforts by hospital administrators to balance their budgets on the backs of healthcare workers who provide care and services to the American public;
   2. Educate the public about the important role of healthcare workers, including nursing assistants, medical techs, and transporters of patients;
   3. Build solidarity with local nurses’ unions and support their campaigns.

Currently our federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. While over half of U.S. states have minimum wages set higher than this federal minimum, it is not nearly enough.  A report issued in 2017 by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found a minimum wage worker can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in only 12 of the 3,007 counties across the U.S.  No one should be expected to live in poverty.  

While the cost of living in the U.S. has steadily risen, the minimum wage has not increased at the federal level since 2009 due to congressional indifference to the conditions of low-income workers.  The real value of the minimum wage is now 10 percent below 2009 levels, and 25 percent below its all-time high adjusted for inflation in 1968.  

Due to this inaction, labor and other groups seeking economic justice have taken the minimum wage fight to the state and local level.  In recent years many states which elected conservative, anti-minimum wage Republicans to high office simultaneously approved ballot initiatives increasing the minimum wage.  This is unsurprising considering it’s one of the most broadly supported policies in the country, with even the majority of Republicans supporting raising the federal minimum wage to at least $9 per hour.  

But those increases which have been won at the state level are half-measures.  If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation and productivity growth since 1968 it would be $18.70 today.  The minimum wage needs to be increased very significantly to not only reduce, but eliminate, poverty.  The Fight for $15 movement, spearheaded by unions and their allies, grew out of this realization.  Although initially considered a political impossibility, $15 minimum wages are now being phased in across all of California, along with cities including New York, Washington, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis.   Virtually all studies have shown the economic benefit of these increases to low-income workers outweighs the drawbacks by a factor of four or five to one.  

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been a long-time proponent of Fight for $15.  Along with other progressives, including Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), he has now introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2017, a bill which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024, thereafter indexing the minimum wage to inflation (ensuring that Congress could never again allow it to decline in purchasing power due to sheer neglect).  It is an astonishing step forward for a movement which is only five years old.  When unions and working people join together to insist that people in our country need and deserve better wages, the seemingly impossible becomes possible.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls upon Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act of 2017;
2. Calls upon state and local governments to increase minimum wages in their jurisdictions to $15;
3. Opposes state preemption laws which prevent cities from enacting their own minimum wages;
4. Encourages locals to support the Fight for $15 movement, and to join actions to raise the minimum wage, including rallying at workplaces, submitting letters to local newspapers, contacting legislators, governors, and other elected officials; supporting ballot initiatives,  signing and promoting community and statewide petitions, and joining grassroots organizations dedicated to raising the minimum wage such as Labor for Our Revolution;
5. Opposes all actions meant to weaken or lower wages, such as efforts to repeal prevailing wage laws.

For many years, business and government have been attempting to move away from the eight-hour day, by establishing a 10-hour, four-day workweek with no overtime after eight hours.

Contrary to corporate propaganda, this policy provides no benefit to workers. It does not ensure a three day weekend — only three days off a week, none of which may be consecutive. Ten-hour days mean a worker who is absent will receive a larger dock in pay. Improvements to paid leave, such as vacation and holidays, cost the company more. Numerous studies have shown longer work days result in more accidents and injuries.

Some employers are promoting the 10-hour day. They use it as a way to stop paying overtime on Saturday or Sunday, turning these days into a shifting part of the new regular work week. Small and economically marginal employers save on energy costs by keeping their shop shuttered an extra day but do not share this savings with workers.

The labor movement is the reason the eight-hour day was established. Our union has long supported shortening the workday and workweek even more. We should not move backwards and bargain away one of our most fundamental victories.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:  

1. Reaffirms our longstanding policy of overtime pay for any hours after eight and our goal of reducing the work week. We call on the labor movement to adopt the new slogan “30 hours work, 40 hours pay;”
2. Calls on Congress and state legislatures to:
   1. Improve and vigorously enforce existing overtime laws and regulations;
   2. Oppose employer-imposed “comp time” and “flex time” schemes;
3. Encourage all locals to:
   1. Incorporate language into their contracts mandating overtime for all hours over eight;
   2. Ensure overtime premiums are retained for Saturday and Sunday work where the ten-hour day cannot be eliminated.

In 1983, UE members on strike at a copy shop in Amherst, Massachusetts took control of their workplace after the owners shut down rather than meet their demands: They started their own worker-owned-and-operated co-op, Collective Copies (Local 274). It is now one of the largest and most successful copy shops in Western Massachusetts, paying good union wages with comprehensive benefits.

Since then, workers at Vermont food co-ops Hunger Mountain in Montpelier and City Market in Burlington have organized with UE, forming Locals 255 and 203.  New Era Windows, formed by former Republic Windows employees in Chicago (Local 1110), was created after two plant occupations and a successful campaign to purchase the machinery and materials from the former owner Serious Materials.  Workers at the East End Co-Op in Pittsburgh also organized in 2015, forming UE Local 667.  The skill and tenacity of these UE members is an inspiration to us all.

Cooperative enterprises offer a democratic model of economic development.  They are accountable to local communities, not to distant investors. However, some cooperatives — such as consumer co-ops owned by shoppers — are not immune from unjust labor practices and are often run by bosses who act like bosses. UE fully supports the organization of co-op workers, not only to win justice on the job, but to keep cooperatives accountable to their mission and communities.

The Authentic Labor Front (FAT) in Mexico has a significant cooperative sector representing workers in the textile, agricultural, and insurance sectors. The UE and the FAT have exchanged delegations of co-op members.  UE co-op members have also met with Zenroren co-op members to share notes, experiences, and ideas. 

As a rank-and-file union, UE has 81 years of experience operating as a democratic organization. UE is a natural home for workers in consumer and worker-owned cooperatives. UE co-ops share our union’s proud history and fighting spirit, benefiting from our status as a union with vision, integrity, and commitment that works in a principled way with other organizations in building a better world.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Supports the transition of capitalist businesses to worker ownership, and supports legislation to facilitate this process;
2. Supports the unionization of consumer and producer cooperatives;
3. Encourages UE cooperatives to engage in solidarity work with each other, analogous to the Hallcon/Renzenberger Conference Board and UE public-sector convergences;
4. Supports strengthening our relationship with the FAT’s and Zenroren’s co-op sectors;
5. Encourages the national union, locals, and members to utilize and promote the products and services of UE, FAT, and Zenroren cooperatives.

UE left the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1949, when the CIO had lost its militant and progressive direction. With no national labor federation today supporting UE’s rank-and-file principles, we find ways to interact with trade union and community allies which share our approach. Among those places are Jobs with Justice (JwJ) chapters, Labor Notes conferences, the World and U.S. Social Forums, and local workers’ centers.

