The week in US unions, January 22-29, 2022

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

Four months into the USW Local 40 strike at Special Metals, local politicians have decided to suggest that the strike should end, with Senator Shelley Moore Capito and the Huntington, WV city council speaking up. Elsewhere in West Virginia, Teamsters Local 175 is apparently considering striking Coca-Cola over the company’s failure to pay its workers, more fallout from the Kronos ransomware attack that’s affecting payrolls across the country since December.

Michael Sainato at The Guardian spoke to striking concrete truck drivers with Teamsters Local 174 in Seattle. The 300-worker strike is having a serious impact on infrastructure projects in the Puget Sound, including a new light rail construction, but the contractors won’t budge.

1100 city workers across six unions in Portland, OR have announced that they’ve set a strike date of February 10th, after weeks of rallies and threats; if they actually end up walking, it will be in contrast to public workers in Minnesota and California, who both averted strikes this week. Hennepin County, MN workers with AFSCME Locals 34 and 2822 were ready to walk, but reached a tentative agreement. Santa Cruz County, CA workers with SEIU Local 521 came within about 12 hours of a strike, but pulled back at the last minute after reaching a deal. White collar city workers with CSEA in Brookhaven, NY are going into talks with a federal mediator over stalled contract negotiations.

K-12:  Educators in Birmingham, AL and Chesterfield, VA organized sickouts this week, while school bus drivers in Jefferson Davis County, MS struck for an hour over the district paying double for extra drivers without hiking regular driver pay – and won the pay hike. Teachers in Champaign, IL have voted to authorize a strike, though they apparently need to vote again to actually initiate a countdown to striking. Educators in West Contra Costa County, CA avoided a threatened strike, while teachers in Lompoc, CA have declared an impasse in negotiations with the school district. San Francisco teachers have a tentative one-year agreement. Six months after their contract expired, Anchorage, AK educators have a new tentative agreement as well. Food service workers with SEIU Local 284 in Shakopee, MN schools are pushing for a higher wage, which currently starts at a whopping $13.32.

2500 UFCW Local 1564 grocery workers across New Mexico will be taking a strike vote this week against Kroger-owned Smith’s Food & Drug; the union wants to, among other things, lock in the $2 per hour “hero pay” that Kroger implemented and then rescinded in the first few months of the pandemic. This would be the biggest strike in New Mexico since I don’t actually know when, but at least since 1993, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics begins its list of 1,000-plus worker strikes.

Hospitals: 300 support staffers with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania in Washington, PA have authorized a strike at Washington General Hospital. Meanwhile, SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin continues its years-long battle to reestablish the union at UW Hospital in Madison, WI after a decade-plus legal battle/gray area in the wake of Scott Walker’s Act 10, which applied to most public workers but the university hospital apparently exists in some kind of legal limbo in that respect. Though not quite a decade long, Sarah Hughes at Labor Notes looked back at the very long Massachusetts Nurses Association strike at St Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA. An independent union of nurse anesthetists was planning a one-day strike demanding that Wilkes-Barre General Hospital drop its contract with a third-party contractor who the union’s been negotiating with for a contract since April of last year; the Hospital dropped the contractor, and the union dropped the strike.

A federal judge granted rail operator BNSF an injunction against 17,000 SMART-TD and BLET (IBT) rail workers who had moved towards striking over a new (absolutely insane) attendance policy, which Joe DeManuelle-Hall at Labor Notes summed up well. The unions are now taking pains to tell their members not to take action, which is like never a good sign for fans of labor peace. It is worth remembering that this BNSF injunction is technically totally separate from the much larger 100,000+-worker rail bargaining coalition that has just filed for impasse/mediation and could soon start a countdown on an absolutely massive national rail strike, but it’s very hard for me to tell (some key factors being the global pandemic and supply chain meltdown and disintegrating political orders) whether or not that’s at all plausible.

Speaking of massive critical industries facing a strike deadline (with, like, shocking little public attention on the matter?), the USW’s National Oil Bargaining Program covering 30,000 workers (mostly along the Gulf Coast, but also in California, and a couple other locations, where workers have been rallying this weekend) is facing a contract expiration of February 1 (as in, like, Tuesday) and the latest reports are that things are “intensifying” and the latest offer was “insulting,” per the union. All this against the backdrop of a refinery industry that has made its union-busting aims quite explicit over the past year and change, with lockouts in Minnesota and Louisiana, the latter of which is very much still going and if I had to guess is probably being held up as an implicit threat against the union. The union appears to have had better luck at the Newport News, VA shipyard, with Steelworkers Local 8888 having reached a tentative deal, after rejecting the last one in December and amping up their strike talk.

