The week in US unions, January 29-February 5, 2022

Apologies for the late edition, and thanks for your patience. The next few weeks may be similar, as I have some family obligations to attend to. Incidentally, if I may say so, Labor Notes has had a week of very good pieces up on our site, which I’ve mentioned below throughout, but encourage you to check out, whether on Maine lobstermen organizing a union co-op, or labor’s role in fighting vaccine apartheid, or Mexican autoworkers forming an independent union in a historic vote, or the general state of railroad unions during an ongoing supply chain crisis and ‘great resignation.’

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

Steelworkers Local 40, on their 126th day on strike, once again went back to the negotiating table with Special Metals in Huntington, WV, and once again came back without a deal, primarily because of healthcare costs for the 450 strikers. For the largest nickel alloy plant in the world to not be operational because the global superpower’s healthcare system has been captured by insurance profiteers, even despite the billionaire conglomerate-owner of the plant purportedly supporting single-payer healthcare, is really a send-up of any idea of the efficient or rational or benefit-maximizing nature of our economic system.

And lest you think it’s an Appalachian thing, concrete capitalists in Seattle have managed to keep their gun pointed at the head of 330 Teamsters Local 174 concrete truck drivers for three months, causing thousands of workers to be laid off (and untold millions of dollars in development stalled), rather than raise wages.

The 150 BCTGM Local 37 workers who make ice cream cakes for Rich Products at the Jon Donaire Desserts plant in Santa Fe Springs, CA have also marked three months on the picket line, as Michael Sainato reports in The Guardian, as they continue to ask for $1 an hour raise over each year for three years, with no increases in healthcare costs. 

30,000 Steelworkers refinery workers are on a 24-hour rolling contract extension, which was agreed to 30 minutes before the initial strike deadline. I really feel like this one could go either way; Marathon, who’s leading the negotiations for the employers’ side, locked out 200 workers in Minnesota for six months of 2021, and Exxon is currently locking out 600 workers in Beaumont, TX since May (and trying to bust the union for good measure). What that tells me is the employers are ready to go for a kill shot, and, particularly in this labor market, I can’t imagine workers accepting a deeply shitty contract anywhere close to the 1% offer they just rejected. In related news, Grist has a really interesting piece on how those locked out workers in Beaumont are trying to leverage public funding for a big Exxon carbon capture project to settle a contract.

The ALPA is running their trademark silent pickets against Alaska Airlines, after three years without a contract. The COO of the airline thought it would be a good idea to silently stare down a long line of pilots, one at a time, outside an event in New York and the union posted the video online. (Thank you Sean for the heads up on this one!)

1800 hospital workers with SEIU Healthcare Michigan in Muskegon, MI are voting on whether to picket Mercy Health, after a bargaining deadline passed without a deal. Results of the vote should be announced any minute now. 525 nurses with the California Nurses Association (NNU) at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, CA have authorized a one-day strike; the date hasn’t been set, and they’ll need to file a ten-day notice before walking. Some 700 nurses at Geisinger Health in Wilkes-Barre, PA with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania ratified a new contract, bringing their starting wage up to $35 an hour.

UFCW Local 1564 grocery workers at Kroger-owned Smith’s Food & Drug across New Mexico are still ready to strike, but have agreed to a contract extension as negotiations drag on.

Teamsters Local 320 is recommending its public defenders across Minnesota reject the state’s latest offer and vote to authorize a strike. It sounds like any strike action would be weeks away at the soonest.

For Labor Notes, Joe DeManuelle-Hall has a great overview of the state of rail bargaining, the unraveling of the rail industry, and potential strike actions by the 14 rail unions. Pairs very well with More Perfect Union’s video on the crisis at BNSF, where 17,000 workers have been hit with an injunction against striking.

1200 municipal workers in Portland, OR (the biggest chunk of whom are with AFSCME Local 189, along with five other unions) are nearing a February 10th strike deadline, and the city decided instead to settle its contract with the police union instead.

