The week in US unions, February 26-March 5, 2022
STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS
360 workers with Machinists Locals 388 & 1191 who manufacture aerospace equipment for Eaton (formerly Cobham, which Eaton bought) in Davenport, IA, have voted down a second contract offer, this time by a whopping 97%. This means their strike, which started a couple weeks ago, will go on. The company is threatening to bring in replacements. Amazing that these companies want an ever-ballooning Pentagon budget to leech off of, and are probably drooling in anticipation of a World War III against Russia, but can’t bear the thought of a more than 3% raise. Oh and speaking of, the Machinists are petitioning Congress to stop the closure of a British-owned military contractor GKN manufacturing plant in St. Louis County, MO, which plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs because it’s not profitable enough.
300-some concrete truck drivers with Teamsters Local 174 remain on strike in the greater Seattle area. At one picket line, the company used air compressors to drown out the sound of the protests. Assholes.
100 WGAE editorial workers for Gizmodo Media Group (Gizmodo, Jezebel, The Root, Lifehacker, Kotaku and Jalopnik) struck for five days and won higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and other demands.
Grocery: 17,000 Texas Kroger workers are back on strike notice with UFCW Local 455 as the company amazingly continues to refuse to sign the tentative agreement that they already agreed to in December and which the union sent to the members for ratification; they literally just won’t sign the actual final contract, making it official. My understanding is this is based on other issues outside the contract (like the union’s insistence that the company pay back dues after unilaterally stopping paycheck deductions for over a year) but it’s also my understanding that that’s a totally illegal thing to use to hold the contract (and attendant raises, etc.) hostage. Meanwhile, thousands of Kroger workers in California with UFCW Locals 8GS, 135, 324, 770, 1167, 1428 and 1442 will be under an expired contract as of Sunday at midnight. I haven’t seen official strike talk, but there’s been plenty of member mobilization, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see an authorization vote scheduled this week if no TA is announced tonight. On the other coast, UFCW Locals 328, 371, 919, 1445, and 1459 representing over 30,000 workers at Stop & Shop in the Northeast, ratified a contract, averting a strike authorization vote. In Seattle, workers at an Amazon Fresh grocery store haven’t officially unionized but are already talking strike; it’s an independent effort, and I don’t know much about it, and there aren’t any hard numbers provided on membership that I’ve seen, but certainly a notable threat.
K-12: High school educators at three schools in Chicago’s western suburbs are on strike as of Friday; the strike is open-ended, with bargaining resuming on Monday. 49 school bus drivers in Jefferson Parish, LA organized a sick-out this week, hoping to win similar gains to their neighbors in St. Tammany Parish, who won $4,100 in extra pay. New Kensington, PA educators are threatening a strike vote, as they reach over six months under an expired contract. And remember, if no deal is reached by Tuesday, 8,000 Twin Cities educators will hit the picket line, with SEIU Local 284 food service workers in the public schools voting to authorize a strike of their own this week.
Higher ed: Undergraduate student workers at Kenyon College with UE went on a one-day strike on Thursday against the elimination of a handful of “farmer” jobs where students live on a farm and are paid to farm? And while they’re properly in “new organizing” I’ll just mention here that undergraduate student workers at Wesleyan University are demanding union recognition with OPEIU Local 153, and filing for an NLRB election if they don’t get it by Friday. At Grinnell College, the existing undergraduate student workers union (which covers only dining workers) is expanding by hundreds to cover all student workers on campus. AFT Local 1940 faculty have hit an impasse in contract negotiations with their employer, Middlesex College in Edison, NJ.
I haven’t given all that much attention to the months-long Major League Baseball-MLBPA lockout, but it’s really intensified in the past week, as Opening Day has officially been postponed, the first time a lockout has affected the regular MLB season.
While Starbucks baristas grab headlines for all their NLRB elections, Detroit baristas at Great Lakes Coffee remain on a recognition strike with UNITE HERE Local 24 that could transform the whole process, as they directly challenge the Joy Silk doctrine before the Board. You’ll recall that the Joy Silk doctrine, which NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has been pretty openly supportive of reinstating, would allow workers to unionize without an NLRB vote if they can demonstrate support and the employer refuses to recognize them for no good reason (except so-called “union avoidance”).
Speaking of recognition strikes, 50 production workers on Netflix baking competition show “Nailed It!” are on a recognition strike with IATSE; it sounds like management may have just stopped the season instead of recognizing the union, though the reports are a little unclear.
