The school custodians, maintenance workers and groundskeepers in New Fairfield, Connecticut were prepared for some tough bargaining as 2009 approached. Their current contract was set to expire on June 30, and the town has a long history of making negotiations difficult.
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| Marie Lausch, president of Connecticut statewide UE Local 222 and a member of UE’s General Executive Board, and Bob South, president of UE Local 234, trustee of the national union, and a member of the Vermont House of Representatives, on their way to deliver a stack of petitions more than two inches thick to both the House and Senate |
A big group of UE Local 1174 members and supporters from other unions demonstrated at Wells Fargo’s Rock Island branch on Thursday, July 9. Nearly a dozen workers were arrested after they blocked a street to symbolize how Wells Fargo is a “roadblock to recovery.”
Workers are continuing their fight to keep Quad City Die Casting open and save 100 jobs. The plant is slated to close because Wells Fargo – recipient of $25 billion in the federal banking bailout – has cut off operating credit to the company.
UE Local 1174 filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board today because workers are being denied their benefits. The company informed employees that Wells Fargo, the bailed-out bank that had already cut off operating credit to the plant, would not approve the expenditure of owed vacation pay. In addition, the company now refuses to comply with a 2 percent wage increase due the employees under their legally-binding collective bargaining agreement or to pay a floating holiday, and has eliminated health insurance coverage.
UE members and allies today conducted protests across the country at 20 branch offices of banking giant Wells Fargo, from Boston to Los Angeles. Joined by members of other unions, Jobs with Justice and community organizations, members chanted, “You got bailed out, we got sold out!” and carried signs with that same message. The union charges that the bank, the recipient of a $25 billion bailout from taxpayers, is unfairly forcing the closure of a viable Illinois factory and has become a roadblock to economic recovery.
In November 2008, UE Local 222 Sub-local 58, the Department of Public Works employees’ union, finally reached a tentative agreement for a new contract replacing the one that had expired in June 2007. But in an attempt to bully the committee, the town’s attorney inserted new language into the final draft that had never been negotiated or discussed at the bargaining table.
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Over 200 UE members and supporters rallied outside Wells Fargo’s Chicago offices, demanding that the giant bank restore financing to Quad City Die Casting, and save 100 jobs in Moline, IL.
A new five-year study released last week reveals that private sector employer opposition to the efforts of American workers to form unions has intensified and become more punitive in recent years.
The members of UE Local 1174 are telling Wells Fargo & Co. not to put their plant out of business. Today they are visiting Wells Fargo’s corporate offices in Davenport, Iowa, demanding a meeting with bank officials and a plan to keep Quad City Die Casting open.
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