This story has been updated: www.ueunion.org/unity2003_pensionurged.html
General Electric retirees deserve "an immediate and substantial pension increase," says UE. In a March 4 letter, UE President John H. Hovis reminds company officials that "It has now been nearly three years since General Electric has seen fit to adjust the pensions of its retirees."
A card-check completed on Friday, Feb. 28 brought UE its latest organizing win, securing bargaining rights for approximately 160 full and part-time workers at Burlington’s cooperatively owned downtown supermarket.
Rev. Michael Cronogue of St. Michael’s College conducted the card count and reported that 105 of 157 eligible employees signed UE membership cards.
A majority of co-op workers had also voted for the union in a community election earlier in the month as a means of convincing the co-op’s board of directors to agree to the card-check procedure.
A statement issued by the UE General Officers follows.
Hugh Harley, a veteran organizer and retired UE national officer whose connection with the union spanned more than six decades, died Friday, Feb. 14 in his home in Florida. Harley was particularly known for his major role in organizing the machine-tool, cutting-tool and hand-tool industries in western Massachusetts and Vermont and negotiating agreements with those employers.
The UE General Executive Board, meeting in the union’s headquarters here Jan. 16-17, endorsed the founding statement of the newly organized U.S. Labor Against the War coalition. The Board made a $1,000 donation to the coalition and agreed to publicize union-backed anti-war activity throughout UE and further internal discussions about the issues behind the drive to war with Iraq.
The two-day national strike against the General Electric Company has been "an impressive display of solidarity and resolve," according to UE-GE Conference Board Secretary Steve Tormey. Reporting from GE’s giant Locomotive works in Erie, Pa., Tormey said "everything’s shut down tight, there are no scabs."
For Immediate Release January 8, 2003 For more information, contact: Peter Gilmore or Stephen Tormey 412-471-8919; uenews@ranknfile-ue.org; uege@ranknfile-ue.org
With a large state budget deficit and political scandals compromising both parties, the Wisconsin Capitol is not a place most state legislators would like to be these days.
On April 30, the Capitol became even more interesting as UE members came to town to demand action to save manufacturing jobs.
Those attending the fourth annual Wisconsin UE Political Action Day met with Gov. Scott McCallum and with at least one of their lawmakers.
Workers at Azteca, a tortilla factory, voted by a more than two-to-one margin for UE in a representation election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board on April 12. The vote was 59 for UE, 25 for the company, and 1 for the discredited Distillery Workers Union. Azteca employs approximately 90 workers.
• In Memoriam ...
James M. Kane, who served as president of UE during the Reagan years, died April 1 at age 78. A militant leader of Vermont machine workers, Kane was also president of UE’s northeastern region for many years.
Despite many years in union office, Kane had difficulty with the notion of being a "professional" labor leader. "It’s hard for me to get over the idea that I’m a worker," he told a reporter in 1981.
The UE Local 1421 members at Graham Packaging take satisfaction from knowing that under the terms of their new agreement health insurance will continue to be a company-paid benefit – without a cent coming out of their pockets towards the cost of the premium.
Also, the contract sets doctor-visit co-payments at $5, so that the cost to Graham workers can’t be raised by health care providers.
Negotiations took five days, concluding March 1. UE members ratified the contract on March 6.
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