MOBILIZE the MOVEMENT 74Th NATIONAL CONVENTION || BALTIMORE, MD CONVENTION PROGRAM

MOBILIZE THE MOVEMENT 74th NATIONAL CONVENTION || BALTIMORE, MD CONVENTION PROGRAM

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2015 8:00-8:45 AM Delegates’ Registration, Foyer CONVENTION OPENS 9:00 AM Deb Gornall, Eastern Region President National Anthem: Kevin Yancy, UE Local 150 Invocation: Luci Murphy Speaker: Rev. Graylan Hagler 10:00 AM Address: General President Bruce Klipple 12:00 PM Recess Convention Photo in Ballroom Sunday Afternoon and Evening: Committee Meetings

MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2015 8:45-9:00 AM Music 9:00 AM General Session Speaker: Lawrence Hanley, International President of ATU 12:30 PM Recess 12:30-1:45 PM Lunch 1:45-2:00 PM Music 2:00 PM General Session Organizing Report: Director of Organization Bob Kingsley 4:00 PM Recess 4:15 PM Gather in Lobby to March to Baltimore City Hall 5:20 PM Busses will bring delegates back to Hotel from City Hall 6:40 PM Gather in Lobby to be bussed to Dinner and Boat Ride, Hosted by UE Eastern Region

TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2015 8:45-9:00 AM Music 9:00 AM General Session Convention Speaker: Program Fred Mason, Continued President of MD onand DCBack AFL-CIO Cover 10:00 AM-12:30 PM Workshops 12:30-1:45 PM Lunch 1:45-2:00 PM Music 2:00-4:00 PM Workshops 4:15-5:30 PM General Session 5:30 PM Recess

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2015 8:45-9:00 AM Music 8:30 AM General Session 10:30 PM Budget Review: General Secretary Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker 12:30-1:45 PM Lunch 1:45-2:00 PM Music 2:00 PM General Session Constitution Committee 3:30 PM Officer and Trustee Election 5:00 PM Recess 6:30 PM Banquet, hosted by UE National at hotel

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015 9:00 AM General Session 12:00 PM Adjournment

CONVENTION CLOSES elcome delegates to the 74th National Convention at the Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland!

WOur officers and staff have collectively organized a great week of many workshops, reports, and deliberations regarding what we need to do to continue strengthening and building our union.

As we join together in solidarity, let’s take a moment to reflect on those who have come before us. Those men and women who sacrificed and struggled to give us the proud union we call UE. Let’s make them proud this week as we celebrate our accomplishments and continue to honor the traditions of UE.

The Eastern Region is proud to sponsor this year’s Convention. We want you to enjoy the events the Eastern Region has scheduled for this week including a hospitality room Saturday night and a dinner/boat ride for Monday night. Be prepared to work hard and play hard!

In solidarity,

EASTERN OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE BOARD: Deb Gornall, President

Donna Morgan, Vice-President

Scott Slawson, Financial Secretary

Karen Rizzo, Recording Secretary

EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBERS: Steve Adkins Bonnie Keen

Jim Borowski Bill Metzger

Aaron Clifton Jeff Moose

Bud Decker Leslie Riddle

Mike Divins Larsene Taylor

Tom Gharing Jeff Van Meter

Fred Harris Roger Zaczyk WHO IS THE EASTERN REGION? The Eastern Region has a relatively short history – it was formed 10 years after UE convention delegates amended the UE National Constitution, with ratification by the locals, to consolidate the existing six UE geographic districts into three regions. But the Eastern Region also has a very long history. Most of the independent local unions that came together in Buffalo in March 1936 to form UE were located within what’s now the Eastern Region. The new union set up its national headquarters in New York City where it remained until 1987 when the national office moved to Pittsburgh, both cities in the Eastern Region.

The Eastern Region covers a big territory, including locals in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, and has the largest membership of the three UE regions. When the Eastern Region was formed in 2005 it was a merger of District 6 (Western Pennsylvania, Western New York and West Virginia), most of District 7 (Ohio), and District 1 (Eastern Pennsylvania, Eastern New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.)

