UFCW 3000 Member Story: Cheryl Ziegler

Kaiser Steward Cheryl Ziegler (center), bargaining rep Cathy MacPhail (Left), & Union rep Lauren VanWormer (right)

Cheryl Ziegler works at the Bellevue Kaiser (formerly Group Health) as a NUC Med Tech and has been a UFCW member since 1978. She became a shop steward in 1982, seeing that Union members make the Union strong, an attitude she continues to champion, “Get involved! We need to look at the word UNION, it has a U and an I, you need to look at that as you and I all need to do our part.”

Cheryl has been on bargaining committees at the local level since 1987 and has also served on the national negotiating team with the Alliance of Healthcare Unions for Kaiser after Group Health merged with Kaiser in early 2017. Cheryl has seen the power that local members have gained with a national bargaining coalition, “With 22 local unions we can put pressure on the employer from many different angles that we can’t do all by ourselves. It puts us at a tremendous advantage as opposed to just one or two contracts in WA state.”

Cheryl has served on many committees including the Workforce Planning and Development Committee and the Education Committee. Cheryl continues to be a wealth of knowledge, helping to train new stewards and share immense institutional knowledge. Cheryl Ziegler has recently announced that she is retiring after decades of service to patients and her coworkers. Her decades of staunch activism have paid off and so she is leaving being an active member with the Union stronger than when she started her career!