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Unions

New England Unions Lead The Way On Offshore Wind

October 13, 2025 Paul Prescod, Portside. , , , ,
At a panel during the recent Climate Week in New York City, Rhode Island AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley delivered some much-needed good news. He announced that building trades unions in Rhode Island and Massachusetts signed a Labor Peace Agreement with SouthCoast Wind to ensure union work on its massive planned offshore wind project. The scale of the project and the potential for job creation are significant. For comparison, Rhode Island’s 704-megawatt Revolution Wind project, which the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to block, employed close to a thousand union members in its construction. At 2.4 gigawatts (GW) of energy, SouthCoast Wind will need even more workers.

23 Unions Plan To Strike Together If Kaiser Fails To Address Crises

October 12, 2025 Tyler Walicek, Truthout. , , , ,
“Our patients deserve the best, not mediocrity.” This phrase has been emblazoned across graphics on the social media feeds of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP), an American Federation of Teachers affiliate, Local 5017. The roughly 6,000 health care professionals of the OFNHP are locked in a contract fight with their employer, Kaiser Permanente, the sprawling health care consortium. The mediocrity in question is not that of the staffers themselves; instead, it warns of the impending consequences for staff and patients alike of the workplace stressors to which Kaiser’s tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, technicians, and others are systematically subjected.

LA Tenants’ Strikes Forced A Major Landlord To Refund Opaque Utility Fees

October 11, 2025 Roshan Abraham, Next City. , , , ,
When Joe Porter, a 29-year-old video editor, moved into his 400-square-foot studio apartment in Los Angeles four years ago, his bills for water, trash removal and pest control were bundled together into one monthly payment that came out to about $60. After the first few years, Porter said, his bill increased to about $200. When he asked his landlord – the giant real estate investment trust Equity Residential — for an explanation, he was told billing was done by a third party and that Equity could not provide a more detailed breakdown. Like many landlords of multifamily buildings, Equity uses a billing method called ratio utility billing systems (RUBS). Landlords who use this system divvy up the costs of the building’s total utilities usage according to each unit’s square footage and number of tenants.

Labor Needs An Independent Political Program

October 9, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , , , , ,
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain recently laid out four priorities he says should form the nucleus of a workers’ political program. And he said that a broad strike in May 2028 is one way to fight for those priorities. Fain spoke on September 30 at the release of a new report by the Center for Working Class Politics and allied groups. The report, titled “Democrats’ Rust Belt Struggles and the Promise of Independent Politics,” is based on a new survey showing that workers in four states battered by decades of mass layoffs—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin—are eager to see their basic issues addressed in the political arena.

Starbucks Workers Hold ‘Practice Picket’ After Store Closures

October 8, 2025 Bradley Hohulin, The Indianapolis Star. , , ,
Six days after two Indiana Starbucks locations closed as part of the multinational coffee chain's Back to Starbucks restructuring plan, unionized employees of the Starbucks on Mass Ave briefly walked off the job in a "practice picket" Oct. 2. Roughly 20 Starbucks employees and supporters chanted and marched with signs that read "No contract, no coffee" and "Just practicing for a fair contract" in the shade of the café at 430 Massachusetts Ave. The hour-long demonstration was part of a recent national picketing effort by Starbucks Workers United across 35 U.S. cities, according to a news release from the union. Workers United members have staged rallies over the last week calling for improved staffing in stores and higher take-home pay as negotiations for a new contract with Starbucks have stalled.

The Biggest Bargaining Mistake Unions Are Making In 2025

October 7, 2025 Richard De Vries, Labor Notes. , , , ,
When unions get ready for bargaining, we tend to look at the wage scale in our existing contract and think something like, “Let’s open with a proposal for a 5 percent raise every year, and maybe eventually we’ll settle at 3.75 percent.” This type of proposal was made out of habit when inflation was around 2 percent. While that may seem like a logical way to approach negotiations, you’re making a big mistake if you don’t take a closer look at the numbers. The error that many bargaining teams make is not reviewing the cost of living each of the previous five years. Because of extreme inflation during the last five years, minimum increases of as much as 10 percent may be needed to restore purchasing power.

River Valley Co-Op Workers Opened Up Bargaining And Won Big

October 3, 2025 Katrina Jagelski, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
River Valley Co-op is a consumer-owned cooperative grocery store with two locations in Western Massachusetts. We have been unionized with Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1459 for the last decade with 175 workers in our bargaining unit. This year, beginning in January and ending in June, we held thirteen bargaining sessions with RVC management and their attorneys in a process that was transformative for our union. Negotiations were tense and at times, adversarial. Workers took a stand in ways they never had before, strengthening our relationships and faith in our ability to fight and win. We made significant strides in the contract, including $2 an hour raises across the board, union orientation for new hires, and protections for our immigrant co-workers. Our contract was ratified with 77 percent of workers turning out for a nearly unanimous ‘yes’ vote.

These Tenants Are Going On Strike Against ‘Rent Debt’

October 3, 2025 Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , ,
Nine former tenants of Equity Residential, the nation’s fifth-largest apartment owner, announced this week that they’re going on a new kind of strike. According to the company, the former tenants still owe amounts ranging from $195 to more than $50,000 — but in order to spotlight what they say are predatory practices by corporate landlords, the tenants will collectively refuse to pay up. For sisters Tay’Laur and Tai’Leah Paige, one missed rent payment triggered a chain of events that left them homeless and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Two years ago, when the Paige sisters came up short on rent for their North Hollywood apartment, they say Equity Residential moved rapidly to lock them out of their online payment portal and file for eviction.

