Initially, the bill proposed benefits lasting up to 12 weeks for striking workers. However, the bill faced fierce scrutiny in the State House from corporate-backed Republicans. The bill was eventually settled to 6 weeks after Republican opposition attempted to lower the threshold to 4 weeks.

Workers will be eligible for benefits starting between 15 to 21 days after the beginning of the strike, depending on the day the strike starts. If a contract is ratified before that time, benefits will not be issued.

April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, stated “No one wants to go out on strike… Going out on strike is the absolute last resort and workers that strike do so because there is simply no other option.”

The post WA State Governor Signs Bill Extending Unemployment Benefits to Striking Workers appeared first on Labor Today.

Good afternoon brothers and sisters. My name is M. Drezner and I represent the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 426 right here in Sioux Falls. I’m proud to be here with all of you today to take a stand against what the Trump administration is doing to our unions representing federal workers. Right now, workers at AFGE and other unions representing government employees are in a fight to preserve collective bargaining, a cornerstone of the labor movement. The working class movement has always been at its strongest when workers band together to fight for respect and dignity in the workplace. Now viewing this strength as a threat, the Trump administration is working to dismantle these unions which represent hundreds of thousands of workers across the country.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s attacks on the working class. Alfredo Juarez, a leader of Familias Unidas por la Justicia in Washington was detained by ICE. Mahmoud Khalil of UAW Local 2710 was abducted for exercising his first amendment rights. Kilmar Garcia, a SMART Local 100 apprentice was arrested and sent to a Salvadorian prison. Our union brothers and sisters around the country are under attack at this very moment.

Attacking the working class will not fix the problems we are facing in this country. All workers deserve a life of dignity and safety, collective bargaining, good wages, and the ability to retire. By attacking unions and the ability for workers to collectively struggle for better conditions, we are making the situation worse, not better. It is easy to attack workers as being “entitled” for wanting more when we have become complacent with asking for so little and not realizing that it is our efforts that set this economy into motion every day. What the working class needs more than anything right now is more unity, not more division.

We must remember that when one worker is attacked, we are all attacked. That is why I stand here today in solidarity with our AFGE brothers and sisters, this is the whole meaning behind working-class solidarity. An assault on union rights for federal workers today will lead to an assault on workers in the construction trade like myself tomorrow. I urge everyone here today to get involved in your community. If you’re in a union, attend your meetings, voice your opinion and work to strengthen solidarity within our organizations. The task before us is big, but it is not insurmountable. We will quickly find out that all of us have more in common with each other than we ever thought. Solidarity!

The post When One Worker is Attacked, We Are All Attacked appeared first on Labor Today.

Instrumental in this task were certain officials who set the guidelines for economic and social policies. One of them was José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, who, as Minister of Economy, defined and implemented policies harmful to working people. Another was Domingo Felipe Cavallo, former president of the Central Bank during the last dictatorship, among other positions he held before and after, and who, as Minister of Economy under Menem, created the AFJP (Financial Pension Funds). All of the above is relevant because they are two figures admired by President Javier Milei, who, from their positions of public office, only brought misery and pain to the people.

We, the Coordinating Board of Retiree and Pensioner Organizations, point this out because the Pension System in Argentina is just beginning to be debated, which requires us retirees to make the greatest efforts to disseminate our proposal. It consists, in essence, of a public, supportive, pay-as-you-go, intergenerational, assisted system, led and administered by active workers and retirees, with the participation of the State, as the National Constitution states, it is the guarantor of social security.
It is important to emphasize that any pension system is closely related to the current labor system. You cannot expect the best retirement system with job insecurity and informality, miserable wages, the absence of employer contributions, and a negligent State.

The slogan remains the same: “We are all retirees, it’s just a matter of time.” We call on the working people to join our struggle through unions and central organizations, as well as social, cultural, student, and political organizations within a broad framework of unity.

The post ARGENTINA: Wednesday Retiree Update appeared first on Labor Today.

