90 Years of UE: A Timeline

May 8, 2026

Introduction 

Ninety years ago, on March 21, 1936, 43 delegates from 12 independent local unions gathered in Buffalo, New York. Their goal was ambitious: a new union to represent the hundreds of thousands of workers in the electrical and radio manufacturing industry.

The union they founded, UE, has changed a lot over the nine decades since then. The union survived vicious red-baiting attacks during the Cold War, only to see a wave of plant closings and de-industrialization decimate the industries that formed UE’s traditional base, especially in the 1980s.

Despite these setbacks, UE continued to organize the unorganized, diversified our membership, and became the “union for everyone” that we are now. Most importantly, UE has survived with our principles intact — the principles of aggressive struggle, rank-and-file control, political independence, international solidarity, and uniting all workers that continue to guide UE today.

1936-49: The CIO Years

UE was the first union to receive a charter from the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), a group of unions that, in 1935, decided to pursue industrial organizing. Industrial unions sought to unite all workers in an industry into a single union, instead of carving them up by craft, as did most of the older unions of the American Federation of Labor. Craft unions divided workers — 37 different AFL unions claimed jurisdiction in the manufacturing plants UE sought to organize. And they often excluded workers based on their race, gender, religion, or political beliefs.

A year after UE was founded, several locals of machine tool workers in New York City and Minneapolis, frustrated by the International Association of Machinists’ unwillingness to admit women and workers of color to full membership, left the IAM and joined UE, adding “Machine Workers” to the union’s name. One of those Minneapolis locals, Local 1139, still represents workers in the Twin Cities.

In 1938 the CIO split from the AFL and renamed itself as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Industrial unionism proved successful in bringing union organization to most of American industry, and by 1948 UE was the third-largest union in the CIO, after the United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers. UE had national contracts with General Electric and Westinghouse, along with other large national corporations, and had also organized the major “independent” manufacturers like Sargent Lock in Connecticut and Fairbanks Scales in Vermont. In addition to Local 1139, many UE locals still in existence today were chartered during this period, including Locals 155, 234, 243, 264, 274, 279, 319, 506, 610, 618, 622, 625, and 1421.

  • 1936: UE founded as the “United Electrical and Radio Workers of America.”
  • 1937: Several locals of machine tool workers, led by James Matles, join UE, adding “Machine Workers” to the union’s name. UE Local 1102 at Emerson Electric in St. Louis wins recognition after a 53-day sit-down strike, which lasts three days longer than the UAW sit-down strike in Flint earlier that year. UE negotiates first national contract with General Electric.
  • 1941: First national contract with Westinghouse.
  • 1945: UE brings the first-ever case demanding equal pay for women doing the same work as men before the War Labor Board, charging both GE and Westinghouse with sex discrimination. UE wins the case, but the war ends before the board can enforce its decision.
  • 1946: A million and half workers strike across basic industry, including UE members at GE and Westinghouse, UAW members at General Motors, and the entire steel industry. The united strikes establish the patterns of wages and working standards that would come to define “good union jobs” for decades.
  • 1947: Congress passes the anti-union Taft-Hartley law, which allows states to pass “right-to-work” laws, outlaws sympathy strikes, and demands that union leaders pass a government-imposed political litmus test.
  • 1948: UE members join 3,200 other trade unionists and representatives from farmers’, women's, and civil rights organizations to found the Progressive Party, which nominates Henry Wallace for President on a platform of defending civil liberties, union rights and workers’ living standards. UE does not endorse a candidate in the presidential election, but all three officers campaign for Wallace in their private capacity.

1949-55: Corporate America Strikes Back

Following World War II, elements of the CIO began aligning themselves closely with the Democratic Party. Initially, the CIO had presented a united front against the Taft-Hartley “slave labor bill,” which required that union leaders sign oaths swearing that they had never been members of the Communist Party. This was both an affront to UE’s principle of uniting all workers regardless of political beliefs and an obvious attempt to weaken the unions most willing to take on corporate power. However, in 1948 UAW President Walter Reuther signed the oath and the UAW began raiding UE shops. In 1949, the UE convention voted to withhold dues from the CIO until it took action to stop the raiding. Instead of pursuing the course of unity, the CIO expelled UE for “communist domination” and chartered a new union, the IUE, specifically to raid UE. (The CIO also expelled ten other unions in 1949 and 1950, including the ILWU, the West Coast longshore union.)

