We are First Responders! Hurricanes Harvey and Irma caused massive destruction and upended the lives of untold millions of people. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who lost loved ones and the millions more who are still dealing with the aftermath of the storms. Even before the hurricanes made landfall, our members, particularly our…
UWUA Local 335 volunteers teamed up with the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance and Missouri American Water in August to complete construction of a non-motorized boat ramp at Minnie Ha Ha Park in Sunset Hills, MO, for the second time this year. The ramp was less than a week old when catastrophic flooding destroyed the newly poured…
Each year, two UWUA members’ children are awarded college scholarships through the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). The Scholarship Program maintains the legacy started by a group of delegates at the 10th Constitutional Convention in 1959. The delegates proposed that scholarships be reserved only for children of UWUA members in good standing, and only to…
Members of the UWUA’s three national committees – Human Rights, Young Workers, and the Women’s Caucus – will host numerous activities at the Power for America’s third National Conference on October 18-20. The important perspectives and expertise the three national committees bring to the conference will help meet the conference goal of helping to re-energize…
“Tax Reform:” Just Another Giveaway to the Rich Television ads are now running in support of an as yet unseen so-called tax reform bill. One of the ads focuses on a laid off blue collar worker. The laid off worker states that he lost his job due to foreign competition and that if the corporate…
Education/Communication/Implementation Our National Union represents thousands of utility workers in the electric, gas, and water industries with a diverse workforce that includes physical and clerical classifications. While this is the norm that we have grown accustomed to, many now say that DATA is becoming the newest utility. With that in mind, the National Office is…
As you read this, final preparations are being made for our third Power for America National Conference. The event brings together several hundred UWUA members in a clear example of our union’s commitment to continuous learning for union officers, stewards and rank-and-file members. By offering learning opportunities — not just for new members coming into…
JD started a family tradition when, at the age of 18, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a lineman working out of IBEW Local 1319. After an extended time there, JD, who had already married his high school sweat heart, Jen George, found a new job with the Borough of Ellwood City, PA,…
“I dig in the dirt, fix water mains and stuff like that every day, I’m a union worker,” says Rick Dunham, chair of the Local 428 Safety Committee at Aqua Ohio. “I’ll be the first to say that I was skeptical about the participation we would have in our Systems of Safety training classes. I’m…
Local 18007 and Power for America (P4A) are continuing their partnership to raise awareness of struck-by and caught in-between hazards. Using funding secured by P4A from an OSHA Susan Harwood grant, 18007 members over the summer participated in peer-led discussions with the goal of raising awareness of these hazards in the daily workplace. “The commitment…
P4A on Track for Record Setting Training Year 2017 continues to be a record-setting year for trainings at the UWUA’s Power for America Training Trust (P4A). As of July 1, P4A had trained over 2,000 UWUA members. “We are on target to train 5,000 UWUA members by the end of the year,” said P4A Executive…
Fighting for Good Jobs and Strong Communities Community is something we all strive to be a part of. It is a term that has come to embody concepts both mythical and aspirational in today’s increasingly post-industrial America. Many of us recall a time when we felt a greater sense of being part of a larger…
CN Local 470-1 Inks Contracts with PSEG and Avangrid It’s been a productive period at Local 470-1, which represents members in electric generation and distribution in Connecticut. Two new contracts covering both groups protect jobs, raise wages, and preserve benefits. Negotiations on the distribution side of the local were with Avangrid, which is owned by…
Following an internal organizing campaign to increase the power of the local by activating members and mobilizing politically, UWUA Local 51 recently secured gains in a 2017 wage reopener. “In 2016, the City of Roswell claimed poverty and refused to provide any increases in wages,” UWUA Local 51 President Patrick Lopez explains. “We decided to…
Two More Organizing Wins for Water Workers The UWUA continues to build on a string of organizing victories bringing the benefits of a union contract to more and more water workers. Welcome Belmont County, OH Sanitary Sewer District members On August 25, the decision by Belmont County Sanitary Sewer District employees to join the UWUA…