911 dispatchers with SEIU Local 668 in Allegheny County, PA have authorized a one-day strike for St. Patrick’s Day, as the county refuses to address staffing issues that lead to long shifts and mandatory overtime. Some AFSCME Local 66 snow plow drivers in Duluth, MN refused to come into work during a snowstorm as they wait for a ratification vote on their new contract; the union disavowed the move. UE Local 150 municipal workers in Charlotte and Greensboro, NC rallied for fair pay. Teamsters Local 839 just won an arbitration about getting site visit access to a jail where they represent the workers in Franklin County, WA, but the local sheriff continues to refuse to let them in.
Transit workers with ATU Local 1593 in Hillsborough County, FL have rejected a “last, best, and final” offer from the HART transit authority, and are launching a campaign – “Where’s the Fairness?” or “WTF?” – to take their fight to the board and the public.
In the latest for legislative staffers organizing, the Political Workers Guild, representing Colorado state legislative staff, won a 25% raise for legislative aides. Meanwhile, Congressional staffers in DC are urging the House to pass a resolution to protect their rights to unionize.
In Boston, multiple unions protested the Marriott in Copley Square’s use of non-union, underpaid labor for a major renovation.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
Joe Biden met with 39 national union leaders in Delaware this weekend, and it sounds like it was absolutely thrilling. Per the White House readout, the administration said “We created lots of jobs and protected Davis-Bacon” and the union leaders said “Thank you.”
Elon Musk got mad Joe Biden didn’t mention Tesla in his State of the Union and seems to have verbally agreed to a neutrality agreement with the UAW, which should be a welcome change from the time Tesla fired a union activist, if Musk actually honors the implicit deal in his trolling tweets.
The Kentucky Teachers Retirement System sold off its investment in Russia’s Sberbank the day before the Russian invasion, losing $3 million on its initial $15 million investment. If the US ever drops its sanctions against Russia, one wonders if the teachers pension system will be out of compliance with the state’s anti-BDS law. Somehow I think not. The ILWU has announced that they won’t handle any incoming or outgoing Russian cargo on the west coast ports.
Connecticut legislators are moving towards passing a bill that would ban captive audience meetings; per this article, Oregon is the only other state with a similar bill in effect (Wisconsin passed and rescinded one in the 00s), which has been challenged by the NLRB (but is not something I’ve looked into).
INTERNAL UNION POLITICS
SEIU Local 1000’s Vice Presidents’ efforts to suspend President Richard Louis Brown were kind of derailed when Brown and some supporters apparently occupied the union office and made off with some documents (and maybe glued the locks? A locksmith was apparently involved). A member recapped it on Reddit, which you can see here (h/t C.M. Lewis). I won’t recap the whole “RLB” saga here, but he won the top spot of the 100,000-member California state workers local last year, immediately announced some drastic (and some very kooky and probably damaging) changes, pissed off a lot of members, staffers, and executive board members, and is now experiencing some harsh internal politics.
NEW ORGANIZING
New election filings at the NLRB: 339 graduate student workers at Fordham University in the Bronx are organizing with CWA, in what would be CWA’s first private university grad worker unit, in addition to represent grad workers across the SUNY system, and their network of United Campus Workers minority unions at public universities across the South and Southwest. 280 workers at a GE jet engine test facility in Peebles, OH are organizing with the UAW. 275 truck drivers for regional grocery chain Weis Markets, based in Milton, PA, are organizing with Teamsters Local 764. 220 RNs at Memorial Health System in Marietta, OH are organizing with Teamsters Local 637, which I wonder what the Ohio Nurses Association thinks about that. 203 staff at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore are unionizing with SEIU Local 500, following in the footsteps of the faculty, who filed about a year ago, and then withdrew, and then I believe re-filed last fall (though I haven’t dug into the details). In a slower week for Starbucks Workers United (but what would be a landmark week for almost any other organizing drive of the past fifty years), 171 workers at seven stores in Eugene, OR (x2), Phoenix and Avondale, AZ, Minneapolis, Olympia, WA, and Summit, NJ have filed for elections; by my count, we’re at 122 stores that have “announced,” 85 of which have filed for elections, and three of which have already won, the latest of which Saurav Sarkar covered for Labor Notes. 105 educators at the progressive private City and County School in NYC are unionizing with UAW Local 2110. 100 tree trimmers and other workers for Asplundh in Golden, CO are organizing with IBEW Local 111, as are four more in Paintsville, KY with IBEW Local 369; it’s no Starbucks, but worth noting that the IBEW has filed for six elections at Asplundh in as many months. 80 workers who make rockets for Aerojet Rocketdyne in Huntsville, AL are organizing with the Machinists. 72 utility workers for Southern Cross in Brooklyn, Queens, and Tarrytown, NY are organizing with Teamsters Local 456. 54 workers at the Meadows Psychiatric Center in Centre Hall, PA are unionizing with SEIU Local 668. 50 linemen at “helicopter power line inspection company” Haverfield Aviation in Gettysburg, PA are unionizing with IBEW Local 126.