Much of the history of UE took place within the current boundaries of the Eastern Region, including big organizing victories and major strikes by workers at plants of GE, Westinghouse, RCA, Sylvania and other companies in the electrical, radio and machining industries. A great deal of UE’s pioneering work fighting for equality for women workers and for African American workers took place in the Eastern Region. Ernest Thompson, who headed up UE’s Fair Practices Committee that made great strides against racial discrimination in the 1950s was an African American organizer who came from a UE shop in New Jersey. Several of the women who drove UE’s early women’s rights work were from UE plants in Pennsylvania and New York.

When UE’s very existence was under attack, from the late 1940s to the 1960s, some of the biggest battles to save the union took place in this region. With other unions “raiding” our membership, helped by politicians, government agencies and mass media who were smearing UE as part of a “communist conspiracy” against America, UE member fought courageously to save their locals and save the national union. UE won many of these fights, but also lost many, and a large number of locals that had were organized as UE locals and had won good UE contracts, ended up in other unions. A number of UE’s largest original locals were lost in this way.

UE probably would not have survived the 1950s if not for the unity and courage of the members and leaders of Local 506. They stood firm under the most intense pressure and voted overwhelmingly to stay in UE, even as the local newspaper, politicians and the Catholic bishop told them to oust UE and vote for the IUE. When the John Nelson, the local’s charismatic president, was fired by GE for refusing to “name names” to a U.S. Senate committee on a witchhunt against alleged “reds”, the members solidly backed him, and Nelson himself never wavered, even though the harassment of him and his family ruined his health, resulting in his death at age 42. But the steadfastness of Local 506 gave hope and courage to others and helped ensure UE’s survival.

The districts that now make up the Eastern Region suffered and survived another period of crisis, the massive wave of plant closings and deindustrialization that was most intense in the 1980s, but continues to this day. The locals that fell to plant closings went down fighting, and the memory of those plant closing battles is part of our legacy. But UE also fought back with renewed and diversified organizing. The Eastern Region is especially proud of the organizing work south of the Mason-Dixon Line that has built UE in Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia. Our locals in those states, particularly Locals 150, 160 and 170, represent UE’s expansion into the public sector and put us in the forefront of building the labor movement through pre-majority and in states that outlaw collective bargaining for public workers. CONVENTION CULTURAL PROGRAM We are excited this year to have some of the best cultural workers labor has to offer energizing our UE National Convention this year! These choruses, ensembles, and individual artists have been inspiring workers, educating and motivating workers struggles and the labor movement for many years. From shop floors to picket lines; in marches and rallies; at plant gates and legislative halls; in classrooms andon college campuses; in churches, temples, synagogues and places of religious worship; they have been there speaking out for labor – reminding workers that we have the real power and reminding those corporate capitalists who put their profit before workers that they don’t make a dime unless we, the workers, move!

With us this week will be:

THE DC LABOR CHORUS

The DC Labor Chorus is a musical ensemble representing union members from the Washington, DC area. Some are professional musicians but most are union members and activists who just love to sing! The DC Labor Chorus sings for rallies, demonstrations, and picket lines. They welcome union members to the annual Great Labor Arts Exchange each summer, and hold an annual “Sacred/Favorite Songs” concert every winter and a community benefit concert every spring.

ANNE FEENEY

Anne states that “I’ve been ‘comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable’ since I graduated from high school in 1968.” The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement shaped her conscience and consciousness. She worked for a dozen years or so as a trial attorney, and served as President of the Pittsburgh Musicians’ Union. For the last 25 years, she has really been living her dream... on the road 200+ days a year... all over the US and Canada, and then Sweden, Ireland and Denmark. Anne proclaims that “It has been my privilege to spend most of my waking hours with people who are trying to make a difference in this world... people on strike, or in a union or community organizing drive, or defending women’s rights, the environment, human rights ... working to end poverty and racism ... teaching peace.”

LUCI MURPHY

Luci Murphy is a long time Washington DC activist & cultural worker. She is a vocalist famed for singing usually in her uniquely stylized a cappella. For more than 30 years, she has sung at thousands of peace and justice rallies, both here in the U.S. and in various other countries, educating audiences about the struggles of oppressed peoples around the world. Lucy has received the Friends of the People’s Weekly World’s Paul Robeson Award for Peace and Justice along with many other awards and recognitions for her activism and the energy and inspiration she brings to the workers and social justice movement.