Eleven of twenty five workers who are seeking to unionize with UFCW Local 400 at three locations of “food accelerator” (I guess this is like a startup for restaurants? I don’t know) Union Kitchen in DC struck this weekend, after management served disciplinary notices to two of the main organizers. Pretty impressive to see what is essentially a recognition strike, which is a pretty rare breed, especially in food service, which is a notoriously low-density industry.

Higher ed: Staff at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA will strike for four days this week, as they fight for a first contract with SEIU Local 1021; the adjunct union and faculty have announced plans to honor their picket line. For Discourse Blog, Paul Blest wrote about how much it has sucked to work at a college during the pandemic (specifically Kutztown University, where Aramark dining workers have been organizing with Workers United). At the University of Massachusetts, five unions rallied to settle contracts that apparently expired way back in July of 2020. At California State University, the unionized faculty have voted to ratify a new contract after two years of negotiations and an impasse. And in another contract ratification Columbia University student workers with UAW Local 2110 ratified their contract by 97% after a very, very long series of fights.

K-12: Over 1500 K-12 teachers called out sick in Douglas County, CO, forcing the district to close, after a newly-elected school board changed a policy surrounding teaching about race and bias in the schools. As far as I’ve seen, this is the first work stoppage related to the whole “Critical Race Theory” thing (by which I think is actually meant just any discussion of racism in public schools, far as I can tell), and it’s not on the side of the right-wingers, just saying. Teachers in Guam have been told they’re getting a raise, at some point, the governor is working on it, but the union wants to know the timeline.

Speaking of worker actions against racist bosses, there’s been a fight among non-union workers of color who faced racial discrimination and harassment from a construction contractor in Midland, MI; this week, workers and allies, including the local IBEW, marched and rallied in support of the six workers who have spoken out.

Staffers at the liberal DC think tank Center for American Progress are threatening a strike with the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union (IFPTE) in order to raise the wage floor (which currently sits at $40,000 a year).

After some serious work stoppage talk, the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association have their first union contract.

The tentative agreement between Huntington Ingalls and Steelworkers Local 8888, covering upwards of 10,000 workers (I have seen divergent figures for how many workers it would actually affect) does not yet have a ratification date set, but the union is working on getting members “summaries.”

Deming, NM firefighters and EMTs (IAFF Local 4152) are trying to work out their contract impasse after 14 members all put in their two weeks notice a couple weeks ago. The big issue is how low the pay is; one 15-year employee is still at only $13.45 an hour. East Hartford, CT police have a new contract, with 2% annual raises. Around 100 Staten Island Ferry workers with MEBA are renewing their push for a new contract, having gone over ten years without a raise; presumably they think a new mayor might mean renewed interest.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

In Oregon, the state legislature is considering a bill to mitigate unexpected forced overtime among certain manufacturing employers; from the text of the bill, it’s clearly trying to close a gap that the Nabisco BCTGM strikers couldn’t win in their contract (it literally calls out the NAICS code for “bakeries and tortilla manufacturers”) but it’s not clear to me whether it also applies to other food processing employers.

The California legislature failed to hold a vote on the single-payer bill fought hard for by the California Nurses Association (NNU), thus killing the bill. The union vows not to give up the fight. In a brighter spot, SEIU scored a legislative victory in winning passage of what sounds sort of like sectoral bargaining for the state’s 500,000 fast food workers, though I haven’t dug into what it’s actually going to mean.

A South Dakota legislator pulled their bill that sought to ban collective bargaining for public school teachers in that state, which is better than them not pulling the bill, though one would hope to get to a point where nobody is trying to outlaw teachers unions. A boy can dream.

On the federal level, some good and some bad this week. First, Joe Biden signed an executive order mandating project labor agreements (which is to say, union labor) on construction projects that get $35 million or more in federal funding. I haven’t watched his remarks on the occasion but they sounded fun. On the less good side, the new multi-billion dollar contract to build an electric fleet for the USPS has fallen to a company that’s decided to move the 1,000 jobs from Wisconsin to South Carolina, breaking the hearts of members of UAW Local 578, and spitting in the eye of those coveted upper-Midwest working class voters the Democratic Party just can’t quite seem to figure out how to win back.