Over the next decade the corporations, the AFL and the CIO, and the U.S. government worked hand-in-glove to try to wipe out UE. Not only was UE viciously red-baited, the government attempted to deport UE Director of Organization James Matles, a naturalized U.S. citizen, back to his native Romania.

These attacks were successful in whittling UE’s membership down to 140,000, from a height of 600,000 members during World War II, and in splitting GE and Westinghouse workers into a variety of different unions. However, they were unable to destroy UE. The union continued to bargain national contracts with both GE and Westinghouse, and maintained a strong presence in some locations, including Erie, PA, where Local 506 decisively defeated an IUE raid in 1950, and the state of Vermont, where not a single UE shop was lost.

During this period, UE locals not only fought to maintain standards in their shops but to improve conditions for women workers and workers of color. The union established a Fair Practices Committee, an initiative to fight racial and sex discrimination in UE shops, and held a series of women’s conferences at the district and national level.

In 1955, following the merger of the AFL and CIO to form the AFL-CIO, some UE leaders felt that it was time for UE to rejoin the “mainstream” of the labor movement, and led their districts and locals into the IAM, IUE, and other unions, where UE principles of aggressive struggle and rank-and-file control were quickly suppressed, undermined, or abandoned. This left UE with only 90,000 members by the end of 1955.

  • 1949: UE withdraws from CIO. The Farm Equipment Workers (FE), also expelled from the CIO, merges with UE. The CIO charters the IUE with the express purpose of destroying UE.
  • 1950: IUE begins raiding UE. Local 506 rejects IUE raid by a margin of 3-2. Ernest Thompson, UE’s first Black field organizer, is named national secretary of the Fair Practices Committee.
  • 1951: UE launches national “Women’s Wage Campaign” to fight for equal pay for equal work.
  • 1952: After two years in the IUE, salaried workers at the Erie, PA General Electric plant vote to return to UE Local 618.
  • 1953: UE convenes National Conference on the Problems of Working Women, the first such gathering in the history of the US labor movement. Over four hundred delegates attended the two-day event in New York.

1956-80: Rebuilding

The 90,000 UE members left at the end of 1955 were not content to simply survive, but set out to rebuild the union’s ranks. By the 1960s, these efforts were bearing fruit. A significant number of shops lost to raids in the 1950s, tired of being in unions that wouldn’t fight for their members, came back to UE in this period, and UE also continued its historic commitment to organizing the unorganized. The union made notable progress in organizing the South, bringing in GE and Westinghouse shops in Virginia, Florida, and South Carolina. By the end of the 1970s, UE’s ranks had grown to almost 200,000 members.

As organizing expanded during this period UE discovered that many shops, especially in Southern California, were employing large numbers of immigrants, many of them undocumented. Unlike most other unions at the time, UE welcomed undocumented workers into the union’s ranks as part of UE’s commitment to unite all workers.

UE also took the lead in building unity between unions in the General Electric chain during this period, leading to the successful 1969 GE strike.

UE locals spoke out on the issues of the day. UE not only supported the Civil Rights Movement, sending a large delegation to the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but also engaged civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the union’s fight against discrimination in the shops. UE was an early and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, and played a key role in the 1972 formation of Labor for Peace. And UE women played an important role in the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

  • 1956: UE Local 331 in Rome, NY makes a donation to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, the first recorded (and first of many) UE contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
  • 1957: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes to UE Director of Organization James Matles in support of UE’s campaign to end racial discrimination by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
  • 1963: Hundreds of UE members participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Dr. King delivered his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech. Westinghouse workers in Staunton, VA organize UE Local 123.
  • 1966: Dr. King writes a letter supporting UE Local 190 strikers in Chicago. Workers at Kennedy Valve in Elmira, NY join UE, forming UE Local 329. Maintenance workers at the Erving Paper Mill in Erving, MA join UE, forming UE Local 269.
  • 1969: General Electric workers strike for 101 days.
  • 1972: UE plays a leading role in the formation of Labor for Peace.
  • 1974: UE members participate in the founding convention of the Coalition of Labor Union Women.
  • 1975: General Electric workers in Charleston, SC organize UE Local 1202.
  • 1979: 350 workers at the Kraco factory in Compton, CA, most of them undocumented immigrants, win recognition for UE after a prolonged strike.

