UE NEWS Updates

Workers at Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier Vermont who are organized into UE Local 255 made significant progress in this round of contract negotiations. By keeping the members informed and remaining united, the final contract retained important protections and made some significant improvements. The new agreement, covering 108 workers, is a three-year contract with reopeners on wages, health insurance, retirement and gain share.

On July 3 – the day before Independence Day – a bill to revoke the ban on collective bargaining and contracts for state and local government employees was approved by a majority of a House judiciary committee. This is an important first step toward repealing North Carolina´;s unjust 50-year-old General Statute 95-98, and giving public employees the right to bargain.

Nearly 50 members of UE, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Jobs with Justice and other supporters rallied on June 6 outside the annual meeting of DirecTV in New York City to protest the denial of workers´ rights by the giant satellite TV company and its subcontractors. Four of them – Northeast Regional President Peter Knowlton, UE Local 719 member and DirecTV contractor employee Victor Iddings, International Rep.

The Bush administration has no love for unions anywhere, but in Iraq it has a special reason for hating them. They are the main opposition to the occupation’s economic agenda, and the biggest obstacle to that agenda’s centerpiece - the privatization of Iraq´s oil. At the same time, unions have become the only force in Iraq trying to maintain at least a survival living standard for the millions of Iraqis who still have to go to work every day, in the middle of the war.