Taken over and forced into administration by the Albanese government, CFMEU workers and their officials are being hounded, spied on, and subjected to intimidation by the state, including the Australian Federal Police. The administrators are using the union’s money to persecute its members.

Although Labor officially disbanded the ABCC and transferred most of its vicious anti-union, anti-worker powers to the Fair Work Act Commission, the remaining powers are still being wielded as a political weapon aimed at destroying militant trade unionism. The criminalisation of legitimate trade union activity and use of the courts to bleed unions of their funds remains in place, albeit with reduced penalties.

Union officials attempting to recruit members, speak to their members or organise in the workplace are still being prosecuted. Workers who take industrial action to protect their wages and working conditions or refuse to work in unsafe conditions are pursued.

The ABCC used its draconian powers to call workers in for secret interrogation sessions. Failure to attend or refusal to inform on who said what at a union meeting was punishable by huge fines and up to six months jail.

The ABCC was set up by the Howard government and retained in a modified form by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments under a new name. As well as having drained CFMEU members’ money, it also wasted millions of dollars a year of taxpayers’ money and cost the court system millions more.

The Albanese Labor government placed the Construction and General Division of the union into administration and appointed Mark Irving KC as Administrator on 23 August 2024 for up to five years.

The framework giving Irving incredible powers and absolute control over the union was put in place by former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

One of Irving’s first actions was to sack paid union officials in Queensland, NSW, and Victoria and dismantle elected positions and the democratic bodies of the union.

BLEEDING THE CFMEU DRY

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reports that the administration appointed by Irving has spent $4.4 million in expenses in its first seven months. These costs have been borne by the union’s NSW, Victorian, and Queensland branches.

The bill mostly consists of employees’ hefty salaries and investigation costs, including contractors and consultants. According to the AFR, Irving is paid  $643,640 a year. That will come to $1.9 million over the administration’s minimum three-year term.

Irving’s deputy chief of staff, former Australian Services Union official Michael Flinn, is reportedly paid $330,000 a year.

CFMEU SINGLED OUT

Under the ABCC the construction union paid out tens of millions of dollars in penalties for the ‘crime’ of chasing workers’ unpaid entitlements and attempting to make construction sites safe. Union officials and workers were also fined for organising and taking action.

The ABCC’s obsession was such that some of the cases taken to court were petty and vindictive.

For example, in one case the magistrate commented on the waste of time and public funds involved in a long drawn-out case in which an organiser was accused of swearing at a boss, saying: “We have had one witness today about a case whether a bloke took his hat off or didn’t take his hat off and whether he said, f-ck off, to somebody or he didn’t say f-ck off to somebody. One wonders. One wonders about the motive for all this.”

Nonetheless the official was found guilty. The union received a combined total of $12,500 in fines and the organiser lost his right of entry to building sites for 12 months. The organiser was on the site workers were instructed to work in pouring rain on an unsafe site. Never forget; unions make work safer. No job can be too safe.

Now with the union handicapped, bullying and harassment cases are now on the rise.

Despite the hefty penalties, the militant union never let up pursuing bosses who killed and injured workers and stole worker’s entitlements. Those bosses were rarely chased by the ABCC.

IT PAYS TO BE UNION

It is not hard to work out why the CFMEU is the main target. The union has collected millions of dollars for workers who were ripped off by unscrupulous employers. “That’s a lot of hard-earned money back in the pockets of workers for them and their families that they otherwise wouldn’t have,” the union’s Construction Worker reported.  Speaking of rip-offs, the laws being used by the government and employers are funded by the public purse.

Urgent action is required to:

• End the administration of the CFMEU and return the union to its members
• Repeal all anti-union legislation
• Legislate for the unfettered right to strike
• Abolish the system of right of entry permits for union representatives
• Restore all rights to union officials and members
• Not just union coffers have been affected. Workers and their families have been hard hit by the ABCC, and after that, the Albanese government. They should receive full compensation. The International Labour Organisation has repeatedly found the provisions of the laws in breach of international law.