LYNN MARIE

Energetic, Effervescent, Spiritual, Sensational, Feminine Phenomenon – Now, that’s Lynn Marie! Lynn Marie is a Detroit – based singer- songwriter and actress. She is a high energy performer that is on a mission to spread the joy and love of life she feels with audiences everywhere. Lynn Marie worked as an organizer with AFT (American Federation of Teachers) in Michigan. She is known throughout the labor movement for her labor themed parodies of popular songs. The velvety-voiced R&B and neo- soul crooner has also been on the Billboard Soul Chart top 10 single for 6 weeks, Billboard’s top 100 soul singles chart and the top 20 soul LP chart. FRUIT OF LABOR SINGING ENSEMBLE

The Fruit of Labor Singing Ensemble, their songs and music was born out of the struggle of organizing African American workers in the “Black Belt” region of North Carolina and the South. As the cultural arm of the NC based civil and workers rights organization Black Workers for Justice, “Fruit” members are recruited from workplace and community struggles. The ensemble has captured in music oppressed peoples’ and the working class’ history of community and workplace struggles. Many folks have experienced the powerful political messaging of their lyrics bound up in soul stirring, gut wrenching blues, bouncing to a hip-hop or reggae beat or sliding in and out of a jazz melody with a little scat included. Their lyrics have also been known to get caught up in a 70’s funk beat and break it down rhythm & blues sound. They are even infused, at times, with a bit of pop flavor and, at others, a take them down to the river and lift ‘em up gospel flavor! The Fruit of Labor’s songs and music is an exciting mixed bag of dancing, energy, down in your bones spiritual and “fightback” coming at you! The ensemble received the prestigious Joe Hill Lifetime Achievement Award this year from the Great Labor Arts Exchange/Labor Heritage Foundation for its over 30 years of inspiring the labor and social justice movement with its music.

PAM PARKER

Pam Parker can be described as the silky smooth Ella Fitzgerald of the labor movement. She wows audiences with her seemingly effortless delivery of blues, swing, jazz, folk and protest songs. Through an apprenticeship program run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Pam became an electrician after leaving college when scholarship funding ran out. ‘‘I went to union rallies,” she says, ‘‘and there were these protest songs that I really got into. One day, one of the guys noticed me singing along, and asked me to get up to sing at a rally. I think I sang ‘Harriet Tubman,’ the civil rights song, and everybody just went crazy, telling me how good it was,” she remembers, laughing at the memory, ‘‘and it occurred to me that I could sing.” For eight years, Parker worked as an electrician in Maryland, Virginia and the District, becoming involved with social and political causes, getting arrested at anti-apartheid rallies, picketing against the covert wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua — and singing all the time. THANKS AND FAREWELL TO TWO UE LEADERS At this 74th UE National Convention, we are saying thank you and best wishes to two of our national officers, President Bruce Klipple and Director of Organization Bob Kingsley. Both have made tremendous contributions to our union and to the working class movement in the United States and worldwide, through their long careers in the union.

BRUCE KLIPPLE

As a UE leader, Bruce Klipple describes himself as a product of UE rank-and-file democracy and shop floor militancy. Bruce came into UE as a young worker in 1979 when he was hired at Penn Pump and Compressor in Easton, Pennsylvania. He had held other industrial jobs and been a member of other unions, but he quickly saw that UE Local 141, the union in his new workplace, was different. Bruce describes Local 141 as “an old-line UE local,” organized in the 1940s, “that truly had that UE spirit and the UE principles and policies that they adhered to every day.”

Bruce credits his fellow workers in Local 141 with teaching him those UE principles. “I really owe these guys a lot because they took the time to sit down with me and keep me straight because I was a bit of a young radical then,” Bruce says, “and they took the time to educate me not only about the history of UE, but the history of the labor movement.” Bruce recalls that some of the union old timers conducted lunchtime classes where they’d discuss “politics, history, social issues, and a lot of different things.” Bruce particularly credits one older co-worker, Conrad Schlough, as his mentor in UE principles.