In Congress, there’s a new bill to prohibit employers from cutting health insurance to striking workers, which would be a big deal, as this is a tactic we see used over and over in strikes to force workers to fold. It of course raises the question of whether your boss holding the keys to your healthcare is ever fair. But it’s a start. While the Democrats tinker at the edges of labor law, the right wing is just going ahead and proposing we establish company unions so the working class can escape their corporate overlords’ excessive wokeness, or something.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

In big news for the labor left, Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey announced he will not be seeking re-election this year, and will instead return to the classroom to teach. Presumably this means Vice President Stacy Davis Gates will go for the top spot, though both Sharkey and Gates are rumored to be potential mayoral candidates. 

In a massive upset, the independent Mexican auto workers union CINTTIA won in a landslide against three other company-aligned unions in an election among 6,000 General Motors workers in Silao, Mexico. Luis Feliz Leon and Dan DiMaggio wrote about it for Labor Notes, and Max Alvarez at The Real News spoke with member leader Israel Cervantes. Natalie Kitroeff at The New York Times had a story worth reading on it, too.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: A whopping 5,182 grad student workers at MIT are unionizing with the UE. Aside from Bessemer, this would be the biggest single NLRB election to take place in the past five years, and marks UE’s further organizing among graduate workers; they have represented grad workers in Iowa for decades and have been organizing among grad workers in North Carolina, Virginia, and New Mexico. 1500 more Amazon workers at another Staten Island, NY facility are organizing with the Amazon Labor Union. In the single biggest week for the Starbucks Workers United movement in terms of filings (so far), something like 665 at 26 Starbucks locations in [deep breath] Philadelphia, Kansas City, Ithaca, Buffalo, Rochester, Ann Arbor, Grand Blanc, MI, Santa Cruz, CA, Chatsworth, CA, Overland Park, KS, Portland, Eugene, and Beaverton, OR have filed; the running total of stores that have announced (though not all have filed for elections yet) is 64, across 19 states, and I’m sure by the time you’re reading this a couple more will have gone public. I’m a broken record on this, but I can’t really express how big a breakthrough this campaign is already. 350 counselors and specialists, and, in a separate vote, an additional 250 nurses at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA are organizing with AFSCME Local 1674 (Council 93). 

Smaller shops: 63 counselors and clericals at Rainbow Health in Saint Paul, MN are unionizing with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. 63 workers at a speciality elastomers plant (no I don’t really know what specialty elastomers are) in Cantonment, FL which Celanese recently acquired from Exxon Mobil, are organizing with IBEW Local 733. 40 library staff at the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, CA are unionizing with the California Federation of Teachers. 32 workers at the Broadway Youth Center in Chicago are unionizing with UFCW Local 1546. 29 linemen for the Marshall-Dekalb Electric Cooperative in Boaz, AL are unionizing with IBEW Local 443. 28 dispensary workers at Rise in Niles, IL are organizing with Teamsters Local 777 (which UFCW Local 881 will probably not be happy about, as they continue to tussle over that turf). 25 TV producers at WPXI in Pittsburgh are unionizing with SAG-AFTRA. 23 drivers for United Natural Foods Inc in Logan, NJ are unionizing with Teamsters Local 676. 22 workers at the Lake Charles Power Station in Westlake, LA are joining the existing IBEW Local 2286 agreement at Entergy, the utility that owns the site. 21 nurses at Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, CA are joining the California Nurses Association (NNU), as are 20 more at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, and five at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo. 20 carpenters for Unity Construction in Sayreville, NJ are joining the Carpenters, as are five more at Del-Sano Contracting in West Long Branch, NJ. 20 streetcar operators and mechanics for RATP Dev McDonald Transit in Tucson, AZ are unionizing with ATU Local 1433. 18 workers at Northern Stage, a performing arts theater in White River Junction, VT are organizing with IATSE Local 919. 17 technicians who repair tractor-trailers for Penn Power Group in Syracuse, NY are organizing with Teamsters Local 317. 16 workers at used clothing store Crossroads in Seattle are joining UFCW Local 21. Eight building engineers employed by Acumen Capital Partners in Brooklyn, NY are joining Operating Engineers Local 30. Six custodians for Flagship Facility Services in Mesa, AZ are joining UFCW Local 99. 

