The week in US unions, March 19-26, 2022
If you’re reading this newsletter, there’s like a 99% chance you would be the exact type of person who should come to this summer’s Labor Notes Conference, June 17-19 in Chicago. And if you’re coming to the Labor Notes Conference, you should sign up to host a pre-conference house party or happy hour to tell everybody in your city all about why you’re so excited to go, and help us build our best conference ever! Sign up here to organize one of these events! Fun, easy, and builds the movement.
STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS
The Minneapolis K-12 strike is over, long live the Sacramento K-12 strike! From the former, of particular interest is the interview with two strike leaders published by Eric Blanc at Jacobin today. From the latter, Peter Lucas covered what’s at stake for the teachers and SEIU Local 1021-repped support staff. Michael Sainato has the bird’s eye view for the Guardian. Meanwhile, teachers in Champaign, IL have filed their 10-day strike notice.
As expected, 48,000 grocery workers across Southern California at Albertsons- and Kroger-owned stores (and a couple other small chains) authorized a strike across UFCW Locals 8GS, 135, 324, 770, 1167, 1428, and 1442. No strike date has been set, but this would of course be the largest strike since the #RedforEd strike wave, and the largest private sector strike since UAW struck GM in 2007. Meanwhile, after stonewalling for almost two years, Kroger came to an agreement with UFCW Local 2008 in Arkansas, which the membership ratified overwhelmingly. Local 2008 had been in essentially the same boat as the Houston local, which has prominently threatened (but not carried out) a strike multiple times over the past couple years, which may have something to do with them being under the same corporate division and being in the South, where Kroger thinks it can get away with worse than in Denver, Portland, and other areas.
1300 members of four locals of the Operating Engineers, IBEW, Machinists, and Steelworkers at one of the largest copper mines in the world are threatening a strike against operator Rio Tinto outside of Salt Lake City after union members rejected the latest contract offer. The ratification deadline is March 31st.
500 refinery workers with Steelworkers Local 5 are on strike against Chevron in Richmond, CA, the first unit of the 30,000 members in the Steelworkers’s National Oil Bargaining Program to take strike action after rejecting a local agreement. In El Segundo, CA, 1,000 Chevron workers with Steelworkers Local 675 voted to ratify their agreement. Between the two of them, those refineries supply about 20% of California’s gas.The national contract – being negotiated by Marathon for the employers, but covering workers at Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, and others – has a tentative agreement, but each of 200 local units apparently has to ratify it and any local riders.
350 Illinois State University maintenance, dining, and other workers with AFSCME Local 1110 voted to authorize a strike by 96%, with 80% turnout; they’ll have to provide 10 days notice before they actually walk off the job. In DC, SEIU Local 500 is busy at both Howard University, where a strike threat came right up to the edge of a work stoppage, and American University, where students rallied with educators. The Washington Post wrote about the general uptick in campus labor organizing.
220 PASNAP nurses at Armstrong County Hospital in Kittanning, PA struck for five days after eight months without a contract. It sounds like the strike did not appreciably move talks at the negotiating table, at least from preliminary local reporting, so I’d keep an eye on this one for a repeat.
195 workers at City Brewing in Latrobe, PA with IUE-CWA Locals 22 and 144 struck for three days before ratifying a new agreement. It sounds like the company was going after seniority rights, which is a perennial favorite target of blue collar employers (that was a big feature of the 10-month Exxon lockout in Texas, and many others), and it sounds like the union successfully fended that off, as far as I can tell from the local reporting.
60 workers with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota at the Minnesota Epilepsy Group at three locations around the Twin Cities struck for five days against a contract offer that offered less than 1% annual wages.
CWA call center workers for Maximus, which handles federal hotlines for Medicare and ACA inquiries, struck in Hattiesburg, MS and Bogalusa, LA on the 12th anniversary of the passage of Obamacare. Elsewhere in the Deep South, cops in Birmingham, AL organized a “blue flu,” with a sick out over low pay.
Strikers at WTTW TV station in Chicago with IBEW Local 1220 have now been cut off of their healthcare coverage, in one of the more depraved rituals of employer aggression. Management has not met with the workers since the strike began on March 16th.
Employees at Disney in Florida have been staging intermittent walk-outs to protest the company’s initial silence on the anti-LGBTQ bill going through the statehouse that would prohibit teaching about sexual orientation, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. This one is notable for being an explicitly political walkout, though it looks like at least UNITE HERE Local 362, one of the unions that represents Disney workers (along with several Teamsters locals and others), is telling its members not to participate, I think due to potential discipline rather than political allegiance, judging from this article.
70-some workers who harvest flowers for the Washington Bulb Company in Mount Vernon, WA struck for a few days just before a large tulip festival, and then suspended the strike while they resumed talks with management. The workers are organized with the independent farmworkers union Familias Unidas por la Justicia.