We Said ‘We Will Block Everything’ And We Did

October 2, 2025 Laura Montanari, Scheer Post. , , , , , , ,
As boats from the Global Sumud Flotilla prepared to set sail toward Gaza from the coasts of Italy, Spain, and Tunisia, a representative of Genoa’s Dockworkers’ Union (CALP), now part of Unione Sindacale di Base, declared that if anything happened to the flotilla, workers would “block everything.” “Our young women and men must come back without a scratch,” the worker said at the port, before the flotilla ships departed. “And all this cargo, which belongs to the people and is going to the people, must reach its destination, down to the very last box.” So when the flotilla was attacked on the night of September 8 while in Tunisian waters, the reaction was swift: Italian labor unions, led by Unione Sindacale di Base, called for a 24-hour general strike on September 22.

What’s At Stake: USC And LMU Push Back Against Untenured Faculty Unions

October 1, 2025 Julia Barajas, Portside. , , , ,
Last summer, after nearly two years of organizing, hundreds of untenured faculty at Loyola Marymount University celebrated the certification of their newly formed union. In a message to the campus community, Thomas Poon, who served as LMU’s executive vice president and provost, wrote: “We honor the will of our [non-tenure track] faculty and the perspectives they expressed throughout the election campaign.” The university, he added, “will continue to engage the union in good faith and with transparency.” Poon is now president of LMU and, earlier this month, he changed his tune. Poon announced Sept. 12 that the university’s board of directors decided to invoke a religious exemption to the National Labor Relations Act.

Research And Public Service Professionals Vote To Form Union

September 25, 2025 Josephine Murphy, Portside. , , ,
Research and public service professionals across the UC voted Tuesday to form a new union that will represent 7,200 workers. The union, Research and Public Service Professionals-United Auto Workers, will represent workers who run “core facilities,” administer grants and analyze data, among other services. About half of those who the union will represent voted in the election, with 83% voting “yes” for the union’s formation. RPSPs have cited multiple reasons for the formation of RPSP-UAW, including stagnant salaries amid increasing workloads and a lack of administrative transparency. “In the face of federal funding cuts to higher education, many RPSPs also want a union to gain a stronger political voice,” a RPSP-UAW press release said.

Day Two In French Anti-Government Actions: ‘Stop Austerity!’

September 24, 2025 John Catalinotto, Workers' World. , , ,
A million people joined the Sept. 18 protest action aimed at stopping the French regime’s war on the workers. Besides street demonstrations and some traffic disruptions, tens of thousands of workers held strikes that closed schools and shut down significant public transportation. Strikes cut the metro traffic in Paris in half. It only ran during rush hours. Behind the eruption of class struggle on Sept. 10 and 18 is the continuous decline in the quality of life for working people in cities and in rural areas. This decline includes the 2023 legal rise in retirement age — a de facto cut in pensions — and the current regime’s attempt to cut social services that mainly aid the working class.

Wells Fargo Workers Push To Bring A Union To The Banking Industry

September 24, 2025 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. , , ,
Workers at Wells Fargo are organizing the first union at a major U.S. bank—in one of the least-organized industries in the country. The first branch where workers won a union vote, in 2023, was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then, workers have have voted to join the Communications Workers (CWA) at 29 more branches from Apopka, Florida, to Casper, Wyoming. So have 35 workers who review customer and employee complaints at the bank. These workers, a total of 200, are a small fraction of Wells Fargo’s 217,000 employees. But their organizing represents the first formal union effort since the company’s founding in 1852. And their success is even more notable in an almost entirely non-union industry.

Teachers And Unions Fight Back As US Campuses Prepare To Fuel Witch Hunt

September 23, 2025 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , , , , ,
Outrage flared last week about the University of California’s capitulation to this era’s resurgent McCarthyism, as news spread that the university has provided the names of at least 160 students, faculty members, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley, to federal officials who — under the guise of investigating “alleged antisemitic incidents” — are scrutinizing people who have expressed opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Judith Butler, a UC Berkeley philosophy professor and Jewish critic of the Israeli government, said in a recent interview with Democracy Now!, “There is no good evidence that antisemitism is rampant on campus,” adding, “To take a position against genocide is certainly not an antisemitic thing to do.

Trump’s War On Wind: Tens Of Thousands Of Jobs Destroyed

September 23, 2025 Kari Thompson, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Environmental groups and unions representing construction workers found common ground this summer over President Trump’s blocking of offshore wind projects. The Revolution Wind offshore turbine farm off the coast of Rhode Island is 80 percent complete, but its fate remains uncertain after the Department of Interior issued a stop-work order on August 22. “The full thing was finally getting put together, and having it stopped like that was out of nowhere,” said Antonio Gianfrancesco, a Laborer from Local 271 who has been working the project for more than two years. The project’s halt resulted in a fiery statement from Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), an alliance of 14 construction unions: “Trump just fired 1,000 of our members who had already labored to complete 80 percent of this major energy project.
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