1981-88: Fighting Plant Closings and Concessions

As the 1980s dawned, all unions, including UE, faced a difficult situation. One of the first acts taken by the newly-elected President, Ronald Reagan, was to fire striking air traffic controllers, signalling to employers everywhere that it was open season on the labor movement. A concessionary contract with Chrysler that the UAW agreed to in 1979 encouraged employers to demand concessions across the board. And as Wall Street gained greater power in the economy, companies found they could make more profit by shutting down factories than by continuing to produce goods.

Most of the U.S. labor movement was resigned to this state of affairs, but UE members fought back, resisting concessions, organizing vigorous community campaigns against plant shutdowns, and pioneering “corporate campaigns” against recalcitrant bosses.

In November of 1981, the 3,700 members of UE Local 610 struck WABCO (now Wabtec), at two locations just outside of Pittsburgh. It was the first large strike of the Reagan era, and after almost seven months on the picket line, the local was able to turn company demands for concessions into contract gains — a major victory in an era when union after union was simply agreeing to concessions without a fight.

UE members also resisted plant closings. Of particular note were campaigns against plant closings waged by UE locals in Massachusetts: Local 276 at Union Twist Drill in Athol and New Bedford Locals 277 (Morse Cutting Tool) and 284 (J.C. Rhodes). All drew support from the community on a scale not seen since the 1946 CIO strikes, and the threat of the city using eminent domain to take over the plant secured another five years of life at Morse.

While fighting concessions and plant shutdowns in existing shops, UE also waged lengthy campaigns to win first contracts at the Litton microwave plant in Sioux Falls, SD (organized in 1980) and the Circuit-Wise plant in North Haven, CT (organized in 1988).

Despite losing huge numbers of members and many historic locals to plant closings during this period, UE continued organizing new workers and participating in mass mobilizations to demand jobs, peace, and freedom.

  • 1981: Thousands of UE members participate in the huge Solidarity Day rally against Ronald Reagan’s union-busting in Washington, DC.
  • 1982: Local 610 wins 205-day strike against concessions. UE members participate in massive Nuclear Freeze March in New York City.
  • 1983: UE members participate in the 20th anniversary of March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC, emphasizing the relevance of Dr. King’s fight for jobs to contemporary fights against plant shutdowns.
  • 1984: Members of UE Local 1180 at the Litton microwave plant in Sioux Falls, SD win a first contract after a four-year struggle and a corporate campaign which drew support from national religious leaders and celebrities and got coverage in The New York Times, Time, and the Wall Street Journal, and on the Phil Donohue show.
  • 1985: Workers at Industrial Alloys (now known as Tree Island) in Southern California organize into Local 1421.
  • 1987: Workers at Load King in Elk Point, SD, affiliate their independent union with UE, becoming UE Local 1187.
  • 1988: Workers at the Circuit-Wise plant in North Haven, CT, vote to join UE, one of the largest union wins at a manufacturing plant in New England in the 1980s.

1989-96: Looking for a Way Forward

Following the devastation of the Reagan years, UE began experimenting with various ways to rebuild the union. Recognizing the importance of plastics in manufacturing at the time, UE launched the Plastic Workers Organizing Committee, a nationwide campaign to organize plastic workers on the model of the CIO, which brought in several new shops and locals, including UE Local 690 in southwest Pennsylvania. And after extensive discussion, the union’s General Executive Board made a conscious decision that UE should organize those workers who want to form a union aligned with UE principles, whether in manufacturing or not.

In Vermont, UE pioneered the creation of a “Workers Rights Board,” which brought together community leaders to support workers’ rights to organize. The Vermont Workers Rights Board helped several groups of non-profit workers organize into UE, including at CVOEO in Burlington (Local 221) and the Vermont Achievement Center in Rutland (Local 225). The model was then replicated across the country by the labor-community coalition Jobs with Justice, which UE played a key role in building, especially in Chicago.