The birth of JwJ in the late 1980s was a response to the failure of business unionism. JwJ was formed by trade unionists, community activists and other progressives as a way to work together for workers’ rights. There are currently 38 JwJ chapters across the country. Whether walking picket lines, supporting organizing campaigns, or staging town-hall style Workers’ Rights Board hearings, JwJ does the work that the labor movement finds itself incapable of or unwilling to do.

UE has been a strong supporter of JwJ since its beginning. JwJ has always valued our contribution and welcomed our presence, demonstrating the real meaning of the phrase “labor solidarity.” UE locals throughout the country are supported by JwJ organizations and affiliates. Eastern Massachusetts JwJ provided critical labor and community support for the successful strike of UE Local 279 members at Weir Valves in Ipswich.

Labor Notes and its network of supporters have promoted rank-and-file unionism within the U.S. labor movement for 38 years. It has become an indispensable resource for trade unionists. UE leaders, rank-and-file members, and staff contribute regularly to Labor Notes, sharing our experiences and analyses with other trade unionists worldwide. Labor Notes conferences are now the largest gatherings of rank-and-file union members in the country. UE continues to provide some of the largest union delegations at national Labor Notes conferences, including in 2016, and plays an important role in conducting workshops and plenary sessions.

Since 2002, UE has participated in the World Social Forum, where trade unions and social movements from around the world gather under the banner of “Another World Is Possible” to discuss how to oppose corporate globalization and replace it with alternatives that place people over profits. Our participation in the World Social Forum strengthens ties with trade unions in other countries (most recently Brazil, India, Canada, Tunisia, France, Palestine, and Egypt) and is useful in building solidarity with other workers who share the same employers.

The basis for UE’s participation in national and international coalitions, organizations and gatherings such as Jobs with Justice, Labor Notes, and the World and U.S. Social Forums has always been a desire to build a more vigorous, responsive, and relevant movement, and to work with allies — both trade unions and community organizations — regardless of affiliation status, size, or politics. If another world is possible, a world of justice for working people, we need to build a rank-and-file based movement to make it a reality.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:    

1. Calls on the union at all levels to: 
   1. Participate in, support, and join Jobs with Justice;
   2. Foster the formation of new JwJ chapters and attend its national conventions and local meetings;
   3. Participate in the next Labor Notes Conference in Chicago on April 6-8, 2018;
2. Commits to support for and participation in the World and U.S. Social Forums;
3. Encourages members and locals to participate in or assist the formation of Labor Notes Troublemaker schools, subscribe to Labor Notes, purchase bulk subscriptions and books, and submit articles for publication.

“Right-to-work” laws, which make it illegal to compel nonmembers to pay union fees, are the most common state-level anti-worker laws in the private sector.  Right-to-work laws make it more difficult for a union to function because under the National Labor Relations Act’s “duty of fair representation” not only do non-members get all the benefits of a union contract without paying for it, but the union must represent them without prejudice in grievances and arbitrations, despite their paying nothing towards the cost of being represented.  This encourages free-riding by selfish workers, which in turn builds resentment among those who are members of the union.  In a divided workplace, the boss almost always wins.

Since the last convention Kentucky and West Virginia have followed in the footsteps of Wisconsin in enacting right to work.  Missouri’s state government passed  right to work, but the labor movement collected more than three times the number of signatures required to force the issue onto the ballot, likely postponing implementation until November 2018, when voters may have the opportunity to overturn it.  An attempt by Republicans to pass right to work in New Hampshire was defeated due to union agitation, and because many of the newly-elected Republican representatives were union members themselves.  Despite the outcome in New Hampshire, and potential for our victory in Missouri, Republicans are likely to continue pushing right to work in any other states they may gain total control of after the 2018 elections — including potentially Pennsylvania and Minnesota.  

With Trump’s new Supreme Court appointee Neil Gorsuch, the pending Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME, will likely impose right to work on every state and local public-sector bargaining unit in the country.  Unions covering seven million workers in 20 states will lose union security, potentially crippling both their finances and internal organization.

While right-to-work is terrible policy, unions can continue to fight back and win even after its enactment.  Since Wisconsin and Indiana have passed right-to-work laws, UE shops have negotiated new contracts without union security, but understanding the importance of keeping the membership united has re-energized those locals. This has resulted in most cases in the best contracts achieved in decades — including the phase out of existing two-tier wage structures.  Indeed, UE’s rank-and-file structure makes it uniquely able to survive in a right-to-work environment. Union leaders must remain visible in the workplace, continually communicate with members and involve them in struggle, giving them compelling reasons not to drop out of the union.  Despite what the bosses may desire, we will stay active in the workplace and not fade away quietly.  

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Opposes all right-to-work legislative efforts across the country;
2. Renews UE’s call for the repeal of Taft-Hartley;
3. Calls on the national union to develop materials for the fight back against right-to-work laws, and to help locals build their membership even when they’re forced to operate under right-to-work or open shop conditions;
4. Endorses continually educating and training all members, so people understand why unions are important in the workplace and what their functions are;
5. Calls on the national union to develop a coherent political response to the likely Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court ruling in 2018, including proposals for new state-level public-sector bargaining statutes addressing the free rider problem;  
6. Calls on the national union to survey the strength of locals and regions in non-right-to-work states and develop a comprehensive strategy to prepare rank-and-file members for the spread of right to work.  

Starting with the UE 53rd Convention in 1988, delegates to UE conventions have adopted resolutions opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; supporting the human rights of the Palestinians; opposing the one-sided policy by which the U.S. government funds and arms the Israeli government; and calling for negotiations toward a just and peaceful solution to this longstanding conflict. 

At our 74th Convention in 2015, we took our commitment to peace and justice for Palestine and Israel one step further, endorsing the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS arose from a 2005 call by Palestinian trade unions and hundreds of Palestinian civil society organizations for a worldwide campaign of boycotts to pressure Israel to end its apartheid rule over the Palestinians. BDS was modeled after the 1980s international solidarity campaign that put economic pressure on South Africa’s government and helped end apartheid.

Our resolution — the first by a U.S. national union to endorse BDS — was welcomed by many people in the peace and international solidarity movements, including the Palestinian labor movement. But our statement was also met with fierce hostility by forces connected to the Israeli government, including Shurat HaDin, an Israeli law firm that files nuisance lawsuits against critics of Israel, including against former President Jimmy Carter. A few weeks after our convention Shurat HaDin wrote a letter to the CEO of General Electric, slandering UE as “anti-Semitic” and demanding that GE rescind its labor agreement with UE. They also filed a frivolous and unsuccessful unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

A pro-Israel website, based in Israel, launched an online campaign against UE, urging its readers to flood us with harassing phone calls, emails, and hostile comments on our Facebook page. For several weeks in the fall of 2015 UE offices received a steady stream of hate messages. 