NLRB election wins…: 43 nursing home support workers at Community Care on Palm in Riverside, CA voted 22-1 to join SEIU Local 2015. 33 staffers at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York in Albany, NY voted 21-5 to join UAW Local 2325, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. 15 CVS workers on Haight in San Francisco voted 5-0 to join UFCW Local 648. 15 laborers at CSI Sands in Buffalo, NY voted 3-1 to join Operating Engineers Local 17. 13 clerical workers at as many locations of Bacharach Institute for Rehabilitation across New Jersey voted 9-4 to join UFCW Local 152.

…and losses: 23 emergency room clericals at Providence Holy Family Hospital in Spokane, WA voted 8-9 not to join UFCW Local 21. Ten doctors at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, CA voted 4-5 against joining AFSCME Local 206, the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. Seven meat department workers at an Albertsons in Rock Springs, WY voted 0-4 against joining UFCW Local 7; in the past ten years, there have only been 18 NLRB elections in the state, the last three of which were small Albertson’s units filed for by Local 7 in which the union got zero votes. Three sanitation dispatchers in Santa Clara, CA split 1-1 on joining Teamsters Local 350. 

Decertifications and raids: For the Intercept, Bill Shaner wrote up the decertification efforts against the Massachusetts Nurses Association at St Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA. It looks like the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen is raiding a unit of 21 BMWE (IBT) maintenance of way workers for railcar manufacturer Alstom in Sanford, FL. 16 mechanics at Brown Honda dealership in Toledo, OH decertified Teamsters Local 20, 6-9. 15 workers in the meat departments of three Albertsons stores in El Paso, TX decertified UFCW Local 540 in a narrow 6-7 vote. 12 sprinkler fitters for Summit Fire & Security in Salt Lake City voted 2-3 to drop Sprinkler Fitters Local 669.

Security guards: SPFPA and LEOS-PBA are squabbling over 12 K-9 handler security guards in Boston.

Outside the NLRB: Congressional staffers have announced a historic bid to unionize, though they haven’t affiliated with any national union. So are the staff of the Financial Times. The faculty of Miami University (Ohio, not Florida) are unionizing with the AAUP; they already have an “advocacy chapter,” but are now making the move for collective bargaining. School psychologists in Clovis, CA voted to unionize with the California Teachers Association (NEA), forming the school district’s first-ever union (which when I first learned about this campaign I was surprised to learn that any district in California was still unorganized); the teachers are still working on winning their union. Workers at the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia, MO are unionizing with AFSCME. 30 K-12 cafeteria workers in Sauk Rapids, MN voted 25-1 to join SEIU Local 286.

The Machinists organizing drive among 130 or so architectural firm staffers at SHoP Architects in NYC is over, after they pulled their petition for lack of support, in a drive that was met with lots of excitement when it was first made public in December.

The re-vote at Amazon in Bessemer, AL is officially underway, with RWDSU making its second run at what would be the first union at the country’s second-largest private employer; as Alex Press writes in Jacobin, the e-commerce giant appears “addicted” to union-busting, apparently continuing to commit plenty of potential violations even after having been forced to re-run this election due to their rampant labor law violations the first time around.

Not to be outdone by Amazon, Starbucks is making a name for itself with its egregious level of union-buster activity, as Dave Jamieson mapped out.

Let’s not forget that it’s not just the big name corporations that union bust, but places like Bates College and “immersive arts and entertainment company” Meow Wolf. It’s almost as if the employment relationship sets up an inherent structural antagonism that individual owners or managers are nearly helpless to avoid, no matter how progressive or nice they may personally be.