Speaking of massive contract negotiations not going well, 14,000 AT&T workers with CWA in 36 states are negotiating a new contract, as their one-year extension expires on February 12th. As the bargaining committee put it, “We are bargaining in an environment of incredible challenges including inflation, worker unrest and the ongoing Covid Pandemic… The Company offered a Benefits proposal right off the bat that was offensive, concessionary and shows their contempt for their employees. We need all our CWA members to be prepared for a fight as well. We are going to fight, and we need an army of Union members fighting alongside us.”

260 security guards at Harvard University with 32BJ SEIU voted down a contract offer and authorized a strike. Apparently custodians got a better deal just months ago, and the guards want to at least match that, which seems entirely reasonable.

With just days to go, National Women’s Soccer League Players Association members say they won’t report for the first games of the preseason if a contract hasn’t been negotiated by then; they’ve been bargaining for two years.

Thousands of Teamsters were out protesting UPS’s move to cut wages for part-timers (here’s an example of local news coverage in Nevada), the second tier of workers who make as low as $15; the company is ending its “market rate adjustment” by which they raised wages in order to retain and attract people to the low-wage, backbreaking work of package handlers, which means in some areas workers are getting multiple dollar-an-hour pay cuts. This, plus the mobilizations for UPS to make Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday, covered by Paul Prescod for Jacobin, are early salvos in the coming war at UPS, as new Teamster leadership takes office in March and gears up for a credible strike threat in August 2023.

The Hollywood Basic Crafts unions – covering 7500 members of Teamsters Local 399, IBEW Local 40, Plumbers Local 78, Laborers Local 724, and OPCMIA Local 755 – have a contract, with far, far less fanfare than IATSE did last fall, which as I understand it informally sets the wage pattern.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

The ghoulish bill to gut public sector unions in Florida advanced through a committee in the legislature this week; like in a couple other states, it would decertify any public sector union that falls below 50% paying membership, while making it much harder for members to pay their dues (by, for example, disabling dues deduction from your paycheck), thus making that 50% trigger much more likely to be reached. Also it exempts police, corrections, and firefighter unions, a very common move in these sorts of bills, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

In Washington state, the Teamsters are apparently working with Uber and Lyft to create some kind of compromise position in which app drivers would get some benefits in exchange for permanent misclassification as less than employees of the companies. Not to be outdone, in Canada, UFCW has announced an agreement with Uber to team up on legislation permanently misclassifying its drivers in exchange for some kind of UFCW representation paid for not by drivers but jointly by the company and the union; really simplifies the whole union thing when you don’t have to get workers involved.

Two developments of note regarding the Federal Labor Relations Authority, one good, one bad: A circuit court ruled to undo a Trump-era policy limiting federal unions’ ability to bargain, which is just another step away from the very anti-labor federal policy the Trump administration had implemented. That said, the Trump legacy is still alive and well: the FLRA has upheld a decision to decertify the IFPTE’s union for immigration judges.

Costa Mesa, CA is considering a project labor agreement for its construction projects.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

In an epic posting fail, someone working for the DC Democratic Party accidentally posted (thanks to DC teacher Laura Fuchs for spotting it) what was supposed to be a tweet from the Members First caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union, the caucus that has repeatedly tried to unseat the incumbent CORE caucus, which latter group is on some level behind the revival of radical K-12 unionism over the past decade. One wonders why/how a caucus of the Chicago union (whose caucus’s recurring theme is “the CTU is bad for students and families and shouldn’t strike”) is enlisting the services of a DC Democratic Party operative. More here.

This week will mark the potentially watershed union election at a GM plant in Silao, Mexico, as Dan DiMaggio and Luis Feliz Leon covered for Labor Notes. In the wake of domestic union democracy legislation and new labor protections under the USMCA, an independent union is vying to unseat the “protection union” that has been in place at GM (and across huge swaths of the Mexican economy); if they’re successful, it could mark a new day for Mexican unionism as well as begin to lift the floor in key industries where the North American race to the bottom hurts workers across borders.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: AFSCME continues its museum organizing drive with 184 workers at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City filing for an election; DC 37 already has an entire local of Natural History Museum employees, so I assume this is an expansion of that local. 87 more Starbucks workers have officially filed for elections in Seattle (two stores), Atlanta, and Denver, with I believe the total number of stores that have “gone public” (though not all have filed with the NLRB yet) at 44, across 16 states, last I checked. 75 nurses at the Windsor Laurelwood Behavior Health Center in Willoughby, OH are organizing with the Ohio Nurses Association (AFT). 50 baggage handlers and customer service workers for Greyhound in Phoenix are organizing with Machinists Local 519. 44 utility workers for Aquarion Water in Bridgeport, CT are unionizing with IBEW Local 420. The 32 video game quality assurance employees at Raven/Activision Blizzard in Middleton, WI have officially filed for an election with CWA. 32 custodians and cleaners at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia are organizing with NUHHCE District 1199C (AFSCME). 

