The week in US unions, December 18-25, 2021

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

The 1400 BCTGM strikers are back to work at Kellogg’s in Omaha, Memphis, Lancaster, PA, and Battle Creek, MI, having ratified the company’s latest offer. This is why I try not to make predictions (though it sounds like the vote was close, I haven’t seen final numbers). For the American Prospect, Jarod Facundo reports that leaders of the Battle Creek local were dismayed by the ratification, and whether you chalk it up to actually sufficient improvements for a majority of the workers or fear of being replaced or exhaustion from a three month strike, the strike is over.

UMWA miners at Warrior Met in Brookwood, AL spent Christmas on strike. For Labor Notes, Luis Feliz Leon covered how they’re keeping up the fight. Kim Kelly and More Perfect Union headed down to Alabama to talk with strikers there.

Arielle Isack at Jewish Currents says the Columbia University student workers strike of UAW Local 2110 members appears to be nearing an end, and details the transformative possibilties for our very broken higher education system.

The 450 Steelworkers Local 40 strikers in Huntington, WV took Christmas off from the picket line, but the strike against Special Metals still continues, and the two sides sound like they’re still quite far apart.

Several hundred Teamsters spent Christmas on strike across the country. The Teamsters Local 174 concrete strike is still on, but picket lines have apparently been suspended until the new year per this local news report; in the meantime, the local held a big toy drive and had hundreds of people come out to the hall to celebrate Christmas. 250 Teamsters Local 542 sanitation workers remain on strike in San Diego against Republic. The mayor intervened but the company didn’t put a new proposal on the table, so the strike continues, as trash piles up. Drivers for Shred-It/Stericycle in Lawrence Township, NJ went on strike for a first contract on Monday with Teamsters Local 469. Teamsters Local 705 organized a show of force “walk-in” in Chicago support of an unjustly fired UPS driver. Coca-Cola workers in Bethlehem, PA remain on strike with Teamsters Local 773, as do two dozen members of Teamsters Local 553 in Brooklyn against UMEC energy, but I haven’t seen any updates on either of those.

Operating Engineers Local 49 is following in the footsteps of Teamsters Local 320 in authorizing a strike at the Minneapolis airport, which could happen as soon as January 25th.

Amazon workers in Chicago and Staten Island walked out this week (the former with Amazonians United, the latter with the Amazon Labor Union, both independent (as in, not backed by a national union) efforts to organize at Amazon).

The contract standoff between Steelworkers Local 8888’s 12,000 or so members at the Huntington-Ingalls shipyard in Newport News, VA is now at the stage where the company and the union are disputing the actual math of the contract in the local press. The union says the offer on the table is a less than 12% raise over five years, while the company says it’s 24%. Seems like an important disagreement to get straight!

Interesting dispatch from Tonawanda, NY where a Town Supervisor is blaming the blue collar city workers union (the Hourly Employees Association, which as far as I can tell is an independent local) for embarrassing the town for not having Martin Luther King Day off as a paid holiday; the union rejected a deal that would give up their current deal of having your birthday as a paid holiday in exchange for having MLK Day and Juneteenth off. Buried halfway down the story: “Of course, the town simply could provide King's day as a holiday for this group of workers. But Emminger [the Town Supervisor] said adding two paid holidays – King's day and Juneteenth – without the union giving back anything in return isn't financially prudent.” So who’s embarrassing the town? Is it the workers who don’t want to lose their birthday off, or the town which wants to pinch pennies over honoring King’s legacy?

After some very contentious negotiations and informational picketing, UNITE HERE Local 25 members at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, VA have ratified a contract, which includes up to 48% raises. 

K-12: This week saw an uptick in COVID actions among K-12 workers, as the Omicron variant spreads like wildfire, especially along the East Coast. In Philadelphia, teachers at Olney Charter High School called in sick en masse, forcing classes to go virtual, after a 17-year-old student died from COVID last week. The MORE Caucus of the UFT in New York City began putting out daily bulletins to cover all the school-based organizing, calling on schools to shut down early before the holiday to stop the spread. Outside of COVID organizing, K-12 workers in Sandusky, OH have new contracts, after the last teachers contract expired in 2020.

For Labor Notes, Saurav Sarkar wrote about the way longshore workers get conveniently blamed for supply chain issues, just as contract negotiations gear up around the ILWU west coast longshore contract.

For the Chicago Reader, Jennifer Bamberg looked back on the IATSE near-miss and how film & TV workers in Chicago felt about the whole saga.

City workers: Municipal workers in Hutchinson, KS have rejected a contract with the city; but the city says only 16 of the 125 workers covered by the contract (and thus who would’ve voted on it, presumably) are actually members of SEIU Local 513 (worth a fact check, certainly, but is not outside the realm of possibility). NYC’s firefighters (IAFF Local 94, the Uniformed Firefighters Association) have a tentative agreement with 8% raises over three years, pending a ratification vote. City workers in Springfield, MA with UFCW Local 1459 ratified an agreement with 2% annual increases.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

In response to Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not be supporting “Build Back Better,” Joe Biden’s signature omnibus legislation, the UMWA came out with a statement in strong support of the bill, and calling on Manchin to reconsider. Specifically, the union highlighted the need for continued Black Lung benefits paid by coal companies, investment in what sound like green transitional industries for displaced coal miners, and PRO Act-type language; President Cecil Roberts also called on Manchin to support voting rights protections.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

