The past three weeks in US unions, July 23-August 13

Family visits, kids get sick, the newsletter gets neglected, then suddenly you’ve got to cover three weeks of activity and it’s just too much! To cope, I’ve left out some lower-frequency activity (like new NLRB filings under 10 workers), and am hoping to get back to regularly scheduled programming ASAP. As always, thanks for your patience, and feel free to heckle me for my shortcomings on your social media platform of choice. In the meantime, come work with me at Labor Notes! 

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

Healthcare: The Minnesota Nurses Association have announced a strike authorization vote to take place among a whopping 15,000 nurses at 15 hospitals across the state. After they vote, they’ll still need to deliver 10-day notices before walking off any job (legally, that is). In California, 2,000 Kaiser therapists with NUHW are on an open-ended strike as of today.

Education: As the school year starts back up, so do education strikes: In Columbus, OH, teachers have delivered a 10-day strike notice that means a strike could start as soon as August 22nd. Despite a contract expiration, those in the know haven’t expected a Los Angeles teachers strike, but the union did just file an unfair labor practice charge against the district for unilaterally adding school days. The Springfield, IL teachers union voted down a contract offer by 80%, and Hillsborough County, FL teachers are at an impasse with the district. In higher ed, hundreds of staff at DC’s American University are counting down the days until they go on strike with SEIU Local 500, and UE-represented grad workers at Indiana University are voting on whether to resume their recognition strike at the end of September.

Starbucks: Three weeks is an eternity in the Starbucks Workers United campaign, so forgive me if this isn’t comprehensive, but by my count (and with help from the ILR Labor Action Tracker), Starbucks workers struck in Santa Cruz, CA, Bellingham, WA, Ann Arbor, MI, Eugene, OR, Pennington, NJ, Overland Park, KS, Jacksonville, FL, Pittsburgh, Boston, Watertown, Brookline, and Worcester, MA, Richmond, VA, Minneapolis, Ithaca, Cheektowaga, and East Amherst, NY, and Anderson, SC, where the company has charged workers with kidnapping for doing a march on the boss and is barring them from entering any Starbucks location anywhere. Insane. Michael Sainato at The Guardian put together a very useful roundup of the scope of the campaign so far. With the employer counteroffensive becoming increasingly aggressive and hostile (as I finish this thing up, Starbucks appears to be going directly after the NLRB, trying to halt all union votes, which is just insane), the temperature is likely to get turned way up on all sides. I know Starbucks likes its Italian lingo, let’s see if they get their autunno caldo.

UPS: And speaking of a hot autumn, UPS Teamsters have launched their contract campaign in earnest, with less than a year until the biggest potential strike of my lifetime, starting with a focus on atrociously hot working conditions. That issue coincides with rallies across the country as the clock starts ticking, with a hard deadline of August 1st, 2023. As new Teamsters President Sean O’Brien put it, “We won’t extend negotiations by a single day. We’ll either have a signed agreement that day or be hitting the pavement.” Outside of UPS, the Teamsters have a much quieter fight brewing at Costco, where 17,000 workers rejected a contract and are moving towards a “national work stoppage” (though they really just mean East and West Coast Costcos, where the Teamsters have members, primarily if not exclusively through mergers/buyouts).

Journalism: 300 Reuters journalists with the NewsGuild struck for 24 hours for the first time in decades, as the company stalls on contract negotiations. Meanwhile, Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper publisher by daily circulation, continues to gut newsrooms, provoking a national “lunch out” at two dozen papers.

Transit: Outside DC, the largest local of the ATU, ATU Local 689, held a nine-day strike against mega-contractor Transdev, which operates the metro area’s paratransit services. In Louisville, KY, workers with ATU Local 1447 have been holding informational pickets and rallies over workplace safety and ongoing contract negotiations. In Portland, OR, ATU Local 757 extended their contract to 2024.

Rail: Biden’s emergency board on the railroad dispute is set to issue its recommendations for a settlement on Tuesday, which will then set off a flurry of debate and speculation over what the companies and workers’ responses will be. There’s a 30-day bar on any lockouts or strikes from that point, so the can will be kicked, but not indefinitely. Jeff Schuhrke at Jacobin took stock of the big picture, and Railway Age has a very useful explainer on where we stand as of today. One interesting development was the Federal Railroad Administration proposing a rule to mandate two-man crew minimums, a major demand of rail workers.

Airline: 5300 workers at Alaska Airlines with the Machinists have ratified a new two-year contract; on the other end of things, Southwest Airlines flight attendants with TWU Local 556 have filed for mediation and plan to picket next month.

