The largest Eastern Region council meeting in recent memory, with around 100 delegates, guests, and staff, met this past weekend in North Carolina, home of UE’s statewide Local 150. The council meeting heard shop reports from two dozen locals, reports about UE’s recent growth from two national officers, and, by video, from members of UE locals who have been actively supporting and participating in campus protests demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

“We organize a little different down here in the South”

Welcoming delegates to the meeting, Local 150 President Sekia Royall said, “We organize a little different down here in the South without collective bargaining,” referring to North Carolina’s legal ban on collective bargaining for public-sector workers.

Clockwise from top left: Willie Brown, Tracy Harter, Dominic Harris and Rakesh Patel.

Despite that ban, Local 150 has been engaging in aggressive struggle to win justice for municipal, university, and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) workers over more than two decades, as members from four different Local 150 chapters made clear during the local’s shop report. Willie Brown of the Durham City Workers Union chapter related how his chapter won $6.5 million in bonuses for city workers last fall [1], and discussed their current struggle for a fair wage in the next city budget [2]. He reminded delegates of the importance of having bold goals, saying, “You got to shoot for the stars just to land on the moon.”

Rakesh Patel reported that DHHS workers are fighting for a $20 per hour minimum wage and safe staffing, and taking on corruption, workplace bullying, sexual harassment, and racism. Tracy Harter described how the University of North Carolina forces workers to “pay for the privilege” of working at the lowest-paid jobs at the university, and how her chapter is fighting to change that.

Dominic Harris, president of the Charlotte City Workers Union chapter, spoke about new initiatives his chapter is undertaking. They are working with the firefighters’ union to pursue a “workers’ bill of rights” that would give the union the right to sit in on grievances and disciplinary hearings, and with community organizations on a “people’s budget” that would provide not only fair wages for city workers but also money for housing and other community needs. “We’ve been winning and kicking ass for the last four to five years and we’re going to keep it up with these new initiatives,” Harris said.

In his Organizing Report, Director of Organization Mark Meinster said that for several years UE has been expanding its work to take on the laws that limit public-sector workers’ rights in the South, which he called a “vestige of slavery and Jim Crow,” from North Carolina to Virginia. In Virginia Beach, city sanitation workers went on an illegal strike in 2020 during the pandemic, and have since been organizing with UE. A state law passed in 2020 gives municipal workers the right to collective bargaining, but only if their city council passes an ordinance authorizing it.

Four Virginia Beach city workers attended the council meeting. Brad Belton thanked the delegates for their solidarity, saying that “Coming here has showed me that I am not alone.” Terry Green described how he and Belton had served on the city task force that helped write the ordinance that will be voted on, and Pat Thebert noted the historic nature of the vote — Virginia Beach is the largest city in the state, and if the ordinance passes will become the first city in the Tidewater region to approve collective bargaining. (Trina Love also attended the council meeting, but did not speak.) Following their presentation, Meinster presented the workers with a charter for their local, UE Local 111.

UE Director of Organization Mark Meinster (right) presenting a charter for UE Local 111 to Local 111 President Terry Green.

The council also heard remarks from Local 150 founder and former president Angaza Laughinghouse, who reviewed the history and importance of Black working-class organizing in the South. He described how, in the wake of the Greensboro Massacre in 1979, when union organizers in the textile, higher education and health care sectors were murdered by armed white supremacists, Black workers in North Carolina built both workplace committees and alliances with the community. This self-organization, built on principles of self-determination and self-reliance, would eventually lead to the formation of UE Local 150 in the 1990s.

Angaza Laughinghouse.

Black workers have a special interest in forming “social movement” unions, he said, because “our fight has been a fight for the fundamental right to vote, for housing,” and for other issues that stretch beyond the workplace. “We have to challenge this system that historically has taken away these very fundamental human rights” from Black and immigrant workers especially, but also from all workers.

To challenge the system, Laughinghouse continued, we need unions with “a vision of building a better world.” He spoke about the importance of being willing to break unjust rules and laws, such as those that prohibit public-sector workers from striking, and praised the “breadth of educational opportunities” that UE provides for its members, especially the opportunity to participate in worker-to-worker exchanges in other countries.

Following his presentation, the current leadership of Local 150 presented him with a plaque recognizing him for more than two decades of union leadership, and also recognized a longer list of members with over 20 years of service.

“A younger generation that wants to live by the principles of rank-and-file unionism”

In his National Officer Report, UE General President Carl Rosen reviewed “the long arc of UE history.” For generations, he said, UE members have fought to keep their union alive, to make sure UE and its rank-and-file principles survive as “a beacon to the working class.”

UE General President Carl Rosen.

He reviewed how in the middle of the 20th century, corporate, government and business-union forces combined to attack UE and were successful in reducing the union’s membership by 80 percent. After rebuilding the union’s ranks in the 1960s and 70s, the union’s membership was further reduced by waves of plant closings in the 80s.

Despite the difficulties, Rosen said, “we fought and survived,” leading the fight against concessions and keeping the union’s principles intact. UE also “poured most of our resources into organizing,” expanding into new sectors of the economy beyond manufacturing.

Rosen reviewed the plans adopted and undertaken by the UE membership over the last five years to reverse downward trends in the union’s finances, and praised the hard work and sacrifice that made it possible to keep UE alive for the next generation of workers.

Now, he said, “That next generation of workers is arriving.” UE Local 256 (MIT-GSU) settled a first UE contract last fall, and three other graduate worker locals — Local 1122-Northwestern University Graudate Workers, Local 1103-Graduate Students United at the University of Chicago, and Local 197-Teachers and Researchers United at Johns Hopkins University — followed suit this spring. Each of these locals has thousands of members.

“We are rebuilding this union,” Rosen said, with the help of “a younger generation that wants to live by the principles of rank-and-file unionism.”

