The week in US unions, July 29-August 5

Thanks for your patience with this belated edition of our weekly roundup; after moving 700 miles with an infant, I am ready to get back to our regularly-programmed Thursday schedule. And double thanks to those of you who filled out the reader survey; lots of good feedback I plan to experiment with implementing in the coming weeks!

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: The New York NewsGuild has filed for its massive 600 tech worker unit at the New York Times; if successful, it will be the second-largest private sector organizing win of 2021. 160 workers at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City are organizing with -- who else? -- UAW Local 2110; if successful, it’ll be the largest museum organizing win since Monday (see below). 93 aircraft mechanics at Fort Hood, TX are unionizing with the Machinists. 70 drywall finishers for Raymond Interior Systems in Orange, CA are unionizing with the Southwest Region of Carpenters. 55 construction workers for Omni Excavators, plus 52 construction workers for Stealth Construction in the metro DC area are organizing with Laborers Local 11.

Small shops: 32 workers for Lattimore Materials at a limestone quarry in Stringtown, OK (which is located on Reba McEntire Road, I think readers should know) are organizing with Operating Engineers Local 627. 24 workers at medical waste processor Stericycle in Elizabeth, NJ are organizing with Teamsters Local 813. 23 steelworkers for rebar maker Camblin Steel in Stockton, CA are joining Steelworkers Local 790. 22 workers at Genesis-operating nursing home Kimberly Hall North, and 19 more at Kimberly Hall South, both in Windsor, CT, are unionizing with 1199 New England. 20 drivers for Tri-State Asphalt in Morris, IL are unionizing with Teamsters Local 179. 19 workers for the Brown County Rural Water Association in Brown County, OH are unionizing with Laborers Local 265, in two units, production and clerical. 19 security guards at the Sanderson Farms poultry plant in Palestine, TX are joining SPFPA. 18 workers at Haven Cannabis Dispensary in Long Beach, CA are unionizing with Teamsters Local 630. 16 healthcare techs at the Tuality Clinic in Forest Grove, OR are joining AFSCME Council 75. 14 workers at gardening non-profit Big Green are filing for an election with the Denver Newspaper Guild after their employer rebuffed their voluntary recognition request and hired a union-busting lawyer. 13 building service workers at luxury condo 25 Park Row in Manhattan are unionizing with 32BJ SEIU. 11 workers at construction equipment supplier United Rentals are unionizing with Operating Engineers Local 825 in Sicklerville, NJ. 11 stationary engineers at a LSU Health facility in New Orleans are unionizing with Plumbers Local 60. Eight techs and physical therapists at Liga Puertorriquena Contra el Cancer in San Juan, PR are joining Union General de Trabajadores (SEIU). Seven wine distribution workers for Opici Wines in Baltimore are unionizing with Teamsters Local 570. Six art installers and drivers for Bourlet Art Logistics in Queens are joining Teamsters Local 814. Five warehouse workers for Marine Oil Service of New York in Elizabeth, NJ are joining Masters, Mates, & Pilots. BCTGM Local 114 is continuing its slow march across Oregon Safeway bakery departments, unionizing three such workers in Corvallis, OR. Two parking attendants for Vancity Parking in Manhattan are joining Teamsters Local 272. 

NLRB election wins…: 176 workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC voted an impressive 96-1 to join UAW Local 2110, yet another museum organizing win for that local; management had said they would voluntarily recognize, but limited the group to 50 workers, not the nearly 200 that ended up joining. 31 nursing home workers in Wilmington, DE voted 24-3 to join NUHHCE District 1199J (AFSCME). 25 social services workers at Newark, NJ’s La Casa de Don Pedro voted 15-5 to join CWA. Nine drivers for Hallcon in Wichita, KS voted 8-0 to join Teamsters Local 795. Nine workers at Pfizer’s Andover, MA manufacturing facility’s attached power plant voted 8-1 to join Utility Workers Local 369, while the skilled maintenance workers (see below) voted to stay non-union. Four electronics techs at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque voted 3-0 to join Machinists Local 794. Three social workers at St. Mary’s Medical Center’s Adolescent Psychiatry unit in San Francisco voted 2-0 to join SEIU UHW. 

