Our union first launched Your Union Your Voice two years ago so we could hear about your top priorities and share information about our core issues.
The effort was an overwhelming success that included thousands of responses to our initial membership survey and thousands more members and retirees providing feedback at town hall meetings across the nation.
Because this feedback proved so vital in shaping our work, we repeated this effort in the spring and early summer of 2022.
MAJOR WINS
Our efforts over the past two years resulted in significant victories.
Since we first launched the campaign, we:
- Achieved a massive win on retirement security that will protect the benefits of 120,000 active and retired members who were at risk of losing everything.
- Realized a decades-long goal with the once-in-a-generation infrastructure bill the president signed into law in November 2021. This move will keep countless USW members’ jobs strong for years to come, while improving our communities and overall global competitiveness.
- Saw a change in the leadership at the National Labor Relations Board that provided fundamental improvements for workers who are seeking justice when they or their unions are subjected to unfair labor practices.
SURVEY RESULTS
Most importantly, we heard from you. The survey asked members and retirees to rate how important different issues were. Thousands of you took the time to answer the questions and provide additional feedback.
As in 2020, our top three issues remained the same:
- Retirement security topped the list.
- This was closely followed by affordable health care and prescription drugs.
- Labor laws that allow us to organize and secure good contracts took the third spot.
Trade agreements and laws that protect U.S. workers, increased worker wages, and safety and health also weren’t far from the top. With all of these, more than 70 percent of respondents rated the issue “very important.”
IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZING
We also asked questions related to organizing new workers into unions.
As a testament to the importance of organizing, 88 percent of respondents agreed that more unionized workers near them is good for their communities, while 80 percent believed their contracts would be easier to negotiate with more unionized workers in their sectors/industries or at their employer.
When it came to the common tactic of employers interfering with organizing efforts, 69 percent of respondents thought it was “easy” for them to do this, while well over half said they’d help organize unorganized workers if they had the chance.
TOWNHALL FEEDBACK
The feedback from our more than 150 town hall meetings largely echoed these issues.
Participants shared stories about how health care costs impacted them in different ways, from trying to contain rising costs at the bargaining table to sharing difficult personal experiences before having unionnegotiated coverage.
Others reiterated the importance of our ongoing efforts to protect things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
We heard from members in states that had recently passed a so-called “right to work” law and how that action has created more divisions – which are exactly the intentions of those laws.
At some meetings, attendees shared powerful stories of helping workers organize in their communities and the struggles that must be overcome in the process. These conversations often lifted up the need for stronger labor laws to protect workers’ rights to organize.
PANDEMIC CONCERNS
The impacts of the pandemic were also clear in the town hall meetings. In many meetings, someone spoke up about working long hours because employers needed to hire.
Some health care workers shared their stories of what they went through, such as having to work without proper PPE, and the ongoing short staffing in their workplaces and the implications for patient care.
Many local leaders expressed a hope for more people to get involved in their local unions. Others wanted the town hall information to get out as widely as possible.
Beyond the broad themes, the survey and the town hall meetings captured the individual, openended feedback that thousands of survey-takers and meeting attendees provided.
We thank everyone who leant their voices to this process. Your feedback will once again help shape the work of our union moving forward.
Click here to download the results as a PDF that you can share with members of your local.