This struggle affects all unions, not just the CFMEU or other unions in the construction industry. If the government in its anti-union campaign on behalf of employers succeeds against the CFMEU, it will come after the other unions.

Guardian readers are urged to write to the Prime Minister, Workplace Relations Minister, their local MP, Senators including the Greens and independents, and contact media outlets and social networks.

The struggle to defeat the government’s attack is the struggle to defend trade unionism in Australia.

Originally published in The Guardian (Australia).

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Today, in 2025, the Palestinian people are facing a new and even more brutal chapter of this ongoing catastrophe. Since October 2023, the people of Gaza have endured one of the most destructive and deadly military campaigns in recent history. Tens of thousands have been killed, the majority of them women and children. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Hospitals, schools, and refugee shelters have been repeatedly attacked. The infrastructure of Gaza has been deliberately decimated, plunging the population into a humanitarian nightmare with no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no safety.

As we mark this year’s Nakba anniversary, Israel, with the full support and complicity of the United States, the European Union, and their allies, is intensifying its war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. The international community watches, and yet Israel continues to act with total impunity, violating international law, United Nations resolutions, and even the recent rulings of the International Court of Justice.

The WFTU reiterates its full and uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian people and their just struggle. We remain firm in our demand for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian and Arab territories, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. We reaffirm the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and insist on the urgent need to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In these difficult times, we are inspired by the courage and determination of workers, students across the globe who have risen in solidarity with Palestine. The WFTU feels proud as its affiliates are leading mass mobilizations across the world, rejecting the genocide in Gaza and demanding an end to their governments’ complicity in this crime.

The WFTU calls on its affiliates and friends across the globe to escalate their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Our solidarity must be loud, it must be visible, and it must be grounded in action.

On this 77th Nakba Day, we do not forget, and we do not remain silent. We rise alongside our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the streets, in our unions, and in every forum of international struggle. Despite threats and repression, the voices of peace continue to grow louder, while the WFTU will continue to proudly wave the Palestinian flag alongside its own, standing on the right side of history, and fighting until the end of occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

End the occupation now!
Stop the genocide!
Free Palestine!

The post WFTU Statement on the 77th Anniversary of Palestinian Nakba Day appeared first on Labor Today.

In typical libertarian fashion, Sen. Paul feigns sympathy for the “freedom of choice” for the workers to carry out his work for the monopolies and cartels in the U.S. If Sen. Paul cared about the freedom of the American working class, he instead would back the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 aimed at restricting the power of organized labor.

Taft-Hartley was monopoly capital’s response to the wave of successful industrial organizing led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.) and it decimated the U.S. labor movement. Taft-Hartley set forth the banning of most strikes, ending the closed shop and allowing states to introduce “right-to-work” laws. Most notably, aimed at “rooting out Communism” within the labor movement Taft-Hartley included a provision forcing labor leaders to sign anti-Communist affidavits which was used to root out all militant and class-oriented trade unionists from American unions. Although the anti-Communist provisions were ruled “unenforceable” in 1965, the damage had already been done as Taft-Hartley had allowed the reactionary business unionists to consolidate power.

Since Taft-Harley was passed, 26 states have passed “right-to-work” laws with at least one more pending. Union membership in the U.S. peaked in 1945 at 33.4% holding union cards; under the guidance of business unionist leadership union membership in the U.S. has decreased to an all-time low of 9.9%. This “right-to-work” has been a major factor in this decrease as the unionization rate in private industry has dropped to an even lower 5.6%. This should make it clear that the American labor movement needs a change of direction.

