Unions

Low Voltage Electricians Strike For The First Time In Unit’s History

June 5, 2024 Jorge Torres, Labor Notes. Resist! Electrical Workers, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Members of the limited energy construction unit of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 46 in Seattle will be voting June 6 on the latest offer from the contractors’ association, after nearly eight weeks on an unprecedented strike. The current offer includes wages far below the union’s original demand, nothing on paid holidays except an exploratory committee that might not meet until September—and giving up the right to go on strike ever again. The 1,023 members of the limited energy unit—mostly specialty electricians, and a few installers—have been on strike since April 11, in an unexpected shake-up of standard-practice contract negotiations.

Starbucks Resumes Bargaining Amid Fresh Wave Of Unionized Stores

June 3, 2024 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Organize! Contract Negotiations, Labor Movement, Starbucks, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Starbucks has resumed bargaining with union leaders amid a fresh wave of organized stores after the world’s largest coffee chain agreed to open talks over labor agreements. After a long, embittered campaign, the Seattle-based coffee giant jointly announced a new framework with Workers United in February to reach contracts with unionized stores. Bargaining got under way on Wednesday, and is due to continue on Thursday. Since baristas in Buffalo successfully formed the first unionized US Starbucks store in December 2021, an organizing drive by Starbucks Workers United has spread nationwide, to more than 425 Starbucks stores in 43 states, representing over 10,500 workers.

UAW Local 4811’s Stand-Up Strike Grows By 12,000

June 1, 2024 Hannah Bowlus, In These Times. Resist! California, Campus Movement, Israel, Palestine, Strikes, UAW, Unions

Twelve thousand academic workers at UCLA and UC Davis are poised to walk off the job Tuesday morning as part of an historic strike in solidarity with Palestine. The workers — 6,400 at the University of California, Los Angeles and 5,700 at the University of California, Davis — are members of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers across the University of California (UC) system. “We’re taking this … unprecedented action because of the university’s serious, unfair labor practices (ULP), which really go to the heart of our rights for freedom of speech and protest, and the ability to take collective action,” Local 4811 President Rafael Jaime told In These Times ahead of Tuesday’s walkout.

European Farmers Shun Anti-Green Deal Protest In Brussels

June 1, 2024 Katharina Wecker, DeSmog. Strategize! European Union (EU), Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Green New Deal, Right wing extremism, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Europe’s largest farming unions representing millions of agricultural workers have rejected calls to join next week’s protest against EU green reforms, DeSmog can reveal. Smaller groups have also shunned the demo – some wanting to avoid the prospect of violence, others claiming they didn’t know it was happening. Preparations for the June 4 demo have been ramping up ahead of the start of the EU elections next Thursday, with protesters set to gather in Brussels days before European citizens head to the polls. The hardline Dutch group Farmers Defence Force (FDF) has urged farmer “warriors” to attend the demo, with its spokesperson claiming: “we are defending the rights of farmers and the standards of the European Union as it’s supposed to be”.

How Tens Of Thousands Of Graduate Workers Are Organizing

May 30, 2024 Valentina Luketa, Labor Notes. Organize! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s the biggest organizing wave the U.S. labor movement has seen in decades. Graduate workers are unionizing in huge numbers, winning drive after drive with 90 percent support or more. What’s more, the workers are in the driver’s seat of these campaigns, with little help from union staff. Most union organizing these days relies on a staff-heavy approach that’s tough to scale up. But the grad worker upsurge offers a sketch of a worker-led model that could help reverse labor’s decline. The United Electrical Workers (UE) alone has organized close to 30,000 graduate workers over the past year and a half. We’ve won elections at eight major universities, including MIT and the University of Minnesota.

Union Power Can Change Campus Protests Forever

May 29, 2024 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Strategize! Campus Movement, Palestine, Solidarity, Strikes, Student Activism, UAW, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Strikes are different from protests. Though protesters frequently say that they are making “demands,” it is more accurate to say they are making requests. Protests rely on persuasion. Their persuasion may be gentle, or it may be aggressive. It may rely on moral shaming to get its point across, or it may rely on the elevation of awareness, or it may rely on the pure intimidation of numbers. But protests, for all of their righteous fury and necessity, lack the legal ability to shut things down until change is achieved. Strikers, on the other hand, can truly make demands. Their proposition is simple: No work will get done until a change is made.

Over 400 Physicians From Delaware’s Christiana Care Move To Unionize

May 29, 2024 Jennifer Henderson, MedPage Today. Organize! Delaware, Doctors, Health Care, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD. "If successful, this will be the first physician union in Delaware and the first union of any kind at ChristianaCare," Doctors Council SEIU said in an announcement of the filing, which pointed to the ongoing corporatization of medicine as driving the physicians' efforts. Some of the specific concerns that physicians detailed in regard to their filing included understaffing and inadequate resources, corporate influence on medical decision making, limited input in matters affecting patient care and physician safety and autonomy, and moral injury caused by pressure to place profit over patients.

