United Electrical Workers (UE)

United Electrical Workers (UE) The Members Run This Union National independent democratic rank-and-file union. "The members run this union."

10/02/2026

At our recent Western Region Council Meeting, we got the chance to talk with Local 1177 Chief Steward Erin Frimpong who is currently in negotiations with Hallcon and our General President Scott Slawson!

“Our union is a powerful tool that we must utilize to attain a society and a world that is truly equitable and just for ...
09/28/2026

“Our union is a powerful tool that we must utilize to attain a society and a world that is truly equitable and just for all,” Local 1186 Vice President Michele McCoy told the Western Region council meeting during the region’s political action report. McCoy and Local 1107 President Kellye Allen were reporting on resolutions that their locals, both located in Wisconsin, had passed about defending labor and democratic rights in the upcoming midterm elections.

Following the political action report, the region’s delegates passed a resolution which declared that “the fight to maintain open, free, and fair elections ... [is] an opportunity to bring working people together to build an even stronger force for change in our country and the world.“ The full text of the resolution can be found here: https://www.ueunion.org/political-action/2026/ue-western-region-fight-to-maintain-open-free-and-fair-elections

The council meeting also heard remarks from UE General President Scott Slawson, the stories of PTI rail crew drivers who are seeking to join UE, and shop reports from locals across the region. At the opening of the meeting, Region President Ramona Malczynski announced that she will be stepping down as regional president; the region’s executive board chose Local 1186 President Michael Tomaloff to fill out the remainder of her term. The region also elected members to fill open officer and board positions, and two representatives for the election committee that will oversee national officer elections next year.

New Poll Finds Rising Support for Medicare for AllAn August poll found that support for Medicare for All has risen signi...
09/22/2026

New Poll Finds Rising Support for Medicare for All

An August poll found that support for Medicare for All has risen significantly in the past year, from 54 to 60 percent. Among voters who have significant medical debt ($1,000 or more) or who have been denied treatment by their insurance company, that support rises to 68 and 71 percent respectively. A whopping 75 percent of voters under the age of 30 support Medicare for All.

The rising support for Medicare for All is accompanied by growing skepticism about our current system. Seventy percent of those polled have a negative opinion of for-profit insurance companies, up from 62 percent last year, and negative views of prescription drug companies have reached 73 percent.

These negative views are based on material reality. One in three voters (32 percent) report paying more than $500 per month for health care, up from 25 percent in 2025. Almost four in ten (38 percent) have been denied coverage, a percentage which rises to 46 percent among people of color. And one in four (24 percent) have medical debt of over $1,000.

Nandell Baines, the president of UE Local 977, passed away on August 16. Local 977 represents Hallcon rail crew drivers ...
09/19/2026

Nandell Baines, the president of UE Local 977, passed away on August 16. Local 977 represents Hallcon rail crew drivers in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Kansas.

“She just fought for the members until the very end,” said Local 1177 President Larry Hopkins, whose local represents Hallcon drivers in the upper Midwest, and who served with Baines on the UE bargaining committee which negotiates the union's national contract with Hallcon. Baines joined bargaining calls this summer, even as her health was deteriorating, up until just two days before she passed. After her death, her son told a UE representative that fighting for her co-workers at the bargaining table had kept her going in her last days.

"Nandell was a real fighter and she will be greatly missed by her union, family, friends and community," wrote Western Region President Ramona Malczynski in an email to her region’s executive board members and local officers. UE General President Scott Slawson called Baines "an amazing leader."

Baines was one of the key leaders among a large group of Hallcon drivers who left their company-dominated union and organized with UE in 2018. Despite pushback from her supervisor, she insisted on her right to bring the UE message to her fellow drivers in Houston, helping UE win the election. Speaking to the 2019 UE convention, she said that before workers organized with UE, “everything I saw was unjust,” and the company was rife with abuse and favoritism.

After the election, Baines was elected to serve on the bargaining committee which negotiated how that group of hundreds of drivers was incorporated into the UE national agreement. A serious and detail-oriented negotiator, she was elected president of Local 977 once it was established, and served until her passing.

Hopkins said Baines was “steadfast, always staying on the boss. She will be truly missed, especially by the drivers in her local.”

This Is How We Win: A Guide to Building Working-Class Uprisings is a new book from the May Day Strong coalition (of whic...
09/18/2026

This Is How We Win: A Guide to Building Working-Class Uprisings is a new book from the May Day Strong coalition (of which UE is a part). It is a guide to building a bolder, more militant labor and working-class movement, and to how working people can effectively use economic disruption to fight the billionaire class.