Postal: US Postal Service unions like NALC and APWU are calling on management (under the still-not-dumped Postmaster General Louis DeJoy) to ramp up hiring amid chronic understaffing. For context, the USPS employs 60% as many people as it did in 1995.

Other strikes, near-misses, and negotiations of note: For Labor Notes, I wrote about what would’ve been the biggest manufacturing strike since Deere, with 2500 Machinists at Boeing in St. Louis narrowly averting a strike against a disappearing 401k (which follows a disappeared pension). Even bigger would’ve been a 6,000-strong Steelworkers strike at Goodyear/Bridgestone in Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Kansas, which came right down to the wire (actually past the wire, with a rolling contract extension) but ended in a tentative agreement. Word from the CNH strike in Burlington, IA and Racine, WI is that there’s not really any end in sight, over three months into the 1100-worker UAW strike. And speaking of no end in sight, Warrior Met strikers with UMWA in Brookwood, AL were hit with an absolutely ludicrous ruling from the NLRB, claiming that the union is liable for an absolutely obscene $13 million to cover damages from the strike including, unbelievably, lost production; apparently the union agreed to something like this in principle, thinking it would be an order of magnitude less expensive. This would be an unbelievably bad precedent if it’s upheld. 120 workers who make sweeteners and other food products for Ingredion in Cedar Rapids, IA have now been on strike with BCTGM Local 100G for two weeks, with the company and the union far apart on everything from healthcare to vacation time; elsewhere in that union, sugar beet workers for American Crystal Sugar in North Dakota and Minnesota rejected a contract offer, but the union leadership at BCTGM Local 167G say a strike isn’t on the table (why not?). It’s not a union fight per se, but 80 owner-operators for freight company Hudd Transportation in Houston struck for higher rates, which is an interesting and rare development. 300 workers at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco held a one-day strike with SEIU Local 1021. Early childhood educators with Growing Seeds in Portland, OR struck for four days with ILWU Local 5 and won a tentative agreement. Call center workers at federal contractor Maximus held another one-day strike with CWA across four centers in the south, in Bogalusa, LA, Hattiesburg, MS, Chester, VA, and London, KY. In DC, Senate cafeteria workers put up another picket line with UNITE HERE Local 23 and apparently a priest is helping out. Both the Teamsters Local 89 strike at FireKing in New Albany, IN and Teamsters Local 783 strike at Sherwin-Williams in Bowling Green, KY have come to an end. UAW Local 2110 museum workers at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA are planning a one-day strike for this Friday. Members of OPEIU Local 39 at CUNA Mutual insurance company in Madison, WI picketed as negotiations have stalled for over six months; unions at insurance companies are somewhat rare, but have been the site of some big fights in the past. Kroger grocery workers in Columbus, OH with UFCW Local 1059 voted down their contract by a big margin, following in the footsteps of Indianapolis Kroger workers last month (and Michigan Kroger workers last year); UFCW Local 700 members at Kroger in Fort Wayne, IN will vote on their contract this week. Security guards in downtown Cleveland with SEIU Local 1 rallied for higher wages; their average is currently just $13 an hour.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

The PRO Act is back, baby! The Worker Power coalition, born of the IUPAT and CWA push as Biden was coming into office to make the PRO Act core to the Democrats’ legislative agenda, apparently wants to force a vote in September, though they apparently aren’t even pretending they hope to pass it. On the one hand, I’m glad labor’s not giving up. On the other hand, they’ve clearly given up. You know who hasn’t given up? Henry Cuellar, who just barely beat his progressive primary challenger, and is now introducing a bill to end federal protections for millions of workers in the name of Moloch – er, I mean, “the gig economy.” Thank you Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn for standing up for what’s right. 

I guess at least we’re not yet enshrining open shop laws into the constitution; at least not the federal constitution. Tennessee has got that covered locally, and campaigns for and against are heating up. I will make my perennial observation that “right-to-work” laws are better understood as a tailing indicator than a cause of union weakness, but still, better to not have the institutional gutting of your movement enshrined in the state constitution, if you have the choice.

Lest you think anti-union legislative fights are limited to the red states, the United Farm Workers have been marching for weeks for legislation that would ensure farm workers can vote by mail, as opposed to on employer property and subject to employer coercion.

And lest you think unions are always fighting for the most progressive demand, the Maine AFL-CIO has come out against a referendum to establish a consumer-owned public utility, amid fears that workers could lose their right to strike (though as far as I know the proposal addresses this, and the real concern may be around open shop laws in the wake of Janus, which a state law couldn’t legally get around).