Bruce became a steward within two months of being hired at Penn Pump, and a few months later, at the urging of Schlough and other older members, he was elected president of the local despite being the least- senior worker in the plant. He became the leader of a local with a strong tradition of winning grievances by conducting wildcat strikes. “It was a frequent occurrence,” Bruce says, sometime two or three work stoppages in a single day, in a plant of only 60 to 80 workers. It taught him the power of militant, unified action by the members. “This is called shop floor militancy, this is how you handle it, we’re the ones who are in charge of production, not them. And it’s always been an inspiration to me,” he says.

Bruce also learned a lot about the power of a determined and united membership when his local shut down the plant for 14 weeks in a solid and effective strike against concessions in 1983. After reaching a satisfactory agreement, the members struck again for an additional week when, on the day they returned to work, the boss brazenly violated the seniority provisions of the contract.

In 1985 Bruce was hired as a field organizer, with organizing and servicing responsibilities in Northeast Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York. Five years later he was promoted to International Representative, a position in which he directed organizing and the servicing of locals throughout UE District 1, the Mid-Atlantic district that is now part of the Eastern Region.

In September 2001, at the 66th UE National Convention, Bruce Klipple was elected UE General Secretary- Treasurer. Bruce immediately tackled several major challenges that UE needed to overcome in order to survive. UE needed to end its practice of deficit spending because the union’s financial reserves which were largely the result of the sale in 1987 of the former national headquarters building in Midtown Manhattan. Bruce aggressively sought areas of cost savings. One area of potential savings was to change from annual conventions to conventions held every other year, and Bruce helped initiate a period of study and discussion that led to the members adopting that change.

The geographic structure of the union with six districts had also become a problem, with some of the smaller districts struggling financially. Bruce helped launch two years of study and discussion that led to the consolidation of the districts into the present three regions, a change that had brought financial savings and better use of resources.

The old flat-rate per capita system was no longer fair to low-wage workers and was not producing sufficient revenue. In an earlier era the union was composed mainly of manufacturing workers with fairly comparable wages, but over the past two decades UE’s membership has become more diverse, now including public sector and service sector workers, with a wider divergence of wage rates. Bruce initiated, with help from his fellow officers John Hovis and Bob Kingsley, members of the General Executive Board and several staff members, and following a period of study, education and discussion among the members and locals, at regional meetings and conventions. The result was a transition first to a tiered system of per capita rates, and then to the current hourly-based system, where the per capita dues locals pay to the national union reflects their members pay rates.

“If we hadn’t done that, frankly we wouldn’t be here right now,” Klipple says, because a combination of organizing, cost cutting and improved revenue through the new financial system have enabled the union to eliminate deficit spending which was no longer sustainable.

Delegates to the 72nd UE Convention in 2011 elected Bruce as General President, succeeding his friend John Hovis. As president Bruce has continued to provide wise, steady, unifying leadership in all of the union’s work. He’s been a valued mentor to Andrew Dinkelaker who succeeded him as secretary-treasurer, and to local and regional officers and staff dealing with difficult situations. Bruce has stepped in to assist in several crucial negotiations, helping to achieve settlements, and his leadership in this year’s national negotiations with GE was invaluable.

Integrity, hard work, a gift for listening and for keeping people together – these are some of the words used to describe Bruce Klipple by those who have worked with him. On behalf of all UE member and all whose lives have been touched by Bruce, we say thank you and best wishes.

BOB KINGSLEY

Director of Organization Bob Kingsley has not only been one of the longest-serving national officers in UE’s history, has also, in the opinions of many who have worked with him, one of the hardest working. Bob was first elected director of organization in 1992, and for the past 23 years he has directed UE’s field staff and our organizing work, at a time when the enemies of working people have made organizing increasingly difficult.

Bob began his union career in Vermont in the late 1970s when he was working as a newspaper reporter, and organized his coworkers at one of the state’s major daily newspapers. He went on to serve as a union steward and first president of the new local union. He was later fired during a 1980battle for union contract improvements that included a 15-month strike, the longest newspaper strike in New England history. Bob was hired by UE as a field organizer in 1981 to organize in Vermont. In late 1982 Bob was transferred to South Dakota, where UE had organized 500 workers at the Litton microwave oven plant in Sioux Falls, and Bob took over directing the four-year fight for a first contract. By the time the union won a contract in 1984, the workforce was 2,500, and UE was probably the most visible union in South Dakota. Bob also organized another plant in Sioux Falls, Schwartz. During that period Bob also made contact with leaders of the Load King Employees Union in Elk Point, SD, leading to their affiliation as UE Local 1187, a militant local that conducted long strikes in their next two rounds of bargaining after joining UE, and in recent years even reversed the closing of their plant and the apparent breaking of the union, bouncing back as strong as ever.

