The week in US unions, Jan 21-28, 2021
NEW ORGANIZING
NLRB new organizing filings this week:
Healthcare: SEIU 668 is organizing 65 behavioral health workers with the RedCo Group in Pottsville, PA. 1199 SEIU is organizing 40 technical workers at White Plains Hospital in New York. SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania is organizing 35 RNs, and, separately, 20 radiation therapists, at the AHN Cancer Institute at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Security: 110 security guards at Mount Sinai West in NYC are joining either the Special and Superior Officers Benevolent Association (never heard of them) or National Security Officers Benevolent Association Local 971/550 (ditto). Thirty mall cops at Hoffman Town Center in Alexandria, VA are the prize for either the Governed United Security Professionals (GUSP) or Union Rights for Security Officers (URSO). United Government Security Officers of America Local 287 and the SPFPA are both going for 90 security guards with Paragon Systems across Louisiana, while 10 other Paragon security officers who work at the Peace Corps in DC are going with either the Fraternity of American Protective Officers, the National League of Justice and Security Professionals, or URSO.
Food: UFCW Local 881 is organizing another weed dispensary, with 40 workers at Ascend in Springfield, Illinois. Seven production workers at “monfefo,” a bougie ginger turmeric fancy drink maker in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, are joining UFCW Local 1500. For the most part I don’t cover de-certification attempts here (where a worker files to disaffiliate the workforce from its existing union), but Jackson Lewis is counsel for a de-cert at Cash-Wa in Fargo, North Dakota, against Teamsters Local 120 -- Cash-Wa was the site of a COVID-19 strike this fall; sounds like management decided it was time to bust the union, and found a worker willing to sign their name to a de-cert. Central Yetev D’Satmar Meat, a Hasidic butcher in Brooklyn, is dealing with company union United Production Workers Local 17-18.
Others: The Utility Workers have filed to organize 125 utility workers in Hartford and Orange, CT, with Avangrid. Fifty three employees of Federal Defenders of San Diego are organizing with IFPTE Local 20, going up against Jackson Lewis. 28 production and maintenance workers at SeaPort Sound Terminal in Tacoma, WA, which stores petroleum products and processes wastewater, are organizing with the Steelworkers. Is hospitality organizing creaking back to life? Laborers 332 is organizing 20 facilities workers at Live! Casino & Hotel in Philadelphia. Sixteen production and warehouse workers at Marlin Thermocouple Wire in Westlake, Ohio, are organizing with Machinists Lodge 54. Twelve mechanics at Alta, a construction equipment supplier, in Orland Park, Illinois, are joining either Operating Engineers Local 150 or Machinists Local 701. Eight rail traffic controllers for Bombardier in Camden, NJ, are organizing with the American Train Dispatchers Association. Six workers with Impact Environmental in East Chicago, Indiana are joining Operating Engineers Local 150. Five beverage delivery drivers in Warwick, RI are organizing with Teamsters Local 251. Three construction workers at CREA Construction are apparently joining “The Onyx Skilled Trades Union Local 79” for which I can find almost no record at all, but an enterprising mind can go call the number they listed with the NLRB. Two tech inspectors with Technica at Fort Irwin National Training Center (an Army training site) are joining Teamsters Local 166.
NLRB election wins..: Two hundred workers at the Twin City Foods frozen foods plant in Pasco, WA have voted 126-2 to join UFCW Local 1439. After filing for an NLRB election nearly six years ago, there are 158 new Teamsters with Local 406 at the Grand Rapids, Michigan hub of wholesaler giant Sysco; this after Sysco fired a union supporter and coerced employees, leading the Teamsters to lose a 2015 vote, and then the NLRB to implement remedies, that a district court then judged too punitive, ordering a new election which they then won (with endless lawyer briefs in between). Let’s hope this is the end of the NLRB nightmare for these workers. One hundred production and maintenance workers at Clow Valve in Oskaloosa, Iowa, are joining Machinists District Lodge 6 after a 47-31 vote. There are seventeen new members of Teamsters Local 996 in Waianea, Hawaii, after a 15-0 sweep at the innocuously named Tech Systems, Inc., which provides ammunition to the US Army. A 6-1 vote means the 14 service techs and porters at Western Avenue Nissan at Western & Columbus on Chicago’s Southwest Side are now members of Teamsters Local 731. Ten retail workers at the Woodland Hills Pharmacy in Woodland Hills, CA voted 5-4 to join UFCW Local 770. Nine paratransit techs and cleaners with Solid Ground Transportation in Seattle are joining Machinists Lodge 751, after a 5-0 vote. Eight security guards at a Japanese auto parts plant in Vonore, Tennessee voted 5-3 to join the Security, Police, and Fire Professionals of America. Six building engineers at the Amgen building in South San Francisco, employed by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc, have voted 5-0 to join Operating Engineers Local 39. The five newsroom employees of The Loveland Reporter-Herald in Berthoud, Colorado, are joining the Denver Newspaper Guild, CWA Local 37074, after a 4-0 vote. Two F-16 simulation technicians at the Duluth Air Force Base in Minnesota both voted to join Machinists Lodge 77.
