A welcoming message from President Cyphers!
Welcome to the new ICWUC web site! It has been quite a few months in the making but we certainly hope that you find the wait worthwhile. Our website is a work in progress. Our intent is to make this website both informative and interesting to our members and their families. You will see that there are many new links and much new information that are included on this site. If you feel there is something else of interest or some other information that should be included on this site in the future contact snoble@icwuc.org for consideration of that submission.
The ICWUC is doing quite well. In the last nine months expenses have been reduced drastically without affecting either our servicing to our membership or our ability to organize. Our headquarters has been streamlined with all of our capable headquarters staff willing and able to take care of the needs of locals who call in for assistance. We have improved in response time in headquarters to the requests of local unions when they call in for any reason. Field staff have been increased and all field staff have had their needs met for improved tools they need in order to serve our members needs even better. We have some of the best field staff now in the entire labor movement and we are very proud of each and every one of them. Our staff at the Cincinnati training center has had improvements made for them so they can continue being a vital force to the ICWUC/UFCW membership and to the entire labor movement that they serve. Forms that the local unions need regularly for carrying out day-to-day activities are now included for downloading directly from this site so that you will have them on hand immediately when necessary. There will also be information made available to local union officers on this site that will assist them in filling out those forms, whether they are internal forms or forms for outside regulatory agencies. In other words, we are trying to make day-to-day operations for our local unions as efficient as possible so that you can serve your membership even better and more efficiently. Let us know how we are doing.
Another part of this site will be family related. We are putting links on here to get access for our members to union-made items that you may use every day. We only ask that you look at them, familiarize yourself with those items, and purchase them so that we can keep our union brothers and sisters working in this country. Also benefit programs that we are eligible for under the UFCW like the union privilege program are included here also. You MUST be a union member to be eligible for the benefit programs. Scholarship forms for both the ICWUC and the UFCW are downloadable here. We want your family and friends to see that joining and being part of a union give you a benefit each and every day. Some of the value you can receive from this information pays the cost of your union dues many, many times over. Visit the organizing part of this site and notice the NEW incentive rate that the ICWUC pays for organizing leads from any of our members or their family or friends for simply telling us someone that they know who may want to enjoy the benefits of joining our union. If we talk to that person and win a new group of members, you win also by receiving a good financial reward. Not only can you help your union to grow and help yourself to get better contracts by gaining more members, but you can enjoy a financial reward as well! Hopefully we will hear a lot of response to this new incentive program in the immediate future. We can also assist your local union in putting together their own incentive program IN ADDITION to the Council’s program to grant you a GREAT incentive to assist your union in gaining new members and building union strength! If we all want to benefit from our union we all need to do something to help it grow and help non-union members gain the job security and benefits that union members enjoy. Remember, it doesn’t matter if someone works in a chemical plant, nursing home, homeless shelter, pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, or wherever they work, ALL working people need our union! If you know of any worker that needs our help simply let us know and we will do the rest.
And this year is also a political year and is as important as it can possibly be to you and to your union. While there were many great candidates in the primary for the Democratic Party and all may have had different choices for their candidate, the primary is now over and we must do all that we can do for Senator Obama to ensure that he becomes our nation’s next President. It is of paramount importance to put any divided feelings that we may have had as working people aside now for the good of the working community and our members. Divisive politics will help no one but the anti-union forces that are present everyday and trying to destroy working people. A union survives by the members working together for the good of the whole unit. Unity is the answer, not division. When you are asked by your union to support a candidate it does not necessarily mean that your union supports each and every one of those candidates’ positions on all issues. But it DOES mean that this candidate gives unions the best chance of getting better benefits for our members because of many or most of their positions on labor issues. You should have already been asked by your local union to sign a pledge card for the Employees Free Choice Act, legislation that will help not only your union but ALL unions. That is legislation that Senator Obama has pledged to support if he is elected. That legislation levels the playing field for organizing new members into unions so that working people have a better chance for better contracts. More members joining unions, especially our union, equal better contracts and better labor laws for us all. When you were asked to sign that pledge card it was not for just something to do. It is critical that you get from your local union a pledge card and sign it and get it back to your Council so that we can join in a UNITED voice with hundreds of thousands of other working people who want a stronger voice on their job. Your union is not going to ask you to do something that is unimportant or against your beliefs. Working together with great pride in helping ourselves get stronger and organize the unorganized should be exactly what our beliefs are. This cannot be something nice to do or something that sits on a desktop and goes away. Your union is working hard to make life better for you and your family. Lets give a little back so that we can retire someday and leave things a little better than we found them for those who come after us. Please sign your pledge card for the Employee Free Choice Act that your local union has and get it in today, and please follow the endorsement of both the UFCW and the ICWUC and support Senator Obama. The time is now for change to the anti-union policies that exist out there right now. Let's all do our part to stop anything anti-union we can this November. We are one, we are a united union that will remain a united union and our goal is to get the best wages and benefits for all our brothers and sisters and their families from our employers. The only way we can accomplish that goal is by acting as one and working together both now and in the future.
I hope now that communications will be more open and regular between the Council, our great staff, and our membership and their families. Please enjoy our new website and help us gain new members now and in the future and remember, there are NO benefits if you are NOT union!
Frank Cyphers, President
ICWUC/UFCW
