Welcome to the weekly roundup from Who Gets the Bird?. I’m going to do my best to give a near-comprehensive snapshot of the US union movement each week. There will always be things I miss, but feel free to send me corrections, thoughts, additions, edits, or things you’d like to see for next week. You can reach me at jonahfurman@gmail.com, and of course always appreciate people spreading the word & subscribing
NEW ORGANIZING
NLRB new organizing filings this week: The Maine State Nurses Association (NNU) is filing for a huge unit of 1600 RNs at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. Three hundred cookie-makers and -packers with Tates Bake Shop on Long Island are organizing with Local 298 of theNovelty and Production Workers. Twenty legal workers at the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City are organizing with UAW Local 2325. Sixteen white collar workers at the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles are organizing with Machinists District Lodge 947. Fifteen pipefitters at CAPAVI Industrial Piping in Woburn, MA, are organizing with Pipefitters Local 537.Fifteen mechanics, drivers, and helpers with D. Daniels Contracting in Inwood, NY are organizing with Laborers Local 108 of the Mason Tenders District Council. Fourteen hospice chaplains at a Franciscan Hospice outside Tacoma are organizing either with Machinists District Lodge 751 or SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. Ten equipment techs working for Bombardier (subcontracted out from the North County Transit District, which operates a commuter rail north of San Diego) are joining Teamsters Local 542, unless SMART or the Carpenters, who are both intervening, have their way. Six LPNs at a nursing home in Sistersville, West Virginia, are organizing with the Steelworkers. Six RNs and LPNs at a Dakavia nursing home in Myrtle Point, Oregon, are organizing with Teamsters Local 206. Six milk truck drivers with Darigold in Yakima, WA are organizing with Teamsters Local 760. Four air traffic controllers at the Fullerton Municipal Airport in California are organizing with NATCA.
NLRB election wins..: AFSCME Council 75 picked up a big wall-to-wall unit of 448 healthcare workers at Tuality Healthcare in Hillsboro, Oregon, 164-61 (50% turnout). 90 RNs at Sutter Coast Hospital in Crescent City, California, are joining the California Nurses Association, NNU, after a 70-12 vote (91% turnout)... 59 sanitation truck drivers and helpers with Marengo Disposal Company in Marengo, Illinois, have joined Teamsters Local 301… 59 workers at Granada Wellness & Rehabilitation Center in Eureka, California, are joining SEIU Local 2015, after a 17-14 vote (56% turnout). Twenty three workers voted (39% turnout), fourteen in favor, nine against… 34 security guards in Washington DC with The COGAR Group had a 3-way election between 3 tiny, obscure security guard unions -- Protective Service Officers United, United Government Security Officers of America Local 255, and Governed United Security Professionals. Five people voted (15% turnout), three of whom voted for Protective Service Officers United, who were certified.
...and losses: Sixty industrial laundry workers in Kearny, NJ, lost a close vote (15-17, 53% turnout) to join the Laundry Distribution and Food Service Joint Board of Workers United. A 4-4 tie vote at K8E Trucking in Sacramento, means 9 truck drivers will not join Teamsters Local 150. 4 endoscopy technicians remain non-union after voting 1-2 not to join SEIU Healthcare 1199NW at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Washington.