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

It’s summer, so it’s union convention season, with the Steelworkers, NALC, RWDSU, and others holding their conventions. I haven’t read detailed reports from those, but there was plenty at stake at the UAW convention. You should read the whole report at Labor Notes, but suffice to say that members challenging the status quo got more of a hearing than they have in many decades, with plenty of challengers being nominated for the first membership-wide elections to take this place this fall, and reform caucus UAWD nominating a slate against the incumbents. 

The ICE union is officially decoupled from AFGE, and the right wing is very concerned about union-busting!!!

The Carpenters have expanded their “Southwest” Regional Council to include notable Southwestern states like Idaho and Wyoming. This move is part of a general trend in the union to create increasingly large intermediate bodies, which is a way to rearrange the internal politics of the union; President Douglas McCarron is the longest-serving incumbent of any major union (he’s been in since 1995; only the Laborers President Terry O’Sullivan, elected in 2000, comes anywhere close, especially after the IAFF’s Schaitberger and Teamsters’s Hoffa both left office over the past year), and has a reputation for consolidating control at the national level of the union.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: The Steelworkers are organizing a group of 725 manufacturing workers for compact construction equipment company Bobcat in Bismarck, ND, in the biggest NLRB filing in the state in decades; the second-largest is the last time the Steelworkers filed at Bobcat in Bismarck, which was in 2017. The union lost that election more than two to one. I’d be curious to know what’s changed (aside from the unit they’re filing for being almost twice the size). A whopping 221 coffee shop workers for local chain Heine Brothers in Louisville, KY are unionizing with 32BJ SEIU. 140 workers for water purifier company Coway in Los Angeles and Orange County are unionizing with the California Retail and Restaurant Workers Union, which started as an independent Koreatown restaurant union but is clearly growing. 130 workers at Communitas, a non-profit for adults with disabilities in Wakefield, MA, are organizing with SEIU Local 509. In addition to the big win at TJ’s in Minneapolis (see below), 116 more Trader Joe’s workers have filed for an election in Boulder, CO with UFCW Local 7; interestingly, while the first two stores filed independently, obviously this store is going with the UFCW, which represents hundreds of thousands of retail grocery workers. It’s unclear what that might mean for the larger national effort to organize Trader Joe’s, which has 530 locations and is a decent contender for the “next Starbucks”; also interesting for UFCW jurisdictional reasons is the filing of 80 grocery workers at a MOM’s Organic Market in Baltimore, who are going not with UFCW but with Teamsters Local 570. The Teamsters represent a lot of grocery workers too, but primarily (exclusively?) warehouse and drivers. 115 transit workers for a subcontractor in Norfolk and Newport News, VA are organizing with ATU Local 1177. 100 more workers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA are unionizing with AFSCME, after the RNs and others won their union earlier this year; 78 nurses at Bell Hospital in Ishpeming, MI are joining the Michigan Nurses Association, and 71 workers at Sharon Hospital in Sharon, CT are unionizing with AFT, while 26 skilled maintenance workers Bangor, ME’s Eastern Maine Medical Center are joining the Machinists. 97 warehouse workers for Ryder in Hazelwood, MO are organizing with Teamsters Local 688. At least 89 (but it may be more) food service workers at local chain operator Via 313 in Austin, TX are forming an independent union, Restaurant Workers United; 16 more at Texas chain Tiff’s Treats in San Antonio are unionizing as well (unclear to me whether independent or with Workers United, as that line keeps getting blurred). 81 workers for Republic wine and liquor distributors in Houston are unionizing with Teamsters Local 988. In the past three weeks, just 77 Starbucks workers at four stores in Philadelphia, Greeley, CO, Bloomfield, MI, and Denison, TX have filed for elections with Workers United; if I had to guess, this dramatic slowdown in filings is greatly influenced by the probably-illegal move by the company to declare August 1st the cutoff for any non-union stores to get a raise and other benefit increases, on the condition that they hadn’t unionized. I would not be shocked to see the pace of filings pick back up once the non-union stores are granted those equal benefits at the end of the month (as I understand the totally arbitrary and punitive arrangement from management to be), as many workers naturally would want to lock in those gains before resuming their boat-rocking. 68 workers for lighting and decor company Schoolhouse Electric in Portland, OR are organizing with IBEW Local 48. 57 stage techs at Jones Hall in San Antonio are unionizing with IATSE. 55 EMTs and dispatchers for United Ambulance Service in Lewiston, ME are joining Teamsters Local 340. 55 nursing home workers at Ethan Crossing in Springfield, OH are unionizing with AFSCME Council 8. 45 zookeepers at the Oakland, CA Zoo are organizing with Teamsters Local 853, so the IBT can keep using the corny line that many unions use about “representing everyone A through Z, accountants to zookeepers” (or similar); 18 more zookeepers at Rolling Hills Zoo in Salinas, KS are joining SEIU Local 513, so they get to use it too. 45 workers at Communication Service for the Deaf in Syracuse, NY are unionizing with CWA (how’s that for jurisdiction?). 45 uh “doughnuteers” at Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, OR have formed Doughnut Workers United. 41 faculty members at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC are unionizing with the “Association of Teachers Training Actors” which I can’t find anything on, so is maybe a new independent union? 36 drivers for beer distributor Bueno Beverage in Visalia, CA are organizing with Teamsters Local 948. 35 workers at luxury hotel The William Vale in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY are joining the Hotel Trades Council. 35 workers at I think a wastewater treatment plant run by contractor Jacobs in Hoboken, NJ are unionizing with IBEW Local 1158. 30 subcontracted (for Chartwells) cafeteria workers for North Providence, RI schools are unionizing with AFSCME Council 94. 26 workers for Southern Company Gas in Atlanta are joining IBEW Local 1997. 25 workers for government contractor Accent Controls in Coronado, CA and 19 flight simulator workers for Sonoran in Enid, OK are joining the Machinists. 20 warehouse workers for Capstone Logistics in Medley, FL are unionizing with Teamsters Local 769. 19 workers for CPC Logistics in Rockford, IL are joining Teamsters Local 325. 19 dispensary workers at Lume Cannabis in Monroe, MI are joining UFCW Local 876, and 11 more at Trulieve in Pittsburgh are joining UFCW Local 1776. 18 workers at Universal Plumbing in Las Vegas are joining UA Local 525. 17 mechanics and others for Mowbray’s Tree Service in San Bernardino, CA are organizing with IBEW Local 47. 17 grocery workers at Northgate Gonzalez Market in San Diego are joining UFCW Local 135. 16 workers at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago are joining three IATSE locals. 15 workers at a Petco in Seattle are unionizing with UFCW Local 3000. 14 iron workers for Raimore Construction in Portland, OR are joining the Iron Workers. 13 workers for P&R Water Taxi in Honolulu are joining the Inlandboatmen’s Union (ILWU). 12 painters for Specialty Finishes in Seattle are organizing with Painters District Council 5, as their Portland counterparts just did successfully this week. 11 massage therapists at Elements Massage in Denver are joining UFCW Local 7. 11 clubhouse attendants at the famous golf club Pebble Beach (that’s in Pebble Beach, CA) are unionizing with UNITE HERE Local 483. 11 mechanics for ITS in Kansas City are joining Teamsters Local 41. Ten cement masons for Mass Excavation in Anchorage, AK are unionizing with OPCMIA Local 528.