These attacks on our union are part of the broader attack on critics of Israel, and especially BDS. At the core of these attacks are the effort to smear anyone who criticizes Israel as an “anti-Semite,” an anti-Jewish racist. Increasingly, U.S. student activists are being targeted by pro-Israel groups, then punished by university administrators. Professors who write or speak critically on the Israel-Palestine conflict have been fired. The targets of this persecution include members of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) and other Jews. 

In addition, numerous state legislatures have passed laws targeting BDS. Most alarming, however, is a bill now before both houses of Congress, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, to make it a felony to boycott Israel. As of July the Senate bill (S. 720) had 43 sponsors, and the House bill (H.R. 1697) had 234 sponsors, 63 Democrats and 174 Republicans. Punishments for violating this law would be a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. On July 18 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote to all members of Congress urging them to oppose the bill as unconstitutional, and in the negative publicity that followed, at least one Democratic senator withdrew support for the bill, and others expressed opposition. But this outrageous attack on free speech and fundamental human rights remains a real threat. 

The situation of the Palestinians has been getting steadily worse. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to confiscate homes and land to expand Israeli settlements. Since 1967 Israel has settled more than 500,000 of its citizens in the West Bank, and has been building a wall that separates neighboring towns and cuts off farmers from their fields. All of this is illegal under international law.

In Gaza, 1.8 million Palestinians are crowded into a tiny enclave under continuous military and economic blockade. In the summer of 2014 Israel waged a merciless war on the impoverished population of Gaza. More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed. Since then, Israel’s blockade of crucial supplies getting into Gaza has led to the collapse of the power grid, and Gazans now get electricity for only a couple of hours a day. Food, medicine and building supplies, needed to rebuild after Israel’s brutal bombing and shelling, are blocked.

For more than 25 years the U.S. engaged in a so-called “peace process” with Israeli and Palestinian representatives. But the U.S. role has always been extremely one-sided. The U.S. provides Israel $3.8 billion a year in aid and repeatedly uses its UN veto to shield Israel from criticism of its human rights abuses. 

In recent years racism and extremism in Israel has grown more severe. One-fifth of Israeli citizens are Palestinians whose families survived the large-scale ethnic cleansing that occurred when Israel was created in 1947-1948. Some members of parliament, including cabinet members in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, call for stripping their citizenship and expelling them. Some in the government also call for expelling all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and annexing them to Israel. The “peace process,” supposedly aimed at negotiating the terms of Palestinian statehood in those territories, has been dead at least since March when Netanyahu, in his reelection campaign, declared he would never accept a Palestinian state.

Labor support for BDS has grown worldwide. At its recent Canadian Conference, our friends in Unifor passed a BDS resolution. BDS is supported by, among many others, UNITE, the largest union in Britain; and COSATU, the Congress of South African Trade Unions that helped defeat apartheid in that country. Even in Israel, progressive activists who seek a fundamental change in their country’s direction have endorsed BDS, despite growing government repression against the movement. In endorsing BDS, Gideon Levy, prominent columnist in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has written “boycott, divestment and sanctions is the only game in town [and] the most non-violent, legitimate means there are.”

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Demands the U.S. government end all military aid to Israel and pressure Israel to:
   1. End the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza
   2. Uphold the 2014 agreements;
   3. Negotiate a peace agreement on the basis of equality, democracy, and human rights for the Palestinian and Israeli people, including Palestinian self determination and the right of return for refugees;
2. Endorses the BDS movement and urges the union at all levels to become engaged in BDS and the movement for peace, justice and equality between the Palestinians and Israelis;
3. Opposes all efforts to outlaw BDS and otherwise punish non-violent critics of Israeli policies, and calls on the union at all levels to work for the defeat of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720 and H.R. 1697).

Working class unity is a core belief of our union. Article IV of the union’s constitution stipulates that all working persons are eligible for membership “regardless of skill, age, sex, nationality, color, race, religious or political belief or affiliation, sexual orientation, disability, or immigration status.”

While many regard marriage equality as the hallmark win for the LGBTQ+ community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer/Questioning), LGBTQ+ people across the country continue to struggle against housing, workplace, and other forms of legal discrimination. 

Since Trump took office, more than 100 bills have been introduced in 29 states to deny basic rights to LGBTQ+ persons. While one in five workers report workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, only 19 states and Washington DC have passed statewide laws to protect against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. In July, the Jeff Sessions-led Department of Justice ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act Title VII’s scope does not include sexual orientation and gender identity. This ruling perpetuates the oppression of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. by denying them civil rights protection under federal law.

Violence against LGBTQ+ people is undeniable. In 2016, we saw the deadliest shooting on record targeting the Latinx community at a gay nightclub in Orlando where 49 people were gunned down. The most violent year for trans people was also 2016, with 27 deaths on record. This year is on track to take the deadly title with 17 known deaths due to violence, 16 of which were trans women of color. The average life expectancy of a trans woman of color is 30 years, and only two states have banned the use of a “trans panic” defense in murder cases.  

We must unite and fight against all discrimination, whether in our communities, in our government, or in our workplaces. Homophobia and transphobia keep us divided and weaken the labor movement. We must take up the cry that an injury to one is an injury to all. 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Encourage the formation of LGBTQ+ caucuses at various levels of the union;
2. Calls on locals to bargain protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, health insurance and pension coverage for same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners, and leave-of-absence language that gives domestic partners the same rights as married employees;
3. Calls on the UE Education Department to develop, in conjunction with LGBTQ+ members, anti-oppression workshops and materials for use at all levels of the union in order to educate our membership and communities on the destructive nature of LGBTQ+ oppression;
4. Supports organizations fighting for the rights of LGBTQ+ people;
5. Urges members to boycott establishments that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people;
6. Calls on UE negotiating committees to bargain gender-neutral language in their collective bargaining agreements;
7. Encourages all levels of the union to make use of gender-neutral language.

​

In the early-21st century U.S. economy no worker is safe from workplace closing. Manufacturing employers ship production overseas, to the south, or to nonunion plants, where they can pay a fraction of the wages and benefits of union shops. Many tasks can now be performed electronically from outside the U.S., including completing tax returns, reading medical scan results, and customer service calls. Entire occupations are being replaced by automation, ranging from retail checkout, to warehouse worker, to even journalists. Federal, state, and local policies which reward workplace closings and layoffs are a national disgrace.

