UE NEWS Updates

UE Local 208 has achieved an important victory with a wage settlement, announced May 3, between the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and Stanley Associates and other contractors at the Vermont Service Center. The settlement means $2.9 million in payments to around 700 workers who have been employed by the contractors at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Center in St. Albans in the past three years. The money is owed because Stanley and the other contractors systematically underpaid workers.

A year after the closing of the plant and apparent destruction of the union, UE Local 1187 has risen from the ashes. Load King is once again a UE union shop. This is another case of UE members who refused to give up and continued their fight, even in what appear to be hopeless circumstances.

In a unanimous vote on February 8 , members approved a new contract and an agreement settling NLRB charges which will put UE and its members back into the shop, which manufactures truck trailers.

People around the world are watching the situation in Japan with deep concern and sympathy for the victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami, and with worry over the dangerous situation at the Fukusima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For UE, those concerns are intensified by our close fraternal relationship with Zenroren, Japan’s large progressive union confederation, a connection that goes back more than 15 years.

A year after the closing of the plant and apparent destruction of the union, UE Local 1187 has risen from the ashes. Load King is once again a UE union shop. This is another case of UE members who refused to give up and continued their fight, even in what appear to be hopeless circumstances.