Very small shops: 25 food service workers at three locations of Union Kitchen in Washington, DC are unionizing in three different NLRB votes with UFCW Local 400. 19 salespeople for Aramark in Syracuse, NY are unionizing with Teamsters Local 294. 15 pharmacy techs at two Rite Aids in Lockport, NY are unionizing with UFCW Local 1 in two elections. 14 workers at a gun shop, Ammo Brothers, in Cerritos, CA, are unionizing with UFCW Local 324. 14 mechanics at South Bay Volkswagen in National City, CA are joining Machinists Local 1484, while ten mechanics at the Jim Fisher Volvo dealership in Portland, OR are unionizing with Machinists District Lodge W24. Ten flight simulator techs at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey are joining Machinists District Lodge 1. Eight workers at sex shop Hustler Hollywood in Chicago are joining RWDSU. Eight landscapers for Scapes & Co. in Snohomish, WA are joining Laborers Local 292. Seven workers at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada are joining Machinists Local SC711. Six dispensary workers at Budlandia in Portland, OR are joining UFCW Local 555. Five radiology techs at Steward Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, OH are joining 1199 WV/KY/OH. Four workers for US Army contractor Tech Systems in Hilo, HI are joining Machinists Local 1998. Three plumbers for Brooks Plumbing in Trotwood, OH are joining Plumbers Local 162. 

NLRB election wins…: 64 guidance counselors and academic advisors at the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School across Pennsylvania voted 44-14 to join the PSEA (NEA). 20 nursing home support staff at Westmont Manor in Westmont, IL voted 6-3 to join SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana. Ten concrete truck drivers for GFP Mobile Mix Supply in Wilmington, DE voted 7-3 to join Operating Engineers Local 542. Two school bus dispatchers for Student Transportation of America in Macungie, PA both voted to join Teamsters Local 773. 

…and losses: 24 workers who I think make doors for Assa Abloy in Ontario, CA voted 8-10 not to join Teamsters Local 986. 23 cannabis workers at Cannaseur’s Choice in Renton, WA voted 6-8 not to join UFCW Local 21. The 20 fast food workers at Tudor’s Biscuit World in Elkview, WV who marched on their boss and got the cops called on them ultimately lost their union vote, 5-7, not joining UFCW Local 400. 15 grocery warehouse workers for UNFI in Hopkins, MN also deadlocked, 6-6, not joining Teamsters Local 120, which I believe represents something like 700 other workers at this facility. Five lab techs at Steel of West Virginia in Huntington, WV deadlocked 2-2, thus not joining Steelworkers Local 37. 

Decertifications and raids: I don’t think it’s quite a raid, but Teamsters Local 911 is organizing a unit of 430 K-12 support staffers in Inglewood, CA that was recently “disclaimed by their former representative”; the vote is set for March 4th. It looks like four support staffers at West Harlem Head Start in NYC voted 0-3 to decertify AFSCME DC 37 Local 95.

Security guards: Two security guard unions, UGSO and UPSO (the difference in the acronym being “government” versus “professional”) are fighting over 211 security guards at the ICE detention site in Aurora, CO.

Non-profit staffers at the Public Interest Network have won voluntary union recognition with OPEIU.

The staff of the DCCC, the Democratic Party’s congressional elections campaign arm, are unionizing with Teamsters Local 238; you’ll recall the DNC staffers just joined SEIU, so now Change to Win is fully integrated with the DP staff.

Finally, some snippets of Amazon news worth highlighting. In Staten Island, the independent Amazon Labor Union has reportedly re-filed and shown sufficient interest for an NLRB election after having withdrawn their petition last year. The NLRB also found that management at the warehouse has been illegally surveilling and threatening workers. Unrelatedly (but obviously also relatedly), the Bessemer, AL re-vote is fast approaching; as Bloomberg reports, nearly half of the 6100 eligible voters are new to the warehouse since the last vote a year ago, due to Amazon’s very high turnover (which is by design, not specifically to Bessemer, but across the company).