After extensive discussion, UE Local 170’s executive committee, which is made up of the five statewide officers and chapter presidents, adopted a plan for an intensive organizing campaign to build our union in the coming months. The organizing campaign will focus on building our membership at the chapter level with the chapters developing organizing targets in their geographic area.
In May, the chapters had special meetings to launch the organizing campaign with trainings for chapter leaders and activists on internal organizing. At these meetings, the chapters developed lists of organizing targets, including state hospitals and nursing homes, DHHR offices, DOH garages, and other state workplaces.
The organizing campaign will include petition campaigns, meet and greets and other workplace actions to build the union and advance our local’s political action agenda, including better wages and working conditions, ending mandatory overtime and the use of contract employees, stopping privatization, and demanding collective bargaining rights.
The success of the campaign will depend on the active participation of our rank-and-file members. In UE, the members build our union. When UE Local 170 was first organized, it was our rank-and-file members who signed up their coworkers. Since that time, it has been our rank-and-file members who have helped build UE Local 170 into the largest, non-teaching, public workers’ union in West Virginia. If you would like to participate in the organizing campaign, please contact our local union office.