In a review for the UE NEWS, UE Communications Director Jonathan Kissam writes, “This Is How We Win can help working people imagine — and fight for — a better life. So get a couple of copies, read one, and distribute the rest to your coworkers, your friends, your family — anyone who needs to be reminded of the power of solidarity.” Read the full review here: https://www.ueunion.org/ue-news-feature/2026/new-book-explores-how-we-win

This Is How We Win is published by Haymarket Books and can be purchased on their website for just under $10: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2966-this-is-how-we-win

Fifteen years ago today, on September 17, 2011, approximately one thousand people gathered in Zuccotti Park in lower Man...
09/17/2026

Fifteen years ago today, on September 17, 2011, approximately one thousand people gathered in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, launching the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Establishing a permanent encampment — a tactic that soon spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the country and the world — the movement brought attention to the skyrocketing inequality between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of us, “the 99 percent.”

The UE officers announced the union’s solidarity with the movement, pointing out in a statement issued on November 7 that “The protestors, predominantly young, have revived the tactic of occupation which, in the form of sit-down strikes, was central to the growth of a militant U.S. labor movement in the 1930s. The factory occupations of the ’30s not only brought millions of workers into unions. They also helped enact some of the most important economic and social reforms of the 20th century.”

UE members were active in supporting encampments in UE areas from Erie, Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Southern California. In Burlington, Vermont, Occupy activists provided important support for UE Local 267’s contract negotiations at the University of Vermont, and in Southern California, UE locals took the lead in organizing a Labor Solidarity Committee of over 30 unions to support Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Long Beach, and Occupy Orange County.

Sherry Filiatreault, a UE Local 222 member from Norwich, Connecticut, travelled to New York City with then-Northeast Region President Peter Knowlton to visit the original Occupy encampment. She told the UE NEWS, “You can see the support of the construction union brothers and sisters through the writing on the beams on the construction sites, expressing solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. To be in the park, to walk around and see, feel and listen to history being made, a new generation becoming passionate about the world in which they live, it was a great eye-opening experience. It made me realize when we are negotiating our contracts we need to keep in mind how hard people are working to preserve their futures.”

“It has changed the entire debate over the role of capital and workin

09/16/2026

At the Eastern Region Council Meeting, UE members expressed their solidarity with the Local 256 grad workers at MIT!

09/16/2026

Two UE members from Virginia sat down with us to talk about what lessons they were taking away from the Local 150 convention in North Carolina last month.

During the UE Eastern Region council meeting held in Needham MA on Saturday, over a dozen members of UE Local 256 (MIT-G...
09/14/2026

During the UE Eastern Region council meeting held in Needham MA on Saturday, over a dozen members of UE Local 256 (MIT-Graduate Student Union) came to the front of the room to report on their difficult contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their contract expired in May, but MIT has refused to meet for more than a few hours at a time, and is insisting on healthcare givebacks and attacking the local’s union shop.

Earlier that week, the local reported, over 550 graduate workers had gathered to launch a strike pledge campaign, and over 1,000 workers signed the pledge within 24 hours. Delegates from locals across the region, from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania to North Carolina, pledged their solidarity with Local 256.

In her president’s report, Eastern Region President Janet Gray outlined steps the region has taken to increase rank-and-file participation. After outlining some of the challenges facing working people, including the health care crisis, the war in Iran, and the anti-worker majority on the National Labor Relations Board, Gray declared that “By standing together in solidarity, that's how we fight, that's how we win.”

The council meeting also heard from Director of Organization Kimberly Lawson, who gave an update on the union’s organizing work, and General Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker.

25 years ago, the terror attacks that occurred on 9/11 killed thousands of working people and forever changed the lives ...
09/11/2026

25 years ago, the terror attacks that occurred on 9/11 killed thousands of working people and forever changed the lives of others. UE’s 66th National Convention was scheduled to occur only a few days after the attacks took place.

UE’s General Executive Board adopted a statement addressing the attacks ahead of the convention. It said, “Many of the slain were union members, murdered at their place of work and on the job. With profound sorrow, we mourn our fallen brothers and sisters and express our solidarity with the families of the victims.”

The statement went on to say, “We are resolved not to yield to terror or to terrorists’ designs. Democracy is too precious. We continue with plans for our convention — the highest expression of our union democracy — with renewed commitment to freedom and solidarity. We shall not be stopped by cold-blooded, calculating killers.”

“And we shall not allow our grief and righteous anger to be polluted by hatred and bigotry. We recall with pride that weeks after Pearl Harbor, as UE mobilized to win the war for freedom, our union condemned anti-Japanese racism as fundamentally opposed to that great cause. Today’s war against the terrorism of an evil few must not be confused with attacks on an ethnicity or religion. Verbal slurs and physical assaults against our Arab-American and Islamic neighbors and co-workers must be countered, condemned and stopped.”

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