Nearly 700 public defenders and support staffers repped by Teamsters Local 320 across the state of Minnesota came right up to the edge of their first-ever strike before settling a contract.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
Dave Jamieson reported on the long-term systematic underfunding of the NLRB, and what it means for any current or future surge in new union organizing, not to mention investigating employer abuses. If only the party that says it cares about unions held majorities in the House and Senate and the presidency. Ah, well, nevertheless.
On the other side of the aisle, a senator from Idaho who you have never heard of introduced a bill specifically targeting longshore workers, who he does not represent, preemptively blaming them for slowdowns during contract negotiations, at the apparent behest of, I kid you not, the US Potato Board. Judging from this senator’s official headshot, he looks like he may be the chairman of the Potato Board, because he looks like a potato.
INTERNAL UNION POLITICS
The Teamsters union officially has new national leadership, with the O’Brien-Zuckerman slate officially taking office on March 22nd. The transition was, uh, rocky, according to reports, and though I haven’t seen any reporting on it, the new administration was quick to relieve a considerable number of national staffers of their duties. And if the new leadership’s campaign talk was tough, they sound just as serious in their first days in office, openly talking about striking UPS in 2023, and quick to get out to the Teamsters Local 174 picket line in Seattle and announcing an additional $1 million contribution to the striking concrete workers’ hardship fund.
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota has absorbed – er, merged with – SEIU Local 199 in Iowa; the Minnesota union is nine times as large as its Iowa counterpart, which has faced relentless attacks under Iowa’s relatively new and draconian anti-public-sector union laws. SEIU continues to inch towards the long-held dream of One Big Union, but not in the way the syndicalists meant it.
NEW ORGANIZING
New election filings at the NLRB: 346 more Starbucks workers at 13 more stores in… Pittsburgh (x2), Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Columbus, OH, Austin, TX, Anaheim and Capitola, CA, Oviedo and Estero, FL, Anderson, SC, and St. Anthony, MN are joining the Workers United wave that won’t quit, bringing us up to over 3,300 workers who’ve filed for elections (not counting those who’ve announced their intention to do so but haven’t yet put in the paperwork), 40% of whom have taken the plunge in just the past four weeks; this thing is showing no signs of slowing. 235 manufacturing workers who make semi-conductor cables for RoGar Manufacturing in El Centro, CA are organizing with Teamsters Local 542. 112 support staffers at Tower Behavioral Health in Reading, PA are unionizing with SEIU Local 668. 104 educators for online charter school Washington Connections Academy based in Tumwater, WA are organizing with SEIU Local 925. 90 workers at Diversified Gas & Oil in Buckhannon, WV are unionizing with the Steelworkers. 87 school bus drivers for NRT Bus in Framingham, MA are organizing with Teamsters Local 170. 70 hospital techs at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia are organizing with PASNAP. 55 staffers at restorative justice non-profit Impact Justice based in Oakland, CA are unionizing with OPEIU Local 251. 48 hospice workers for Sutter in San Mateo, CA are organizing with NUHW.
Smaller shops: 34 educators at Urban Pathways charter school in Pittsburgh are joining AFT Local 6056. 27 more baristas, this time at Old City Coffee in Philadelphia are unionizing with Workers United as well. 25 pharmacists at a Walgreens in Oakland, CA are organizing with UFCW Local 5. 25 warehouse workers for building products distributor Weyerhauser in Stockton, CA are unionizing with Teamsters Local 439. 22 workers at Atchinson Ford dealership in Belleville, MI are joining the Machinists. 21 ambulance dispatchers for American Medical Response in Tucson, AZ are unionizing with IAFF Local I-60. 21 dispensary workers at Cannabist in Villa Park, IL are organizing with UFCW Local 881. 20 boat operators at Pearl Harbor, HI are joining the ILWU. 18 retail workers at a Half Price Books location in Niles, IL are organizing with UFCW Local 1546; it’s not quite the Starbucks breakneck pace, but this is I believe the sixth location (of 120 total stores) that’s filed for an election in as many months, at a large-ish progressive-ish retail chain. 18 workers for American Campus Communities, which is apparently the largest private provider of student housing, are joining the Operating Engineers in Riverside, CA at UC-Riverside in two votes. 16 staffers at the International Documentary Association in Los Angeles are joining CWA. 15 mechanics at John Deere equipment dealer (which of course makes me raise an eyebrow, after workers at Deere dealers sent along several anonymous tips and expressions of solidarity during the strike) McCoy Construction & Forestry in Cape Girardeau, MO are joining Operating Engineers Local 513. 12 workers at 1stMile, a software company in Redmond, WA that does something with car repairs and sales, are joining CWA Local 7800. 11 electric utility workers for DTE Energy in Berkeley, CA are unionizing with IBEW Local 1245. 11 deckhands at a logistics hub in Herculaneum, MO, south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, are joining Operating Engineers Local 513. Ten freight drivers and warehouse workers for Point Dedicated Services in Laredo, TX are joining Teamsters Local 657. Nine construction workers for ShureLine in Kenton, DE are joining the Iron Workers. Five construction equipment rental workers for Ahern in Franksville, WI are joining Operating Engineers Local 139. Four trainers at MV Transportation in San Jose, CA are joining Teamsters Local 853.