The time is now for all militant, class-oriented trade unionists to take the lead in organizing a rank-and-file movement to take back the American labor movement. Without a vastly organized rank-and-file, we will be at the mercy of monopoly capital. It is time to get out on the shop floor and work to build the class consciousness of your fellow workers. It is time for the heart of the labor movement to stand up and fight back. It is time to organize the anti-monopoly coalition led by a class-oriented trade union movement. This is the time to bring workers together to build a real rank-and-file and collectively led Labor Party in the U.S. Only then can we effectively push back the monopolists, as our class-oriented forebears in the C.I.O. did, and build an America of the people, by the people and for the people.

The post EDITORIAL: Class-Oriented Trade Unionism is Necessary to Permanently Defeat Monopolists as National “Right-to-Work” Bill is Reintroduced appeared first on Labor Today.

For decades, PAMI has been under intervention, rendering it no longer the public agency in whose direction and administration workers should participate. Quite the contrary, it is run by officials of the current government. As if that weren’t enough, several cases have been reported in different parts of the country recently, evidencing the political misuse of PAMI and the use of its resources to settle internal disputes. The concern or obligation of these bureaucrats, paid with members’ money, to address their pressing needs is far from obvious.

For this reason, on the occasion of the new anniversary of the creation of PAMI, we, the National Coordinating Board of Retiree and Pensioner Organizations, demand:

– The immediate implementation of all benefits without restrictions;

– Establish free access to all medications, including those recently classified as over-the-counter for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies and to the detriment of workers;

– Stop the intervention! Normalize PAMI NOW! Active and retired workers must participate in its management and administration.

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Once again, workers paid the price of profitability with their lives.

These accidents are the result of inadequate training of employees on Occupational Safety and Health issues, the absence of controls and the disregard for basic protection rules.

On construction sites, where risks are heightened and daily, the existence and adherence to safety procedures is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for life.

Employers have enormous responsibilities. It is not enough to hire staff, but they must ensure that every worker is properly trained, that there is access to the necessary personal protective equipment, and that professional qualification and training standards are implemented.

These standards – which link skills to safe practice – are not just bureaucratic tools. They are shields to protect workers’ lives.

The state is not innocent. Control mechanisms are under-functioning, inspections are not satisfactory, and lenient sanctions do not prevent violations of regulations.

At the same time, in workplaces where there is no union coverage and workers are not organized in unions, accidents are more frequent, as there is no one to advocate, report and demand the implementation of legislation.

The union presence on every construction site is crucial. It is the one that can push for training, for decent working conditions, for the implementation of professional qualification standards, for inspections. It is the one that can give a voice to workers before the silence of the dead speaks.

We cannot get used to death at work. Workers’ lives are not statistics. They are families, they are dreams, they are people.

We demand: Mandatory training on Health and Safety issues, implementation of qualification standards, strengthening of controls, union presence in every workplace.

So that the workers return home alive.

The Builders’ Union PEO is no longer expressing simple concern. We express our anguish over the dimensions that the phenomenon of occupational accidents, especially fatal accidents, is now taking in the sectors represented by the Union.

We express our sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the deceased colleagues and hope that they will be the last victims of this unacceptable situation.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE PEO BUILDING ASSOCIATION

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The UE NEWS asked retired UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend to write a summary of how UE’s membership base has changed over the years. Brother Townsend joined the UE staff in the late 1980s, when the membership was primarily (though not exclusively) manufacturing workers, and retired in 2013, after the union’s membership had expanded to include significant numbers of public-sector, higher education, federal contract and rail crew workers, and supplemented his own experience with detailed research from UE convention proceedings and interviews with participants.

The ongoing organizational renewal and substantial growth of the United Electrical Workers (UE) is one of the most distinctly remarkable stories in the U.S. labor movement in decades. Few other unions have suffered such losses from state repression, raiding attacks by opportunist unions, and the catastrophic effects of corporate job relocation — and survived. Of the original 42 unions who comprised the founding roster of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO) in 1938, a grand total of eight survive intact today. UE is one of them. The remainder have passed out of existence, been destroyed by repression and employer attacks, or been merged into larger unions and lost forever.