From 1987 to ’92 Bob served as UE’s political action director in Washington. “We worked hard to establish more membership involvement in political action work, particularly active issue advocacy,” says Bob. “Getting our members out in the streets to raise Cain on the issues of the day.” Bob instituted the program of political action conferences that brought members to Washington to have direct face-to-face discussions with members of Congress.

Bob’s 23-year tenure as Director of Organization has been marked by many organizing accomplishments. Following the heavy losses in UE membership through the 1980s as factory after factory closed in what’s been called “the deindustrialization of America,” Bob led UE into a more diversified organizing strategy that resulted in significant growth for the union in the public and service sectors, along with continued organizing in manufacturing. This approach brought several large groups into UE, including the affiliations of Local 893 in Iowa, Local 222 in Connecticut, public sector organizing in the southern states of North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia, and Local 896 at the University of Iowa, as well as our recent successes among federal contract workers and rail crew van drivers. In one year in the 1990s, UE’s organizing work under Bob’s leadership brought in 6,000 new members. While the union has organized nearly 30,000 workers in the 23 years of Bob’s incumbency, he notes that that “churn” in membership – continued losses to workplace closings and other factors – as well as the challenges of consolidating organizing wins into solid UE units – means that all of that organizing has enabled us to maintain roughly the level of membership we had in 1992. “Holding the line has been key to our ability to endure as a national union,” says Bob. UE’s survival as “a beacon of militancy and democracy in today’s labor movement” is, in Bob’s opinion, our union’s most important victory.

Bob has played a key role in many of the union’s major struggles over the past three decades, from the Litton Industries corporate campaign in the 1980s to the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors Plant in Chicago in 2008. He has also had a central role in the union’s solidarity work, having served on the national board of Jobs With Justice. In the early 1990s Bob traveled to Mexico to help initiate the historic cross-border solidarity alliance between UE and the Authentic Workers Front of Mexico (FAT). His international labor solidarity work has also taken him to Canada, El Salvador, Brazil, Belgium, India, China and Japan. Bob also takes great pride in his role in launching UE’s successful Young Activist program.

It would take many more pages than this to begin to describe Bob Kingsley’s many contributions to UE over the past 34 years. For all UE members and all working people whose lives have been made better by Bob’s work, we say thanks and best wishes for a long, happy and healthy retirement. CONVENTION SPEAKER BIOS KEVIN YANCY NATIONAL ANTHEM Kevin Yancy of UE Local 150 will lead us in the national anthem. Kevin is UE Local 150 elected State-wide Chief Steward who works out of the Murdock Center. Many delegates who attended the last convention in Chicago in 2013 will immediately recall Kevin’s powerful rendition of the National Anthem he gave. Kevin has extensive history in music. In high school and college he preformed and sang for audiences from Boston to Baton Rouge including even singing for 65,000 people at a NY Jets halftime performance.

LUCI MURPHY INVOCATION Luci Murphy is a long time Washington DC activist & cultural worker. She is a vocalist famed for singing usually in her uniquely stylized a cappella. For more than 30 years, she has sung at thousands of peace and justice rallies, both here in the U.S. and in various other countries, educating audiences about the struggles of oppressed peoples around the world. Lucy has received the Friends of the People’s Weekly World’s Paul Robeson Award for Peace and Justice along with many other awards and recognitions for her activism and the energy and inspiration she brings to the workers and social justice movement.

REV. GRAYLAN SCOTT HAGLER SUNDAY SPEAKER Senior pastor, Plymouth Congregation Church of Christ. The Rev. Mr. Hagler is the Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C., and the Immediate Past National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice (MRSEJ). He has been an organizer for all his life, in areas of social justice, civil rights and human rights. He serves people without boundary, and believes in basic human rights, and that everyone deserves the same dignity and respect. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Hagler received a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1976. Three years later, he received his Masters of Divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. On 3 February 1980, Hagler was ordained in the United Church of Christ and was recognized with full standing in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) the following year.

