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Unions

New Orleans Nurses Fight For A New Union As Hospitals Merge

February 13, 2024 Jesse Baum, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Heidi Tujague works 12-hour shifts as an emergency room nurse at New Orleans’ University Medical Center (UMC), just outside the Central Business District. The hospital is part of a massive nonprofit, LCMC Health — which held assets of $3.57 billion in 2022 and operated over half of New Orleans’ hospitals in 2023. But despite those resources, Tujague says nurses sometimes have to scramble for supplies to care for patients. Even wheelchairs can be scarce. “You have to ask a patient, ‘Would you mind standing up and shifting to this chair so I can get this wheelchair — while you’re waiting for your X-ray — so I can get someone else to their X-ray?

Amid Union-Busting, Starbucks Workers Just Keep Organizing

February 6, 2024 The Stand. , , , ,
If Starbucks executives thought the company’s aggressive and illegal anti-union efforts would eventually wear down employees and that enthusiasm would wane for joining together in a union, they were wrong. On Monday, employees at yet another local Starbucks store in Renton Village demanded a union election, saying “business has repeatedly been prioritized over partners’ physical and mental health.” Amid management’s union-busting campaign, Starbucks workers just keep organizing. There are now 483 Starbucks stores in 46 states that have filed to unionize. Of those, 385 Starbucks stores in 43 states have won union elections, a nearly 80 percent win rate.

The South, Where Automakers Go For A Discount

February 6, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
In 1978, Volkswagen became the first foreign-owned company to manufacture cars in the United States since Rolls-Royce in the 1930s, setting up shop in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. “This is one of the most important organized victories in years for the UAW,” said United Auto Workers President Doug Fraser after VW workers voted 865 to 17 to join the union. “We believe that there will be other foreign automakers deciding to open plants in the U.S. and we intend to organize those workers as well.” Since then, some 35 shiny new engine and assembly plants have been installed along I-75 and I-55, forming an automotive corridor from the Midwest to the South that today employs about 150,000 workers

Honor The Palestinian Trade Union Picket Line

February 5, 2024 UAW Labor For Palestine, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , ,
On October 16, 2023, Palestinian trade unions issued an urgent call to End all Complicity and Stop Arming Israel. At the CAP Conference on January 24, 2024, the UAW International Executive Board — without membership engagement or approval — crossed that picket line by endorsing Joe Biden, whose administration arms, funds, and facilitates the relentless Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout historic Palestine that has already killed more than 30,000 people, including thousands of children, in just over 114 days.

Hyundai Workers Roll The Union On In Alabama

February 4, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Auto workers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, have signed up more than 30 percent of their nearly 4,000 co-workers in an ambitious drive to unionize. The Auto Workers (UAW) announced the organizing breakthrough with a new video, “Montgomery Can’t Wait,” where workers link the labor and civil rights movements: “Montgomery, the city where Rosa Parks sat down, and where thousands of Hyundai workers are ready to Stand Up.” “There’s something about our fight to unionize being homegrown that makes it just that much sweeter,” said Quichelle Liggins, a 12-year quality inspector at Hyundai.

Tech Workers Deserve A Union

February 2, 2024 Peter Olney, The Stansbury Forum. , , ,
Many of us have tried to follow the recent kerfuffle involving Sam Altman’s leadership of the company he founded, OpenAI. In mid-November 2023 he was abruptly fired, then returned to power just five days later. The business press highlighted the implications of this power struggle for the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence and the future influence of investors like Microsoft. It appears, however, that the pivotal moment in the power struggle came when 738 out of OpenAI’s estimated 770 workers said they would resign if Altman remained ousted. Even if it only resulted in putting a CEO back in power (and to a company that represents a real threat to the labor movement), the revolt by OpenAI workers was nevertheless “one of the most successful collective actions taken to date in the tech industry,” writes Ethan Marcotte, and a reminder to tech workers of the power they have at work.

How We Move Forward Together: The Rank And File Project

January 30, 2024 Abdullah F., Cyn Huang and Marsha Niemeijer, Convergence. , , , , ,
Most major advances toward a more equal and just society come about because organized working people use their power to disrupt capitalist profits. And we think that’s the only force that can ultimately end capitalist exploitation and establish a truly democratic society. For that reason, many on the Left see labor unions as essential to making radical change. But unions today are often top-down and undemocratic in structure, weak, defensive and even conservative in their politics. The labor movement lacks a coherent, organized left-wing leadership that could help re-found the movement on a democratic, class-struggle basis.

Condé Nast Bosses Wear Prada And The Workers Get Nada!