...and losses: 145 workers who make automotive interiors for Eissmann in Port Huron, MI voted 40-97 not to join UAW Local 9699. 29 skilled maintenance workers at Pfizer’s 175,000-square-foot Andover, MA manufacturing plant voted 7-19 against unionizing with the Area Trades Council. 22 sales associates at Toyota of Santa Fe, NM voted 10-0 against joining Machinists Local 794

Decertifications and raids: The Ohio PBA successfully raided SPFPA Local 132’s unit of 44 security guards at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland in a 15-2 vote, while the SPFPA held onto its unit of 19 guards in a parallel raid at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky after a 9-5 vote. 41 security guards at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans voted 18-0 to drop SPFPA Local 129; this was a rerun of a March vote in which the union was also decertified in a landslide but was successfully challenged. LEOSU-PBA is raiding 20 SPFPA guards in DC, and SPFPA is raiding a unit of 10 parking garage security guards at a high rise in Arlington, VA, currently represented by LEOSU-PBA. At a certain point one wonders if the dues being traded back and forth are worth the legal fees for all these NLRB filings and hearings. In the one non-security raid, Operating Engineers Local 150 is going after three Machinists members at United Rentals equipment supplier in Frankfort, IL.

An NLRB agent recommended the RWDSU election in Bessemer, AL be re-run, after finding that Amazon installed a mailbox at the warehouse in contravention to the election agreement. It’s just a recommendation, and can and will be appealed by the company, plus has to be heard by higher-ups at the Board, but observers say a re-run is quite likely, if the union pursues it. There isn’t much data on comparable re-run elections (I mean, there haven’t been many (any?) really comparable elections in recent memory) but statistically re-runs tend to be worse for the union, plus Amazon’s hyperturnover means it’ll be basically an entirely new workforce voting. That said, it also gives the national coalition of groups that want to see a union at Amazon a second bite at the apple, and with even more ammunition against the company’s ostentatiously anti-union stance. Lots of people have had things to say about the potential re-run, but Primer, the new Amazon podcast from Jacobin’s Alex Press, had on author Heike Geissler and labor lawyer Will Bloom who probably have interesting perspectives (I haven’t gotten to it yet!).

Outside the NLRB: The huge unit of 17,000 graduate student researchers at the University of California had their majority petition verified by the California Public Employment Relations Board; the UAW called on the university administration to immediately recognize the union and begin bargaining. The Steelworkers long-running campaign to unionize the 3,000 faculty members at Pitt is finally coming to a vote, with ballots set to go out at the end of August and be counted at the end of October, per a Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board decision. More than 300 workers at the Art Institute of Chicago are unionizing with AFSCME Council 31, as AFSCME gets in on the museum organizing wave. 150 workers at the Democratic National Committee are unionizing with SEIU Local 500; seems like a conflict of interest, now SEIU will be incentivized to endorse Democrats (I kid). 90 classroom aides in Findlay, OH’s K-12 schools have unionized. Progressive data firm Catalist has recognized CWA Local 2236 as its employees’ union. New Hampshire Public Radio has voluntarily recognized SAG-AFTRA as the union of 31 production employees.

STRIKES & BARGAINING

St Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA offered the Massachusetts Nurses Association its “last, best, and final offer,” with no improvements to staffing ratios, the quintessential issue of the five-month long strike. Needless to say, the union denounced the “unsatisfactory ultimatum” and insufficient.

The mainstream media broke its months-long silence on the coal miners strike at Warrior Met in Brookwood, AL with ABC airing a segment on the fight. Jacobin also published an overview of the strike, as a thousand miners and supporters rallied in Brookwood.

Over 800 mechanics at 56 car dealerships in and around Chicago walked off the job with Machinists Local 701 on Monday. The proposed contract, which members rejected with a 97% vote, would have reduced base pay and raised healthcare costs

On Wednesday, 200 transit workers with Teamsters Local 533 in Reno, NV went on strike, as contractor Keolis pushes to change the workers’ health insurance plan.

Twenty barbers at Fort Lee, VA remain on strike with Laborers Local 572 since the Fourth of July, as contractor Sheffield cut their pay while raising haircut prices.

In what could be considered the first K-12 job action of the new school year, some teachers in East Baton Rouge, LA refused to attend in-person professional development sessions due to the spread of the delta COVID variant. In Orange County, FL 750 more teachers resigned in the past school year than in the previous one, and more continue to leave, as COVID spreads and the union and district are at an impasse in bargaining over a pay dispute. The teachers union in Quincy, MA is knocking the city for failing to use any of its COVID relief funding to provide increased compensation for teachers.

The strike among 200 skilled tradespeople with UPTE CWA at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which does nuclear research for the federal government, ended after three days, as planned.

After authorizing a strike, 500 warehouse workers with Teamsters Local 117 at Fred Meyer in Puyallup, WA landed a tentative agreement that’s expected to be ratified in the coming days. Meanwhile, Local 117 workers at Darigold remain on high alert for a strike, as their contract expired in May and members authorized a strike in July.