Small shops: 30 warehouse workers for weed delivery service Nabis in Commerce, CA are organizing with Teamsters Local 630 after the drivers unionized last year. 28 RNs for Atlantis Healthcare in Mayaguez, PR are unionizing with 1199 SEIU. 22 firefighters and others for Wolf Creek Federal Services, a contractor at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, NM, are joining IAFF Local 10099. 16 retail workers at Half Price Books in Greenwood, IN are organizing with UFCW Local 700; this is the fifth location in the 120-store chain to file for an NLRB election since the fall, when four Minnesota stores successfully unionized. 16 drivers for Premier Recycle Company in San Jose, CA are joining Teamsters Local 853. 16 clericals for Virtual Computing Technology at a Navy base in Coronado, CA are joining Machinists District Lodge 725. Ten weed dispensary workers at Cannabist in Deptford, NJ are unionizing with UFCW Local 360. Ten sanitation workers for Eurocaribe Packing in Vega Baja, PR are organizing with Union de Tronquistas de Puerto Rico (Teamsters Local 901). Ten construction workers for Area Erectors in Rockford, IL are joining Operating Engineers Local 150. Eight workers for Ryder Truck Rental in Toledo, OH are unionizing with Machinists District Lodge 60Seven shuttle drivers (I think?) that are somehow employed by conservation non-profit Pulama Lana’i in Lanai City, HI are joining ILWU Local 142.
NLRB election wins…: 591 tech workers for the New York Times voted 404-88 (that’s 82% yes) to join the New York NewsGuild; if the latest LM-2 filing is accurate, that’s more than a 10% increase in membership for the local in a single vote. 214 nurses at the Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, RI voted 92-47 to join UNAP, who represent 7,000 hospital workers in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont. 108 workers at an REI in NYC voted 88-14 to join RWDSU, in what could be the next Starbucks (progressive retail brand with locations across the country)? 34 therapists for Sparrow Home Care in Lansing, MI voted an impressive 31-0 to join the Michigan Nurses Association, after the near-strike at Sparrow Hospital last year. 25 wine distribution workers for Opici in Albany, NY voted 14-10 to join UFCW Local 2D. 19 transit workers for the Green Mountain Community Network, which runs a transportation system in Bennington, VT, voted 14-5 to join Teamsters Local 597. 17 retail workers at Ammo Brothers gun store in Cerritos, CA voted 10-1 to join UFCW Local 324. 14 what-sound-like clericals for CT Transit in Hartford, CT voted 9-2 to join ATU Local 425. Eight workers at five concrete production plants in Indiana voted 2-0 to join Teamsters Local 142. Eight retail workers at a sex shop, Hustler Hollywood, in Chicago, voted 6-1 to join RWDSU (who represent sex shop workers in NYC, and maybe other places). Four building engineers for BGIS at a data center in Hawthorne, CA voted 3-0 to join Operating Engineers Local 501. Both school bus mechanics for Durham School Services in Bettendorf, IA voted to join Teamsters Local 371.
…and losses: No unions lost a new representation election at the NLRB this week.
Decertifications and raids: 53 workers at Swire, a Coca-Cola products distributor in Eugene, OR, voted 17-20 to drop Teamsters Local 206. 43 workers who do duct cleaning and similar work for Power Vac in Novi, MI voted 3-18 to leave Operating Engineers Local 324.
Dubious unions: 40 more workers for wine distributor Winebow are organizing in Glen Allen, VA, but with “Liquor & Wine Sales Representatives Local 3” which I put in quotes because it’s a Chicago-based union of dubious integrity, run by a politically influential family that in 1999 was found to be replacing its own members’ jobs through a staffing agency, and in at least one NLRB case from 2001 was found to have been brought in specifically to supplant the Teamsters, which could be what’s happening here, considering that just last month UFCW filed for an election at Winebow in upstate New York, and last year the Teamsters did the same in California. Ten transit mechanics for MV Transportation in Denver are unionizing with New York-based IUJAT Local 455, who, for what it’s worth, appear to have represented some transit workers in Denver for at least a decade.
Kidscreen, a kids entertainment industry magazine, has a piece on unionization across animation studios, which has seen an uptick over the past couple years.
After filing for an election at the NLRB, the staff of the Charlotte Observer instead won voluntary recognition with the Washington Baltimore News Guild.