A member of the St. Louis Regional Council of Carpenters has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the national union’s move to dissolve the council and merge it into the Chicago Council; the move was announced earlier this year but details were sparse. Now national president Douglas McCarron says it was due to “financial malfeasance.” More details also came out about the Carpenters trusteeship going down in Washington state, but I haven’t seen anything reported on it so I’ll share it next week if I see something out there.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: The independent Amazon Labor Union has re-filed its petition for an election for 5,000 Amazon workers on Staten Island; last time, they pulled it after not having enough support to qualify for an election. 208 staffers at the Public Interest Network (the umbrella for the PIRGs, the Ralph Nader brainchild which fuels progressive organizing with hugely underpaid and overworked young staffers, notably, for example, opposing the Department of Labor’s new overtime rule under Obama) are organizing with OPEIU Local 2. 150 staffers for Lines for Life, a substance abuse and suicide prevention organization in Portland, OR are organizing with AFSCME Council 75. 100 animators with Titmouse Studios, who make shows like Metalocalypse and Superjail and apparently a Baby Shark TV show and some kind of Animaniacs reboot, plus lots of other things, are unionizing with the Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839. 63 EMTs and paramedics for Northwest EMS in McKees Rocks, PA are unionizing with FAPP, the Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics. 60 stevedores for Tropical Shipping USA in Riviera Beach, FL are organizing with ILA Local 1359/1860. Not to be outdone by Starbucks workers, 52 coffee shop workers at the Coffee Tree Roasters stores in Pittsburgh are unionizing with UFCW Local 1776. 36 CNAs at Riverstreet Manor nursing home in Wilkes-Barre, PA are unionizing with RWDSU Local 262 (which filed as “RWDSU of New Jersey”). Yet another Illinois weed dispensary is organizing with Teamsters Local 777, this time 19 workers for Zenleaf in Lombard, IL. 14 laborers at a sand mine in Buffalo, NY, CSI Sands, are joining Operating Engineers Local 17. Eight workers for Ozinga Ready-Mix at five locations in Indiana are unionizing with Teamsters Local 142. Seven F-35 flight instructors for Lockheed in San Diego are unionizing with Machinists District Lodge 725. Six parking attendants with Laz Parking in Peekskill, NY are joining Teamsters Local 272. Six utility workers at the Crawford Electric Cooperative in Bourbon, MO are joining IBEW Local 2. Five A/V workers at the JCC in East Palo Alto, CA are joining IATSE Local 134. Three workers for corporate uniform provider Cintas in Midland, MI are unionizing with Teamsters Local 406. 

NLRB election wins…: 225 techs and scientists for big regional healthcare non-profit Allina’s Central Lab in Minneapolis voted 146-39 to join SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. 113 non-profit staffers at Leadership for Educational Equity in DC narrowly voted to join the Machinists, 51-42. 61 nurses for Berkshire VNA in Pittsfield, MA voted 43-16 to join the Massachusetts Nurses Association. 44 lottery machine techs for Intralot in Bolingbrook, IL voted 25-7 to join IBEW Local 176. Seven production workers for Chemtrade Sulex in Mount Vernon, WA who make a chemical used for paper manufacturing voted unanimously to join the Steelworkers. Five school bus drivers for Durham School Services in Trumbull, CT voted 3-2 to join ATU Local 1336. Four welders and fabricators for Fluid Controls & Components in Richland, WA voted 3-1 to join UA Local 598. Two building engineers at 101 Ash Street in San Diego are now union after one of them voted to join Operating Engineers Local 501 (and the other didn’t vote). 

…and losses: 123 clerical workers at Keck Medicine at USC in Los Angeles voted 35-54 not to join NUHW. 56 sanitation workers for GFL Environmental in Dearborn, MI voted 12-29 against joining Operating Engineers Local 324.

Security guards: 112 security guards who work for Marriott at the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor, MD voted 54-0 to join SPFPA. 13 security guards contracted out at two Cowan Systems trucking terminals in New Jersey are apparently now union after one of them voted, and voted to join the Federal Contract Guards of America.

Outside the NLRB: Architects are beginning to unionize, per Noam Scheiber at the New York Times, who covered a group of architects at a prominent firm who are asking for voluntary recognition with the Machinists for 135 workers at SHoP Architects.

A couple interesting NLRB rulings came out on new organizing this week. The one that got a lot of attention was the Board’s ruling against Amazon, which, among other things, mandated the company email something like a million current and former Amazon workers about their rights to organize on the job, and repealed things like a rule stating workers had to leave the premises within 15 minutes of the end of their shift (i.e., barring workers from staying and talking to people after work or at shift change, which is key to organizing at work). It’s both an important ruling and development and also just comically insufficient, which kind of describes most of the things that happen in the US labor movement. Another interesting ruling has the Board reviewing a decision from this summer barring a smaller unit of skilled trades workers at Nissan’s Smyrna, TN plant from organizing their own union (as opposed to a union that includes all 4,000 workers at the plant). My non-lawyerly understanding is that this marks the first step to returning to so-called “micro-units,” a practice which was overturned under the Trump labor board.

Although I haven’t seen official NLRB filings, the Starbucks organizing wave has now spread to Knoxville, TN and Seattle. This thing appears to be achieving escape velocity beyond Workers United’s initial focus on the Buffalo area, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least a dozen more stores going for it in the next few months.