This week, I spoke with Nausicaa Renner (who I speak to every week!) about the Deere strike, the labor market, and union democracy, for Intercepted. You can check that out here. Also, big news! The 2022 Labor Notes Conference is now open for registration: see you in June.

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

My latest on the Deere strike dropped Thursday afternoon, and by Friday night, everything had changed. It’s deja vu all over again -- there is now a new contract offer from Deere to the 10,000 UAW strikers. I say contract offer and not “tentative agreement” because the union has emphasized that this is a final offer from the company (with the implicit threat to go to arbitration and risk it just being imposed) and not something the bargaining committee voted to approve. The previous claims from Deere about “last and best offer” have proven to not be technically true, though the new offer basically only changes CIPP (and some slight vacation policy tweaks, I believe), the departmental performance pay plan that is so convoluted that most members couldn’t precisely explain it and I certainly don’t have it down. The change means that members who are covered by CIPP -- which I don’t have figures on, but seems to be something between half and two-thirds of the workforce -- will make a bit more money, and get that money sooner. It’s not the maximalist demand of post-retirement healthcare and pre-97 real wages, but it could certainly be enough to sway the roughly 500 votes needed to ratify, along with the additional two weeks of being on strike, and the increasingly-real-seeming threat of impasse/final offer. We’ll know on Wednesday, when the locals will vote on whether or not to ratify the deal.

An even bigger tentative agreement was announced on Saturday morning, when the Alliance of Health Care Unions, the group of 20 unions currently negotiating a national agreement with healthcare giant Kaiser for something like 50,000 workers, around 40,000 of whom had authorized strikes and some 32-35,000 of whom were set to strike starting on Monday. The roll-out of the tentative agreement announcement was clunky, with Kaiser apparently jumping the gun, and then UNAC/UHCP also kind of jumping the gun, but eventually all the relevant unions announcing they do, indeed, have a national TA. Ratification processes TBD, but these particular unions will not be striking on Monday as planned. The word I’m hearing from union sources is that they killed the two-tier wage proposal and got something in the ballpark of 10% raises over four years (up from 3% over three years). Notably, when we say there’s a national TA and “the strike” is off, that does not mean that the Operating Engineers Local 39 strike is settled (it’s still on, nearing its 2-month mark), and the independent Guild of Professional Pharmacists is still planning to strike for a week starting Monday, which will mean around 2,000 Kaiser pharmacists in Northern California will be on strike. SEIU UHW and the California Nurses (NNU) still plan to strike this week in sympathy with the Operating Engineers, which will mean something like 50,000 Kaiser workers will strike, but only for one day and not over their national master agreement.

Elsewhere in hospital unions: Around 1,000 hospital workers at Cabell Hospital in Huntington, WV remain on strike with 1199 WV/KY/OH, with “no end in sight”; the boss has cut the strikers’ healthcare and a judge has granted a temporary restraining order against the picketers. 350 SEIU UHW hospital workers at Sutter in Antioch, CA held a five-day strike this week, after having struck last month; as at so many hospitals, the biggest issues are staffing ratios and working conditions. 2200 members of the Michigan Nurses Association at Sparrow Health System in Lansing, MI will take a strike authorization vote this week. The reports of an end to the St. Vincent Hospital strike in Worcester, MA are greatly exaggerated, says management; not only is the strike not over, but the CEO blamed the Massachusetts Nurses Association for apparently spreading rumors that there’s a deal at hand. Clearly lots of good will here. The CWA Local 1133 strike at Catholic Health’s Mercy Hospital in Buffalo is officially totally over, with a 96% contract ratification. Other healthcare & social assistance: Elsewhere in Buffalo, 1199 SEIU members at the Weinberg Campus nursing home are rallying for their own safe staffing contract. The 1199 New England group home strikers against Sunrise Group in Connecticut marked a month on strike with a rally in Hartford. 25 nursing home workers at Blue Circle in St. Louis are on strike with SEIU Healthcare Missouri, after having struck for one day in September, over a $15 minimum wage among other issues.

The IATSE ratification vote closes on Monday, and Sarah Hughes spoke to one of the members voting “no” for Labor Notes. Unscientific member polls on social media seem pretty heavily unfavorable, but that’s obviously a self-selecting group. Presumably we’ll know the results by Tuesday or sooner, and in the seemingly less-likely (but certainly possible!) scenario that it is voted down, that doesn’t mean a strike is necessarily happening.