To facilitate organizing in the South, UE developed a relationship with Black Workers for Justice, hiring BWFJ organizer Saladin Muhammad and pioneering new approaches to organizing which eventually led to the chartering of UE Local 150. Local 150, a statewide local which organizes both public- and private-sector workers in North Carolina, has been able to secure significant improvements for workers without collective bargaining. (Public-sector workers in North Carolina are prohibited by law from negotiating union contracts.)

UE also began outreach to independent unions to join UE as the “national home of independent unionism,” and a number of independent unions chose to affiliate with UE. Most notable in this period was the affiliation of the Iowa United Professionals, an independent union representing 2,000 state social workers in Iowa, as UE Local 893-IUP, which brought a significant number of public-sector workers into UE for the first time.

With the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the phenomenon of corporations moving work overseas to take advantage of lower wages and weaker regulations accelerated. UE, with a long-standing commitment to international solidarity, responded by building relationships with unions in other countries to develop united campaigns against shared employers, most notably with Zenroren, a militant union federation founded in Japan in 1989, and the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT), an independent union federation in Mexico.

The passage of NAFTA also brought long-simmering frustration with the increasing domination of the Democratic Party by corporate forces to the boiling point for many working people. Several unions, including UE, concluded that the time was right to organize an independent political party for working people. UE members were enthusiastic participants in building Labor Party Advocates during the early 1990s. Although the Labor Party, founded in 1996, was not ultimately successful, the experience provided valuable lessons and remains an inspiration for those seeking to escape the two-party trap.

  • 1990: Workers at the Hendrickson Suspension plant in Kendalville, IN affiliate their independent union with UE, becoming UE Local 770.
  • 1991: UE Director of Organization Ed Bruno travels to Japan to participate in an international conference sponsored by Zenroren, the first of many exchanges between the two unions.
  • 1992: UE and FAT launch Strategic Organizing Alliance to unite workers in the U.S. and Mexico in joint campaigns against common employers.
  • 1993: Workers at Farnam Sealing Systems (now Freudenberg-NOK) in Necedah, WI organize UE Local 1107. Workers at Tulip Corp. (now Stryten Energy) in Milwaukee organize UE Local 1135. Iowa United Professionals affiliates with UE, becoming UE Local 893-IUP. The National Independent Workers Union also affiliates with UE, bringing in the shops who now make up Locals 704, 712, 860, 886 and 1160.
  • 1996: UE delegates play key leadership roles at the founding convention of the Labor Party.

1996-2019: Becoming a Union for Everyone

The affiliation of the 2,000 public-sector workers of Local 893, and the work being done in North Carolina to build Local 150, led UE to begin more intentionally organizing workers in new sectors, beginning with the public sector. The first major new-organizing win of this approach came when 2,600 graduate workers at the University of Iowa organized UE Local 896-Campaign to Organize Graduate Students in April 1996. Other public-sector organizing wins in Iowa, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Vermont followed in the subsequent years, and in 2005, the Connecticut Independent Labor Union, an independent union of 2,000 municipal and school workers, affiliated with UE, becoming UE Local 222.

In 2003, workers at two cooperative grocery stores in Vermont, City Market in Burlington and Hunger Mountain in Montpelier, organized with UE, forming Locals 203 and 255 respectively and bringing UE to a new sector of the economy. They would be joined by workers at Pittsburgh’s East End Food Co-op in 2015 and the Willy Street Co-op in Madison, WI in 2019.

In 2008, workers who were employed by federal contractors at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) facilities in Vermont and California contacted UE about deteriorating conditions as a new contractor took over; they quickly formed UE Locals 208 and 1008 respectively. In subsequent years they were joined by federal contract workers in Chicago, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Kentucky.

UE expanded into another important sector in 2010 with an election among railcrew drivers at a company called Renzenberger (now Hallcon) in the greater Chicago area, forming UE Local 1177. Over the following decades, rail crew drivers in more than a dozen states, from New Jersey to California, have joined them. UE has had a national contract with the company since 2015, and has also organized rail crew drivers in several locations who work for PTI, one of Hallcon’s competitors.

