Union Secures Important State–Level Changes in November Elections!
UE150 members participated in our Political Action Committee at a higher level this year than in any year’s past.Members interviewed candidates all across the state for many races at the state and local level. Through our organizing efforts we were able to help flip two seats in the NC House of Representatives in Wilson and Granville Counties, helping to end the Republican supermajority rule. We will still need to hold accountable the four Democrats that often vote to override the Governor’s veto.
UE150’s work in Granville County showed to be highly successful this year. We identified that Granville was going to be a critical swing district, and our analysis proved true! Granville County is also where we have several hundred union members that work at Central Regional Hospital, Murdoch Developmental Center, UNC Chapel Hill and City of Durham. Throughout September and October our members there engaged in many educational activities with our members at work, and our communities.
Our members organized neighborhood canvasses in working class neighborhoods where our members live. On October 12, union members Magayo Harrison (CRH), Jerome Harrison (CRH), Tracy Harter (UNC), Alexandra Fox (CRH), Rakesh Patel (CRH) and Mariana Aldridge knocked doors in Butner!
Organizing wins!
Union Co-Hosts Granville County Candidate Accountability Town Hall!
UE150 joined forces with Down Home NC to host a Candidate Accountability Town Hall forum in Oxford on October 17. Attending the event included candidates Brian Cohn (NC House District 32) and Terence Everitt (NC Senate District 18).
Workers spoke out about critical issues handled by the NC General Assembly including family-supporting wages, funding for state mental health, affordable housing and public schools.
Tracy Harter, housekeeper and Vice President of UE150 at UNC spoke out saying, “The living wages are critically behind, while the corporate people are getting record profits on our backs. On our children and our grandchildren.”
James Winston, healthcare technician from Central Regional Hospital also spoke up about the dangerously low staffing situation, particularly in the children’s unit. Dr. Rakesh Patel, President of UE150 Butner chapter greeted the crowd, introducing the commuity to the organizing work of our union.
Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class to Resist Corporate Agenda, Fight for Real Solutions
While working people largely voted for Trump in the hope that he will improve the economy, Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, will only worsen the economic problems working people face. One of the most dangerous political threats that the labor movement, and the working class, has faced in generations, Project 2025 proposes a variety of measures to weaken unions in the private sector, and bluntly states its objective to eliminate them completely in the public sector. It also seeks to weaken or eliminate virtually every law that protects workers, from OSHA to the minimum wage to laws against child labor.
Furthermore, we know from Trump’s first term that a Trump NLRB will seek to remove National Labor Relations Board protections from hundreds of thousands of graduate workers by classifying them as simply students, not workers, despite all of the paid labor that they provide to their universities. We also know from Trump’s history, and the rhetoric he has used throughout his campaign, that he will continue to demonize immigrants and encourage attacks on them — and we know that employers will take advantage of those attacks in order to silence immigrants who are union leaders.
Faced with these threats, the labor movement simply cannot afford to retreat into a defensive crouch as it did after the election of Republican presidents in 2001 and 2017. Our unions must be prepared not only to militantly defend workers, but also to lead a broad and militant social resistance to Trump and the Republican Congress. The policies that they will seek to enact, both legislatively and through executive branch action, will hurt everyone except the super-rich.