Kellogg’s is suing some of its striking BCTGM workers in Omaha for the sin of picketing. The company wants them to be able to “communicate” their position without having any influence on production, which is just not what a picket line is. The law is unfortunately stacked against picketers, but as in so much of our society and in particular as it concerns unions, the law is deeply broken, and is just one tool Kellogg’s is using in its attempts to break the strike.

At Jacobin, Nora de la Cour has a full account of the UMWA strike at Warrior Met, through contract rejection, mass pickets, injunctions, protests in New York City with arrests of top union leaders, and more.

Higher ed: Rachel Himes wrote about why she’s on strike, along with 3,000 other student workers, against Columbia University for Jacobin. Elsewhere in UAW Local 2110, around 200 museum workers at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts are planning a one-day strike this week. And elsewhere in Columbia… ok, that’s a stretch, but Columbia College faculty in Chicago are still threatening a strike, as contract negotiations continue. Around 6,000 lecturers across the University of California system will strike over unfair labor practices Wednesday and Thursday with UC-AFT; they’ve authorized a full strike, but for now are just doing the two-day, though I’d assume this is functionally a warning shot to the University, which probably doesn’t love that this is happening just as two other units of a combined 24,000 union members are voting on authorizing their own strikes across the UC. Labor Notes covered the broader fight here. Harvard’s Clerical and Technical Workers have ratified a one-year contract, after much debate.

K-12: 900 K-12 educators in Scranton, PA remain on strike, and are pressing their case in the state capital (Harrisburg, for you Zip Zap Map dropouts). In Pleasanton, CA, educators have a tentative agreement that reduces some class sizes and raises pay, after having threatened a strike. After similarly tense negotiations, educators in Anderson, IN have a TA as well. 20 newly-organized K-12 custodians in Chisago Lakes, MN are pushing for a first contract with SEIU Local 284.

School bus drivers: 40 school bus drivers in Cumberland County, NC have joined the school bus drivers mini strike wave, with particular outcry from special education bus drivers: "We call ourselves CNAs with CDLs," said one special education driver. In Howard County, MD, school bus drivers did the same, with 80 drivers calling out sick. In Minneapolis, 100 unionized school bus drivers with Teamsters Local 320 unanimously authorized a strike; the complicated public sector law there means the earliest they could strike is January 15 or so, but the trend holds.

Other transit: Around 200 transit workers with Teamsters Local 533 are on their third strike since August as they battle French transit contracting giant Keolis in Reno, NV; Keolis took over the contract for Regional Transportation Commission from MV Transportation in 2019 and has been playing hardball in negotiations with the union, which has responded by filing unfair labor practices and striking over each one. TWU's national leadership has intervened to call off (or maybe just delay) a strike of 275 Local 1 transit workers in Akron, OH that was set to start on Monday, and has placed the local union in receivership. TWU says Local 1 didn’t provide proper notice of the strike, somehow mishandled the strike authorization vote, and the local president is no longer officially employed by the employer. Those issues all sound pretty process-oriented to me, so I’m curious to learn more, and why the national union would take this drastic step. If you’re a member or have more insight, I’d love to hear from you.

Grocery unions: Kroger workers with UFCW Local 455 in Houston are taking a strike authorization vote at their worksites and the company has repeatedly called the police on them (who for the most part seem to show up and shrug their shoulders and leave). As I mentioned last week, in Michigan, members of UFCW Local 876 have rejected a tentative agreement at the grocery giant, but I haven’t seen updates on what happens next. On the west coast, contract negotiations are beginning across several UFCW and Teamsters locals, covering 100,000 workers.

Members of the New York NewsGuild have authorized a strike at the New York Times’s Wirecutter on or around Black Friday.

Multiple rail unions (including at least BMWE-IBT and TCU (IAMAW) but I think like seven others) are threatening a strike at Chicago’s Metra commuter rail, after three years without a contract.

Three years after they first unionized, 100 IWW-represented workers at five Burgerville fast food chain locations in the Pacific Northwest have their first union contract.

Frontier Communications is facing more ire from unionized workers, this time from IBEW Local 363 members in New York; separately, the company still has not come to an agreement with several CWA locals in California, despite multiple ULP strikes and the contract having expired over two months ago (here’s the latest, not-very-substantive bargaining update from California). Separately still, members of CWA Local 1298 have organized information pickets against the company in Hartford, CT, as they also try to settle a contract with Frontier.

