Frustrated MontCo Workers To Rally Today

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Frustrated with the county’s “failure to treat our proposals seriously,” members of UFCW Local 1994 MCGEO and their supporters will rally this afternoon at 2P in Gaithersburg to focus on the status of negotiations for a new contract covering Montgomery County workers. The rally will be a show of solidarity for the union’s negotiating team, which has been at the bargaining table over the past four months working to hammer out an agreement on wages and benefits covering some 7,500 county workers who are career, seasonal, substitute and temporary employees. In a letter to Joseph Adler, Montgomery County’s top negotiator, Local 1994 President Gino Renne expressed “disappointment” over the county’s indifference to the union’s proposals that would restructure the costs of pension and health care to save as much as $26 million. Management’s failure “to treat our proposals seriously” is an “indication that you want a fight to bolster your political message that the executive is ‘getting tough with the unions,’” said Renne. – photo: workers in Montgomery County rally against proposed budget cuts in 2010; photo by Bill Burke