In the world of vaccine mandates, there’s just too much to track. On the union side, unions from the IAFF, APWU, and AFT came out against mandates, but then AFT signaled some openness, and then President Randi Weingarten announced on Meet the Press this morning that she actually supports mandates, but was just speaking to her own personal beliefs, apparently, and not as a matter of union policy. Meanwhile, there have been a number of high-profile company mandates. Other unions, like Teamsters Local 743, are taking legal action against mandates, and that might set some kind of private sector legal precedent. States, school districts, counties, private employers are all taking divergent actions and the relevant unions are responding divergently as well. A year and a half into this COVID thing and we really haven’t figured out a way to have a national response, on almost any level.

Around 2500 CWA members in and around Buffalo, NY working for Mercy Health are sounding the alarm about a contract proposal that would functionally cut wages and fail to address staffing levels. The current agreement is a one-year extension, like many unions agreed to during the pandemic, that expires at the end of September.

The American Ballet Theatre in NYC is joining the movement of companies taking this pandemic opportunity to gut their union contract despite taking millions in PPP money, per a letter from Musicians Local 802 to Congress. In Nashville, Musicians Local 257 has ratified a contract that includes a paycut and then a reversal of that paycut and then an increase, theoretically keeping them on pace with pre-pandemic wage gains, with help from a venue bailout. Springfield, MA members of AFM Local 171 might see a delayed reopening as contract negotiations stall.

Laborers Local 329 is spearheading a campaign against Lima, OH Cenovus Refinery’s decision to bring in out-of-state workers for the annual maintenance turnaround, as opposed to hiring local union labor. 

University of Maryland bus drivers with AFSCME Local 1072 have been protesting for everything from hazard pay to better bus maintenance to COVID safety protocols.

Kroger workers with UFCW Local 400 in Virginia are protesting the company’s efforts to switch from a jointly managed health plan to a management-only health plan, and predictably worse healthcare that may entail.

Midwives with NYSNA at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens rallied outside the hospital for a fair contract; they joined the union over two years ago and still don’t have an agreement. SEIU UHW healthcare workers rallied outside Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, CA against the proposed closure of that facility, among other issues.

Negotiations between 1199 SEIU and social services agency Lorain County Community Action Agency in Lorain, OH are not going well.

Two of ten unions who bargain with PATH, the New Jersey commuter train, have settled contracts that have been expired for a full decade. The other eight, whose contracts expired in 2011, are still waiting.

SMART-TD’s (and other rail unions’) fight against one-man train crews -- which, just like it sounds, would allow trains to be staffed by just one worker as opposed to current staffing minimums of two or more -- took a hit after an arbitrator ruled that the union must bargain over crew minimums for most large carriers. Obviously, one-man crews are a safety concern (no backup if something goes wrong, among other issues) and a jobs concern. Ironically, SMART was a leading advocate for train safety technology (“Positive Train Control”) which, now that it’s been implemented, allows carriers to argue that a two-man crew is unnecessary. The rail carriers face steep competition from over-the-road trucking, whose owner-operators can deliver at a fraction of the cost; apparently the collapse in demand for coal transportation has hit the rail industry hard, so all of this is also, of course, a just transition issue as well.

Laborers Local 860 says Cuyahoga County, OH has “essentially kicked the union out” of the juvenile detention system, where they (used to?) represent 135 workers, after the contract expired in 2019 and the employer has sought legal action against negotiating a new agreement. The union says that move, plus a staffing shortage in the face of COVID, has led to major safety issues. AFSCME Council 3 in Maryland is also sounding the alarm about staffing shortages at correctional facilities, wanting to improve the 96 to 1 ratio of prisoners to officers.

The Steelworkers announced a labor-management partnership with Talon Metals Corp to develop a nickel mine in Tamarack, MN for the electric vehicle battery supply chain. It’s expected to create 500 union jobs.

The Morgantown, WV Mylan pharmaceutical plant has officially closed as of July 31st, turning 1400 jobs (800 of which were Steelworkers Local 8-957 union jobs) into just 70, as workers decommission the plant. The opioid manufacturing deindustrialization death spiral is almost too on the nose.

As a handful of cities move towards dispatching mental health workers to non-violent 911 calls, Minneapolis is getting pushback from its EMTs and dispatchers union, first and foremost for not having been consulted on the plan, says the independent Hennepin County Association of Paramedics and EMTs.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law ensuring fair compensation for auto mechanics who work on vehicles under warranty, closing an existing loophole by which mechanics are systematically underpaid for such work. I wonder if this had anything to do with the 800 mechanics currently on strike at over 50 car dealerships in and around Chicago.

Bloomberg Law has a look at how “right to recall” rights, first negotiated by unions like UNITE HERE as jobs returned after initial COVID closures, are becoming state law, giving non-union workers rights previously strictly reserved for union members.

