SCHENECTADY – Hundreds of General Electric IUE-CWA union workers chanted various sayings as they marched Tuesday from their State Street union hall to the GE sign just outside the main gate at GE’s main Schenectady plant on River Road.
“Larry Culp you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side,” they shouted.
Culp is the chairman and CEO of GE and CEO of GE Aerospace, according to the company’s website.
The IUE-CWA, the nation’s largest union of GE workers, gathered workers from New York, Massachusetts and as far away as Kansas and Kentucky to participate in the rally in advance of forthcoming negotiations next summer between the union and GE with union contracts set to expire next year.
Images: Union workers rally Tuesday at General Electric plant in Schenectady (16 photos)
During the rally workers held signs calling for fair wages that included a cost-of-living adjustment to meet the rising inflation rates, better healthcare and to stop sending work overseas and invest in the plants the company already has in America.
In November, the company announced plans to break off into three companies beginning next year, with separate power, healthcare and aviation businesses.
National Union President Carl Kennebrew said there are still too many unknowns with the decision to spin off into three companies.
“Part of the problem is I don’t think they have a clear plan and I think the workers and America needs to hear that plan and make sure that the plan that they have to split up or stay together is based upon again reinvesting in American workers and reinvesting in this country,” he said. “I think everything is a little gray with them right now. I don’t see that they have a clear path forward and that’s part of the concern.”
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Tammy Hoke, a winder for the company for almost 10 years, said the next contract needs to have “successorship language,” which would essentially state that once the company breaks into three separate ones, the union contract would still remain intact for the remaining years it was negotiated for.
“This is critical for us,” said Hoke, who is also the secretary of the Schenectady chapter of the IUE-CWA.
On top of that, Hoke wants to see healthcare costs get renegotiated. As a single mother, Hoke said, she pays $126 a week for healthcare.
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“We have high deductibles,” she said.
She and union executive board member Charles Tyrrell, who has worked for GE for 15 years, also really supports the company reinvesting in jobs in America rather than sending them overseas, they said.
Tyrrell said GE “threatens” to send work over to Poland. But both Tyrrell and Hoke said the work just comes back to Schenectady because Poland can’t do the work.
They said the company should just invest money in having the work done in America.
According to a press release the union is calling for the following:
- For GE to invest $5 billion over the next five years into recently closed facilities and add thousands of jobs to those facilities and the ones still left open.
- To bring back all U.S. military aviation production from overseas, as well as 70% of GE industrial work that has been sent overseas over the last five years.
- Enable shareholders to vote on GE splitting into three companies and add elected worker representatives to the company’s board of directors.
- To create supplier parks within converted GE facilities to establish factories that would be able to minimize supply chain issues, “building up an American offshore wind power supply chain on our shores, including Schenectady, New York– the original Electric City.”
Tyrrell also shares concerns about the cost of healthcare provided by the company. For him, his two kids and wife, Tyrrell said, he pays $160 a week, but still has $4,000 to $6,000 deductible. Once he hits that deductible, he said, then the company pays 80% of the costs.
“And we’re on the better option,” he said.
But, he also said the company needs to provide a fair and equitable wage, noting the pay starting out at Home Depot and other companies is more than what GE workers are making.
During the rally other non-General Electric union workers also joined the rally, like Brian Sempala-Kimuli with Worker Action. He said it was extremely important that unions, no matter what company they work for, support each other because workers are the backbone of the economy.
Images: Union workers rally Tuesday at General Electric plant in Schenectady (16 photos)
A GE spokesperson said Tuesday they had no additional comments beyond what they stated Friday regarding the protest.
“As one of America’s oldest and most innovative companies, GE believes in the importance of American manufacturing,” a GE spokesman said on Friday. “GE remains one of the largest manufacturers in the U.S., employing nearly 55,000 U.S. workers. We continue to invest in our facilities across the country where we can – having invested over $1 billion in new and upgraded facilities in the last six years, which included upgrades at many of our existing union sites. So far in 2022, we’ve added 50 new manufacturing jobs to our Schenectady site and are hiring for another 25 roles by the end of the year.”
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