About UE 150

Standing Up for Public Employees Across North Carolina

We are an organization that fights every day to improve the lives of public workers across our state. Our immediate goals are better wages and working conditions and protection from unfair treatment. Our long-term goal is collective bargaining rights for public employees.

UE local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, is a member-run organization made up of thousands of state and city workers. We are state employees at hospitals and universities, city employees in sanitation, streets, fleet maintenance, parks, and other public works departments.There are official UE 150 chapters in more than a dozen cities statewide. With every new member, our fight for better jobs and conditions for public workers gets stronger.

It is Your Right to Join Union

Executive Orders by North Carolina governors and statements by attorneys general established that employees “who decide to join a union will be respected to the full extent of the law.” Your legal and constitutional rights also permit you to:

• Talk to co-workers about the union.
• Participate in union activities.
• Distribute information and hold meetings.

It’s Easy to Join

Call at (919) 539-1051 or email at organizeUE150@gmail.com, and we’ll get you a sign-up form. Dues are set at biannual convention by members like you and can be automatically deducted from your paycheck. By joining UE 150 you strengthen efforts of thousands of NC public employees who have united to win improvements and secure fairness on the job.

Yesterday

“That summer we just got hot and tired, ” explained Barbara Prear, a state employee and former president of the union, referring to the early 1990’s struggle by housekeepers at UNC Chapel Hill that laid the foundation for UE150. By the mid-90’s university employees were joining hands with municipal employees to create a new statewide union, an
organization that would later be strengthened by an influx of employees from the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and elsewhere. A founding convention in 1999 made it all official with elected statewide officers and a constitution for UE local 150, NCPSWU.

Union Democracy

UE 150 is a member-run organization. In each workplace, our union builds chapters and holds meetings where workers discuss problems and develop action plans to solve them. Members elect stewards to lead union activities and represent employees in each workplace.

Members in each chapter also elect a representative to serve on UE150’s state executive board, which coordinates the union’s overall work. Every two years chapters send delegates to a statewide convention to elect state officers and set union policies. The members vote on what the union’s priorities will be and how union money will be spent.

We are also part of UE, a national union that provides us with staff, research, legal education and strategic planning assistance. Our local has elected representation at the regional and national levels of UE and plays an important leadership role in the national organization. You can learn more about UE at www.ueunion.org

We are a founding member of the HOPE Coalition that fights for collective bargaining rights. We are key players, together with the NAACP, that organizes annual marches on the state capitol to demand social and economic justice. We are involved in the “Moral Monday’s” Campaign against the draconian policies of the state general assembly. Several of our officers and members have been arrested in the ongoing protests.We are also active on national issues through our affiliation with UE, recently voted Most Valuable Union in America by Nation Magazine.