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Unions

Teamsters Deliver Strike Notice; Canada Rail Delivers Lockout Notice

August 19, 2024 David Lassen, Trains. , , , ,
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference today (Aug. 18) served a 72-hour strike notice to Canadian Pacific Kansas City, saying the union will walk out at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 22, barring a last-minute labor agreement. Canadian National Railway, meanwhile, announced it had delivered a formal 72-hour lockout notice, following up on plans it had announced on Aug. 9 [see “Canadian rail strike could begin …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 9, 2024]. CPKC had also said it would institute a lockout on Aug. 22. The 72-hour notifications are required under Canadian law. Strike notice at CPKC The TCRC said it was issuing the strike notice after CPKC served notice it would lock out union members and change the terms of the collective agreements.

Nurses Strike At University Of Illinois Health Close To The DNC

August 19, 2024 Kristen Schorsch, WBEZ Chicago. , , , ,
UI Health nurses allege they’ve been assaulted by patients for years: shoved — one while she was pregnant — and lunged at by a patient’s relative, and otherwise at risk of getting hurt. “One of the reasons we’re striking is the security here is awful,” Emma Stone, a nurse in the intensive care unit at the Near West Side hospital, said Monday in a field with dozens of other unionized nurses, as their colleagues picketed around the hospital across the street. “It’s very scary as a nurse to think like I could get shot or stabbed.” Stone is among more than 1,000 nurses at UI Health who went on strike Monday over safety, staffing and better pay, as the Democratic National Convention kicked off blocks away at the United Center.

The Win For EV Workers In The South You Didn’t Hear About

August 17, 2024 Ella Fanger, Portside. , , , , ,
Organized labor is in the midst of a fierce campaign to make inroads at auto manufacturers in the South, most recently at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, where on May 17, 56% of workers voted narrowly against joining the United Auto Workers. But a few months before the unsuccessful vote at Mercedes, workers 100 miles away at an EV bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama, unionized and won a historic contract. In January 2024, the majority of the around 600 workers at a plant run since 2013 by New Flyer, the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America, signed a union card to join the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA).

Meat Packing Factory: “If We Unite As Workers, We Have The Power”

August 16, 2024 Isabela Escalona, Workday Magazine. , , , ,
Dina Velasquez Escalante is a poultry worker in southwest Minnesota. She spends her workdays inspecting the chicken millions of Americans eat every day. She looks for tumors, stray bones and organs, and removes bile. After six years of hard work and cultivating expertise on almost every position on the line, she’s now in the laboratory testing samples of poultry to ensure the highest quality. As a union steward with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 663 at Butterfield Foods in Butterfield, Minnesota, Escalante is also tasked with ensuring her fellow workers receive fair treatment and safety on the line.

The Latest From On The Picket Line

August 14, 2024 Marie Kelly, Workers' World. , , , ,
The ongoing battle about whether gig workers are employees or “independent contractors” is continuing. The latest blow against these precarious workers came from the California Supreme Court on July 25. The court upheld Proposition 22, which gives companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash the means to cheat their employees out of benefits and bargaining rights by classifying them as independent contractors. According to Rideshare Drivers United: “Today, the Supreme Court of California decided that Prop 22 was not in violation of our state constitution, allowing Big Tech to continue exploiting drivers under a law they wrote and paid for, that replaced decades of common sense labor law in exchange for complete disregard of basic standards like hourly minimum wage standards and basic benefits like unemployment, family leave, workplace safety standards and the like.

How San Francisco Longshoremen Made Their Union A Powerhouse

August 13, 2024 Peter Cole, Jacobin. , , , , ,
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University and the author of Dockworker Power: Race & Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018). In this interview, Cole and Jacobin’s Benjamin Y. Fong discussed the dedication and success of the longshore workers in the 1930s and ’40s in overcoming racial division on the docks. Clips from this interview are included in Episode 6 of Organize the Unorganized (among others), which also includes archival interviews with the first International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) president, Harry Bridges, and the first black president of ILWU Local 10, Cleophas Williams.

East Coast Longshore Contract Clock Ticks Down

August 13, 2024 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , , ,
Union negotiations covering longshore workers on the East and Gulf Coasts have been stalled since June 10, bringing the union closer to a potential strike at the September 30 contract expiration. Leaders of the International Longshoremen’s Association have called a September 4-5 delegates meeting to discuss demands and strike strategy. Last week the union sent the employer association, known as USMX, a strike notice that federal law requires 60 days before a strike. The contract between the ILA and the USMX is one of the largest expiring this year, and a strike would have massive economic impact—billions of dollars per day.

