Wendell Young IV
President, UFCW Local 1776
Wendell Young IV is President of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 Keystone State. The Union represents 35,000 members from across Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia in supermarkets, drug stores, food processing plants, government services, the gaming industry, manufacturing facilities, nursing homes, professional offices, medical cannabis facilities, and Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores. He is a Vice President of the UFCW International Union.
Young was born in 1961 in Philadelphia. He attended Archbishop Ryan High School as well as Penn State and LaSalle Universities. He is a graduate of Saint Joseph’s University’s Comey Institute of Industrial Relations, where he has served as an Advisory Board member and taught courses in labor economics and collective bargaining. He is also a graduate of Cornell University’s Advanced Labor Union Leadership Program.
From 1977 to 1983, Young was employed at Penn Fruit and Acme Markets. In 1983, he began his career as a union representative, in which capacity he worked as a field representative and an organizer. Subsequently, as the Union’s lead negotiator, he assumed responsibility for all collective bargaining activities and spearheaded a number of initiatives as a union negotiator to establish affordable child care and education benefits for working families.
He was elected President of UFCW Local 1776, taking office in January 2005, and serves as a trustee overseeing health and pension benefit trust funds for the union’s members. In 2018, Local 1776 merged with UFCW Local 23, making UFCW Local 1776 Keystone State. One of the most important, strategic initiatives in the respective Local’s long and proud history.
Young is on the Board of Directors for the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) and currently serves as President. He is a graduate of the IFEBP Trustees Masters Program.
Young is involved actively with fundraising activities for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the ALS Association and other charitable causes.
Young resides in Lower Providence Township in Montgomery County, PA.
