The week in US unions, Feb 18-25

NEW ORGANIZING

NLRB new organizing filings this week: 

Media: 140 editorial employees at 11 newspapers with the Southern California News Group are joining TNG-CWA’s Media Guild of the West. 100 editorial staffers at eight Gannett-owned papers in North Jersey, as well as the 78 editorial staffers of the New York Daily News, are joining the NewsGuild of New York. 34 TV news journalists at WITI FOX 6 in Brown Deer, WI are joining NABET-CWA.

Teamsters: 33 drivers at Shred-It in Lawrence, NJ are joining Teamsters Local 469. Nine warehouse workers at Three Corners, LLC, which is somehow affiliated with a few casinos in Las Vegas, are organizing with Teamsters Local 986. Eight warehouse workers and truck drivers at Mazel & Company in Chicago, which makes nails and fasteners, are joining Teamsters Local 777. Four concrete drivers at Smyrna Ready-Mix in Winchester, KY are organizing with Teamsters Local 89. One West County Resource Recovery scalehouse operator in Richmond, CA is voting on whether or not to join Teamsters Local 315.

We love US labor law, don’t we folks?: 89 comedy educators at Second City in Los Angeles are joining CWA, as part of the previously-mentioned Association of International Comedy Educators, which will be a CWA affiliate in Toronto and Los Angeles, and an AFT affiliate in Chicago. As a perfect display of how broken US labor law is, the Canadian workers are already voting electronically, while US workers at the same employer doing the same job will likely wait at least six weeks, with plenty of opportunity for employer malfeasance, before having their say.

Others: 87 skilled auto techs at Nissan in Smyrna, TN are organizing with Machinists Lodge 1888. 65 drivers with Imperfect Foods in San Francisco, Concord, Merced, and Sacramento are joining UFCW Local 5. 36 weedworkers at Tweedleaf in Denver, CO, are organizing with BCTGM Local 26. 28 techs at Ira Toyota car dealership in Manchester, NH are joining Machinists Lodge 15. 12 housekeepers at Holiday Inn Express Stonybrook on Long Island are joining RWDSU Local 1102. 11 radiological techs at Aleut Lab Services in Oak Ridge, TN are joining International Chemical Workers Union Council Local 715C, which is affiliated with UFCW. Ten train dispatchers in Irving, TX are joining either the American Train Dispatchers Association or SMART, but they may be working together on this one. Nine sprinkler fitters at Capital Automatic Sprinkler in California, MO are organizing with Sprinkler Fitters Local 669, UA. Cement Masons Local 72 and the Carpenters are fighting over two cement masons in Richland, WA. One Kitchen Manager at a homeless shelter in New Britain, CT is voting whether to join UFCW.

NLRB election wins...: 525 nurses at Milford Regional Medical Center in Milford, MA voted to join the Massachusetts Nurses Association, per the union, though the NLRB hasn’t said anything on the case, which would be the biggest NLRB new organizing win so far this year. 93 security guards at the Braidwood Nuclear Site in Illinois voted 31-23 to join the National Union of Nuclear Security Officers (LEOS-PBA). 80 nurses at John Muir Behavioral Health in Concord, CA voted 28-15-2 to join the California Nurses Association over SEIU UHW. 48 truck drivers at Ferguson plumbing supply in Pomona, CA voted 24-14 to join Teamsters Local 166. In a rerun election, 40 transit workers at MV Transportation in Selma, CA voted 16-5 to join ATU Local 1027 [correction: I had accidentally listed this as a loss, apologies!]. 24 deli, cheese, and Starbucks workers at a King Soopers supermarket in Loveland, CO voted 11-7 to join UFCW Local 7. 23 non-profit workers at ScholarMatch in San Francisco, which helps first-generation students go to college, voted 15-2 to join Teamsters Local 856. 22 nurse anesthetists in Wilkes Barre, PA voted 11-0 to join PASNAP after employer reorganization busted their union. 14 chaplains at Franciscan Hospice Care in University Place, WA have voted 10-4 to join Machinists Lodge 751. 14 security guards at the Department of Energy in Germantown, MD are joining Protective Service Officers United (over the National League of Justice and Security Professionals) after a 3-0 vote. 11 maintenance techs on the Sprinter Light Rail line in San Diego, CA voted 7-0 to join Teamsters Local 542. Nine air compressor service techs at Ingersoll Rand in Goshen, IN voted 6-3 to join Operating Engineers Local 150. Four air traffic controllers at the Fullerton Airport in California voted unanimously to join NATCA. 

