Emergency Response! As every UWUA member knows, prior planning prevents poor performance. While no one could have known that a pandemic was on the way, less than a year ago, the UWUA had the foresight to establish the National Safety Committee with representatives from every industry in each of our five regions. The Safety Committee…
American Water workers from Bel Air, Maryland ratified a new five-year contract with Maryland American Water on March 2, that includes an average 2.75% annual wage increase, an additional paid holiday, the elimination of a step to get to the top of the wage scale and a host of other working condition improvements. The tentative…
Jerry Acosta, Senior National Representative for Region V, has retired after more than 40 years in the utility industry, most of them spent serving the 5,000 UWUA members of California Locals 132, 522 and 483 at SoCal Gas. Jerry joined Local 132 in 1977 as a young Chicano activist in Los Angeles. He began his…
Deb York, who has played an important role in the workings of the National Union for more than 10 years, retired on May 31. She started working part-time for the UWUA when former President Mike Langford took office in 2007. She began full-time with UWUA in 2010, working as an administrative assistant to Langford and…
Meet Juanita Ray, the newest member of the UWUA’s National Executive Board. Recently elected President of Michigan Local 223, Juanita replaces retired president Mike Smith. The first African-American female president to lead the 4,000 members at Detroit Edison (DTE), Juanita says, “I worked very hard to achieve my position in UWUA Local 223 by focusing…
What is your new job? I am the Director of Renewable Energy. The roots of this position started with our work with the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA) in 2009 when Congress was considering carbon pricing legislation. At that time, President Langford appointed me to be the UWUA’s representative on the BGA’s Steering Committee. The premise of…
UWUA Members Impacted by Coronavirus As the entire world continues to grapple with the ongoing public health and economic crises created by the COVID-19 virus, the UWUA’s members have risen to the challenge. As essential workers operating and maintaining the most critical life-supporting infrastructure in society, the UWUA membership has gone above and beyond to…
Shortly after 11:59pm, on Friday, March 6, when UWUA Massachusetts Local 369’s contract with Exelon expired, the 36 members at the Mystic Generating Station went on strike. With numerous negotiating sessions proving unsuccessful, workers sounded the alarm to raise concerns that Exelon, one of the largest corporations in America, was cutting corners. Including deferring maintenance,…
Over the years, UWUA members have been on the frontlines of every major storm and national disaster making sure communities have access to essential services. That remains the case, although this pandemic is throwing new challenges that no one has experience facing. The Utility Worker spoke to a few of the members working on gas,…
Starting as a new team of UWUA National Officers, and only seven months in office, we never expected to be facing a pandemic. We feel blessed to be heading such a well-run organization with a membership second to none and the tools in place to tackle any emergency. After all, we are Utility Workers, the…