Born in the electrical, radio, machine tool, and related manufacturing industries, UE membership for the first four decades remained nearly completely within those industries. The constant emphasis on the need to organize the unorganized did lead to many thousands of non-manufacturing members being brought into the union, but virtually all were clerical or technical workers already working side by side with UE’s members for the same employer. Occasional small groups of non-manufacturing workers would find their way to UE and try to join. They were dutifully encouraged to unionize but directed to another union, whichever union that might already represent that sort of worker elsewhere. Union “jurisdictions” were a serious business then, with most unions dutifully staying in their own lane so far as the types of workers they organized. With UE’s organizing base in several specific manufacturing sectors, it was almost unimaginable that unrelated types of workers would somehow make a home in a union dominated totally by factory workers.

Along Comes Antioch College

By the mid-1960’s, during the beginnings of the student organizing upsurges across the country in support of the civil rights movement and in opposition to the burgeoning Vietnam war, Antioch College student Larry Rubin contacted UE asking the union to organize the service and maintenance workers at the Yellow Springs, Ohio, campus. Rubin and other students had already told the workers about UE’s record at the bargaining table, its democratic processes, and its rank-and-file character. The reflexive impulse of the union was to refer them to another union, a union better suited for their type of work. But Rubin, the students, and the workers involved all made the case over and over that UE was the union they wanted to belong to.

UE organizer Mel Womack, one of the early African-American staff members, finally went to bat for bringing the Antioch workers into UE, taking Rubin’s plea all the way to the UE officers in New York City. “I knew about UE from my family in Philadelphia, and this was the right union for these workers. But we had to convince them that it would be a good fit,” commented Rubin.

Making the decision a bit easier for the union was the fact that virtually the entire union membership in Ohio had been destroyed or lost during the preceding 15 years of raids and plant closings. As the union organized new factories and reclaimed some lost shops in the heavily industrialized state, the Antioch College workforce offered a chance to rebuild a solid foundation for new manufacturing organizing. A 1965 strike for union recognition was quickly won by the college workers and students, and their official entry into UE allowed for the reconstitution of UE District Seven shortly after.

For the past 60 years the Antioch members have played a consistent and positive role in the life of the union that had nearly turned them away. But the members of UE Local 767 today comprise just a handful because of the closing of most Antioch operations in 2008 — a victim of epic mismanagement. The Antioch College story transcends the entire era from when UE began to seriously consider new non-manufacturing workers for membership, and it also teaches the lesson that in an economy driven completely by profits and “efficiency,” even a workplace such as Antioch is not immune to layoffs or closing. 

Tough Decisions

By the 1970’s, UE began to experience wave after wave of layoffs and plant closings as manufacturing bosses began their exodus from the U.S. for low-wage zones across the globe. Retired UE Director of Organization Ed Bruno commented that, “All through the 70’s and into the 1980’s we suffered major losses as plants closed. Formerly big plants were whittled down to just a few hundred members or even less. It was hard to imagine. By the time Reagan was elected President the floodgates opened. We had tried to organize runaway plants in the South, with only limited success. And those plants were not immune to closing either, as we discovered with the loss of the Tampa Westinghouse and Charleston General Electric plants we had organized. No plant was safe anymore.”

As the 1980’s ground on, the union experimented with a number of strategies to organize again and regain lost membership. “By 1987 and ’88 we were forced to rethink our relationship as a union to the manufacturing sector. We looked at trying to organize semiconductors, medical equipment, service shops and other industries still largely based here in the U.S. And we decided to take a look at the plastics industry.” said Bruno. “We went all-in.”

The Plastics Organizing Effort

The plastics industry presented a formidable target for UE organizing. It was decentralized and largely unorganized. Profits were high, and wages were low. Early probing into the 600,000-worker sector yielded above-average interest in unionizing by many workers, but employer resistance was fierce. Sensing the need to move quickly under the deteriorating conditions, UE devised the “Plastic Worker Organizing Committee” (PWOC) plan of action, where several hundred plants would be approached by the union simultaneously. All with the hope of triggering a contagious wave of new organizing spirit among the workers in the industry as was the model of legendary U.S. organizer William Z. Foster in his approach to organizing meatpacking and steel industries early in the 1900’s.

