The week in US unions, Jan 1-7, 2021

Welcome to the first 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.

NEW ORGANIZING

Outside the NLRB, the Alphabet Workers Union, an unconventional minority union (reporting about 235 members among Google’s parent company’s 120,000 workers) has gone public to much fanfare under CODE-CWA, Local 1400. To date, the only Google employees who’ve formally unionized have been subcontracted support workers (cafeteria, custodial, bus drivers). Alex Press had a great piece on minority unionism’s pluses and minuses, at Jacobin. Elsewhere outside the NLRB, workers at the electoral non-profit MOVE Texas are asking for voluntary recognition with OPEIU Local 277, while two hundred more cops in Florida are now full-fledged collective bargaining union members, after a vote. (If only it were that simple for the rest of us…)

Here’s everyone who’s filed for a new union with the NLRB since December 1, 2020. Almost none of these workers have an election date set, let alone have taken the vote they are legally entitled to, due to our deeply broken labor law. For the coming weeks, I’ll just do the past 7 days of new filings and try to keep track of anyone who actually, you know, gets to vote on their right to have a legally-recognized union.

Teamsters: 49 residential care workers in Waltham and Belmont, MA, are organizing with Teamsters Local 25; 44 truck drivers in Pomona, CA, at Ferguson Enterprises (a plumbing supply company), with Teamsters Local 166; 18 sanitation drivers and mechanics are organizing with Teamsters Local 58 in Oregon; 2 school bus mechanics in New Hampshire are hoping to join Teamsters Local 633; 22 white collar non-profit workers at ScholarMatch in San Francisco are organizing with Teamsters Local 856; 80 workers at Shasta Beverages in La Mirada, CA, are organizing with Teamsters 896; 7 drivers and warehouse workers in Ohio are organizing with Teamsters Local 20; 4 environmental services workers are joining Local 251 in Rhode Island

SEIU: 280 service and technical workers at the Victor Valley Medical Center in Victorville CA, with SEIU-UHW; 380 mental healthcare workers in Chelsea, MA, with SEIU Local 509; 248 healthcare workers in West Branch, MI are organizing with SEIU Healthcare Michigan; 750 service and maintenance workers at a hospital outside Minneapolis are organizing with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota

Operating Engineers: 53 workers at Stella-Jones, which makes industrial wood products, in Bangor, WI, with Operating Engineers Local 420; 11 nurses in Fort Hood, Texas are joining Operating Engineers Local 351; 9 workers at Hydrochem PSC in Illinois are joining Operating Engineers Local 150; 4 maintenance workers are joining Operating Engineers Local 399 in Lisle, IL.

Security guards: 98 security guards in Illinois with the SPFPA (one of like a dozen tiny independent security guard unions that I would love to some day do a deep dive on); 55 security guards in Alexandria VA, SPFPA; The Governed United Security Professionals and Local 101 of the International Council of Security of America (see what I mean about these bizarre security guard unions you’ve never heard of?) are fighting over 60 security guards in Washington, DC; 37 security guards at the Whitney Museum -- who faced big layoffs last year -- have filed as “The Whitney Braves,” with OPEIU Local 153 and the Law Enforcement Officers Security Union (another of those tiny strange security guard unions) intervening (i.e., they want to be on the ballot if it ever actually comes to a vote); 17 racetrack security guards in Queens are organizing with the United Federation of Special Police and Security Officers (another!)

Statewide nurse unions: 19 nurse anesthetists in Wilkes Barre, PA trying to rebuild their union under PASNAP after employer reorganization; 210 nurse anesthetists outside Detroit are in a similar boat, their jobs having been outsourced to a subcontractor, and are now re-organizing either with an independent union or the Michigan Nurses Association; 525 RNs in Milford, MA, are organizing with the Massachusetts Nurses Association; 39 RNs in Bend are organizing with the Oregon Nurses Association.

Others: 4 workers are forming an independent union at a condo complex in Culver City, CA; 7 early childcare workers in Corona, Queens, are organizing with AFSCME DC37; 56 faculty members at the Institute of Culinary Education are organizing with the UFT, AFT Local 2; 54 white collar workers with the Animal Legal Defense Fund are organizing with IFPTE Local 70, the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, NPEU; 27 workers at the Miller Environmental Group (which does something called “environmental services”) on Long Island are organizing with IBEW Local 1049; 6 longshore workers in Maui are organizing with ILWU Local 6; 67 radio workers at Marketplace in Los Angeles are organizing with SAG-AFTRA; 6 workers at Stepan, a chemical manufacturer, are organizing in Anaheim with the UE; 93 white collar workers at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) in Los Angeles are organizing with AFSCME District Council 36; 9 utilities workers outside Scranton, PA, are joining IBEW Local 2244; 95 Planned Parenthood workers outside Burlington, Vermont are organizing -- and actually have an election date! -- with AFT Vermont; 38 journalists at four papers owned by McClatchy in Washington state are organizing with the Pacific Northwest NewsGuild; 20 journalists at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs are organizing with the Media Guild of the West, a NewsGuild local; 67 legal workers at Queens Defenders are organizing with UAW Association of Legal Aid Attorneys Local 2325; 8 white collar workers at the Association of Community College Trustees are organizing to join OPEIU Local 2; 46 wine distribution workers at Opici Family Distributing around NYC are organizing with UFCW Local 2-D.

