Workers will bear the cost of higher interest rates; rising energy prices erase all wage gains since Trump’s inauguration; McDonald’s using AI to gouge consumers; corporate profit, federal disinvestment, and climate change are supercharging water rate hikes; damaging new rules on student loans take effect; and scammers rob SNAP recipients while Trump Administration does little to stop them.
UE Local 613 ratified a new four-year agreement on September 14, achieving key goals set by the local entering into negotiations. “The gains we achieved on salaries will allow our extremely deserving members to pay their bills, meet their basic needs, improve the living standards for themselves and their families, and try to keep up with economic demands,” said UE Local 613 President Alison Oniboni, who also served as co-chair of the bargaining committee.
Members of Local 1186, representing Willy Street Co-op in Madison, WI, have been strategically aligning resources and strengthening connections with other labor and community organizations as part of a collective effort to prepare for potential threats to democracy, writes Local 1186 steward Jason Fuhrman. “We have been working to circulate and collect pledge cards for labor rights, with escalating actions to which the signer can commit. These actions range from simply voting for pro-labor candidates and phone banking to being a constitutional observer and participating in a national economic blackout in the event that the elections are compromised.”
On October 3, UE hosted a delegation from the Belgian trade union FGTB. UE Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker and members of UE Local 667 joined the Belgian trade unionists at an Oktoberfest event in Pittsburgh, which raised money for Palestinians.
The Belgian union delegation, members of the Belgian FGTB, was on a three-city tour (Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Chicago) to meet union leaders and other activists to discuss how they are fighting the far-right and fascism.
“Our union is a powerful tool that we must utilize to attain a society and a world that is truly equitable and just for all,” declared Local 1186 Vice President Michele McCoy during the Western Region council meeting’s political action report. McCoy and Local 1107 President Kellye Allen were reporting on resolutions that their locals, both located in Wisconsin, had passed about defending labor and democratic rights in the upcoming midterm elections.
On September 28 and 29 respectively, UE Locals 728 and 228 ratified new one-year agreements. The locals collectively represent over 800 workers who process visa petitions and provide petitioner support at the U.S. Department of State’s (DOS) Kentucky Consular Center (KCC) in Williamsburg, KY (Local 728), and National Visa Center (NVC) in Portsmouth, NH (Local 228). They are sister locations whose members are both employed by federal contractor LDRM under DOS’s Visa Support Services contract.
The members of UE Local 115 ratified a new three-year agreement on August 27 after four months of negotiations. Refresco employees bottle beverage products like Gatorade, Bodyarmor, Tropicana, and generic sodas for various supermarket chains. The contract, Local 115’s second with Refresco, includes an average 14 percent wage increase across the life of the agreement, establishes firm limits on mandatory overtime, and lowers penalties for attendance infractions.
On September 22, the Portsmouth City Council passed a collective bargaining ordinance allowing city workers “the right to organize, form, join, assist, and pay dues or contributions to employee organizations, to bargain collectively through an exclusive bargaining representative of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”
At the end of September, UE Local 221 members who work for the Head Start program at Northeast Kingdom Community Action (NEKCA) ratified a two-year contract that includes wage increases and improvements to language. The benefits in the contract were won despite $1.2 million of federal funding cut to the Head Start program.
UE Local 119, which represents approximately 200 one-on-one aides, teacher assistants, bus aides, and before and after school program attendants in the Winslow Township schools, concluded negotiations with their employer, the contractor ESS, at the end of September. The one-year contract will provide most workers with a 2.25 percent wage increase, with some senior workers receiving a three percent increase. Workers also gained a second day of bereavement leave.
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