Labor 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. GE deals with many types of EU employee representative bodies, including health and safety committees, employee forums, information and consultation bodies and works councils. GE has European Works Councils (EWC) within our Energy business and an EWC for our GE Healthcare business.

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 10,900 employees). The larger of the two unions, the IUE-CWA, represents approximately 7,900 GE employees at 40 Company locations, while the UE represents approximately 3,000 employees at 9 locations. The terms of these two contracts were also extended to, and approved by, 8 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 4,300 employees. The IUE and UE National Agreements, and a majority of the other local contracts, expire on June 19, 2011. Other GE affiliates are parties to non-CBC labor contracts with various labor unions, covering approximately 2,500 employees, that also have varying expiration dates.