Utility Workers Affiliation Will Strengthen Professional and Technical Workers
In May 2008, the Utility Workers affiliated with the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), becoming the 25th national union to do so. “For us, this affiliation just makes sense,” UWUA President D. Michael Langford said. “Operational engineers at National Grid joined us. Chemists and engineers at the Suffolk County Water Authority joined us. As we reach out to professional and technical workers in the electric, gas, nuclear, water, and service industries, our affiliation with DPE offers us organizational support and one more reason for professional workers to join us.”
DPE is a coalition of national unions that collectively represent more than four million professional and technical workers in over 300 occupations. Its focal points include engineering, information technology, and science; education and information resources; health care; arts, entertainment, and media; and public administration. DPE is the largest association of professional and technical workers in the United States.
DPE President Paul E. Almeida welcomed the Utility Workers: “As a former senior electrical designer, I had the good fortune to work for 25 years with the people who keep our electrical grid and nuclear plants up and running. They have to be and are absolutely top-notch.” Almeida added, “I especially admire the aggressive organizing that President Langford and the UWUA have launched. When professional and technical workers are the fastest growing group in our workforce, giving them a voice benefits us all.”
Before becoming the president of DPE in 2001, Almeida served since 1994 as president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO, CLC, which is also affiliated with DPE. At IFPTE, Almeida oversaw both a dramatic growth in membership and the successful engineers’ action against Boeing in 2000, one of the largest strikes by professionals in U.S. history.
DPE offers its affiliated unions a forum for collaboration and action. It promotes their efforts to organize, bargain collectively, and provide mutual support, and it shows the high value of union membership to professional and technical workers. DPE also builds alliances with professional associations and societies and fosters diversity in the professional and technical workforce. Since 2004, DPE has played a leading role in the AFL-CIO’s efforts to understand how work in the United States is changing and how unions can and should adapt to meet the challenges of the future. Among its recent campaigns: DPE and its affiliated unions led the charge against Bush Administration attacks on overtime pay.
DPE highlighted the damage from 2006 decisions by the Bush National Labor Relations Board that radically expanded who will be considered a supervisor and thus ineligible for union protection. DPE and its affiliated unions identified employers’ misclassification of employees as independent contractors as a widespread abuse that deprives workers of workplace protections and benefits, including the ability to organize in unions, and then provided its affiliates with a central point for evaluating Congressional proposals to curb the abuse. The AFL-CIO chartered DPE in 1977 in recognition of the remarkable increase in professional and technical workers among union members. That growth has accelerated as America’s work moved even more dramatically to a knowledge economy.
For more information about DPE, including its other affiliated unions and a list of the occupations they represent, see the DPE website, www.dpeaflcio.org.