STRIKES & BARGAINING

Four hundred steelworkers in Muscle Shoals, Alabama continue their weeks-long unfair labor practice strike at an aluminum recycling plant. The plant was acquired by Paris-based Constellium in 2014, and they’re now trying to roll back seniority as bargaining stalls. 

Two hundred Teamsters Local 120 refinery workers at Marathon in the Twin Cities suburbs inched closer to a strike as their contract expired on New Year’s Eve

2500 nurses and licensed healthcare workers with SEIU Local 121RN in Southern California ratified a contract after authorizing a strike against three Hospital Corporation of America (the largest for-profit hospital system) hospitals in the face of a lack of COVID-19 protocols and protections.

On the NY-Canada border, IAFF Local 1799 is fighting the town of Ogdensburg’s effort to eliminate 7 of its 27 firefighter jobs. Meanwhile, IAFF Local S-15 at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut is facing a similar war of attrition. It’ll be interesting to see how local austerity fights hit firefighters (and police, for that matter), who tend to be carved out and shielded from the worst anti-union policies.

Twenty thousand Maryland state workers with AFSCME Council 3 are on alert after the state offered a 1% raise which the union rejected (which I’d reject too, knowing that the cops were getting 20%), missing a key negotiating deadline on New Year’s Eve. For the record, public sector strikes are illegal in Maryland, not that anyone’s talking about that.

K-12 school workers across the country push back on returning to school before it’s safe -- some Chicago educators didn’t show, are enlisting elected officials’ support, & are talking strike authorization, some NYC dissidents want to close back down, the Washington Post wants you to blame the WTU, Newark teachers want every student tested before they return, and the West Virginia Education Association is testing the waters before a January 19th reopening while AFT West Virginia also puts legal pressure on, plus updates from K-12 unions in Memphis, Connecticut, Broward County, Jersey, Ohio.

Police & prosecutors unions remain one of the labor movement’s most active segments: The LA County Association of Deputy District Attorneys is bucking their new reformer boss, District Attorney George Gascon, in protest of his less-carceral stances; the Schenectady PBA lost a lawsuit to shield the record of a cop who knelt on somebody’s head this summer; in the wake of their shooting & killing a man (and standing around while he died), the Columbus FOP is asking for training and supplies; the Pensacola FOP is calling on the mayor to stop looking for a new police chief because they’ve already got the guy they want and wouldn’t it be a shame if they didn’t endorse the mayor for re-election.

Grad student workers at Harvard continue to have to wrangle over things like unit size, as they gear up for a 2021 contract campaign.

UNION LEADERSHIP

The IAFF convention is in less than 3 weeks, on January 25th, and the union has its first contested leadership election in at least 30 years. After a surprise resignation by long-time president Harold Schaitberger (after what looked like some nasty political infighting), Secretary-Treasurer Ed Kelly looked poised to replace him. But challenger Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Wisconsin Firefighters, is racking up some serious endorsements, including from the largest state body, the California Professional Firefighters. Watch this space for a deeper dive on the IAFF election in the coming weeks.

LEGISLATION

Twenty states just got a minimum wage hike with the new year.

The Texas state legislature, never satisfied, wants a state preemption on local neutrality agreements, among other ghoulishness.

The IUPAT continues to lead the charge on the PRO Act, & spoke with Working People podcast about it.

POLITICS

There was an attempted coup, you may have seen. Nothing shocked me as much as the strength of the National Association of Building Trades Unions’s statement calling for the immediate resignation of the President and all the vote-objectors in Congress. NABTU is not a bleeding heart Democratic partisan union, having endorsed Joe Biden a mere 11 days before the election, for example. But maybe they didn’t want to miss out on a chance for a good labor-management partnership with the National Association of Manufacturers. Maybe weirder yet, the Trump-supporting Fraternal Order of Police came out against the insurrection. CWA, SEIU, AFT, and AFA all had strong statements as well, with the AFA calling for insurrectionists to be barred from flights -- we’ll see if it translates into further legislative, political, or organizing action. I’m sure there are many I missed.

Julie Su, Marty Walsh, Andy Levin, Patrick Gaspard, all remain in the running for Labor Secretary, with labor’s allegiances split. By my count, leadership at the AFL, AFSCME, and AFT want Walsh, while it looks like the UAW, CWA, OPEIU, and Utility Workers are with Levin. Sara Nelson and Mark Dimondstein have said kind things about Bernie at DOL, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that confirmation, and who knows if Bernie’d even want it now that the Democrats have a Senate majority. Plenty of union leaders like Su and Gaspard, but I haven’t seen public endorsements.

UNITE HERE once again seems to have brought home the bacon for Congressional Democrats, and hopefully will be getting something for their members, somewhere, someday, for helping the Dems win the Presidency and the Senate.

Rachel Cohen has a deep dive on the incoming Secretary of Education’s history with labor-management partnerships.

Juliana Feliciano Reyes has a great round-up of the 10 most important figures in Philadelphia labor in 2020. Read it! Pairs nicely with this editorial from two Teamster leaders in Philly about how the “business community” is not a victim, no matter how much it wishes it were.