...and losses: BCTGM Local 42 lost a pretty big vote in Opelika, Alabama, to organize 187 food production workers with Golden State Foods, McDonald’s third-largest beef supplier in the US, who voted against the union 45-67. Forty five workers at commercial ink producer INX voted not to join Teamsters Local 100 in a 10-20 vote. Sixteen vending machine delivery drivers and warehouse workers are staying non-union after a 3-9 loss with Teamsters Local 135 in Seymour, Indiana. UA Local 669 appears to have accrued zero votes among the fire protection installation workers at All Fire Solutions in Greenwood, Indiana, losing 0-4. In a 1-1 squeaker, seven flooring supply freight workers with Xpress Global Systems in Hayward, CA, failed to gain the majority needed to join Teamsters Local 70 -- every vote counts.
Amazon workers in Alabama near the opening of their union vote, and the NFL Players Association is pulling for them. The New York Times also had a story I thought was very beautiful and the slightest bit hopeful -- and had the interesting stat that the union filed with 2,000 cards, which would exceed their initial unit size and, while still shy of 50%+1 of the 6,000+ eligible voters roster, puts just the tiniest amount of wind in my sails. Amazon has filed a motion to stay the election and again demand in-person ballots because they are ghouls.
Maine Medical Center has begun in earnest its efforts to bust the massive 1400-member NNU organizing drive.
After a long, hard road, Kumho Tires in Macon, Georgia is a union shop, after the NLRB certified results. Now they just need a first contract...
OPEIU has launched Local 1010, for tech workers, released a Tech Workers Bill of Rights. Most notably OPEIU ran a successful union drive at Kickstarter, which they apparently hope to build off of. So far, CODE-CWA has been the most successful union operation for tech workers, though the Teamsters at some point at least passed a resolution in favor of the idea.Here’s a deeper dive on the general tech worker question from the Washington Post.
The Campaign Workers Guild, the fast-growing union of political campaign staffers, is calling out the Campaign Workers Collective, who are working with Painters District Council 5 in the Pacific Northwest to do the same exact thing, for lifting language from the website, and making competing claims of “we did it first.”
STRIKES & BARGAINING
Two hundred Teamsters at a Marathon refinery outside the Twin Cities are on strike. The strike is primarily around management’s unilateral changes and refusal to bargain around subcontracting and workload, and other things the union, Teamsters Local 120, says are safety risks. They’re pointing to the 2018 Husky refinery explosion in Superior, Wisconsin, as a cautionary tale.
Around 75 workers at Borgers, an auto-supplier in Norwalk, Ohio, are on a recognition strike as of 12:01am last Thursday. They voted 98% to strike, and are organizing with the Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United. As the local press put it, “A strike in Norwalk could mean big problems for General Motors, as the automaker relies on Just in Time (JIT) parts from Borgers. Plants that could potentially be affected include Lansing Grand River, Springhill, Orion, Fairfax, Wentzville and Lansing.”
The Chicago Teachers Union is on strike watch as we speak. As I mentioned last week, teachers took a vote on whether to do all-remote teaching in defiance of the District’s orders, and, pending a lockout from CPS, to authorize a strike. That vote passed with a wide margin, and teachers are now teaching remotely, with in-person schools closed, against the plans of the Mayor and the District, for the second day in a row today. It’s not a strike (yet) since teachers are still teaching remotely, but it’s a wide-scale job action face-off between the CTU and the administration, and so far, CTU’s winning.
The Bellevue, Washington school district brought 700 second-graders back into in-person learning, against a vote of the Bellevue Education Association to halt all teaching in protest; thus, over 1,000 Bellevue educators were (kind of?) on strike. By Tuesday morning, there was an agreement that involved kids coming into school, with additional undisclosed protocols.
The Hunts Point Teamsters are back to work after ratifying a new contract by 97% on Saturday morning. After national attention, massive support from NYC DSA, tons of great media coverage, cameos from AOC and others, the 1400 food distribution workers won $1.85 in wage increases over the life of the contract, which is a 10% raise for some of these workers, plus won most (though not all) of their healthcare contribution demands from the employer. In dollars and cents it looks like a decent win, but in the x-factor of “winning a strike” it seems like an even bigger deal. A great way for the labor movement to start off the year, with a short, winning, 1,000+ worker private sector strike. Let’s keep it rolling.
