OUR PLATFORM

BUILD OUR UNION

Deepen the support the National Union provides to locals around administrative support, data support, membership services and other areas, with the goal of allowing local leaders to spend less time on administrative work and more time running their locals.

  • Reinvigorate our education programs with intention to build new generation of leaders 

    • Ensure all of our locals have adequate core trainings in collective bargaining, mobilizing membership, building a contract campaign and leadership development

    • Focus on worker to worker exchanges

    • Offer more training, resources and support to locals on how we can build participation and move members into action

    • Develop more leaders so the work of running the union can be shared among more people

    • Offer more training opportunities for local officers, executive boards and stewards

    • Offer better training materials and more training opportunities so locals can learn from each others fights 

  • Build a more diverse pool of future leaders

    • Address barriers to leadership for women, people of color, younger members and others

  • Unite our union by integrating new members into UE while supporting existing locals

Win more

Support locals in waging more effective contract campaigns by providing strategic planning and support 

  • Help locals take action to defend our contracts and improve our conditions mid-contract by training staff on supporting locals with strategies and organizing skills 

  • Provide more focused support from the National Union in communications, legal support, strategic research, and global strategies

  • Build the UE Strike and Defense Fund so that our locals have increased power to wage strikes 

  • Use our increased resources to organize in our key industries across manufacturing, higher education, the public sector, the service sector and in the south.

Invest in member-run unionism

More participation, dialogue and debate at all levels of our union

  • Bring more members into the discussion, so members may engage directly in making decisions to move our union forward

  • Enhance participation at the local, regional and national levels

  • Uphold the UE Constitution

    • Uphold - not eliminate - Article 25

    • Local Leadership Orientation on how to use the Constitution to fully exercise their democratic rights at all levels of the union 

  • Ensure that all voices are heard

    • Make special efforts to increase participation of women and people of color on the national level, including through support of the Women’s Caucus and the Black/African-American Caucus 

    • Build opportunities for the locals to engage with each other so we can all learn from each other

Lead in this moment

Lead in this moment

  • Wage the big bold fights that are needed in this period to scale up our power 

    • Fight to defend our union rights in higher education 

    • Fight to scale up our bargaining power in manufacturing and public sector 

  • Move forward on independent political action

    • Create more opportunities for members to directly challenge elected officials that serve corporate interests

    • Work with other unions and working-class organizations to build a Labor Party

  • Continue to lead on climate, international solidarity, peace, etc

    • Further expand our Green Locomotive project

    • Build the National Labor Network for Ceasefire to bring justice to Palestine and to break labor away from corporate-driven foreign policy

    • Focus additional attention on the fight to bring full collective bargaining rights to workers in the South

    • Support the building of international union networks for UE employers with overseas facilities