Early PWOC results were encouraging, as large numbers of workers responded to UE’s outreach and call for organization, better wages, better benefits and working conditions. Plastic product and component manufacturing plants were leafleted widely and workers were contacted in several hundred plants. PWOC groups were started across a dozen states and the union launched a full mobilization with hundreds of union staff, local leaders, members, and UE supporters deployed. But almost immediately employers responded to the organizing push with fanatic and illegal repression.

Workers were fired, threatened, and terrorized from coast to coast. Union-busting meetings were held in union targeted shops, and so pathological was boss resistance that plastics employers not even encountering UE yet forced their workers to attend anti-union meetings. In UE’s historic base city of Erie, Pennsylvania, then and now the home of many thousands of UE members and retirees from several locals, the plastics employers held meetings to coordinate their plan to repulse the organizing effort by all means legal and illegal. Gigantic billboards were put up across the city decrying UE’s organizing effort, all to induce fear and panic among the several thousand workers in the Erie PWOC area.

Crushed

Only a handful of plastics shops were organized by the end of the nearly two-year effort. One, Reid Valve in Leetsdale, Pennsylvania, was organized only as a result of the massive lawbreaking by the company during the organizing drive. Current UE International Representative John Thompson, then a shop leader, led the drive in the plant where the employer engaged in illegal firings and conduct so severe that the NLRB ordered recognition for the union without an election as the remedy for the outrageous company lawbreaking. The exceedingly rare “bargaining order” granted to UE by the labor board for the Reid workers may well have been the only such order granted that year to a labor union trying to organize.

Organizing progress across the entire union had nearly come to a halt as the union-busting cloud descended on workplaces across all sectors. Between the late 1980’s and 1992, the union was able to win elections and organizing drives totaling barely several hundred workers per year. This crisis was mirrored across the entire labor movement, as mass layoffs, partial closings, and complete plant shutdowns accelerated. The inability to crack into the plastics industry in spite of the herculean effort by the entire union was sobering. Was there a future for UE? Or any union? Was there a way forward? Could the union even hang on, let alone revive?

New Course Needed

The question of widely diversifying the industrial sectors being organized by UE remained a larger option, and by the early 1990’s a small trickle of such shops had already been won. Experimentation with organizing non-manufacturing workplaces and affiliating existing independent unions took form, but were small in scale as most efforts remained focused on factory organizing. Bus operators in Greenfield, Massachusetts joined city and school district workers already part of UE. Movie theatre and radio station staff had organized into UE in Boston. Construction workers in Sacramento, California signed up. A temporary employment agency was organized in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Radio station staff were won in Los Angeles, California. Bank safe installers and alarm technicians were organized in Philadelphia. A newspaper staff unit had been organized in Vermont. And there were others, mostly small shops. Recruiting union members in already-organized open shops also brought in some needed new blood as the union implemented a renewed push in this regard as well.

Early Forward Momentum

With the election of Bob Kingsley as the new Director of Organization in late 1992, it was apparent that UE was in immediate need of expanded experimentation with the organization of new sectors. “We didn’t want to give up on organizing manufacturing workers, but we had to do something to bring in new members to offset the losses,” said Kingsley. “Our factory members stepped-up and saw the need too. Over and over and over again we relied on them to take the UE message to workers far away from the factory floor.” Magnifying the earlier work of Ed Bruno, Kingsley launched a major outreach to independent unions across the country. Results were significant, and in 1993 alone more new workers were organized either by affiliation votes or NLRB elections than in the previous decade. Public sector workers, truck drivers and mechanics, port workers, warehouse workers, and food service workers joined, boosting the numbers of non-manufacturing members in UE dramatically. Factory workers continued to be organized as well, a welcomed uptick after years of decline.