NLRB election wins…: While the Starbucks drive has slowed down by its own lights (see the note about the benefits cliff above for a possible reason why), by any other campaign’s metrics they are still voting to unionize at warp speed, with 502 workers at 18 stores voting to unionize with Workers United 14 of those shops, for a combined margin of 183-84. The past three weeks bring us newly unionized Starbucks shops in Montclair, NJ, Portland (x2), Salem, OR, North Bend, WA, Farmingville and Niskayuna, NY, Chicago, Los Angeles (x2), Riverside, and Barstow, CA, and Pittsburgh (x2), with losing union votes at four stores in Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Wichita, and Smyrna, TN. 485 healthcare workers at Howard Brown Health in Chicago joined the Illinois Nurses Association in a landslide vote, 231-7 (97%!). 218 social services workers serving homeless youth in NYC for Covenant House voted 105-3 (that’s another 97% in favor, folks) to join 1199 SEIU in two separate votes. 164 workers at massive trading card warehouse Card Kingdom in Seattle voted 111-16 to join UFCW Local 3000. Having filed almost a year ago, 162 legal services workers at Hudson Legal Group have won their union with UE, 87-1 (99% in favor). 153 workers at two Trader Joe’s stores, in Hadley, MA and Minneapolis voted to unionize with the new, independent Trader Joe’s United, 90-36 across two votes (the Minneapolis one in particular was a blowout, 55-5). 78 workers at social services org Joseph’s House and Shelter in Troy, NY voted 33-10 to join SEIU Local 200. 69 workers who make corrugated cardboard for the Packaging Corporation of America in Bedford Park,  IL eked out a win, 23-22, with GCC-IBT Local 415-S. 66 school bus workers for First Student in Warrensburg, MO voted 24-9 to join Teamsters Local 838. 44 stagehands and others at DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company voted 23-6 to join IATSE Local 22, and 32 more stagehands at Five Flags Center in Dubuque, IA voted 13 to nothing to join IATSE Local 191. 40 weed dispensary workers at Zen Leaf in Chandler, AZ voted 20-2 to join UFCW Local 99; 29 more at Rise dispensary in Joliet, IL went with Teamsters Local 777, 13-6, and 20 more at aptly-named The Dispensary in East Dubuque, IL voted 8-3 to join UFCW Local 881 (as the Teamsters and UFCW beef over weed workers in Illinois apparently continues). 16 more tree trimmers voted to join the IBEW, this time at Wright Tree Service in Lexington, KY joining IBEW Local 369, 7-2. 16 workers at the McLean Hospital campus in Princeton, MA have voted 11-1 to join AFSCME Council 93. 15 construction workers for Pevik Construction Group in Madera, CA voted 8-5 to join the Iron Workers. 14 utility workers for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Ramon, CA voted 7-2 to join IBEW Local 1245. 12 workers at Portland, OR paint contractor Specialty Finishes voted 8-1 to join Painters District Council 5. Ten workers at Swift Beef in Greeley, CO voted to join the existing UFCW Local 7 unit there, 9-0. Eight clerks at a Safeway in Tracy, CA voted 5-2 to join Teamsters Local 439. All six maintenance workers at New Vista nursing home in Newark, NJ voted to join 1199 SEIU. Five RNs who somehow weren’t already in CRONA at Stanford Health in Palo Alto, CA voted 3-0 to join the union, and four at the Sidney Health Center in Sidney, MT voted 3-0 to join the Montana Nurses Association (AFT). Three workers at Mendel Steel and Ornamental Iron in Bethel Park, PA voted 2-0 to join the Iron Workers. 