January 28, 2024 Bob Hennelly, Portside. , , , ,
“The bosses wear Prada, and the workers get nada!” chanted hundreds of News Guild CWA workers out on a one-day strike against Condé Nast, the publishing juggernaut that owns iconic titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Bon  Appetite. The boisterous picket line at the base of One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on a damp day January 24, drew a cacophony of honking horns whizzing by on West Street. After a widely lauded voluntary recognition of the union back in 2022 by the privately-held global media conglomerate, the union has run into what it told Work-Bites is hardball union-busting tactics that have really intensified with the New Year. Back in October, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch announced the company would be shrinking its global workforce of 5,400 by 270 while also predicting the publisher would see the “third straight year of overall revenue growth.”

Another Hollywood Strike?

January 26, 2024 Elizabeth Wagmeister, CTVNews. , , , , ,
Los Angeles, CA - After a year in which both actors and writers hit the picket lines, another Hollywood strike may be on the horizon. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), a union representing musicians across the entertainment industry, will begin negotiations Monday on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The union said it is seeking a deal to better reflects the current state of streaming media. The AFM is also seeking AI protection, increased wages, health care improvements, improved working conditions and residual payments for streaming content.

How Solar Ironworkers Zapped Tiers

January 26, 2024 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
California’s solar power plants now rival the scale of any in the world. What stands out most is how they were built: under union contracts. Across the U.S., nearly 90 percent of solar workers had no union last year. In California, the situation was different—at least on paper. The vast majority of its solar power plants have been wrenched in place by unionized construction workers. But at first these were union jobs practically in name only, as thousands of unionized solar construction workers toiled on the underside of a two-tier system. Their wages, training, and job security lagged far behind their union siblings. Many questioned if they were members at all.

Hawaii School Employees To Get Up To 25% In Pandemic Hazard Pay

January 25, 2024 Kevin Dayton, Portside. , , , , , ,
An arbitration decision has determined public school employees in five bargaining units of the state’s largest union are entitled to back pay of up to 25% of their total salaries for as much as two years, according to the state’s largest union. The Hawaii Government Employees Association said the decision covers up to 7,800 Department of Education employees, including school nurses, office employees, and classroom educational assistants. “Those working in the DOE were some of the most exposed among public service employees, putting their own health – as well as that of their loved ones – at substantial risk to keep services running in Hawaii’s schools,” HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira said Tuesday in a written statement.

One In Ten US Workers Belong To Unions

January 24, 2024 Jake Rosenfeld, Scheer Post. , , ,
The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union fell slightly to 10% in 2023, from 10.1% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a scholar of organized labor, I’m not shocked by this slight decline, although if there was ever a year to expect the unionization rate to increase, it was 2023. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation that unites 60 unions, has proclaimed 2023 “the year of labor.” She wasn’t exaggerating. Successful walkouts by Hollywood actors and screenwriters, autoworkers and health care professionals demonstrated how effective strikes can be in achieving union gains.

One Of The Largest Unions In The US Called For A Ceasefire In Gaza

January 23, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
“Wherever violence, fear and hatred thrive, working people cannot,” reads a statement by Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU, which boasts two million members, just joined a growing section of the US labor movement in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. SEIU is now the largest union in the country to issue such a statement. The statement begins with condemning “the horrific attacks by Hamas on October 7th,” while also condemning “the widespread attacks on innocent civilians, including the bombardment of neighborhoods, healthcare facilities, and refugee camps, by the Israeli military.”

The Unionization Wave Is Hitting Costco

January 23, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon , Jacobin. , ,
Costco’s executives are eyeballing the number 18,238 and plastering letters of contrition in break rooms after workers at the wholesale retail chain’s Norfolk, Virginia, store voted to join Teamsters Local 822 in late December. “We’re not disappointed in our employees; we’re disappointed in ourselves as managers and leaders,” wrote outgoing CEO Craig Jelinek and then president and now CEO Ron Vachris in a memo on December 29. “The fact that a majority of Norfolk employees felt that they wanted or needed a union constitutes a failure on our part.” This pattern — contrition, apology, vows to do better — is nothing new in the union-busting playbook.

Our Union Called For A Cease-Fire; It’s About Our Students

January 21, 2024 Dave Stieber, In These Times. , , , , , , ,
If you teach, your absolute worst nightmare is that something tragic happens to your students. Teachers don’t just think about students when they are in front of us; we think about them throughout each day and night. They are a central part of our lives. When a young person steps into our classroom, the first thing we do is work to connect. That’s the best way students learn. When a student doesn’t live up to their own potential, we take it personally. We obsess about what went wrong. Caring about students also means deliberately caring about the world we are helping them grow into. It has never been enough to only teach students when they are in the classroom; we have to advocate for them all the time.
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