Outside the NLRB: The staff of Augsburg University in Minneapolis have voted to join OPEIU Local 12. The Nonprofit Professional Employees Union has won voluntary recognition for white collar workers at the National Partnership for Women and Families. ACLU staff are looking for voluntary recognition through the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, IFPTE Local 70. The Austin NewsGuild is still pushing for voluntary recognition from the Austin American-Statesman, after going public in December. The Animal Legal Defense Fund is doing the progressive-except-unionization non-profit thing. Ditto for management at Queens Defenders. The Washington State NewsGuild is slugging it out with McClatchy at the NLRB over being recognized as a single unit across several papers. Canada Goose workers in Winnipeg (yes, this breaks my no-Canada rule, but it’s a good article!) are organizing in the face of some pretty horrible conditions, ranging from locked exits to speed-up to being owned by vulture capitalist firm Bain. The Google union has tripled its membership. The Wall Street Journal is gonna cry about it.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
The labor movement came out uniformly against the coup, for impeachment, and had endless nice things to say about DOL nominee Marty Walsh. Betsy Devos resigned like an opportunistic coward, and nobody misses her. In St. Louis, IBEW, AFGE, SEIU, and others came out for an “Josh Hawley, resign” rally. The Toledo and Pittsburgh NewsGuilds pushed back in a joint press conference against censorship and pro-insurrection ownership at their respective papers. UNITE HERE is calling on their employers to cut funding, as many other corporate actors did, to anyone supporting the whole coup thing. Sheldon Adelson, while the only non-union hotel owner on the Vegas Strip, cut funding for other, more existential reasons. The ATU and other transit unions are calling for enhanced safety precautions around inauguration violence. UNITE HERE Local 25 in DC is calling on hotels to close down and let workers refuse to work, out of safety concerns.
The Painters-led PRO Act campaign charges on, picking up state and local union endorsements, while the APWU focuses on the Postal Board of Governors, the big public sector unions push for state & local aid, and the Social Security unions push hard for new leadership at the agency.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finalized a very Trumpian rule change that says union reps can’t use official time to represent workers in EEOC claims. After all, it’s not a free country if employers aren’t free to discriminate freely against their workers.
The American Federation of Musicians has applied to the Treasury for permission to cut about 25,000 people’s pensions in the face of insolvency. The US pension crisis apparently continues unabated.
Montana is on the verge of going right-to-work, among other draconian anti-labor reforms on the table. Nurses in Minnesota are pushing for emergency COVID-19 leave legislation. Shockingly, Minnesota nurses still only get compensation if they somehow “prove” they contracted the virus at work.
STRIKES & BARGAINING
After almost a month, the 400 Steelworkers at the Muscle Shoals, Alabama Constellium aluminum plant have ended their unfair labor practice strike, settling a new five-year contract that, presumably, includes seniority rights (which were at the core of the dispute). Steelworkers at NLMK in Western Pennsylvania are still on strike, five months in.
After NNU’s big win in Asheville last year -- the largest new organizing victory of 2020, if I’m not mistaken -- bargaining is set to begin, with the pandemic still obviously a major issue for healthcare workers. Whether these nurses can win a strong contract in North Carolina is the real test of strength, even more than winning an NLRB vote… In December, California started handing out safe staffing waivers to hospitals. Now NNU nurses are thankfully organizing against this development. I guess one way to deal with a pandemic is to force nurses to take care of more patients than they can keep alive at any one time. Or you could, you know, hire more workers from the massive ranks of the unemployed… Hawaii Nurses Association OPEIU Local 50 authorized a strike over health care, wages, and PPE, and then, wouldn’t you know it, the bosses quickly settled the contract. Funny how that works.
SAG-AFTRA is calling on TV and film production to shut down in the face of COVID safety concerns. Hundreds of Teamsters in the South and Southwest are “just practicing” picketing against grocery giant Albertson’s. ATU bus drivers in Richmond, VA are not yet talking about a strike authorization vote over work rule language in a contract that’s been expired since September. In a “What century are we in?” moment, a judge has ruled against the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees safety protocol strike against Union Pacific.
There is just a flood of K-12 updates, which I’ll link here but won’t go into deep detail on each. Most saliently, the Chicago Teachers Union is getting a lot more serious about strike talk over re-opening schools, with an authorization vote possible as soon as late January. Auspiciously, the state legislature has passed a law removing restrictions on CTU’s ability to bargain over things like class size and other anti-CTU carve-outs in the state law. CTU’s militancy seems to be spilling over into neighboring Cicero, and downstate -- after 10 months of negotiations, and five months on an expired contract, the 170 elementary school teachers in Bourbonnais, Illinois, took a strike authorization vote. Plenty more K-12 reopening updates from Broward, the DMV, Hawaii, Ohio, Puyallup and Pasco, WA, Columbus, OH, Amherst, Haverhill and Peabody, MA, Connecticut, West Virginia, the Twin Cities, Pennsylvania, and NYC. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said in her State of the State speech that the state’s educators must be re-educated to sufficiently teach the children, and I quote, “why the United States of America is the most special nation in the history of the world.” Special indeed. The South Dakota Education Association had special words for Noem.
