UE NEWS Features

Thirty years ago, UE organized its first graduate worker local at the University of Iowa. Since then, UE has negotiated contracts at 11 universities and has graduate worker members at 12 chartered locals.

On the last five days of the year, we count down the “top five” UE NEWS stories of the past year on social media. From a major first contract and a big organizing win in higher education, to the affiliation and first contract win of over 800 grocery workers in the Pacific Northwest, to bargaining contracts in the Trump era and the 79th UE Convention, here they are.

UE’s commitment to Palestinian rights is the exception, not the rule, in the U.S. labor movement. In his new book, No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine, historian Jeff Schuhrke explains that the U.S. labor movement has never been neutral when it comes to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and critiques those that claim unions should stay out of the worsening conflict. He explains in detail how U.S. unions have not only supported Israel, but helped build it.

The ongoing organizational renewal and substantial growth of the United Electrical Workers (UE) is one of the most distinctly remarkable stories in the U.S. labor movement in decades. Few other unions have suffered such losses from state repression, raiding attacks by opportunist unions, and the catastrophic effects of corporate job relocation — and survived. Of the original 42 unions who comprised the founding roster of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO) in 1938, a grand total of eight survive intact today. UE is one of them. The remainder have passed out of existence, been destroyed by repression and employer attacks, or been merged into larger unions and lost forever.