Members of Boilermakers Local 696 protested against a tentative agreement, covering I think around 800 members, that’s going up for a vote next month at Fincantieri Marine, a shipbuilding operation in Marinette, WI, with issues ranging from the fact that there have been no raises for the past two years, the contract expired last summer, health insurance costs are rising, they’re having to work more long weekend shifts, and the company is using subcontractors from out of state to take union work.

Workers across four unions (the Pascagoula Metal Trades Council, IBEW Local 733, Machinists Local 1133, and UFSPSO (the security guards)) at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, MS have a tentative agreement, as do their counterparts in Newport News, VA with Steelworkers Local 8888. There are rumors of a “no” vote at least in Mississippi but I really don’t have enough details on that yet. Will keep an eye on it.

Steelworkers Local 3057 appears to have won their strike against ArcelorMittal in Shelby, OH, with a tentative agreement after 11 days on the picket line. Steelworkers Local 13-243 in Beaumont, TX is still, after six months, locked out by Exxon, and are in the fight for their lives as they face a decertification attempt.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

This is going to be a historic week in the Teamsters, as the votes are counted in the election to succeed James P. Hoffa at the helm, after 23 years. You can follow the vote count, which begins on Monday, online. The heavy favorite is on the Teamsters United slate, backed by the rank-and-file reformer group Teamsters for a Democratic Union . Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal are taking note, as this could mean a new, more aggressive direction for one of the most important unions in the country. I’ll be hosting a panel discussion with some of TDU’s leaders on Sunday, November 23; you can check that out here.

Ray Curry, the fourth UAW president to occupy the seat since the corruption scandal first started breaking a few years ago, is now under investigation by the DOJ-appointed monitor for illicitly accepting gifts (football game tickets) from a vendor. It’s peanuts compared to the other embezzlement and outright bribery that others have been charged with -- like the $2 million stolen by a local official who was charged just this week -- but it’s just another data point in the culture of corruption or entitlement or ethical laxity or however you want to characterize it in the Administration Caucus of the UAW. This came out as part of Independent Monitor Neil Barofsky’s first report on the state of things in the UAW, in which he says the union has “fallen short” in its efforts to “eradicate the strong remnants of the 'toxic' culture that characterized its recent past and still remain present today."

Isaac Scher at Jewish Currents has the story of how a pro-Palestine resolution within the UTLA drew the ire of several Zionist organizations, eventually killing the motion.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: 163 home healthcare workers for Sutter based in Alameda, CA are organizing with NUHW, as are 47 healthcare workers for contractor Wellpath at the San Luis Obispo County Jail, plus 40 workers in two units at Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles. SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana is organizing a bunch of nursing homes in Illinois: 85 workers at South Holland Manor in South Holland, IL, 66 workers at Symphony in Evanston, IL, 50 workers at St. James Wellness in Crete, IL, and 23 workers at Westmont Manor in Westmont, IL. 103 Starbucks workers at three more stores in the Buffalo area have officially filed with the NLRB, bringing the total up to six (with apparently something like a dozen more following closely behind); the company has been actively trying to bust the union drive but hasn’t been able to avoid a vote at the first three stores that filed in September. Having organized one unit of undergrad workers at Hamilton College, UFCW Local 1 is going for another unit, this time of 69 RAs and 16 “student ambassadors.” 65 workers for social services agency Communitas in Bremerton, WA are unionizing with SEIU Local 775.