By the 76th UE Convention in 2019, which adopted the theme “UE: The Union for Everyone,” UE’s membership was approximately a third each manufacturing, public sector, and private service sector.

During this period, UE’s international work also expanded. UE and the FAT organized regular worker-to-worker exchanges, bringing U.S. union members to Mexico and vice versa. The two unions also sponsored several murals celebrating cross-border solidarity, including A Woman’s Place: A Warrior in the Struggle for International Solidarity, painted on an interior wall at the UE Local 506 hall in Erie, PA. Together with Zenroren and the Quebec union Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), UE organized a series of international “convergences” of public-sector workers to discuss common challenges. These in turn helped inspire UE and Local 150 to launch the International Worker Justice Campaign, which brought international attention — and condemnation — to North Carolina’s law against public-sector collective bargaining. In the mid-2010s, UE developed a close relationship with Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, which led to the formal establishment of the “North American Solidarity Project” in 2017.

UE also participated in the “global justice movement” against so-called “free trade” agreements and institutions like NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and proposed new trade agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas. UE members joined demonstrations, engaged in political action, and sent delegations to the World Social Forums, global meetings of unions and social movement organizations organized under the banner “Another World Is Possible” in the 2000s.

In 2006, UE locals participated in the historic mobilizations of immigrant workers, including the May 1 “Day Without Immigrants” general strike, which successfully defeated a punitive bill then making its way through Congress. And in 2008, members of UE Local 1110 made history by occupying their factory, Republic Windows and Doors, for six days, winning a severance agreement from the Bank of America and eventual reopening of the plant.

  • 1996: Graduate workers Iowa City, IA organize UE Local 896-COGS. Aramark workers in La Crosse, WI organize UE Local 1121.
  • 1997: Service and maintenance workers at the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT organize UE Local 267.
  • 1998: An independent union of teachers and other professionals at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind affiliates with UE, becoming UE Local 613.
  • 1999: Workers at the Delaware City Schools in Delaware, OH and Highland Schools in Morrow County, OH organize UE Locals 799 and 741, respectively. Workers at TEMCO in North East, PA organize UE Local 684.
  • 2000: Workers at Henry Mayo hospital in Valencia, CA organize UE Local 1004. Approximately 100 UE members join massive protests against the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC.
  • 2003: Co-op workers in Vermont organize UE Locals 203 and 255. UE plays a leading role in the founding of U.S. Labor Against the War in Chicago.
  • 2004: Workers at Harborcreek Youth Services in Erie, PA organize UE Local 642. Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago organize UE Local 1110.
  • 2005: Connecticut Independent Labor Union affiliates with UE, becoming Local 222.
  • 2006: UE locals participate in “Day Without Immigrants” general strike on May Day. Workers at the Hess Oil refinery in Port Reading, NJ vote to affiliate their independent union with UE, becoming UE Local 106.
  • 2008: Service Contract Act workers in Vermont and California organize Locals 208 and 1008. Members of UE Local 1110 at Republic Windows and Doors occupy their plant. UE named “America’s Most Valuable Union” by The Nation magazine.
  • 2010: Workers at the NCS warehouse in Bolingbrook, IL join UE, forming UE Local 1123. Railcrew drivers at Renzenberger in greater Chicago join UE, forming Local 1177.
  • 2011: UE members from Wisconsin and Illinois participate in demonstrations in Wisconsin against legislation which stripped public-sector workers of most of their collective bargaining rights (legislation which would be copied in Iowa in 2017).
  • 2012: New Jersey railcrew drivers join UE, becoming part of amalgamated Local 155. USCIS contract workers in Chicago organize UE Local 1118.
  • 2014: California railcrew drivers join UE, forming UE Local 1077.
  • 2015: East End Food Co-op Workers in Pittsburgh organize UE Local 667. UE signs national contract with Renzenberger (now Hallcon).
  • 2016: Federal contract workers at the National Visa Center in Portsmouth, NH organize UE Local 228.
  • 2017: UE and Unifor launch North American Solidarity Project.
  • 2018: Workers at the Lanterman Regional Center in Los Angeles organize UE Local 1018. 650 Hallcon workers across eight states join UE, with those in the Midwest joining Local 1177, those in the South forming UE Local 977 and those in New Mexico and Colorado forming UE Local 1477. Workers at Raygun in Iowa form UE Local 8515.
  • 2019: Nine-day strike by Locals 506 and 618 in Erie, PA after Wabtec purchases GE Transportation and attempts to impose substandard conditions without bargaining. Willy Street Co-op workers in Madison, WI organize UE Local 1186. Paraprofessionals and other school workers at ESS in Winslow Township, NJ organize UE Local 119.