Trade Unions Can And Must Rebuild Democracy

August 9, 2024 Luc Triangle, Portside. , , ,
2024 is historic in the story of global democracy. Around four billion people will vote in more than 40 countries. But in what state do we find democracy? The facts speak for themselves – if democracy was a hospital patient, it would need constant care. The global trade union movement, as the world’s largest social movement, needs to stand up For Democracy. Democracy and democratic values are under attack worldwide. Unregulated, neo-liberal globalisation has left billions of people behind and this breeds support for right-wing populists. This has fed a rising tide of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes which neither respect limits on their power nor protect the freedoms and rights of workers, minorities, civil society or trade unions.

13,500 US Hotel Workers Hold Strike Votes Over Pay And Conditions

August 7, 2024 Michael Sainato, Portside. , , ,
About 13,500 hotel workers across Boston, Honolulu, Providence and San Francisco will vote on whether to strike this week as they push for significant wage increases and protections against job cuts. Employees at leading chains including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni will decide in the coming days whether to approve the walkouts. The hotel industry stands accused of having used the Covid-19 crisis to reduce staffing and increase workloads. Workers were hit on multiple fronts in recent years, as thousands faced layoffs and furloughs during the pandemic, only to return to work with stagnant wages as inflation soared, and higher workloads due to policies such as the elimination of daily room cleanings, causing rooms to be messier and coinciding with staff reductions.

A National Tenants Union Has Arrived

August 7, 2024 Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , ,
Five tenants unions from around the country convened Tuesday to announce the launch of a new national organization to take on the power of multistate real-estate capital. The Tenant Union Federation marks the first major national effort at tenant organizing in 40 years. “Every tenant deserves a union — everyone deserves to move with the kind of power I found here,” said Donna Goldsmith, an organizer with the Louisville Tenants Union (one of the federation’s founding members) to a virtual audience of renters from around the country. Goldsmith moved to a senior-living community in Louisville looking for a fresh start after the murder of her daughter and two grandchildren more than a decade ago.

Lack Of Worker Input Creates Bumps In The Road For EV Buses

August 7, 2024 Audrey Elberger, Labor Notes. , , ,
Electric buses are rolling out nationally, and promise to help clean up city air. California is leading the way, with more than 650 active vehicles in 2022, and has mandated a completely electric or hydrogen fleet by 2040. But what happens when managers pick buses that can’t drive up the hills? Drivers and mechanics say bosses picked buses without regard for the requirements of the routes. Safety is also an issue. School bus drivers in San Francisco say their new EV buses have a fiberglass frame that puts a blinding glare in the rear view mirror. They also worry the bus frame, widened to fit large batteries, now barely fits in the road lane, which might cause accidents.

Schools For Struggle: For A Workers’ Education Movement

August 6, 2024 Daniel Judt, Portside. , , , ,
In December of 1936, a day into their historic sit-down strike at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, autoworkers set up a school. Surrounded by idle machines, freed from the foreman's gaze, they took classes in public speaking and labor journalism, in political economy, in the history of the labor movement. This was not a spontaneous idea. Some of the key players in the strikes—the nascent United Auto Workers (UAW) union's education director and several rank-and-file organizers, as well as its future president, Walter Reuther, and his brother, Roy—had spent time at Brookwood Labor College, a small independent school for workers who wanted to radicalize the labor movement.

New Contract Equalizes Protections Across University Of Maryland

August 5, 2024 Bri Hatch, WYPR. , , , ,
Workers at nine of 12 schools in the University System of Maryland are now protected under the first-ever system-wide union contract. The new agreement raises wages, establishes health and safety protections, and guarantees permanent salaried positions for contractual employees after two years of service. The changes affect around 5,700 employees, from Frostburg to the Eastern Shore. Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union and university leaders gathered at a signing ceremony Friday to mark the official start of the standardized protections.

New ‘Battery Belt’ Opens Organizing Front In The South

August 3, 2024 Ben Carroll, Labor Notes. , , ,
Towering cranes pierce the sky, contrasting with the rural surroundings. It’s an early morning in June, the air already gauzy and thick, and construction is humming at the Toyota Battery mega-site in Liberty, North Carolina. Trucks and other heavy machines dart in and out of the complex. A line of food trucks is tucked around the corner, alongside a dozen tour buses used to move workers. Production is slated to begin in 2025. By 2030, when the 7 million-square-foot complex is fully operational, it will have 14 production lines—10 dedicated to batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electrics, and four for hybrid electric vehicles—operated by 5,100 workers. The total population of Liberty is 2,655.

Workers Rally Against Racism In Federal Public Service

August 3, 2024 By Gabriela Calugay-Casuga, Rabble.CA. , , ,
Workers marched from the Human Rights monument to the Privy Council Office (PCO) in Ottawa demanding an end to anti-Black racism in the federal public service on Thursday. The demonstration was hosted by the Black Class Action Secretariat and various public sector unions to mark Emancipation Day, which commemorates when enslaved Indigenous and Black Peoples in the British Empire were liberated in 1834.  The rally comes after the secretariat along with its allies in the Coalition Against Workplace Discrimination revealed findings from an internal report from the Privy Council Office. It showed evidence of widespread discrimination within the office, which manages the public service. 
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