U.S. “free trade” policies, like NAFTA, encourage the flight of capital and export of jobs. These policies have contributed to high unemployment, reduced opportunities for young people, and budget deficits at all levels of government, which in turn cause job losses for public-sector workers. UE insists decisions regarding trade and employment are too important to be left exclusively to perfidious plutocrats and their paid-for political patsies, and we have no illusions that the Trump Administration’s plans to “renegotiate” NAFTA will result in better outcomes for U.S. workers. Our union demands sweeping legislative solutions, including controls on capital investment and credit, and severe penalties to give companies a strong disincentive to destroy our jobs. 

Since the last convention, many UE-represented workplaces have either closed or announced their intention to close, including NGK-Locke (Local 120), Madico (Local 262), PennCoil (Local 615), and APL Logistics (Local 1166). General Electric has recently announced plans to end all locomotive production in Erie, Pennsylvania by the end of 2018, with up to 575 members of Local 506 facing layoff. GE continues to drive down U.S. living standards, relocating jobs to non-union locations where wages are less than half that of UE members. This continued obliteration of well-paid manufacturing jobs means an entire industry has seen its employment standards collapse.

As a union, we know even when our jobs cannot be saved, the fight is still worth it. Sometimes a workplace is saved in unexpected ways. The members of UE Local 1187 at Load King in South Dakota can attest that even when the plant has closed and the union members have lost their jobs, continuing to fight can ultimately pay off and restore what appeared to be lost forever. But even when it doesn’t, the fight puts the workers in a better position to win a superior severance package. 

UE has been a leader in developing innovative approaches to fighting closings and saving jobs through eminent domain campaigns, workplace sit-ins, building broad alliances, political action, alternative forms of ownership, and other means. While we have not found a surefire formula, we must continue to struggle and explore new solutions. No boss should be allowed to fire or lay off workers without a struggle.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION: 

1. Demands the union be given an opportunity to locate new investors to keep the workplace open or to establish a worker-owned cooperative;
2. Demands the renegotiation of international “free-trade” agreements to make them fair-trade agreements, and encourages the union at all levels to participate in actions to prevent additional “free-trade” agreements;
3. Demands Congress fully fund and expand the Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) and develop programs to ensure that all affected workers are placed in stable, household-sustaining jobs;
4. Demands Congress require companies pay severance and health benefits to laid-off workers, make payments to affected communities and states to offset lost tax revenues and the cost of retraining displaced workers, and repay any tax breaks and financial incentives;
5. Demands that states and localities be prohibited from offering any incentives, including tax breaks, to lure corporate facilities from one location to another;
6. Encourages all locals faced with a closing to analyze the circumstances of the shutdown, and to quickly pursue whatever strategy is necessary to keep the workplace operating, including local government seizure of private-sector workplaces through eminent domain, and compelling the employer to sell the enterprise at a fair market price to people who will keep the workplace operating;
7. Demands prosecution of corporate leaders whose unjust actions result in the loss of workers’ pay and benefits, such as the successful prosecution of the former owner of Wisconsin Die Casting and the felony charges that led to the conviction and incarceration of the former owner of Republic Windows and Doors;
8. Encourages locals to enlist support from the local community and government to pressure employers to keep members employed;
9. Pledges full support to Local 506 and Local 618 members in the fight to keep their jobs in Erie, Local 120 members in the fight to keep their jobs in Baltimore, and any other local which faces similar circumstances;
10. Supports UE-GE member participation and leadership in building an international GE worker conference to create a global response to GE’s job-cutting and wage-slashing schemes, including the development of internationally coordinated bargaining;
11. Supports the creation of state and local unemployed councils to support unemployed workers’ basic needs and to fight for their rights.

The U.S. military budget is larger than those of the next 10 nations combined. When the interest cost of the national debt attributable to past military spending is added to yearly spending, it comprises half the national budget.  More than 800 U.S. military bases circle the globe. Countries such as Israel, Egypt, Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Georgia receive billions in military aid. Donald Trump seeks a $54 billion increase in military spending next year.  The gigantic military budget takes away from addressing the needs of our people and weakens our economy.

Our government’s involvement in wars and destabilization in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and elsewhere makes us less safe. The two major U.S. wars of the past decade, Iraq and Afghanistan, while costing us billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of our young soldiers, have produced more extremism, more war, more instability, and more danger.

In the weeks leading up to this convention, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have the world on edge as they exchange threats of nuclear war. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, delegates to UE conventions called for negotiations to end that war. But the Korean War never officially ended and there’s still no peace treaty. For 63 years there’s been an armed truce, with periodic provocations that threaten a return to war. The current government of South Korea advocates negotiations for peace, and it’s time for that to happen.  

For many years Donald Trump had spoken against the continuing U.S. war in Afghanistan, calling it “a waste.” But in his first major foreign policy speech as President, he reversed all his past statements and his 2016 promises and announced that he’ll send more U.S. troops into that war. At 17 years and counting, Afghanistan is the longest war in U.S. history, yet Trump now says we must avoid a “hasty” departure from Afghanistan. 

A great danger to peace is the growing war hysteria in this country against Russia, based on the never-proven claim that Russia hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last year. The DNC made the charge immediately after Wikileaks released internal emails revealing how much the DNC worked with the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ run for president, and the mainstream media have repeated the claim daily ever since. A group of retired intelligence experts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), recently issued a report based on forensic examination of the leaked DNC documents. They conclude that the DNC was not hacked, and that the release of its incriminating emails was the result of a leak by a DNC insider. VIPS is the same organization of intelligence professionals who in 2003 warned us not to believe the “intelligence” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the reason we were given for invading Iraq. One does not need to like Putin or the Russian government — nor the governments of Iran, Syria, Venezuela or North Korea — to recognize that negotiation and cooperation are better than war. 

In the Middle East, the U.S. is involved in a tangled, contradictory web of alliances and wars. The terrorist group ISIS would not exist if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq.  Our government now supports the Kurds who are fighting ISIS but also supports Turkey bombing the Kurds. The Syrian government is fighting ISIS, but the U.S., at least until recently, has been trying to overthrow the Syrian government. Our government supports Saudi Arabia waging a brutal war in Yemen against the Houthi rebels, even though the Houthi consistently fight against Al-Qaeda. On his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump doubled down on U.S. allegiance to the Saudis and enmity toward Iran, on the false premise that Iran supports terrorism and the Saudis do not. The Saudis have funded Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and supply their ideology in the form of Wahhabism, the extreme form of Islam that the Saudi rulers embrace and export. Iran, for all its shortcomings, has consistently fought against ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

In recent years, working people throughout Latin America elected a number of pro-worker governments, including Venezuela’s, which the U.S. government has tried repeatedly to overthrow.  Recently Trump imposed new sanctions on Venezuela and said he would not rule out a “military option.” The U.S. media and politicians have recently been even more overwrought in their denunciations of President Nicolás Maduro’s elected government, ostensibly because it held an election for a constituent assembly. Apparently holding an election without the U.S.’s permission is a sure sign that you are trying to impose a dictatorship.

