The week in US unions, Mar 18-25
NEW ORGANIZING
New organizing filings at the NLRB: 175 manufacturing workers in Saegerstown, PA at Parker Hannifin, which makes engine components and generators, are organizing with the Machinists. 143 faculty members at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore are organizing with SEIU Local 500. 81 workers at social services agency Central City Concern in Portland, OR are organizing with AFSCME Council 75. 65 workers at Eagle Railcar in Du Bois, PA, which builds, maintains, and repairs said railcars, are organizing with the Steelworkers. 53 healthcare workers at Lifeworks Hawthorn Walk-in Clinic in Portland, OR are organizing with AFSCME Council 75. 52 security guards at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC are organizing with either Protective Service Officers United or the National Association of Special Police & Security Officers. 41 private school educators at Christopher House in Chicago are organizing with the Chicago Teachers Union. 40 workers at Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco are organizing with the ILWU, as part of the Anchor-Tartine organizing streak. 15 hospital support staff at Good Samaritan in Portland, OR are joining SEIU Local 49. 14 building engineers for research companies in Fremont, CA are organizing with Operating Engineers Local 39. 11 building engineers at the Honeywell building in Des Plaines, IL are organizing with Operating Engineers Local 399.
Teamsters: 469 AAA insurance salespeople across California are organizing to join Teamsters Local 665. 110 drivers for US Foods in Salem, VA are organizing with Teamsters Local 171. 85 sanitation workers with Republic in Boise, ID are organizing with Teamsters Local 483. 63 retirement home support staffers in Zelienople, PA are organizing with Teamsters Local 538. 45 firefighters and EMTs at Constellis, a successor of the notorious Blackwater, in Radford, VA, are organizing with Teamsters Local 171. 14 drivers with Parking Company of America in Long Beach, CA are organizing with Teamsters Local 848. 14 vending and coffee merchandisers with Treat America in Lenexa, KS are organizing with Teamsters Local 838. The UAW is organizing 24 sportsbook attendants at the Greektown and MotorCity Casinos in Detroit, with Teamsters Local 372 intervening; the casinos are already heavily unionized, so it sounds like the unions are just determining who will organize this small group. Ten warehouse workers with Cardinal Logistics in Boston are joining Teamsters Local 653.
Tiny shops: Eight editorial staff at the Daily News of Longview in Longview, WA are joining the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild. Eight non-profit workers at Chhaya in Jackson Heights, NY, who organize with South-Asian and Indo-Carribean communities are joining TWU. Seven white collar workers with Planned Parenthood’s Pennsylvania PAC in Harrisburg, PA are organizing with the Washington Baltimore NewsGuild (which may or may not be independent of the national staff’s move to ask for voluntary recognition from same). Five security guards with KR Contracting in Alexandria, VA are joining GUSP. Four building engineers at CBRE commercial real estate in Melville, NY are organizing with Operating Engineers Local 30.
NLRB wins…: 36 workers at Planned Parenthood of Western PA are joining the UE after a 22-4 vote. 15 “technical artist support staff” at CalArts voted 9-5 to join CWA. Eight mechanics at the Audi dealership in Concord, CA voted to join Machinists Local 1173. Four school bus mechanics are joining Teamsters Local 512 in Jacksonville, FL after a 3-1 vote. Two “production control clerks” for MIRACORP at the Denver Federal Center voted 1-0 to join Operating Engineers Local 1.
...and losses: Five building engineers at South Shore Hospital in Chicago voted 2-3 not to join Operating Engineers Local 399. After filing for an election in April 2018 I kid you not, three drivers and mechanics for Concrete Express in the Bronx have voted 0-3 against joining Teamsters Local 456.
Decerts & raids: About 88 sanitation workers for Cogent Waste Solutions in Brooklyn, NY remain members of the sketchy League of International Federated Employees (LIFE), Local 890, over joining Laborers Local 108; it looks like the Laborers initiated this election as a raid on LIFE last February, then Teamsters Local 813 briefly intervened, and it was all delayed due to COVID.69 drivers and warehouse workers with Teamsters Local 120 at Cash-Wa Distributing in Fargo, ND, who struck against COVID conditions, beat back a decertification 26-16. Fifteen quarry workers with Southern Illinois Stone Company in Buncombe, IL voted to stick with Operating Engineers Local 318 in a 10-4 vote against decertification. 20 beverage distribution drivers for Allied Central Coast Distributing in Santa Maria, CA voted 10-7 to decertify their union, Teamsters Local 986.
