Financial services firm union suspends strike with new talks underway

Union employees at CUNA Mutual Group, which has adopted the brand name of TruStage, returned to work Monday after a two-week walkout as negotiations were set to resume toward a new labor agreement.

Members of Office & Professional Employees International Union Local 39, representing about 450 CUNA Mutual/TruStage employees, voted Friday to suspend their strike effective Monday. The strike began Friday, May 19.

The strike is the largest by white-collar workers in Wisconsin in at least a decade and the first by the union at Madison-based CUNA Mutual, where it has represented employees since the 1940s. The company provides financial service products to credit unions. 

The strike came more than a year after negotiations began on a new contract and after what union leaders have said was a failure on the part of the company to take part in meaningful bargaining. 

Talks between the union and the company management “tentatively agreed on priority issues” including job security provisions and remote work policies, the union said in a statement. Additional negotiating sessions are scheduled Tuesday and Friday this week.

The union has labeled the work stoppage an unfair labor practice strike — a distinction that, if upheld, protects strikers from being permanently replaced. The union’s statement credited the two-week walkout with spurring additional bargaining sessions, which the union said produced progress while leaving a number of issues unresolved. 

The statement added that union members also voted to “authorize a work stoppage within the next thirty days if necessary.”