Foreign and military policies should defend the interests of working people, not the wealthy. UE has long supported the labor movement promoting its own foreign policy ideas based on diplomacy and labor solidarity. We are proud to be a founder of U.S. Labor Against the War, which advances such a policy. Our government should not destabilize democracy on behalf of billionaires. It should promote peace, jobs, and justice for all.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:  

1. Calls on the union at all levels to:
   1. Promote involvement with U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) and support Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW);
   2. Inform and engage members on the need to change U.S. foreign policy to promote diplomacy, democracy, and workers rights;                                
2. Demands the U.S. government invest in peace and build economic security by:              
   1. Reducing the military budget while improving wages, healthcare, and pensions of soldiers and veterans;                    
   2. Reappropriating defense savings into transportation, housing, healthcare, education, renewable resource development, or other peaceful infrastructure;
   3. The creation of a fund to guarantee any worker or soldier displaced by conversion from a war economy to a peace economy  up to four years’ living allowance and educational expenses;  
3. Further demands the U.S. government:
   1. End incentives for corporations to profit from exporting weapons abroad;
   2. Cease military aid to countries with disgraceful human rights records;  
   3. Cease all funding for the National Missile Defense program and support efforts at the United Nations to ban all weapons in space;
   4. Cease using U.S. military and intelligence agencies in interventions against sovereign nations which pose no threat to the American people;
   5. End the use of taxpayer money for further militarization of Latin America;
   6. Cease all harassment of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela;   
   7. Cease the use of drones to attack foreign nationals or U.S. citizens;
   8. Return to a policy of cooperation and negotiation with Russia, instead of the current confrontational policy of increasing tensions in Ukraine and trying to surround Russia with hostile states;
   9. Uphold the agreement negotiated with Iran which prevents its development of nuclear weapons;
4. Welcomes initiatives by the Congressional Black and Progressive Caucuses to redefine federal budget priorities;
5. Supports the struggle of our sister union Zenroren to halt the repeal of Article 9 of Japan’s Peace constitution, to close all U.S. military bases in Japan, and to halt all U.S. efforts to convert the Japanese Self-Defense Force to offensive purposes.

Since UE’s convention in 2015, the climate change crisis continued to worsen. July 2017 marked the 41st consecutive July and the 391st consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average. The earth’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and human-made emissions. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001.

The science is unquestionable: 97 percent of peer-reviewed scientific literature affirms that human activity is causing global warming. Global warming is causing stronger storms, more flooding, longer heat waves, crop damage, and sea level rise. Up to 600 million people could become “climate refugees” because their current communities become uninhabitable by 2050.

The United Nation’s Paris climate agreement was adopted in 2015 and signed by 195 countries, including the U.S. The agreement aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius through curbing greenhouse gas emissions and advancing sustainable development.

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to denounce and pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, jeopardizing the future of our planet. He has filled his cabinet with climate-change deniers. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt has already moved to block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger than any in the EPA’s history. The Secretary of State is the former CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest fossil fuel company in the U.S.

Energy profiteers have been proposing and building new pipelines for fracked gas, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) being built by Duke Energy, Dominion Resources and Piedmont Natural Gas through West Virginia, Virginia and eastern North Carolina. The growing use of fracked gas is deepening climate impacts due to leakage and intentional venting of natural gas from drilling sites, pipelines and even gas power plants. Pipelines have extensive health and safety impacts on communities in their path, which tend to be African American, Native American and low income communities. Landowners in pipeline corridors who depend on their land for retirement security or for agricultural uses may lose land value, forest, control of land use, and productivity while still having to pay taxes on it.

UE rejects the false choice between jobs and the environment. Destruction of jobs and threats to our planet have a common cause: corporate desire to privatize profits and socialize costs. Environmental destruction disproportionately affects the poor, working class, communities of color, and indigenous people. UE has long called for public ownership of the energy industry to prevent racketeering and price-gouging. It is now clear that this step is also necessary for the survival of the human race.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels is not about people losing good paying union jobs — the majority of jobs in coal mining and in hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” to yield natural gas are non-union. It is about creating better, safer jobs.  Basing our nation’s economy on energy efficiency and sustainable energy not only protects our planet, but has the potential to create millions of well-paying jobs, in industries that many UE members already work in.

UE has been a leader in bringing a labor voice to struggles for environmental justice. Over the last two years UE members and leaders have attended the Paris Summit for the Climate Change Accords and numerous immersion classes and educational sessions on climate change and the trade union response to it sponsored by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED). UE signed on to a letter of a coalition of U.S. labor unions denouncing the Dakota Access Pipeline and supporting the sovereignty and rights of the Standing Rock Tribal Council to stop its construction. Bringing the voice of workers and UE members to environmental issues is necessary not only to protect our economic interests, but also to develop creative solutions that can stop global warming and preserve the environment.

UE fully supports the concept of a “just transition,” whereby workers and their communities don’t bear the burden of the transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to one based on renewable energy and where workers continue to receive pay and benefits, during their transition and in their new renewable energy job, substantially equal to what they made in their previous job. Additionally, a just restructuring of our economy should allow workers to more easily form unions. A just transition would create opportunities for displaced workers and their communities to participate in the new economic order through substantial compensation for layoffs, loss of tax base, and other negative effects.

