John Lambiase, who served as president of UE District Six from 1998 to 2005, passed away on January 3. He led his first strike at age 15, when he was a steward at a grocery store in Brooklyn. After a stint working for the United Farm Workers and volunteering on the 1979 UE strike at Kraco in Los Angeles, he was hired as a UE field organizer and assigned to work with locals in Connecticut.
Bob Rudek of UE Local 1111 passed away on December 27. He served as both plant chief steward and president of Local 1111, which represented over 1,000 workers at the Allen Bradley factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Although UE leaders and supporters in the public arts community have secured enough funding to remove the most important parts of the “Solidarity” mural from the UE Hall in Chicago prior to new owners taking over the building, they are seeking additional donations to complete the task of removing the walls and to pay for virtual documentation of the mural.
UE Local 1118 members who process paperwork for the US Citizen and Imigration Services (USCIS) have seen a lot of contractors come and go, but have never had the challenges they experienced over the past year getting paid for work they had already performed.
UE Local 1160 members at Roth Pump manufacture pumps for oil rigs, chemical plants, and refineries. On November 18, those members ratified a new four-year agreement. After a period of relatively little activity, members elected a new executive board and decided to send a message to management that they were done with concessionary bargaining and would not settle for a contract unless it addressed rising inflation, healthcare, increased vacation, and safety.
The members of UE local 1121 at Aramark/Vestis ratified a new five-year agreement on October 13, after fighting back a bitter attempt to break the local union by the boss. Despite the employer’s illegal tactics of threats, lies, and outright bribes to break their local union, members voted by a two-to-one margin to reject an attempted decertification.
On November 29, 2023, Post Consumer Brands called a meeting to notify the 160 UE members who maintain the facility (Local 718) and manufacture cereal (Local 777) at the Lancaster cereal plant that they would all be out of a job in six months to one year. The officers of both locals got this terrible news via a PowerPoint presentation from the Post corporate officials in a hotel conference room a few towns over, and halted further discussions until they could get back to the plant and inform the membership of both locals in person.
After their last contract with the Windsor Locks Board of Education, members of the UE Local 222 Sublocal 4 negotiating committee continued to meet every six to eight weeks to see how things were going and what they would fight for in the next contract. When it came time to negotiate a new contract in 2023, these seasoned veterans all brought their stories to the table, did their research, and stood firm with management when they would question them on an issue.
Close to a hundred people came out on January 15, 2024 for the 34th annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration at the Bloomer Hill Community Center and heard keynote speaker City Councilman Andre Knight address the topic, “Workers Want Justice.” The Carolina Auto, Aerospace and Machine Workers Union (CAAMWU) chapter of UE Local 150 has co-sponsored the annual MLK Day event since 1991.
On the first day of Black History Month, February 1, 2024, members of UE Local 150’s Durham City Workers Union chapter from the Solid Waste and Public Works departments met with Mayor Leonardo Williams and Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton to discuss their demands for the Fiscal Year 2024-25 budget, to be voted on in June.
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