In 1980, he founded a congregation in Roxbury, Massachusetts and in 1991 ran for mayor of that city and lost. During his 12 years as a pastor in Boston Reverend Hagler’s work was one of empowerment and opposition to the forms of racism that gripped the city in the 1980s. He campaigned to protect citizens from unconstitutional and illegal police practices and to safeguard democratic participation in the selection and election of black political leadership. He also led the Free South Africa Movement to force divestiture of dollars from the support of the Apartheid system. In 1992, Reverend Hagler moved to Washington, D.C., where today he is the Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ and continues to preach and organize. He has fought the proliferation of liquor stores in the black community and has insisted on community participation in development issues. In 1993 he opposed the Exxon Corporation’s plans to build a ‘super gas station’ in the neighborhood where his church is located. In 2003, Reverend Hagler broke ground on that same Exxon site after acquiring the property. Instead of a ‘super station,’ 69 units of subsidized apartments for senior citizens opened in February 2005. Reverend Hagler worked to preserve the only publicly funded hospital in the District of Columbia, organized a successful effort to oppose the death penalty from being instituted by the United States Congress on the district, and continues the fight against publicschool vouchers, which he sees as a plan to divert funds from public education to private schools. Reverend Hagler served on the Steering and Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice, a national coalition working to oppose aspects of U.S. foreign policy that the group believes contribute to war and aggression. Reverend Hagler is the former Development Director of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) which helps people become homeowners. Reverend Hagler has also served as chaplain to UNITE HERE Local 25, the labor union representing hotel workers in the Washington Metropolitan Area. He is the Executive Director of Faith Strategies, an organization of clergy he founded in 2012. Faith Strategies organizes efforts to better the lot of working people, protects human and civil rights and develop strategies for movements to embrace the faith community.

LAWRENCE J. HANLEY MONDAY SPEAKER Larry Hanley was elected international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, September 30, 2010. International President Hanley began driving a bus in 1978, at age 21, in Brooklyn, NY, and attended his first union meeting that September. He was an activist in the Transport Workers Union (TWU) during the 18 months he was a member, organizing efforts to get police protection on buses in New York City. In November 1979, he transferred to Staten Island and became a member of the ATU Local 726. By April 1980, he was involved in his first strike and walked picket lines every day and night. The strike was ruled illegal and lasted 11 days. In 1984, Hanley was elected secretary treasurer of the local. Shortly after his election, a strike broke out in Austin, MN, at the George Hormel Company. This strike caught the attention of the media due to the anti- union climate in the Reagan administration and the brilliant tactics of the strikers. He joined the New York support group who traveled to Austin. Concerning that time he said, “It was a chilling experience to see the National Guard brought out by the governor to take the side of the owners. I joined many thousands of union members from across America and I walked the line. It was a formative experience.” He served as secretary treasurer until January 1987, when he was elected president, the youngest in his local’s history. Hanley would go on to be re-elected to five terms, serving until 2002. Hanley recalls, “I hit the ground running... No sooner had I become president than our local union faced the threat of complete privatization of our express bus work. This crisis led us to devise a creative form of protest: carrying coffins into hearings, hiring stagecoaches to demonstrate the poor funding of mass transit, and taking the fight directly to our opponents.” In 1989, Hanley took charge of the Staten Island operation of David Dinkins’ successful campaign for mayor of New York. The local president was one of the founders of New York’s Working Families Party in 1998. “We challenged the MTA in New York through internal member organization. We also made great strides in organizing the riders of our buses. We worked every day in the community to convince both our members and the passengers that our interests were one and the same.” The result was a 125% increase in ridership and 500 more jobs in his local. The local’s investment of $160,000 on the campaign has now generated $450 million in ATU salaries and $1 billion in capital spending on transit. Hanley relates, “Around the same time, I organized a multi-union effort that successfully elected 515 labor union members and officers to the Staten Island Democratic Party - effectively putting Labor in charge.

“We were named by New York Magazine as one of the most “politically important unions” in New York City, an honor we shared with other local unions that have tens of thousands more members. In 2002, Hanley joined the staff of the International as an international vice president. “Though it was difficult for me to leave my local,” he says, “I took the job. I immediately went to work bargaining contracts, often seven days a week throughout the East Coast.” Hanley was the international vice president assigned to the most locals. He negotiated the national Greyhound contract for Local 1700 that resulted in his working with ATU members in many states. He served in that capacity until his election as international president in September 2010.

