UE General President Peter Knowlton traveled to Windsor today to express UE’s solidarity with thousands of GM workers facing layoffs.
“When any group of workers is ready to fight to keep their jobs and preserve strong communities, they deserve UE support and solidarity,” says Knowlton. “UE has a long tradition of fighting plant closings and doing whatever is necessary to keep our members’ jobs.”
In Can the Working Class Change the World? economist and labor educator Michael Yates makes the case that the working class — and only the working class — can indeed overcome economic inequality, eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, and meet the challenge of environmental degradation and climate change. Historian Erik Loomis’s A History of America in Ten Strikes is an original and engaging way to re-learn U.S. history through the lens of working-class struggle.
More than three dozen UE leaders and staff traveled to Port Elgin, Ontario on November 9-11 to discuss key challenges and issues facing the labor movement with trade unionists from across North America, along with allies from Europe and Australia. The North American Solidarity Project Conference brought together 140 delegates from six unions in four countries.
“I do not have to tell you we are in horrifying and shocking times,” said Northeast Region President Elizabeth Jesdale as she welcomed delegates to the regional council meeting on November 2. “Our rights and the rights of our sisters, brothers and comrades are being stomped on and diminished daily… It is up to us to gain the education and skills to not only fight for ourselves, but for us to reach out and pull up the unorganized so they may break their chains.”
On Tuesday, November 27th, UE members stood alongside their allies in the Poor People's Campaign, the NAACP, and Repairers of the Breach for a Moral Day of Action in Raleigh, North Carolina.
After North Carolina was devastated by Hurricane Florence this fall, the state legislature called a special session to pass a hurricane recovery bill. However, Republican legislators also decided to ram through a last-minute voter ID bill, since they will lose their veto-proof supermajority in January.
UE General President Peter Knowlton was one of four labor leaders who addressed the inaugural conference of the Sanders Institute, “The Gathering,” last weekend. The Sanders Institute brings together organizers, educators and progressive elected officials to promote progressive solutions to economic, environmental, racial and social justice issues.
On October 27 and 28, Western Region delegates from Indiana to California met to discuss the upcoming midterm elections, new organizing, and shop-floor struggle.
The UE Local 506 Sports Committee takes their commitment to veterans seriously — but not too seriously to have fun. Since 1996, they have raised $319,873 for the Erie VA Medical Center with a variety of events that bring UE members and their families together, honor veterans’ service, and raise money to meet the needs of local veterans.
UE members in Iowa delivered a massive rebuke to the Republican politicians who are trying to de-unionize Iowa's public sector, voting to retain their unions by well over 80 percent in seven bargaining units covering over four thousand workers.
Members of UE Local 123, who make commercial HVAC systems for Daikin, were recently told that their employer plans to move some of their work to Mexico. The boss is also is requesting that workers take a voluntary six-week furlough due to the company being in a financial hardship.
Yet at the same time the company plans for employees to stay home from work on unemployment, it is scheduling union members and other hourly employees to work beyond the maximum twenty-six weekends a calendar year allowed by the collective bargaining agreement between Daikin and the local union.
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