2020-2026: Resurgence

Just seven months after the 76th UE Convention concluded, the world was engulfed in the COVID-19 pandemic. While most of the U.S. labor movement simply shut down, UE’s Publicity and Education Department worked overtime providing UE members and locals with resources to keep members safe at work and to maintain rank-and-file democracy using virtual tools like Zoom and online voting systems. UE also partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America to launch the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee to help workers organize for safe workplaces.

The pandemic demonstrated both how “essential” workers are to society, and how little bosses care about their workers, resulting in a significant increase in worker militancy over the following years. This militancy, together with a more worker-friendly labor board during the Biden administration, led to a major increase in NLRB elections across the country.

In the wake of the pandemic, UE organized new locals among federal contract workers, healthcare workers, and manufacturing workers, but the largest organizing gains came in higher education. Groups of workers at ten universities and colleges across the country, many of them seasoned by organizing for protections during the pandemic, chose to organize with UE because of the union’s commitment to rank-and-file democracy, militancy, inclusiveness, and an independent stand on political issues. The thirty thousand new members, most of them young, that joined UE through these organizing campaigns have brought new resources and energy into the union. This has created a true resurgence and positioned UE to lead fights for justice, in both the workplace and the broader society, in the coming decades.

  • 2020: In one of the first the large NLRB elections held following the beginning of the pandemic, workers at the Kentucky Consular Center in Williamsburg, KY organize UE Local 728.
  • 2021: Workers at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania organize UE Local 696. Workers at the Refresco bottling plant in Wharton, NJ, organize UE Local 115. New Mexico Labor Board certifies UE Local 1466 as the collective bargaining agent for graduate employees at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
  • 2022: New Mexico Labor Board certifies UE Local 1498 as the collective bargaining agent for graduate employees at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Graduate workers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology win NLRB election, becoming UE Local 256.
  • 2023: Over 20,000 graduate workers at seven different universities and colleges win NLRB elections, forming UE Locals 197 (Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore), 261 (Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH), 300 (Cornell University in Ithaca, NY), 1043 (Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA), 1103 (University of Chicago), 1105 (University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, MN), and 1122 (Northwestern University in Evanston, IL). Locals 506 and 618 in Erie, PA strike Wabtec for 10 weeks. Solid waste workers in Durham, NC “stand down” and refuse to load their trucks for six days, winning millions of dollars in bonuses with the aid of Local 150. Local 256 settles first contract at MIT, setting new contract standards in higher education.
  • 2024: Locals 197, 261, 1043, 1103, 1105 and 1122 all settle first contracts, following strike preparations and, in the case of Local 261, a 59-day strike. UE plays leading role in the formation of the National Labor Network for Ceasefire, a coalition demanding a ceasefire in Gaza which includes unions representing half of all union members in the U.S.
  • 2025: Local 300 settles first contract at Cornell, winning first contract protections against “academic discipline” in higher education. 79th UE Convention held in Chicago is the largest in recent memory, with over 150 delegates and alternates (almost 70 percent of them first-time delegates), joined by more than 60 staff and guests. Postdoctoral workers at Northwestern University organize UE Local 1151. The independent New Seasons Labor Union in Portland, OR affiliates with UE, becoming UE Local 1010.
  • 2026: Local 613 in Pittsburgh wins voluntary recognition for two dozen physical and occupational therapists.

Further Reading

Visit ueunion.org/history for more UE history, including these articles:

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