FRED DOUGLAS MASON, JR. TUESDAY SPEAKER A member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 8018 with nearly 40 years of labor and social justice activism, was elected President of the Maryland State and District of Columbia, AFL-CIO in October of 2001. He was re-elected to a fourth term in October of 2013. Previous years found Fred working for the National AFL-CIO as State Director for Maryland and DC, a position with responsibility for coordinating national programs with State Federation and Central Labor Council activities. It was in this capacity that he led the efforts that resulted in Maryland and DC becoming the third jurisdiction in the AFL- CIO to engage the New Alliance process, a program designed to strengthen the labor movement at the State and Local level. Prior to being tapped for the State Director’s position, Fred had served from 1990 to 1998 as Executive Vice-President of SEIU District 1199E-DC, a 10,000 member healthcare workers’ union. As a student and community activist, Fred was engaged in the initial organizing campaigns that founded this local in 1968. In 1989, he began his employment with 1199 as an organizer and won several campaigns that brought hundreds of new members into the union family. His strategic planning and negotiating skills were soon recognized and he became responsible for planning and negotiating major contracts. Fred began his active involvement in the labor movement in 1969 as a member of the United Steel Workers of America, while working as a laborer at Bethlehem Steel. In 1971, with layoffs beginning in the steel industry, he found work at the General Motors Assembly plant and became a member of the United Auto Workers union. The ‘new global economy’ was settling in, and in 1981 auto workers across the country fell victim to its effect: plant closings, family disruption and worker dislocation – Fred was among the hundreds of thousands who found themselves without a source of livelihood. Even though he had a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Business Administration from Morgan State University, his work experience had been at the point of production, in manufacturing settings. In a down economy, the degree was of little value in securing wages that matched those of the good industrial jobs that were now being destroyed. With a family to support, Fred worked several jobs, including: taxi-cab driver, waiter, bartender, home repair and auto salesman. All the while he maintained a high level of involvement in labor and community issues. The knowledge gained from his grounding in the lives and experiences of workers is what strengthens his passion for social and economic justice and constantly reinforces his commitment to working family issues. And no doubt, this led Maryland and District of Columbia labor leaders to elect Fred to lead their Federation and the 350,000 members that it represents. Fred has held and continues to hold numerous appointed and elected positions, among them: • Gubernatorial appointment to Adult Education Transition Council • Gubernatorial appointment to the Governors Workforce Investment Board • Board of Trustees of the National Labor College • AFL-CIO State Federation Advisory Committee • Governor’s Advisory Council on Offender Employment • Governor’s Commission to Study Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation • Executive Board of Progressive Maryland • Executive Board of AFL-CIO Appalachian Council • Executive Board of A. Philip Randolph Institute • President, AFL-CIO Northeast Council UE WELCOMES OUR INTERNATIONAL GUESTS! The Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, CSN, was founded in 1921. One of the CSN’s major strengths lies in the autonomy of all its affiliated unions representing more than 300,000 members in Quebec, Canada. The CSN has worked for many years to develop international solidarity. The CSN today strongly supports efforts to improve the working conditions and lives of its members. It fights for social, cultural, economic and environmental policies that enrich the fabric of society and that benefit the entire popula- tion. It takes a lead role on many issues, whether it concerns the right to unionize and negotiate freely, or women’s equality in the workforce, pay equity in the private sector or an end to all discrimination. The CSN is a democratic, independent and progressive organization.

The Federation of Metallurgical Employees Workers, FIOM, is the union of workers employed in the metallurgical industry. FIOM is a member of the Italian General Confed- eration of Labor, CGIL which has 5.5 million members and is Italy’s largest labor confed- eration. FIOM is the oldest Italian industrial union. In 2009 FIOM had over members were 360,000 members, including GE workers.

