Dear John,
UE’s Research and Education Fund has had an active year supporting a wide range of programs, from international union collaborations to domestic worker education on labor rights, and more. Our team is excited to build on this work in 2023. Please help us do that by donating today!
Though it’s hard to believe, it was only ten months ago that we released Robin Alexander’s ebook International Solidarity in Action. Written by UE’s retired Director of International Affairs, the book provides an in-depth look at the decades-long relationship between the UE and the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT), an independent Mexican labor federation. Did you download your copy yet? You can get it at InternationalSolidarityInAction.org. I’m excited to share that ISIA will be out in Spanish next year!
Robin’s ebook was a timely addition to conversations regarding the Mexican labor movement. This year Mexican workers were able to use new labor laws to win democratic union representation at a number of factories. UE was proud to support workers at a GM plant in Silao, and many others, in these efforts.
This year also brought us the first opportunity to be in person with some of our international union allies since the onset of the pandemic. We hosted our Italian comrades from FIOM-CGIL at May Day in Chicago, and also reconnected with representatives from the CSN of Montreal at the Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. Also at the conference were allies from Zenroren in Japan, whom we hosted for additional strategy conversations following the conference, and celebrated our 30-year relationship with a new scrapbook. We are looking forward to involving more rank-and-file UE members in our cross-border engagements in 2023. Your donation today will help support those plans.
We saw tremendous growth and success this year for our Southern Worker Justice Project, which aims to educate public-sector workers in Virginia and North Carolina on how best to advocate for their rights at work. Our newly hired project staff, all of whom are people of color, identified and developed many new worker leaders, who led pressure campaigns resulting in significant wage increases for many workers. Municipal workers in Virginia Beach won a new budget that will raise the minimum wage for city workers from $10.87 to $15 per hour and raise wages for every city employee by at least five percent, while city workers in Charlotte, NC won a ten percent wage increase and a new city minimum wage of $20 per hour. With the November election of a worker-friendly city council in Virginia Beach, we will be advocating for these workers to have even more rights at work through union representation.
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), one of our sponsored programs, has continued to do great work educating workers across the country about their rights to organize. There’s lots of additional energy for EWOC coming out of the Labor Notes Conference, including many new volunteers. We’ve also continued our other efforts to expand worker knowledge in other ways, like the UE Steward publication. In the coming year, we’ll be releasing video versions of many of our most popular editions of this newsletter.
We’ve also been building our Green Locomotive project, which offers a concrete example of what a just transition away from fossil fuels can look like for rail transportation workers. In the coming year, we’ll educate and mobilize workers who build locomotive engines, and those who live and work near rail yards with polluted air, to demand that the highly profitable Class 1 railroads make a serious commitment to create good union jobs, clean up railyard pollution and address climate change.
We’ve done all this great work — and more, really — thanks to those who have supported us in the past. Please give today to ensure our efforts to invest in the working class can continue next year, and beyond.
In solidarity,
Kari