The energy profiteers want a world where both labor and environmental standards are in a race to the bottom. If they get their way, we get poverty and a poisoned planet. To defeat them and ensure the right of all people to live, work, and play in safe, healthy, and clean environments, we need to form stronger alliances between trade unions, communities, and the environmental movement.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Encourages the union at all levels to educate members about climate change and creative solutions that reduce carbon output while creating good union jobs;
2. Encourages the union at all levels to educate our members about environmental justice struggles, including the struggle of UE Local 150 members and Butner, NC residents for clean and safe drinking water in their community and workplace, as well as communities in West Virginia and eastern North Carolina threatened by pipeline projects in their areas;
3. Actively urges the environmental movement to incorporate just transition into their platforms, and to push for solutions that curb the power of corporations rather than create market incentives;
4. Demands that all environmental policies, including those targeting climate change, incorporate just transition for workers and communities affected;
5. Seeks renewable alternatives to environmentally-destructive methods of energy production and distribution;
6. Supports legislation mandating massive investments by state and federal governments and U.S. businesses to convert to a clean-energy economy and create millions of good jobs in the process;
7. Supports UE’s active participation in worker-oriented efforts to address climate change such as Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED), Labor Network for Sustainability, the Blue-Green Alliance, and the Just Transition Alliance;
8. Reaffirms the solution UE proposed to the energy crisis in the 1970s: public ownership of the energy industry in order to end price gouging and preserve our environment;
9. Supports the continuing efforts of the UE to build alliances with environmental and community organizations and in developing organizing strategies for renewable energy workers;
10. Supports the current ban on oil and gas exploration and drilling off the Atlantic coast;
11. Calls for a moratorium on the construction of any additional nuclear power plants.  

In UE, we go into bargaining ready to fight for the best contract we can get. We must rely on the unity and mobilization of our members to fight. 

If you only paid attention to topline numbers, you would believe the economy is doing fairly well. Unemployment is at 4.4 percent. Monthly job growth has slowed down from two years ago, but remains positive. Under normal circumstances, one would expect this tighter labor market to have resulted in strong real wage growth, with employers competing to attract the most qualified workers. However, wage growth has remained stubbornly low, and so far has dropped slightly since Trump took office.

Over the past two years, UE members have won an average wage increase of 2.51 percent. Although low by historic averages, this is higher than the current rate of inflation, as well as the average national wage increase. A militant, engaged union can bring real wage growth to its members.

Bosses continue to shift healthcare costs to workers, most notably by proposing high-deductible plans, where employees must pay thousands before insurance pays anything. Even though the Affordable Care Act excise tax on high-premium health plans has been delayed until 2020, employers already are proposing that workers pay this tax.

The right to retire remains in crisis. Private and public employers continue to attack defined-benefit pension plans. All too many politicians support slashing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. UE continues to prioritize the protection of members’ retirement benefits.

Even in a tough bargaining climate, UE members have minimized losses and made gains. It’s a testament to what a rank-and-file union can accomplish.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls for education and mobilization of members in preparation for the aggressive campaigns that are necessary for favorable contract settlements;
2. Calls for broadening contract struggles beyond the bargaining table by including strategic campaigns, shareholder actions, and labor-community alliances;
3. Calls for building solidarity with other unions, especially those of the same employer, engaged in contract fights;
4. Calls on locals to keep members informed and mobilized at every stage of negotiations;
5. Directs the national to provide to locals a list of bargaining goals based on best practices of UE locals developed through years of struggle, along with the research information needed for negotiations. 

In order to have robust rank-and-file participation in our union at all levels, member education must remain a top priority for UE. We must provide the skills and knowledge to empower our members to take on the boss, to engage in community struggles that advance worker rights, and to run the union. We must prioritize time for this education at every opportunity.

Our union’s educational work provides members with the tools to resist employer attacks on wages, benefits, and working conditions. UE’s geographic restructuring of the union into regions and subregions enables us to bring a variety of educational workshops to a broader layer of local union leaders, activists, and members. Combined with workshops in regional council meetings, national conventions, and training sessions organized by local unions, this education helps members fight back in an era of increased anti-worker attacks. In areas with significant Spanish-speaking membership, the union provides materials in Spanish to enable more members to participate.

Educational events help members and local union officers learn about policies on union financial integrity and practices, grievance handling, workplace representation, preparation for bargaining, and other leadership skills. The work of the UE Young Activist Program, the Southern Workers Assembly and our union’s participation in Labor Notes Conferences and Troublemakers Schools have contributed to our efforts to bring forward new activists and leaders who will carry the union’s work into the future.

The union continues to benefit from its education initiatives of recent decades. The UE Steward Handbook and the UE Leadership Guide — both published in the late 1990s — remain the most thorough and useful training materials for rank-and-file leaders. The UE Steward, a newsletter of useful information and tips for shop leaders, continues to be one of the most sought after publications. The UE News provides not only reporting on our recent struggles and other activities, but also in-depth analysis of current issues facing union members as well as UE and working-class history helping members understand our legacy.

Our website (ueunion.org [2]), and Facebook page contain information and news helpful to union members and unorganized workers. A number of locals, the Young Activist Program, Warehouse Workers for Justice, and other organizing projects also have an interactive web presence through Facebook. The UE website has links to download workshops and dozens of issues of the UE Steward.

A strong response and effective fightback depends on an educated, informed leadership, an effective steward system, and an involved membership.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Commits the national union to provide educational materials and workshops to assist members to run effective local unions and successfully wage local, national and international struggles, including:
   1. Democratic operation of a local, including steward training and grievance handling, local union finances and integrity, and preparing for escalating shop floor campaigns, negotiations, and in-shop struggles, with training tailored to the needs of each local;
   2. Sub-regional educational and training conferences;
   3. A day of workshops at the National Convention and workshops for use at regional, sub-regional, and local membership meetings;
   4. The UE Steward and other materials for local officers, stewards, and members;
   5. Political education that counteracts corporate media influence and promotes a working-class consciousness;
   6. Protecting the union in a right-to-work state and implementing strategies to maintain member unity and combat right-to-work laws;
   7. Maintenance and promotion of the UE website;
   8. Continued publication of UE News;
   9. Continued translation of materials into Spanish and/or other languages;
   10. Providing language interpretation of meetings where appropriate;
   11. Utilizing video teleconferencing to conduct educational training;
   12. A revised UE Leadership Guide;
2. Commits all locals to:
   1. Leadership development of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ members, young workers, and members with disabilities;
   2. Active encouragement and support of members regardless of age, race, creed, nationality, sexual orientation, or gender identity;
   3. Education about UE history and principles;
   4. Regular publication of local newsletters;
   5. Classes to introduce new members to the union, explaining policies, structure, and collective bargaining agreements;
   6. Seek the right to conduct union orientation for new hires during work time;
   7. Establishing websites, using social media, and union bulletin boards;
   8. Negotiating employer-paid lost time for members to attend training and educational events;
   9. Develop training materials on unity councils to resolve member conflicts.

Workers around the world face the same conditions: bosses who maximize their profit by moving their investments without regard to their impacts on communities or the environment. As long as there are places where workers toil for starvation wages without health and safety protections, it’s hard to achieve or maintain good wages or conditions anywhere. We must work collaboratively across borders in order to effectively fight back against the multinational corporations that dominate our economy.

