GE CitizenshipLabor Relations
GE maintains constructive statutory and contractual relationships with hundreds of employee representatives throughout its global operations. The employee representative structures take various forms, but they can generally be described as labor unions, trade unions, works councils or other types of employee representative bodies. Relationships with these employee representatives are based on applicable laws in the countries in which we operate. In all cases, we respect employees’ rights to freedom of association and to bargain collectively within the requirements of local law.
In the European Union, GE has employee representation agreements at the local, national and transnational levels. Specifically, GE has more than 300 employee representative bodies, including European Works Councils (EWC) at GE Healthcare, GE Industrial and GE Infrastructure.
In the United States, GE negotiated a four-year National Agreement in 2007 with members of GE’s two largest unions (which currently represent approximately 13,500 employees). The larger of the two unions, the IUE-CWA, represents more than 9,200 GE employees at 49 company locations, while the UE represents more than 4,200 employees at 11 locations. The terms of these two new contracts were also extended to, and approved by, nine other U.S. unions representing smaller groups of GE employees. These other unions are members of the AFL-CIO Coordinated Bargaining Committee, which has local contracts with GE representing an additional 6,000 employees. The IUE and UE National Agreements, and a majority of the other local contracts, expire on June 19, 2011. Also in the United States, approximately 3,500 staff employees (and a large number of freelance employees) are covered by approximately 160 labor agreements to which NBC Universal Inc., an affiliate of GE, is a party. These agreements are with various labor unions, expire at various dates and are generally for a term ranging from three to five years. Other GE affiliates are parties to non-CBC labor contracts with various labor unions covering approximately 3,800 employees that also have varying expiration dates.