Awful Conditions In New Postal Hubs Create Opening For Resistance

May 29, 2024 Jamie Partridge, Labor Notes. Strategize! Postal Workers, Unions, US Postal Service, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

For three years, rank-and-file postal workers and community allies have been fighting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Ten-Year Plan to Amazonify the postal service. DeJoy’s overall goal is eliminating jobs by installing huge new automated parcel sorting machines. For letter carriers, the biggest immediate impact of his multi-pronged plan is relocating many from neighborhood post offices to massive new Sorting and Delivery Centers. Over the next few years 600 of these hubs would be set up, impacting 6,000 post offices and 100,000 routes. Under pressure from Senators, DeJoy announced May 13 that he will pause another part of the plan, the consolidation of mail processing plants, at least until next January—a big win for our side.

Organizing One Of The Largest Black Led Unions In The United States

May 28, 2024 Keith Kelleher, The Forge. Organize! Black Working Class, History, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

McMaid workers, led by Irma Sherman, Doris Gould, Juanita Hill, and Mary Williamson, transformed labor organizing by successfully unionizing homecare workers in Chicago in 1984, setting the groundwork for the largest union in the Midwest, and catalyzing the organizing of a field predominately staffed by working-class Black and brown women. In Part One, the McMaid homecare workers, with their union, United Labor Unions Local 880, a small, independent union founded by ACORN, the national community organization, overcame an intense anti-union campaign by management to win a solid union election victory in January, 1984. But even more obstacles lay ahead in their fight for Justice.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

May 27, 2024 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, The South, union busting, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

How Workers Are Revolutionizing The South

May 25, 2024 David McCall, ZNetwork. Organize! Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Donneta Williams, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1025 and a longtime optical fiber maker at the Corning plant in Wilmington, North Carolina, knows how important it is for workers intent on forming a union to speak directly with peers who walk in the same shoes. So Williams agreed to send three of her colleagues to Corning’s Tarboro facility, about 145 miles away, when workers at that site approached the union with questions about organizing. Local 1025 members shared firsthand accounts of how the union boosted their wages, gave them a voice, and kept them safe on the job. And in May 2024, the workers at Tarboro filed for an election to join the USW.

When Stellantis Fired Temps At Toledo Jeep, We Marched On Management

May 24, 2024 Benjamin Hinsey, Labor Notes. Resist! Auto Workers, Stellantis, Temporary Workers, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

After we struck for six weeks last fall and won a contract that promised a path to seniority, auto workers are being screwed over again by Stellantis. The firings were a one-two punch. First, in January, Stellantis terminated 500 temp workers—“supplementals” in the company’s jargon—in Kokomo, Indiana, and at a parts sequencing facility near its Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Then in March, the mass firings expanded to 341 temp workers at the Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, where I work making Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators, one of the plants that launched the Stand-Up Strike. Workers got the news that they were terminated via text message.

How Reformers Doubled Vermont AFL-CIO Membership

May 23, 2024 Gordon Simmons, Labor Notes. Organize! AFL-CIO, Book Review, Labor Movement, Unions, Vermont, Worker Rights and Jobs

Transforming an existing union into a more democratic and member-run organization has often proven to be a daunting—though possible—task. The pressing need to revitalize organized labor in the U.S., however, depends on such movements. Beginning in 2017, a slate of reform-minded union activists won leadership offices in the Vermont state federation of labor, reinvigorating that organization. Within just a few years, the federation’s membership doubled. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO, 2017-2023 is two-term president David Van Deusen’s participant-retelling of the emergence of the UNITED reform group.

Retired New York City Teachers Rise And Run

May 21, 2024 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. Strategize! Healthcare, Medicare, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Retirees, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

They’ve really stepped in it. The incumbent Unity Caucus that runs the huge teachers union in New York City is facing a challenge from the Retiree Advocate slate who hope to take leadership of the powerful 70,000-person retiree chapter within the union. Ballots were mailed May 10 and will be counted June 14. The rallying issue has been the United Federation of Teachers’ collusion with the city to put municipal retirees, including retired teachers, into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna. The plan would replace their traditional Medicare, which is provided premium-free along with a cost-free wraparound.

The Role Of The Labor Movement In Solidarity Economy

May 21, 2024 CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Labor Movement, Solidarity Economy, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Enjoy this panel discussion on the role of the labor movement in solidarity economy hosted by the Solidarity Economy Club at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies from Friday, May 10 , 2024. Solidarity Economy is an internationalist framework that seeks to unify diverse community-based initiatives toward a values-centered alternative to capitalism. Some of these initiatives include cooperatives, community gardens, land trusts, tenant’s unions, care networks & more. There has been increasing attention on the role of the labor movement in solidarity economy as union leaders seek new ways to fight back against the increasing precarity caused by neoliberalism, automation and AI.

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