Lots in the world of the cop unions as well, who had lots to say on the attempted insurrection. In LA, community groups are backing the reform-minded DA against the cop unions. The Hammond, Indiana cop union head blamed it on Antifa, while his neighbor in the Chicago FOP didn’t need to jump through such hoops to come out in support of the coup, then get publicly blasted by the rest of Chicago. The Seattle cop union president is valiantly resisting cancel culture. The Sacramento deputies union say police department leadership was too harsh against Trump supporters. The infamous Bob Kroll of the Minneapolis police union is retiring. Cop union negotiations are currently open in Kansas City and Portland. The cop union in San Antonio has new, extra-anti-reform leadership, while the Miami FOP rejected a new leadership bid.
Firefighters in Vashon Island, WA are negotiating for paid COVID leave, while Ogdensburg, NY firefighters have unanimously rejected a second austerity contract offer. Oakland, California is trying to budget-cut multiple fire engines, which seems like a bad idea in a place as perpetually on-fire as California. IAFF Local 55 is moving for a restraining order on the plan.
In Los Angeles, 18,000 city union members have negotiated an austerity deal to push back a raise in exchange for undoing furloughs and guaranteeing no layoffs. The Honolulu Civil Beat has a rundown of how Hawaii’s public sector unions have remained resilient in a post-Janus world. SEIU Local 199 in Iowa has begun bargaining at the U of I Hospital & Clinics, looking for an end to furloughs and a wage increase. Even Major League Soccer union members are getting the screws from pandemic disaster capitalist ownership. Nearly 200 weed workers with UFCW Local 881 in Joliet, Illinois, ratified a first contract.
The Independent Drivers Guild, an affiliate of the Machinists, has launched in Chicago, absorbing Gig Workers Matter. There’s been some controversy about the IDG having taken Uber money in the past, raising concerns around company unionism, but much has changed in gig worker organizing in the past few years. In California, SEIU is suing to undo Prop 22, while Rideshare Drivers United (which has ties to the Transport Workers Union) and Gig Workers Rising have launched apps and resources to help gig workers get by in a Prop 22 reality.
UNION LEADERSHIP
In three separate incidents, officials with the Michigan Union of Healthcare Workers, an AFSCME healthcare local in Jersey City, and a K-12 union treasurer in Vancouver, Washington, were all charged with embezzlement of union funds.
The prominent Johnny Doc, leader of IBEW Local 98 in Philadelphia, is facing a Department of Labor lawsuit saying he and his leadership intimidated members out of running against him in last year’s local elections, plus embezzled over half a million dollars. Johnny Doc has been Local 98 President since 1993.
UFCW Local 431 in Waterloo, Iowa, is disputing some pretty damning claims about their failure to protect -- or even really convincingly pretend to care about protecting -- their workers during the pandemic. The Great Plains meatpacking plants have been some real horrorshows, and the unions have not had a great track record of fightback.
Finally, the IAFF leadership fight rolls on, with the convention in less than two weeks. Edzo Kelly and Mahlon Mitchell continue to rack up endorsements, with Mitchell reportedly picking up big endorsements from the large Chicago and Atlanta IAFF locals. Kelly’s still the favorite, but Mitchell is more Bernie Sanders than Howie Hawkins, chances-wise. I’ll have a deeper-dive update this week, which would be a great reason to subscribe to and share Who Gets the Bird? with all your firefighter buddies. If you’re an IAFF member yourself, let me know what you think of the race.
RDU and TWU have all intents and purposes parted ways. Be a good story to cover - the whys of a solidarity union joining with an institutional one - and the whys of the amicable parting.