Outside the NLRB: Staff with Black Youth Project 100 are organizing with Workers United, and pushing for recognition. Workers at indie record label umbrella Secretly Group are organizing for voluntary recognition with OPEIU. Workers at Experimental Station, a culture non-profit on Chicago’s South Side are also seeking voluntary recognition, through OPEIU Local 39. The workers of the political wing of Planned Parenthood, Planned Parent Advocates, are pushing for recognition through the Washington Baltimore NewsGuild (which organizes a ton of political and non-profit staffs). After an outside-the-NLRB recognition vote with the staff of Medium, organizing through CODE CWA, failed by literally one vote, the company is buying out its entire editorial staff, which sounds illegal. The union filed for an election with the NLRB, but withdrew it less than two weeks later, in February. Campaign workers for Naghmana Sherazi, a candidate for Spokane’s City Council, have organized with the WA Campaign Workers Collective (an IUPAT project not to be confused with the original Campaign Workers Guild).
Colectivo Coffee is giving Amazon a run for their money as worst-unionbusters-in-the-game at the moment, running a campaign of terror on their 300+ employees who are currently voting on unionizing with the IBEW. More Perfect Union has details.
Amazon: Voting in Bessemer will close this week, but it’s pretty unclear when we’ll have results. Either we get a straightforward vote count (with hundreds of challenged ballots on each side, I’m sure) and know by the first week of April which way it went, at which point there will be extreme protestations from the losing side based either on the egregious violations of the law committed by the employer throughout the election, or the sheer power of Amazon’s corporate lawyer operation. Another option is that the legal challenges lead to an impounding of the ballots, in which case it could be months, years, or forever before we know the results. Always, but especially in such a high-turnover facility, delays favor the employer; they can just wait the union activists out, or inconspicuously systematically fire them. Remember, the union filed for this election in November, so we’re already reaching the five month mark, and the effort is weaker for it. Bernie Sanders, Danny Glover, and Killer Mike are heading down to show support, as did AFA-CWA leader Sara Nelson, while newly-confirmed Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh is being even more coy than Joe Biden.
STRIKES & BARGAINING
Around 80 Teamsters with Local 337 have been on strike at the 7-Up Distribution Center in Redford, MI since March 11, primarily in opposition to a two-tier wage system. Most of the lower-paid workers are Black, and there have been reports of racial slurs and threats on the picket line from management goons. The strike began quietly but has gotten some national attention, with elected officials showing up to the picket line this weekend. 80 more soda distribution Teamsters, with Local 170 in Westborough, MA, are also on strike, primarily over the company’s push to strip workers of seniority rights.
800 Massachusetts Nurses Association nurses’ strike at St Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA enters its third week. UFCW Local 1445, who represent support staff at the Hospital, also burdened by terrible patient ratios, settled their contract this week, which is good news for those workers but is a missed opportunity at best to pressure management on MNA’s demands.
The Columbia grad student workers strike continues on into its second week, in pursuit of a first contract, after voting overwhelmingly to unionize in December of 2016; Columbia’s administration has been stalling for longer than Trump was president, for a little perspective. NYU grad student workers, also with UAW 2110, have begun a strike authorization vote, with results expected March 29th. Illinois State University grads with SEIU Local 73 will vote on their strike authorization on April 2.
700 janitors in San Francisco with SEIU Local 87 are on a three-day ULP strike, primarily over COVID protections.
130 Steelworkers in Atchison, Kansas are on an unfair labor practice strike at mining equipment manufacturer Bradken Foundry.
The Writers Guild is striking ABC’s quiz show, “The Chase,” over its refusal to join the Minimum Basic Agreement which covers network TV writers.
7,000 grocery workers at 100 Food4Less stores in California rejected the company’s latest offer and authorized a strike across seven UFCW locals.
Transit workers in Loudoun County, VA, with ATU’s largest local, Local 689, have authorized a strike, precipitated by a private contractor Keolis winning a 5-year operating deal with the County. I don’t have the details, but it sounds like it could be a replay of 2019’s showdown between Transdev and ATU 689 at Cinder Bed Road, which triggered a 2 month strike and gave us the best picket line song of the 21st century.