The FAT, translated to the Authentic Labor Front, is a national organization of workers of the countryside and the city, plural, democratic and militant. In the five decades since our founding, thousands of men and women have organized in the FAT and have tena- ciously fought the authoritarian regime that oppresses us and sinks into misery and violence. We are a democratic organization where members are the leaders, where worker assemblies decide our direction and we support everyone in the fight give life to one of the most militant, democratic solidarity organizations in Mexico. With the effort of each and every one of the members in the struggle we remain faithful to our principles, trying to build a new society, freer and fairer from everyday practice, to achieve our ultimate goal: that the working class controls our own destiny. A SPECIAL THANKS TO: SPONSOR SPONSORSHIP Local 106 James Matles SPONSORSHIPS: Local 120 Give What You Can Local 121 Give What You Can $1,500 JAMES MATLES SPONSORSHIP Local 123 Ernest Thompson UE’s first Director of Organization, from 1936 to 1962. Local 150 Amy Newel Matles fought valiantly to protect the interests of the Local 155 Mother Jones members of this great union, also serving as General Sec/ Treas., 1962 to 1975. Local 160 Give What You Can Local 170 Amy Newel $1,200 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. SPONSORSHIP Local 319 Give What You Can Local 329 Mother Jones Dr. King stood for economic justice, equality, and the rights Local 334 Give What You Can of labor. “The labor movement was the principle force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress”, Local 335 Give What You Can he said. Local 506 James Matles Local 601 Amy Newel $1,000 JULIUS EMSPAK SPONSORSHIP Local 610 Amy Newel Local 613 Give What You Can UE’s founding General Secretary-Treasurer from 1937 to 1962. Emspak fought valiantly against the McCarthy Local 615 Give What You Can Era attacks targeting militant, rank and file based trade Local 618 Mother Jones unionism in the UE. Local 622 Mother Jones Local 625 Give What You Can $ 500 AMY NEWEL SPONSORSHIP Local 626 Give What You Can UE’s first woman General Secretary/Treasurer from 1985 Local 642 Julius Emspak to 1994, following in her father’s footsteps, Charles Newell, Local 683 Ernest Thompson as a dedicated fighter and official of the union. Local 684 Amy Newel Local 690 Mother Jones $ 250 ERNEST THOMPSON SPONSORSHIP Local 704 Give What You Can In 1943, Ernest Thompson became UE’s first African Local 707 Give What You Can American staff organizer. In 1950 he became UE’s first Local 712 Mother Jones Secretary of the UE Fair Practices Committee, fighting Local 718 Give What You Can race and sex discrimination in UE shops. Local 741 Mother Jones Local 766 Give What You Can $ 100 MOTHER JONES SPONSORSHIP Local 767 Give What You Can A renowned woman organizer, leader, and fighter for the Local 777 Give What You Can working class and their unions. Local 792 Give What You Can “Mourn for dead but fight like hell for the living”, she said. Local 796 Give What You Can Local 799 Julius Emspak $ “GIVE WHAT YOU CAN” SPONSORSHIP Pat McCaughtry Mother Jones Western Region James Matles Every local and member in UE can give to support the UE Northeast Region James Matles National Convention. We welcome all donations. Please give what you can. Thank you! National Office James Matles CONVENTION PROGRAM

MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2015 8:45-9:00 AM Music 9:00 AM General Session Speaker: Lawrence Hanley, International President of ATU 12:30 PM Recess 12:30-1:45 PM Lunch 1:45-2:00 PM Music 2:00 PM General Session Organizing Report: Director of Organization Bob Kingsley 4:00 PM Convention Recess Program Continued from Front Cover 4:15 PM Gather in Lobby to March to Baltimore City Hall 5:20 PM Busses will bring delegates back to Hotel from City Hall 6:40 PM Gather in Lobby to be bussed to Dinner and Boat Ride, Hosted by UE Eastern Region

TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2015 8:45-9:00 AM Music 9:00 AM General Session Speaker: Fred Mason, President of MD and DC AFL-CIO 10:00 AM-12:30 PM Workshops 12:30-1:45 PM Lunch 1:45-2:00 PM Music 2:00-4:00 PM Workshops 4:15-5:30 PM General Session 5:30 PM Recess

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015 9:00 AM General Session 12:00 PM Adjournment

CONVENTION CLOSES WE form an organization which unites all workers on an “industrial basis, and rank and file control, regardless of craft, age, sex, nationality, race, creed or political beliefs, and pursue at all times a policy of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions.”

- Preabmble to UE Constitution