The Texas AFL-CIO is endorsing a series of recommendations to transition to a clean energy economy. We aren’t quite there yet, but this is yet another serious crack in the idea that fossil fuel workers organizations will never support a Green New Deal or similar.

New York’s top labor leaders have finally broken with Governor Andrew Cuomo, after an Attorney General report detailing his extensive record of sexual harassment came out. In no uncertain terms, everyone from the New YorkAFL-CIO to NYSUT to 32BJ to DC37 to the Hotel Trades Council and plenty others called Cuomo to resign or be impeached. This is a labor movement that has largely stood by him, despite his vow to “mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions” before he even took office, and other indignities.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

Last week, the IUPAT General Executive Board voted unanimously to elect new leadership, replacing retiring General President Ken Rigmaiden with Jimmy Williams, Jr. at the helm. Williams will be the youngest president of any AFL-CIO affiliate, and has been a prominent figure in the campaign to pass the PRO Act. He’ll officially take office in September.

In the week’s most shocking news, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka died suddenly and unexpectedly on Thursday. He was 72 years old. As far as AFL leadership is concerned, this means Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler of the IBEW is now Acting President, and the Executive Council will vote on who will fill out the rest of Trumka’s term (presumably Shuler) and who will be Secretary-Treasurer (I have no idea) until elections are held next year. They were initially meant to be held this fall but were delayed due to COVID (and, unofficially, perhaps because Trumka was supposedly on the fence about another run) until 2022. Shuler and AFA-CWA’s Sara Nelson were the rumored top contenders for the leadership spot in case of Trumka’s retirement. Obviously no one knows what will happen now, but leaders are elected based on weighted delegates, which ends up meaning that the six largest unions -- AFT, AFSCME, UFCW, CWA, IBEW, and the Machinists, respectively -- can functionally pick the winner.

But enough of the crass political bean counting. There have been more thoughtful and thorough remembrances of Trumka and what he meant than I could give here, but when I think of Trumka I think of the spiritual foundational text of this blog, Thomas Geoghegan’s Which Side Are You On?, which I’ll just quote at length below, as a tribute, I guess. In the book, we meet a young Trumka, back when they were both lawyers for the UMWA in the Miners for Democracy reform days, where miners fighting for control of their increasingly undemocratic union (like, murder opposition candidates’ families in their beds undemocratic) joined forces with young leftists and lawyers like Geoghegan:

“...sometimes I would see the rank and file here, in Washington. Sometimes they even roamed through the legal department, and I would be in the law library and look up and see a miner, like an apparition, standing in front of me.

For a moment or two, we would both be embarrassed. Then he might say, very softly and gently, ‘Hey, buddy, how’s it going?’

I never knew what to say. Should I say, ‘Hi, buddy?’

I was a bit jealous of the staff who could say, ‘Hi, buddy,’ and be cool about it. Especially the rank-and-file staff, who came out of the mines. Of course, I wondered how rank-and-file they really were.

There was Rich Trumka, my office mate. He was a young lawyer, just out of law school. We had the same secretary. He was no different from me, really, but he was the son of a miner and he had been in the mines. Rich Trumka was just as much a Washingtonian as I was, but he was a miner. The miners could pour out their hearts to him and call him ‘buddy,’ and he could call them ‘buddy’ back.

And I couldn’t and that’s what annoyed the hell out of me. I was also jealous that he could chew tobacco. I thought that if I could chew tobacco,  it would be a start, and without radically changing my personality, it would be… well, mind-altering, like other kinds of tobacco back then.

So one night, Rich and another miner taught me how to chew tobacco. They leaned their chairs against the wall, and they chewed and spit in long arcing  free throws into a basket (a wastebasket) across the room.

I had to get up, walk across, lean over the basket, and drool.

This is as close as I ever came to being rank-and-file, and I didn’t even get a high.

Trumka became president in 1981. And today the UMW is probably the stablest, most adult, most democratic union in a ll of labor. Yes, the rank and file went a little wild when they had their first taste of real self-government… what did anyone expect? But they sobered up, became responsible, democratic adults. And now the UMW officers don’t have to sit around trembling, like the rest of them in labor, wondering what would happen if they, the ‘membership,’ ever got the right to vote.

Or at least this is how I feel about it on some days. Other days I think how close they came to destroying the Union and leaving it in a pile of ashes. And I think how Rich Trumka will never admit, even now, that he had anything to do with the rest of us, the VISTA volunteers, the grad students, etc., people like me, as if he had obliterated forever that part of his life by going back down under the earth and coming out again as someone else. Sometimes I think they just used us -- Union Democracy, the New Politics, the whole Sixties Enlightenment -- just used these things as a means to an end.”

Who gets the bird, indeed.