64 mental health care workers at Cook County Jail in Chicago with SEIU Local 73 are threatening a strike over random patient rotations being implemented next week.
850 SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin nurses who authorized a strike at Meriter Hospital in Madison have reached a tentative agreement. Funny how that works. Show you’re prepared to strike and suddenly management finds the money and the wherewithal to settle a contract.
Joe DeManuelle-Hall at Labor Notes has a great look into the unions organizing for public sector collective bargaining rights in Virginia, with reporting on how the IAFF, UE, and VEA are all taking up the fight.
BCTGM Local 218 in Topeka, KS have been putting pressure on Frito-Lay to bargain in good faith after stalled negotiations have necessitated federal mediation.
City workers with Teamsters Local 456 in Greenwich, CT, one of the wealthiest towns in the world, are protesting the city’s refusal to bargain a contract or provide a raise for nearly two years.
Firefighters with IAFF in Texarkana, TX are speaking out about forced overtime with unpaid wages since November, apparently due to a computer hack(?).
The Maine State Nurses Association (NNU) is protesting Northern Light Hospital in Bangor for attempting to cut nurses paid time off.
The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers says the university is denying workers access to a negotiated sexual harassment grievance procedure as opposed to the often-toothless Title IX pathway. Sexual harassment tends to be a frequent issue for campus worker unions, and the Title IX deflection a frequent frustration.
Steelworkers Local 8-957 in Morgantown, WV, are fighting to save 850 union jobs at a Mylan Pharmaceuticals factory. The union is making a national security argument, as the plant is apparently one of the last making oral medications in the US. Something to be said here about the plant closing due to being swallowed up by Pfizer, which has made billions pushing pills to deindustrialized West Virginians.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
The campaign for the PRO Act is raging on, with Schumer saying he’ll give it a floor vote if it can get 50 co-sponsors. The hold-outs are Angus King (ME), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), Mark Warner (VA), and Joe Manchin (WV). The Painters Union-led coalition, with strong support from CWA and Democratic Socialists of America, is making half a million calls this week to target those senators. Getting to 50 votes is only a win if the senate also busts the filibuster, which President Biden and even middle-of-the-road senators like King are signaling some support for. It’s unclear how that fight will take shape, with most saying HR1, on voting rights, will be the occasion for a showdown, but PRO could be a key piece of it, too. The Freelancers Solidarity Project and National Writers Union have also come out in strong support of PRO, which is a good sign for breaking the bulwark of opposition around freelancers and the ABC test bogeyman.
The Supreme Court heard a challenge to a 1975 California law giving union organizers access to farms to speak to workers. Sounds like most of the justices across the partisan divide agreed it seems to violate employers’ property rights, and seem inclined to make California farms like every other workplace, meaning union organizers have no right to be on the property. Which might make sense if employers didn’t use those property rights to intervene in free association rights of union organizing, but they do, so if unions don’t have access, you can’t possibly have a free and fair union election. But “Supreme Court rules in favor of employers, against workers” isn’t really news.
In New York State, the AFL-CIO, NYSUT (the merged NEA/AFT affiliate of 600,000 members), NYSNA, and CWA are backing a state legislative proposal to tax the rich. Jamie Dimon and 250 other CEOs aren’t into it. In normal times, Cuomo would tell the unions to fuck off, but having run out of slack with which to jerk around the left after being outed as a serial sexual harasser and lying about the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents and winning an Emmy for it, he just might need to throw New York’s working class a bone.
The Louisiana NAACP is pushing Baton Rouge to end their police union contract, and “fix police union leadership,” with the union putting up dueling billboards across town. It’s a different approach from the referendum being organized in San Antonio, but at least maybe this one won’t trigger an FBI investigation against the cops. A grievance from the Grand Rapids, MI police union is causing hiccups in a community policing plan.
UNION LEADERSHIP
The progressive leader of CWA New Jersey Hetty Rosenstein is retiring, and replacing her as NJ State Director is Fran Ehret, a CWA national staff representative who originally comes out of IFPTE Local 194, Turnpike Workers Union.