UE NEWS Updates

In October 2021, a handful of Dartmouth College graduate students gathered in a living room and set out to do something none of them had ever done before — form a labor union. By April 2023, the Graduate Organized Laborers of Dartmouth (GOLD) had overcome unprecedented unionbusting tactics to win recognition as a UE local representing 800 graduate teachers and researchers. On May Day of 2024, GOLD-UE went on strike for a fair contract.

“I keep on asking are they alive or are they dead?”

Shuruq As’ad, a journalist in the West Bank and a member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, described the constant worry of checking in on her colleagues in Gaza to a webinar hosted by the National Labor Network for Ceasefire on Tuesday, July 9. Due to lack of electricity and internet connection in Gaza, she often doesn’t hear back for several days or a week, and her fear is not unfounded: as she reported, 151 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military in the past nine months.

A UE delegation traveled to Mexico for a week in May to meet with our allies at the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) for the first time since 2017. The trip was an important opportunity to ground UE members in the union’s international solidarity work, which prioritizes supporting workers in their struggles with their bosses. As members learned, even when our managers might be different, our employers use the same kinds of tactics to prevent workers from organizing and to exploit workers’ labor.

UE’s General Executive Board, made up of elected rank-and-file members from around the country, met from June 5-7.

On the opening day, board members had a frank and wide-ranging discussion about the upcoming presidential election, which offers working people, in the words of Western Region President Bryan Martindale, “the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. “We’re at rock-bottom hard spot,” Martindale said.