Our international solidarity work is rooted in worker-to-worker exchanges to understand struggles in other countries, enabling us to create strategies to confront corporate greed and destruction of the planet. 

In July 2017, UE sent a Young Activist delegation to Mexico City to spend a week with our allies at the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT). There our members’ agenda included an orientation to Mexico’s economy, labor law, and organizing struggles, and a discussion of the FAT’s efforts to address violence against women, including disappearances and femicides. 

Other such moments of collaborative conversation include attendance at the August 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal and facilitating the “Global Justice” track at the April 2016 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. At events such as these, our members are able to talk with members of unions and other social justice organizations about organizing to fight back against the impact on our workplaces and communities of the free flow of capital across borders.

UE has demonstrated our commitment to solidarity in a variety of other forms as well. This included a photo action at the request of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) of France, in which members held signs stating, “Non a la loi travail!!” (No to the labor law!!) We stood with our French comrades to oppose the labor reforms proposed by the French government to lengthen the 35-hour work week, reduce overtime, make it easier to lay off workers, and other anti-worker measures. UE has also sent representatives to a number of conferences and conventions, including the Unifor 2016 Constitutional Convention and 2017 Canadian Council, the Confederation of National Unions (CSN) Convention in Montreal, the IndustriAll congress in Rio de Janeiro, an anti-TPP conference in Mexico City, and Los Angeles and Toronto meetings of the Tri-National Solidarity Alliance, an organization including Canadian, Mexican, and American unions. UE also hosted a delegation from Metallurgical Employees Workers Federation (FIOM), our Italian partners, in December 2016 in Pittsburgh and Erie, where we continued to advance the goals of an international, rank-and-file approach to GE.

As we approach everything from the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the spectre of war on the Korean peninsula, our interests as workers are best served by maintaining UE’s commitment to international solidarity.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Affirms support for the UE-Unifor North American Solidarity Project;
2. Reaffirms support for the Strategic Organizing Alliance with the FAT;
3. Reaffirms the deepening of our relationship with Zenroren;
4. Reaffirms our participation in and support of the global union federation IndustriALL;
5. Reaffirms solidarity with: the CSN of Quebec; Brazilian Central Union of Workers (CUT); CGT of France; New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) of India; FIOM of Italy; Workers Advice Center (WAC MA’AN) in Israel/Palestine; Kilusang Mayo Uno and Partido ng Manggagawa of the Philippines; the many Canadian, Mexican and U.S. unions that are our partners in the Tri-National Solidarity Alliance; and other democratic worker movements around the world;
6. Commits to building relations with unions abroad, especially in our industries, through direct contact, progressive forums and networks, and other means, as well as establishing and deepening relationships with workers in sister shops who globally share our employers, including workers in China, Russia, and Cuba;
7. Actively condemns the murder and persecution of trade unionists and harassment of unions and union busting anywhere in the world;
8. Encourages locals and members to increase their involvement in our international program and to make contributions and voluntary payroll check off for the UE-FAT Solidarity Fund and UE Research and Education Fund;
9. Commits to ongoing worker-to-worker exchanges with our allies in order to deepen our alliances and understanding of global labor conditions so that we may engage in collective action together;
10. Encourages the participation in global alliances to fight the rise of precarious (part-time, temp, subcontracted, and insecure) jobs.

The right of workers to withhold their labor – to strike – is among the most fundamental of human rights. No society can truly claim to respect liberty and deny workers the right to strike. International law recognizes the right to strike as a fundamental human right.

Rank-and-file control and anti-discrimination are fundamental UE principles. Equally important is the call in the preamble to the UE Constitution to “pursue at all times a policy of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions.”

The growth of the labor movement beginning in the 1930s, including UE, was accomplished by significant worker militancy, sit downs, and strikes, which resulted in unprecedented progress for working people. 

Ronald Reagan's busting of the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981 accelerated the modern-day assault on the right to strike. Following the president’s lead, bosses began to “permanently replace” economic strikers. The threat of permanent replacement, high unemployment and the shrinking number of unionized jobs has led to a precipitous decline in the number of strikes. In 2009, the number of major strikes in the U.S. was the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting data – just five major strikes, affecting 13,000 workers. The number has since risen in 2016 to 15 major strikes, affecting 99,000 workers, but this is a very low number considering two generations ago hundreds of strikes per year was normal for our country. 

Long-time labor activist Joe Burns did a valuable service to the labor movement when he wrote Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America (2011), in which he documents the decline of the strike and weakening of the labor movement. He argues many unions have forgotten what an effective strike is. A picket line, for example, is not meant to be “a weak form of moral witness,” but a blockade of the workplace to keep out strikebreakers and prevent the employer from operating. Burns offers useful ideas for beginning to rebuild labor’s power. His follow-up book on the public sector, Strike Back: Using the Militant Tactics of Labor's Past to Reignite Public Sector Unionism Today (2014) is equally important and useful.

In the public sector, workers in 39 states lack the legal right to strike. As UE’s public-employee members can attest, mandatory arbitration disempowers the rank and file in the negotiation of their own contract. Recent legislative attacks on public workers included rollbacks of the right to strike where it existed.

Public employee strikes have been a major component of the recent labor fightback, with teachers in Chicago, transit workers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and others prepared to exercise their right to strike in defense of public services and good jobs. In one of labor’s most important ballot-box victories ever, the voters of Ohio in 2011 overwhelmingly turned back the Republican attack on public workers’ rights and restored the Ohio collective bargaining law, which includes the right of public employees to strike.

The right to strike is vital to maintain and improve our wages, benefits, and working conditions, and to resist the attack on democracy by anti-working class elements. In the month of this convention, UE Local 1121 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin engaged in a 45-minute walkout.  This was the first job action in the 20-year history of the local, had 100 percent union participation, and resulted in the local achieving all of its negotiating demands.  Credible strike threats by many UE locals, including Local 274, Local 506, Local 766, Local 770, Local 777, Local 1107, and Local 1118 also helped to achieve excellent results at the bargaining table, including in several cases the elimination of two-tier pay structures. 

The strike is far from dead. A broad grassroots campaign by labor and its allies is necessary to reestablish our right to strike without limitation, and without the threat of being replaced. This includes the right to strike over grievances, as exists in the UE-GE National Agreement.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls for the continued use of the strike as the primary weapon against the employer, characterized by careful planning and timing, full membership involvement, and mobilization of community and political support;
2. Recommends renewed education of members on UE strike policy and urges locals to seek the right to strike on grievances as part of their collective bargaining demands;
3. Calls upon locals and regions to include as part of their political action work the restoration of the right to strike for private and public workers without retaliation or replacement as part of any comprehensive labor law reform;
4. Encourages UE members and locals to learn more about the need to restore the right to strike by reading Joe Burns’ books Reviving the Strike and Strike Back; and learn about their legal rights and effective tactics in strikes by reading Robert Schwartz’s Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns; and the UE pamphlet Preparing For and Conducting A Strike: A UE Guide.

