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Just 10 days after UE’s successful Political Action Conference in Washington, more than 50 UE members were back in the nation’s capital to participate in the One Nation Working Together rally. Seen here near the Lincoln Memorial, the UE delegation included members from eight states.
In April 2009 35 tutors and job coaches voted to join Sub-local 60 of UE Local 222, which already represented all the educational assistants, custodians, and secretaries in the Farmington school system. The union recently concluded negotiations to integrate those workers into the union contract, greatly improving their workplace rights and their benefits.
On September 30, an hour before the existing contract’s midnight expiration, and having already voted to authorize a strike if needed, the members of Local 120 voted to ratify the tentative agreement reached earlier that evening by the union negotiating committee and management of Locke Insulator.
Rail industry van drivers at Renzenberger Incorporated have achieved their first union contract. Agreement was reached and ratified in late August on a contract covering 160 workers, who in September were chartered as UE Local 1177. The contract breaks a company wage freeze and establishes for the first time basic worker rights and union protections – including a strong grievance procedure, protection from unjust firings and discipline, seniority and paid time off.
UE Local 150 has won a ruling that three workers at Central State Regional Hospital were unjustly fired. In a case that the union fought through the grievance procedure for nearly two years, a state administrative law judge ruled on September 20 that the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) did not have just cause to fire nurse Patricia Swann and health care technicians John Long Jr. and Fred Gooch. He ordered the workers reinstated and made whole for their losses, including back pay and legal fees.
UE Local 204’s fight to save the Haskon plant, and the jobs of its approximately 100 members, is coming to a head. And the story was the subject of a major report by journalist Roger Bybee on the labor news blog Working In These Times (a project of the progressive newsmagazine In These Times.)
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Under the guise of fighting the federal budget deficit, a renewed attack on Social Security is being plotted in Washington by a commission that’s meeting in secret and intends to push its plan through Congress after the election.
There are 15 million unemployed people in our country and another 9 million underemployed. In July, we lost another 131,000 jobs. That included 71,000 private-sector layoffs, but also 48,000 jobs eliminated by state and local governments. July’s dismal numbers follow those of June, when 221,000 people lost their jobs.
The vast majority of warehouse workers in Will County, Illinois – a huge hub for the logistics industry near Chicago – are temps who are paid poverty wages and receive no benefits. Those are among the findings in an eight-month study and survey of those workers on their economic status and working conditions conducted by Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ). The findings of that study were released by WWJ on August 16, in a report titled “Bad Jobs in Goods Movement: Warehouse Work in Will County.”
UE Local 170 members are mobilizing against efforts by the state to privatize information technology (IT) jobs. On July 14, nearly 100 state Office of Technology employees showed up for a union press conference outside their workplace in the Capitol Complex – turning it into a rally against outsourcing. UE members say that state’s plans would not only wipe out jobs, but would endanger the privacy of West Virginia residents.
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