Women's History Month Profiles: Maxine Lachnite-Pelker

For Women's History Month, we're taking a look at a group of leaders who are currently active making women's history across the labor movement. Check back daily for a new profile and meet some of the people working to improve not only their community, but also to improve conditions for working people across the country. Today's profile is Maxine Lachnite-Pelker of the Heat and Frost Insulators (HFIU).

Maxine Lachnite-Pelker began her insulator career in 1988, working first as a helper and then starting her apprenticeship in early 1989. She worked hard for many years as an insulator and a mother, retiring in September 2021. She is now a project engineer with a signatory insulating contractor. Lachnite-Pelker is a trailblazer in her industry and an inspiration to all women in her local, showing what can be accomplished by working hard and working together. 

Kenneth Quinnell Thu, 03/20/2025 - 08:41

Tags: Women's History Month

Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Video Game Workers Launch Industrywide Union with CWA

Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.

In an historic development, workers across the United States and Canada are launching United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433 (UVW-CWA), a direct-join, industrywide video game union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in partnership with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). 

UVW-CWA builds off of mobilization following the Game Developers Conference in 2018, which was a launching pad for the start of Game Workers Unite, an international grassroots organization dedicated to labor organizing the video game industry. The launch of UVW-CWA also coincides with the fifth anniversary of CODE-CWA, which has helped more than 6,500 tech and video game workers organize to join the union since 2020. 

“The creation of this union was not done in isolation; it’s a cumulative effort by the thousands of video game workers who have been fighting for years to redefine what it means to stand together and reclaim power in one of the largest and highest-grossing industries on the globe,” said Tom Smith, CWA’s senior director of organizing. “These workers are taking a bold stand, joining together to build power for the workers behind the games we all know and love.”

“Our mission is to take back our lives, our labor, and our passion from those who treat us like replaceable cogs; to empower our fellow workers; to link up arms with the laid off, with the freelancer, with the disillusioned contractor, with the disenfranchised and the marginalized, with the workers laboring invisibly to keep this industry afloat,” reads UVW-CWA’s mission statement. “We are going to create a game industry that works for us, one that nourishes its talent and invests in its future, rather than constantly seeking short-term profits. We are the ones that make the games, so we must be the ones that set the terms of how we work.”

Kenneth Quinnell Wed, 03/19/2025 - 09:50