K-12: The Biden administration is moving towards national standards for school reopening, which could nationalize the intensely local fights that have been roiling for the entirety of the pandemic. Baltimore Teachers Union leadership is not talking about taking a strike vote over reopening, because that would be illegal, of course; the Maryland NEA is making similar noises. After the Pasco, WA teachers union prez said the anti-shutdown protests were a product of “white privilege,” there was apparently some backlash, and now there’s backlash to the backlash, with teachers and students speaking out in support. New Mexico teachers were bumped out of line for the vaccine, and are calling it a ‘gut punch.’Massachusetts teachers are also speaking out about being bumped down the vaccinations list. School reopening fights have heated up in Montclair and Maplewood, NJ, and the district plans to sue. Ohio teachers doubt Gov. Dewine’s assurance that staff will be vaccinated by March 1st. Pittsburgh teachers want reopening moved back to April, at least. After a Nashville school board member told teachers to “teach, or quit your day job,” the teachers union said, “No, you.”In Akron, the union is speaking out in favor of the school board there, against criticisms voiced in a corporate open letter. In New Jersey, Laborers Local 77 is picketing (complete with Scabby) the Princeton Public Schools for using non-union non-local labor in renovations. The Minneapolis teachers have filed an unfair labor practice against their district. Two hundred or so educators in the suburban Pittsburgh district of Keystone Oaks are ready to strike over a long-expired contract. So are educators in Bourbonnais, IL, who have authorized a strike and are running informational pickets about their expired contract.
COVID-19: In a public letter to FEMA and the White House, IATSE continues its concerted push to be put to work for COVID-19 vaccination and testing sites. Maryland AFSCME members of Council 3 are dying of COVID, and the employers can no longer even be bothered to send out an email about it. Connecticut AFSCME members at the Department of Corrections are speaking out about the lack of vaccinations available to their members, ditto for Pennsylvania prison guards. In 2019, the city of Spokane, WA, passed an open bargaining referendum backed by the Koch brothers’ State Policy Network; due to COVID, the implementation has been delayed. AFT Local 1796 is decrying a 25% faculty cut at William Paterson University in Jersey.
The Capitol Police FOP had harsh words for the department’s unpreparedness for the January 6th insurrection. Meanwhile, the New Jersey FOP had harsh words for anyone who demands cops disclose whether or not they attended the insurrection. The Kansas City FOP head applauds a proposed law letting people kill protestors with impunity. The Tacoma police union is defending a cop who hit people with his SUV.
The city of Nashville accidentally paid 135 Parks Department workers -- members of SEIU Local 205 -- hazard pay, and is now trying to claw it back. God forbid a worker get a holiday bonus during a pandemic. AFT Local 800, public sector workers in the City of Baltimore, are celebrating that the water department was not privatized, and 70 union jobs were saved. The University of California wants to close a hospital in Los Angeles. Seems like bad timing. The California Nurses (NNU) agree.
In what ALPA is calling a big win against outsourcing, United shaved 250,000 seats annually, due to some clauses in the ALPA United contract that I honestly don’t really understand. Better, of course, would be to make those non-union subcontracted jobs union, but a good defense with no offense is better than neither.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
Joe Biden restored some basic collective bargaining rights of federal employees by executive order. He also mandated masks on public transit, which the ATU applauded, after over 100 ATU members have died from COVID-19. Lots of changes continue to roll in at the NLRB and the Department of Labor, which I’m not going to cover here, but every time I want to get a clue about labor law and federal policy stuff, I check out Brandon Magner’s Labor Law Lite.
Members of Congress are pushing for the reinstatement of the National Association of Immigration Judges, which was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority last year. Maybe in a healthy democracy the state wouldn’t control workers’ organizations but hey, what do I know.
The Florida legislature has as its first priority the busting of public workers’ unions.
Seattle city council is considering a hazard pay ordinance for frontline workers; UFCW Local 21 is pushing for it.
Virginia has issued a permanent workplace safety standard around virus protection. A national OSHA standard has been a major priority since, like, March, but for whatever reason, the AFL has had the most success in Virginia. It means employers are liable for failing to do things like provide masks, social distancing, and make contingency plans around virus protection going forward.
A California judge ordered Operating Engineers Local 3 to stop trying to FOIA employee emails, which it’s doing because it suspects management is involved in decertification efforts, which would be illegal.
The #LaborStrong2021 coalition of five large politically active progressive-ish unions in NYC (NYSNA, 32BJ, Hotel Trades Council, CWA District 1, and DC37) has endorsed, among many others, two (Caban and Aviles) of six NYC DSA candidates for City Council (and didn’t endorse against any NYC DSA candidates), which is especially fun in the case of HTC because it wasn’t so long ago that HTC was secretly taping DSA meetings.
The Roofers Local 88 pension plan has applied to the Treasury Department for benefit cuts. It’s not clear to me how many pensions this would affect.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released their 2020 numbers, and labor nerds are in a feeding frenzy. Some highlights: there are 321,000 fewer union members than last year, but union density is actually up, to 10.8 percent, just because of the sheer amount of job loss in the economy at large. Seems like a pretty Pyrrhic victory. By my own napkin scratchings, hospitality, manufacturing, and construction union job loss make up 80% of the private sector union job loss. We all knew it, but hospitality is bleak indeed, with 58% of its union jobs zapped into thin air. Manufacturing is almost comparable by sheer number of jobs, but not as a percentage of that industry.