UE NEWS Updates

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Motor City Labor Welcomes Republic Workers' Victory Tour

February 11, 2009
Detroit

A crowd of 400 Motor City labor activists gathered at the IBEW Hall in Detroit on February 9, including the presidents of the Michigan AFL-CIO State Federation and of the Greater Detroit Labor Council. Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW), Steelworkers (USW), International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), AFSCME, Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) participated. This was the ninth stop on the two-week Republic Workers’ Victory Tour.

Trumbull School Sub-local 21 Raises Pay 13% Over Four Years

February 10, 2009
Trumbull, CT
The members of Sub-local 21 of UE Local 222/CILU who work as supervisors for the Trumbull Board of Education have ratified a new four year contract. Members will receive a 3.25 percent general wage increase retroactive to July 2008, and a 3.25 percent wage increase each year though June 2012.

The employer and the union also agreed to consolidate various stipends that had been paid annually to certain members, which resulted in significant equity adjustments for food service and transportation positions.

Workers Win Wage, Benefit Gains in Second UE Contract at Stepan

February 10, 2009
Fieldsboro NJ

UE Local 155 members at the Stepan Company, a chemical manufacturer, voted to approve, on December 12, the company’s final offer for a new three-year agreement. The new contract increased wages by 2.75 percent (retroactive to November 28), and will bring two additional raises of 2.5 percent each on November 28, 2009 and 2010. Workers in the classification of blended operators received an additional 50 cent and hour equity increase. The average hourly wage prior to the new agreement was $27.24.

Bailed-Out Bank Helps Stir Business Opposition to EFCA

January 29, 2009

Not only are recipients of the federal bank bailout using some of that money to pay big executive bonuses and to buy corporate jets. Some of them are also using that money – which is really our money – to attack unions and organize business opposition (including soliciting political contributions) against the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for workers to organize.

UE Honored as "Most Valuable Union" by The Nation Magazine

January 5, 2009

In an article posted on its website on New Year’s Eve, The Nation, highly-respected weekly magazine on the political left, named the “Most Valuable Progressives of 2008." In this year-end round-up of exemplary activism, The Nation’s Washington correspondent John Nichols placed UE at the top of an impressive list of agents for positive change.

Local 150 Celebrates UFCW Organizing Win At North Carolina Meatpacking Plant

December 19, 2008
Raleigh

UE Local 150 members in North Carolina are celebrating a major victory for labor in that state. On December 10 and 11, culminating a 16-year organizing struggle, workers at Smithfield Foods' giant meatpacking plant in Tar Heel voted 2,041 to 1,879 to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). The plant, largest of its kind in the U.S., slaughters 32,000 hogs a day.

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