UAW International Executive Board election

By Jim Fisher

We have said for a while that 2023 would be a busy year, and already some significant events are taking place. First off, we need to remind all members, both active and retired that the run-off elections for the positions of International President, and one position for International Vice President are currently taking place. Ballots began being mailed out on January 12. The recommended date to have your ballot place back in the mail is no later than February 17. The deadline for ballots to be received by the U.S. Post office in Dayton, Ohio is February 28. On March 1, the vote count commences. If you have not received a ballot by mail, you can request one online at www.uawvote.com or call (855) 433-8683. We ask that all Local 249 members take part in the voting process.

In the January Union Meeting Local 249 presented 169 proposals for the upcoming National Contract. Those proposals were accepted by the membership, and have been sent to National Negotiating Team, we would like to thank the members who submitted proposals.

The company has now stated that April 3, will be the date they intend to launch the Transit C-Crew. As you can imagine this has caused a lot of movement in the plant’s manpower. KCAP is continuing to do direct hiring for new Local 249 members and will continue the hiring process to fill the newly created jobs in preparation for the start of C-Crew. We recommend that members watch the job postings as several classifications are still needing to be filled from the bid process. In addition, the company will be surveying current Transit members to see if they would like to shift bump to the C-Crew when it begins.

On January 17, the company notified Local 249 of their intentions to move most of our skilled trades members to the Modified Four Crew Alternative Work Schedule. This schedule can be found in Volume 1 of the International Agreement on pages 356-360. The company states they plan on changing to this schedule in late March. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

Already in January we have seen a couple of scheduling adjustments with cancelled Super Production and shifts either running short or cancelled due to the lack of parts. While both products remain in high demand, the company still sees supply chain issues continuing most, if not all this year. Some of these decisions are made by the company at the last minute, but we will get information out as soon as we have been officially notified by the company.