Iowa

The campaign to win the affiliation of the large Iowa United Professionals (IUP) independent union was key to opening the door to additional units not traditional for the union. This large statewide unit of state professional workers had voted in a leadership vote to join UE in 1989, only to be counseled to return home and develop actual rank-and-file support for the move. By the spring of 1993, both IUP and UE were ready, and the overwhelming vote to join UE by the membership was another shot in the arm for UE’s rebuilding efforts. Kingsley recalls, “We won the Iowa affiliation vote in the middle of their epic spring flood, where half the state was under water. We had UE factory members from all across the country crisscrossing the state, extolling the UE’s merits from the shop floor perspective, in the midst of this calamity. We got votes for determination alone and won overwhelmingly.”

The big Iowa win allowed UE to launch additional organizing campaigns for unorganized public-sector workers at school districts and county workplaces, with new successes. By 1995, graduate teaching and research assistants at the University of Iowa contacted UE, and veteran organizer Carol Lambiase was tasked with determining if a campaign was feasible for the 2,600 workers.

After an enormous and sustained campaign, the University of Iowa workers voted overwhelmingly to join UE in April of 1996. This marked the largest organizing win in several decades for UE and gave the union new energy to expand organizing even further. Everyone in UE was celebrating the big Iowa win, but a common question was, “Tell me again what kind of work they do?”

New Directions

The organizing success in Iowa, including UE’s very first graduate worker unit, all set the stage for continued UE growth in the public sector as well as other new sectors. Through the 1990’s and beyond, UE set down additional membership roots in the health care sector, at food coops, among rail crew van drivers, and among federal contract workers, all while maintaining a realistic focus on new organizing in the original manufacturing sector. Gene Elk and Mark Meinster followed Kingsley as directors of organization in the last decade, and each led membership and staff in the direction of further growth in a diversity of sectors. Both helped set the stage for the explosive growth of the last three years, enabling the union to emerge from the pandemic period strengthened with more than 35,000 new members joining from higher education ranks alone.

A Remarkable Renewal

The role played by UE Local 896, the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) — the University of Iowa graduate teaching and research assistants and first UE win in that sector — was trailblazing. Local 896 has compiled a solid record of rank-and-file and democratic local functioning, aggressive struggle on behalf of the members’ interests, and in opposition to the blizzard of political attacks waged against public employees in Iowa for almost 30 years. This outstanding record is all the more remarkable given that owing to the nature of their profession, workers do not remain for lifetime careers. Each successive generation must relearn the union history and from the point they are hired must join the front ranks of the local.

It would have been inconceivable for any of us who spent time in UE — in my case a 25-year career — to have imagined that Local 896 would have helped to rekindle UE to such an awesome extent. But why not? When those of us who were grappling with the difficult and at times unsolvable puzzle of just how we were going to reverse UE’s decline, and build new membership again, we always believed that there existed a large section of workers who wanted real, aggressive, militant, and member-run unionism. We learned that workers are shaped somewhat by the work they perform for a boss someplace, but more than that working people are shaped by a desire not just for any union, but for a better kind of union. UE’s assembly line workers, machinists, toolmakers, and factory hands are now largely replaced with higher education, public service, health care, rail, retail, and technical workers. But rank-and-file unionism pushes on to another generation, delivering real results and proving that member-run unionism works.

UE holds high that banner, and the response of workers like the several tens of thousands who have poured in to the union’s ranks in the past several years is proof of that. A special union salute is in order to the UE founders, the old-timers who kept UE going in the most trying of times, the current membership, officers, local activists, and staff who kept rallying to UE’s banner, and now to the many new faces arriving to replenish the ranks.

If UE did not exist it would have to be invented. On to the next stage of growth, and wherever that takes us.

The post A Fighting Union’s Path to Renewal: The UE Story appeared first on Labor Today.