NLRB election wins…: Nearly a year after filing, 229 nurses at Longmont United Hospital in Longmont, CO have voted by a single vote, 94-93, to join NNU; this is, I believe, a revised tally after ballots were first counted way back in July and presumably has been held up by hearings on challenge ballots after the union won that initial tally. 170 grad student workers at Clark University in Worcester, MA voted 100-7 to join Teamsters Local 170 (a fortuitous local number), the first sizable grad student worker unit to join the Teamsters union (University of Chicago student library workers are Teamsters but that’s obviously a more limited group). 48 educators at the private Blue School in NYC voted 24-4 (I think, the NLRB count math doesn’t add up, but they won) to join UAW Local 2110, as they continue their win streak. 34 librarians at the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, CA voted 17-4 to join the California Federation of Teachers. 25 transit workers for Tucson Streetcar in Tucson, AZ voted 13-3 to join ATU Local 1433. 25 produce delivery drivers for Albert’s Organics in Logan, NJ joined Teamsters Local 676 in a 14-10 vote. 23 dispensary workers at MedMen in Oak Park, IL voted 17 to zip to join UFCW Local 881, and 12 other dispensary workers at Nabis in Commerce, CA voted 4-2 to join Teamsters Local 630. 21 case managers and RNs at Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, CA voted 14-6 to join NNU. 20 rail workers for Bombardier in Sanford, FL voted 13-4 to join the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen. 13 Starbucks workers in Seattle, the corporation’s backyard, voted 9 to zilch to join Workers United; and while the NLRB hasn’t logged it yet, so did Starbucks workers in another store in Mesa, AZ and one in Knoxville, TN. 13 oil and gas terminal operators for PBF Logistics in Philadelphia voted 7-6 to join Steelworkers Local 286. 12 retail workers at two Google Fiber stores in Kansas City voted 9-1 to join CWA, a new toehold at the tech giant Alphabet (though these workers are subcontracted through a firm called BDS Connected Solutions, as part of CWA’s strategy to organize not just direct employees but all workers under the big tech umbrellas). All ten flight trainers at McGuire Air Force Base, NJ voted to join Machinists District Lodge 1. Nine nursing home workers at Tender Touch in Toms River, NJ voted 5-2 to join the iffy Novelty and Production Workers Local 298. All three drivers for Linde Gas & Equipment in Maryville, MI voted to join Teamsters Local 283.
…and losses: 104 beer distribution drivers for Markstein Beverage in Sacramento voted overwhelmingly, 17-80, against joining Teamsters Local 150; beer giant InBev bought some portion of Markstein in 2019 and closed down the unionized facility in San Diego, which sort of closure can have a strong disciplining effect on workers voting on unionization (though this is of course just my speculation). 16 workers who make air compressors for Ingersoll Rand in Elmhurst, IL voted 7-9 not to join Operating Engineers Local 150. Three medical assistants at Providence Centralia Hospital in Centralia, WA couldn’t agree on joining UFCW Local 21, deadlocking 1-1.
Decertifications and raids: 59 port-a-potty truck drivers for Mr. John in Old Bridge, NJ voted 10-30 to drop Teamsters Local 560. 57 aerospace machinists for Arden Engineering in Anaheim, CA voted 34-8 to stick with Machinists District Lodge 725. 47 workers for notoriously union-avoidant Comcast in Harrisburg, PA dropped IBEW Local 1600 in a 21-24 vote. 46 EMTs for the Galesburg (IL) Hospital decertified Teamsters Local 627 in a 6-23 vote. 41 nursing home workers at Wesley Manor in Frankfort, IN voted 11-16 to decertify AFSCME Local 531.
Outside the NLRB: 939 graduate student workers at New Mexico State University won their card check election with UE, as that union expands its higher education membership. 150 K-12 educators at two Caliber-run charter schools in Vallejo and Richmond, CA have filed for recognition with the IWW. Staffers at public benefit corporation Nava have won voluntary recognition with OPEIU Local 1010.
After months and months of NLRB hearings and filings and all that, Colectivo Coffee workers in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago officially have the largest NLRB-recognized coffee union in the country – until Starbucks workers overtake them in approximately, what, two months?
Finally, this is going to be a historic week for Amazon workers, and while I am loath to be the armchair pessimist, it would be a wild hail mary longshot of a victory if either the Bessemer, AL workers – whose voting ended on Friday – or the Staten Island, NY workers – whose voting ends tomorrow – pulled this off. Luis Feliz Leon spent time with Staten Island Amazon workers and reported it out for Labor Notes. Or if video’s more your speed, Luis went on the Valley Labor Report to talk it out. At the New York Times, Noam Scheiber went deep on Amazon’s anti-union strategy. God bless the workers going up against this Goliath.