Smaller shops: 41 workers at a Dollar General warehouse in West Sacramento, CA are unionizing with Teamsters Local 150. 39 workers at what I believe is an “automated” Kroger grocery warehouse in Middletown, OH operated by Ocado are organizing with Teamsters Local 114. 35 steelworkers at Amerinox Processing in Camden, NJ are organizing with SMART Local 19, as are 17 workers for HVAC company Custom Aire in Bensalem, PA. OPCMIA Local 528 is organizing 29 concrete workers at Precision Concrete in Seattle. 27 drivers for Nabis Cannabis Distribution in Los Angeles are organizing with Teamsters Local 630. 26 security guards at the Children’s Village (that just feels wrong to type) in Dobbs Ferry, NY are unionizing with the Special Patrolmen Benevolent Association. 25 sanitation drivers for Thompson Sanitation in Rock Hill, NY are organizing with Laborers Local 108. 24 landscapers for the creatively-named Trees LLC in Pocatello, ID are unionizing with IBEW Local 449. 22 workers in the costume shop of the Los Angeles Opera are unionizing with IATSE Local 768. 20 gardeners at the Harvest Center in Eugene, OR are organizing with UFCW Local 555. 16 workers at another location of Half Price Books in St. Louis Park, MN are organizing with UFCW Local 663. 15 “herbologists” at Herbology Dispensary in Newark, OH are unionizing with UFCW Local 1059. 15 workers at construction equipment rental outfit Norris Sales (United Rentals) in Conshohocken, PA are joining Operating Engineers Local 542. 11 JB Hunt truck drivers based out of Ryerson Steel in Burns Harbor, IN are unionizing with Teamsters Local 142. Nine mechanics for WAI Construction in Huntsville, AL (I think working on a contract on the NASA space flight center there) are joining Operating Engineers Local 320. Eight maintenance workers at four buildings in four different votes may join the “United Workers of America Local 660” which, with a name like that and being in NYC (and a couple NLRB cases of 32BJ SEIU accusing them of dubious bargaining practices) I’d be shocked if they’re not on the company union spectrum. Eight workers at clean energy company Fuelcell Energy in Danbury, CT are joining Operating Engineers Local 478. Seven workers at the Washington County Rural Telephone Cooperative in New Pekin, IN are joining IBEW Local 1393.

NLRB election wins…: 60 workers for electric utility California ISO based in Folsom and Lincoln, CA voted 46-11 to join IBEW Local 1245. 57 nursing home workers at the Riverview Care Center in St. Louis have won their union with SEIU Healthcare Kansas/Missouri (part of SEIU Healthcare Illinois/Indiana, oddly) in a 14-5 vote; they initially filed for an election back in August 2020. 47 EMTs, paramedics, and RNs for American Medical Response based in Sierra Vista, AZ voted 26-3 to join IAFF Local I-60. 29 utility workers for the United Illuminating Company based in Orange, CT voted 11-8 to join the Utility Workers. 17 workers who make packaging products for WestRock in Tacoma, WA voted 16-1 to join the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Six clerical workers at rec center/waterpark Albergue Olimpico in Salinas, PR voted 5-0 to join UTIER. Five cement masons for contractor Hoffman Structures in Washington state voted 4-0 to join OPCMIA Local 528. Five National Guard medical simulation trainers for Phoenix Logistics in Annville, PA voted 4-0 to join the Machinists. Four therapists at Hospital Oncologico in San Juan, PR voted 3-0 to join Union General de Trabajadores (SEIU 1199).

...and losses: 237 workers for Fragrancenet.com in Deer Park, NY voted over two-to-one against joining Novelty and Production Workers Local 298, 56-138. 61 plumbers for American Plumbing Contractors in Lansing, MI voted 14-33 not to join Plumbers Local 333. 49 workers for Fieldcore in West Chester, OH, a GE utilities subsidiary, voted 16-29 against joining Machinists District Lodge 34. 48 workers at cardboard and chipboard maker RTS Packaging in Stockton, CA voted a whopping 3-34 against joining Teamsters Local 439. 33 techs and stagehands for PSAV, who do audio/visual work at eight Vegas hotels voted 3-21 against joining IATSE Local 720.

Decertifications and raids: There is some kind of jostling going on between GCC-IBT Local 2N and the “Barclay’s Center Conversion Union” which appears to be a breakaway from 32BJ that apparently raided an IUJAT unit of workers (or maybe just beat IUJAT in an election) for contractor ABM Aviation at LaGuardia Airport last year, and is now being raided by Local 2N but was maybe at one point with Teamsters Local 808 a few years ago? I don’t know. I’m sure they’re all busy building a lot of worker power. 18 workers at Bob’s Discount Furniture in Paramus, NJ stuck with UFCW Local 888, narrowly beating a decertification attempt, 10-8.

After years of attempts, staff at POLITICO now have a union through voluntary recognition with the NewsGuild (after having filed for an NLRB election).

Loudoun County, VA is slated to be the latest jurisdiction allowing public sector collective bargaining, as SEIU Local 512 and IAFF Local 3756 make their push.

The week in US unions, November 6-13

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