68th National UE Convention Daily Summaries: Tuesday Morning. On Tuesday morning, August 26, the 68th Convention heard from presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Delegates liked what they heard.
The members of amalgamated UE Local 299 who work at Entoleter decided on May 1 to strike to gain a cap on employee health-insurance costs and a decent raise.
Both goals have been achieved after seven-and-a-half weeks on the picket line.
The new contract, settled June 23, is the first with a new owner. Headquartered in Groningen, Netherlands, NIVOBA manufactures equipment and installations for the chemical, food, pharmaceutical and environmental industries. Entoleter has produced milling machines and air pollution control equipment for more than 60 years.
The union negotiating committee voted unanimously on July 7 to recommend rejection of a tentative agreement reached the previous week with City Market, a downtown supermarket/food co-op.
The decision to recommend rejection follows a meeting with the City Market Board of Directors, at which the board rejected three union requests:
1. A policy statement acknowledging that livable wages remain the goal for all City Market workers.
2. Assurances that management would share the same economic pain experienced by workers.
Representatives of UE locals in the General Electric chain adopted a comprehensive set of contract proposals at a meeting of the UE-GE Conference Board in the union’s national headquarters here March 28.
UE’s national negotiations with General Electric begin May 20 in New York. The UE national agreement with GE expires June 15.
UE OFFICERS’ STATEMENT ON THE WAR ON IRAQ, March 20, 2003
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."
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