UE, Unifor, and its predecessor unions have a long history of working together and share the guiding principle that militant democratic rank-and-file unionism is required to promote a renewed and reinvigorated North American labor movement. Unifor and UE also share the core belief that our members must take an active and aggressive role in organizing the unorganized.

Formally founded four years ago, Unifor is a new union built by its predecessors — the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). The members have a strong tradition of resisting concessionary bargaining and two-tier wage schemes that many U.S. unions routinely accept. Unifor is the largest private sector union in Canada with more than 315,000 members. It has become a general workers union, representing workers in manufacturing, hotels and restaurants, gaming, healthcare, retail, food production, transportation, forestry, and oil and gas production. More than 50,000 Unifor members are public sector workers.

UE is no stranger to Canada and Canadian workers. From 1936 to 1992, UE represented thousands of Canadians employed by GE, Westinghouse, and other manufacturing companies. Recognizing the distinct national interests of Canadian workers, UE Canada, with the National UE’s support, affiliated with CAW in 1992. Unifor Locals 524 in Peterborough and Local 504 in Hamilton celebrate their UE history and carry that legacy with pride and distinction.

Today, Unifor and UE continue to have important mutual interests in organizing and bargaining with GE and other common employers. Both Unifor and UE strive to be unions for everyone, private sector and public sector. Both national unions also recognize the distinct national interests of workers in each country and the need for genuine continental solidarity based on our common principles.

Working together, our organizations are better equipped to combat the rise of inequality and the decline of trade unions, which are twin features of the neoliberal era. Low union density in the private sector has passed a tipping point in both the U.S. and Canada where the growth of unorganized sectors and the decline of employment in traditionally unionized industries results in a continuous decline in the rate of unionization.

Leading manufacturing employers like GE, Caterpillar, Boeing, and the big auto companies have systematically degraded work and destroyed living standards through the extensive use of precarious jobs (contractors and temp agencies) and two-tier pay and benefit schemes. Young people, women, workers of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+, and workers with disabilities often make up the new “precariat” in both the U.S and Canada. Young workers may for the first time in many generations be worse off than the generation that came before them. The mainstream labor movement in both countries has been too slow to adapt and change its organizing, bargaining, and political strategies. 

The North American working class and our labor movement face extraordinary challenges that call for bold ideas and new structures. UE and Unifor are committed to creating a new form of cross-border cooperation, which allows us to effectively mount struggles across borders. It’s not enough to send messages of support to each other. We need to share resources, organize together, bargain jointly where appropriate, and withhold our labor together when it is necessary. Together both unions are better positioned to resist concessionary and two-tier bargaining that divides workers. Our unions are committed to building equality for all members. Workers of color, immigrants, women, indigenous people, young workers, LGBTQ+ members, and workers with disabilities must be encouraged to participate and become leaders in our unions. Strong, progressive independent political action must break the pattern of unions providing support to political parties and politicians that neglect, minimize, and compromise working class interests.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 75th UE CONVENTION:

1. Commits to building on our Solidarity Project, through which UE and Unifor will develop cooperative working relationships on North American bargaining, organizing, education, communication, and political action initiatives, such initiatives to be determined and approved by the national officers of each union and where appropriate by the General and National Executive Boards of each union; 
2. Endorses UE participation in a joint study group with Unifor representatives regarding the prospects for a continental labor alliance based upon democratic, militant, and social unionism, and true internationalism between American and Canadian workers, which will report in 2018 to the General and National Executive Boards of each union on the need and purpose for such an alliance, including its principles and possible structure;
3. Calls upon the union at all levels to promote discussion regarding the North American Solidarity Project, its necessity for advancing the interest of working people on both sides of our common border, and steps that can be taken to support and strengthen the project;
4. Calls on the General Executive Board to hold a UE convention in 2018 if needed to further our relationship with Unifor.

The Policy Action Committee of the 75th National Convention moves the following plan of action in the period up to the next national convention.

Independent Rank-And-File Political Action

1. The national union shall provide locals with detailed information and provide a list of state legislative websites and social media for elected lawmakers and candidates for office from UE areas, for use in ongoing political action efforts including elections; it will be kept up to date and provided at the next UE convention;
2. The national union encourages the union at all levels to emphasize basic political action education, including the need to promote positive legislation, equity, and emphasizing political action at the state and local level;
3. The national union encourages active resistance to the current political attacks using aggressive tactics, regaining lost ground through initiatives that address working people’s direct interest such as increasing the minimum wage;
4. Each local shall, through legislative action committee, inform members about candidates running for election, expose hidden agendas and anti-union sentiment, provide information for union members, and promote pro-union candidates;
5. The national union shall provide materials to educate the membership on the need to register and vote in the 2017 and 2018 state and national elections, and encourage locals to carry out workplace activities to ensure that members are informed, registered to vote, and turn out to vote on election day, including addressing transportation and procedural barriers;
6. The national union shall update UE political action materials and workshops;
7. The national union encourages the union at all levels to conduct state-level coordinated political action in the 2017 and 2018 elections by involving members, youth, retirees, and other community organizations as possible;
8. The national union shall use ueunion.org, the UE News and UE social media to report political action success stories to counter voter apathy and improve activism, and to educate the members on the need for defensive action by the members when necessary;
9. The national union encourages locals to invite elected lawmakers and candidates to meet with UE members in our workplaces, attend union meetings or town hall meetings, using elected allies where possible to accomplish this;
10. The national union shall use ueunion.org, the UE News and UE social media to advertise events of interest to members including Labor Notes conferences and trainings, the Jobs with Justice national meeting, and others;
11. The national union encourages locals in a geographical and/or state area to educate members with respect to step by step process on how to effectively communicate with legislators or other elected officials;
12. Encourages locals to create a political/legislative action committee if feasible.

Healthcare for All

1. The national union shall expand the use of our workshop on the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act, and to refine the workshop as needed;
2. The national union shall continue to educate the membership on the need for a single-payer healthcare system to provide a real solution to our health care disaster;
3. The national union calls on the union at all levels to become more involved in the struggle to defend Medicare and Medicaid from the current attacks;
4. The national union calls on the union to work with veterans organizations to oppose cuts to their medical care, to fully fund veterans medical benefits, and to strongly oppose any efforts to privatize the Veterans’ Administration.