…and losses: 128 dealers and casino workers at Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs, IA voted 35-52 against joining Teamsters Local 554. 63 workers at Engert Plumbing and Heating in Knoxville voted 16-33 against joining UA Local 102. 46 workers at rehab center Transitional Health Services in Freemont, MI voted 3-16 against joining SEIU Healthcare Michigan. Seven months after filing, 44 dockworkers in Toledo, OH (yes, look at a map, Toledo has a waterfront) voted 8-20 against joining the ILA, the non-west-coast longshore union. 41 workers who make, I think, paint pigments for Sun Chemicals in Maumee, OH voted 15-18 on joining the Steelworkers. 28 front of house workers at 856 Brewing in Bend, OR voted against forming an independent union, 2-10. 22 workers who make wires lost their union bid with IBEW Local 666, 10-11, at REA Magnet Wire Company in Ashland, VA. 22 EMTs at the Warrington, PA Community Ambulance Corp deadlocked 4-4 on joining the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics (NAGE-SEIU Local 5000). 14 sprinklerfitters voted against joining UA Local 704 at Affordable Fire Protection in Troy, MI. 13 dental assistants in Louisville voted 5-6 against unionizing with IBEW Local 369. Teamsters Local 431 lost two elections, with at least 13 workers for petroleum recycler World Oil in Parlier, CA voted 2-11 against joining, and 12 workers who make wood products for Stella-Jones in Fresno, CA voting 2-10.

Decertifications and raids: After many decades of union representation, the 487 nurses at the Mayo Clinic in Mankato, MN voted 181-213 to decertify the Minnesota Nurses Association. 277 support staff and hospital techs at VHS Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit voted 127-32 to stick with SEIU Healthcare Michigan. 16 workers at the Dill Pickle Food Co-op in Chicago are voting on whether to join the RWDSU, though they’re currently represented by the IWW and struck last year (I’m only not saying “raid” because I don’t know for sure). One sole voter decertified Teamsters Local 727 at a funeral home in Hinsdale, IL. 

Security guards: 113 guards at privately-operated Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump, NV voted 35-20 to join SPFPA. 62 security guards at the IRS in Ogden, UT (that seems like a lot of security guards and why are they in Ogden, Utah?) voted 37-2 to join UGSO Local 327. 

Outside the NLRB: Non-profit staffers at United We Dream are unionizing with CWA. Massachusetts state house legislative employees are being stonewalled by the bluest legislature in the country, and California legislation is moving to legalize legislative staff unionization in that state.

Finally, Bloomberg Law  says it’s taking an increasingly long time for unionized workers to win a first contract, signs that the one-side class war has certainly not abated. Those 465 days for a first contract are 465 days of deferred raises and benefits, and corporate America continues to laugh all the way to the bank.