Clockwise from top left: Robert van der Drift, Marie Pearce, Daphne Blakely, and Elora Greiner.

In his shop report, Robert van der Drift said that Local 256 now has 87 stewards across the MIT campus, working to enforce their new contract and to “force MIT to provide the things they are supposed to be providing so we can do our work safely.” In addition to a common theme of health and safety, the union is also fighting for the rights of trans and non-binary workers, had fought and won its first disciplinary case, and is fighting for the rights of its members to engage in peaceful protest on campus. Van der Drift called the university crackdown on protestors “a threat to our ability as workers to protest on campus, to express our opinions and beliefs.”

During the organizing report, Marie Pearce of Local 197 mentioned wage increases, guaranteed funding, and a strong agency shop as a key wins in their new contract, which was settled in March. Elora Greiner of Local 261-Graduate Organized Laborers of Dartmouth and Daphne Blakey of Local 300-Cornell Graduate Students United described the actions being taken by the membership of their locals to win first contracts.

New delegates, clockwise from top left: Sylvia Eaves, Francesca Fazzini, Andrew Bonus, and Nick Condon.

Graduate worker locals were not the only part of UE bringing young, new energy to the council meeting, however. Over a dozen of the council attendees were first-time delegates, most of them young, and many first-time delegates got up in front of the room and gave shop reports, including Jorge Guerra, Local 115, Bobbie Johnson, Local 119, Sylvia Eaves, Local 123, Aiden Mohamed, Local 208, Francesca Fazzini, Local 613, Brooke Emert, Local 625, Andrew Bonus, Local 683, Dustin Leonard, Local 690, and Nick Condon, Local 696. Eastern Region President George Waksmunski called it “very inspiring” to hear “so many new people coming forward and giving these reports.”

Other locals also reported on successful efforts to get new people involved in their locals. Em Hammond, Local 221, reported that her local has several new stewards and people who want to join the executive board. Chris Fiorentino, Local 243, talking about his local’s upcoming elections, said, “it’s a good thing that we’re starting to see new blood come in.”

Action for Gaza Ceasefire

Left: Jawuanna McAllister of Local 300 at the encampment at Cornell University. Right: Local 256 President Sophie Coppieters't Wallant at the MIT encampment.

The council also viewed video reports by UE leaders from two of the campus encampments protesting the war in Gaza, which are spreading across the country and facing crackdowns from their universities and from the police. In a video from the encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Local 256 President Sophie Coppieters't Wallant said that the union is ready and willing to use its power to protect its members’ right of freedom of expression, saying, “We know that it’s critical for us as workers to have the freedom to protest to be able to build our power.” Jawuanna McAllister, Local 300, gave delegates a virtual tour of the encampment at Cornell University.

President Rosen, in his report, condemned “the blindness of the Biden administration to the atrocities” in Gaza, and noted that Israel is now using mass starvation as a weapon of war. He warned delegates about the broader implications of the crackdown on protest on university campuses, saying “Make no mistake, this is a new era of McCarthyism.”

Western Region President Bryan Martindale, who was visiting the Eastern Region along with Western Region Vice President Larry Hopkins as part of a region-to-region exchange, also addressed the war in Gaza in his remarks to the meeting. He noted that Israel’s war is in large part “funded by us, the United States taxpayer,” and declared, “we have to find a way to stop the madness.”

“I will always be a part of UE no matter what”

Scott Slawson, Local 506, embraces Antwon Gibson, Local 610 (wearing hat).

In an emotional shop report, Local 610 President and Eastern Region Vice President Antwon Gibson admitted that “We’re going through a tough struggle,” with Wabtec having announced plans to close the Wilmerding facility where he works. (Local 610 represents workers at two Wabtec facilities, one in Wilmerding and one in Greensburg.) The company had announced the plant closing as “a bargaining tool” during the local’s most recent negotiations, Gibson said, but despite the threat, “the members engaged in a fight” and won a good contract. This was the last council meeting which he would attend as president of Local 610, he said, but “being a leader [means] fight[ing] to the very end,” and “I will always be a part of UE no matter what.”

Local 610 Vice President Jeff Kohler said of Gibson, “He’s been a guide to me, he’s been a guide to our local.” He noted that the company had fired Gibson a couple of times, but “he comes out every time with his head high and does the right thing every single time. … It is going to be a huge loss for UE when we lose this guy.”

In elections held at the end of the day, delegates re-elected Vice President Gibson, along with President George Waksmunski and Secretary-Treasurer Scott Slawson, Local 506. Janet Gray, Local 618, was elected as recording secretary.

Jim Borowski, Local 106, Jorge Guerra, Local 115, Theresa Sochanchak, Local 119, Josh Reuter, Local 123, Sekia Royall, Local 150, Gary Stuard, Local 203, Aiden Mohamed, Local 208, Em Hammond, Local 221, Margaret Dabrowski, Local 222, Jane Shepard-O'Connor, Local 228, Dean Pacileo, Local 243, John Pruss, Local 267, Bud Decker, Local 329, John Miles, Local 506, Jeff Kohler, Local 610, Alison Oniboni, Local 613, Karleen Torrance, Local 618, Sharon Johnston, Local 625, Brian Desanto, Local 642, Malcolm Toran, Local 683, Andrew Bonus, Local 684, Tony Hall, Local 690, and Nick Condon, Local 696 were elected to serve on the region’s executive board; Borowski, Royall, Dabrowski, Pacileo, and Decker will represent the region on the General Executive Board. Dominic Harris, Local 150 and Buffy Smith, Local 506, were re-elected as trustees, and David Bedore, Local 123, was elected as alternate trustee.

Eastern Region officers, executive board and trustees are sworn in by UE General President Carl Rosen.