Seen as a wealth of knowledge, and of stories, Marvell Porter from East Moline visits his UAW union has four times a week to help run the call bank as an election retiree coordinator. This year he’s making calls to union workers urging them to vote for the Worker’s Rights Amendment to the Illinois Constitution.
Rob Bern is the Vice President of the UAW Local 4-34 and works at John Deere Seeding as a welder. He says Porter does this for future generations.
“He wants his grandchildren, his great- grandchildren his great-great-grandchildren to be able to have the same opportunities that he had. We all want them to be better than us, go on to do other things. But he wants them to at least be able to-‘My grandkids, my great-grandkids will get a good paying job, a job union job somewhere.”
Bern says the Worker’s Rights Amendment is a key to strong communities and the state-wide economy.
“Some of the protections we have are the right to organize, the right to collectively bargain, like we just did at John Deere with the UAW, we negotiated a contract. In those contracts, we do more than just negotiate for benefits and wages, we also negotiate for things like safety items.”
Porter will be the featured guest on Wednesday when Bern and other union officials, and organizers for workers rights, meet at the UAW Hall in East Moline.