...and losses: Teamsters Local 896 lost a 112 person unit at Shasta Beverages in LA County after a 14-33 vote. 18 ready-mix concrete drivers in Bradenton, FL voted 8-10 not to join Teamsters Local 173.

In a rerun election from over a year ago, 18 demolition workers in McHenry, IL appear to be joining the probably-company-union National Allied Workers Union, Local 831, who got 9 votes, over Operating Engineers Local 150, who got 2 votes. But then again, the reason it’s taken over a year to get to this point is because this is a rerun of a first election, which “was set aside because the Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board found that certain conduct by the National Allied Workers Union, Local 831, interfered with the employees’ exercise of a free and reasoned choice.” Whatever the backstory, it means these 18 workers still don’t have a union and the rights and benefits that come with it, and is a shame.

Voluntary recognition: The Campaign Workers Guild has won voluntary recognition for the staff of the Office of the NYC Public Advocate. Nearly 400 aides at the New York City Council have secured commitments from a majority of the members of the chamber to voluntarily recognize their union. The staff of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, made famous during last summer’s protests, have had their union voluntary recognized. Political and white collar unions tend to be more open to voluntary recognition, whether you want to chalk that up to their values or the political pressures they face, but it’s by no means the rule, and when they’re nasty, they’re really nasty, like the Queens Defenders management who are bordering conspiracy theorists about the union efforts in that workplace.

Librarians, archivists, and curators across University of Michigan’s 3 campuses are forming a union, though I can’t find any reporting on it, just activists tweeting.

Workers at Portland fancy donut place Voodoo Doughnuts are pushing for voluntary recognition with the IWW.

New Mexico State University grad student workers are organizing with the UE, as they announced earlier this month. University of New Mexico grad students announced their union in December, after public sector labor law reform legislation in that state allowed, among other things, card check for public employees, as C.M. Lewis of Strikewave covered for In These Times.

Alabama Amazon drive updates: Joe Biden still won’t publicly support the drive, and unions are calling him out on it. Organizers with the Southern Workers Assembly and other organizations held events across the country to show solidarity with the Amazon workers, whose vote continues through March 29th. Meanwhile, Amazon is bending and breaking the law quite openly, with mailers that make illegal statements about the union, and a brand-new USPS mailbox appearing on site despite the NLRB ruling against in-person voting. The world is watching.

STRIKES & BARGAINING

29 public works employees in South Whitehall, PA with Teamsters Local 773 have been on strike since February 4th, and have faced partial injunctions to return to work during snowstorms.

Over 800 warehouse workers and drivers with Teamsters Local 710 in Chicago voted to authorize a strike against Chicagoland grocer Jewel Osco upon their contract expiration on March 6th.

The 300 educators of the Gateway School District outside of Pittsburgh have authorized a strike. This follows a recent week-long strike by nearby educators in Keystone Oaks, and a near-strike in Mars, PA.

About 150 Massachusetts teachers with AFT Local 1707 authorized a strike at Greater Lawrence Technical School over reopening plans.

150 healthcare workers at St. Charles Health System in Bend, Oregon, have delivered a ten-day strike notice, with the OFNHP, a large AFT Healthcare affiliate.

Nurses with the Massachusetts Nurses Association at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA have officially delivered a 10-day strike notice. The strike is set to begin on March 8th.

800 nurses with the California Nurses Association in San Joaquin County, CA, have called off a three-day strike after a $1.2 million dollar “good faith” payment. They’ve been negotiating a new contract since November of 2018.

Janitors in Miami with 32BJ are claiming illegal employer retaliation for a two-day strike last week.

The Toledo NewsGuild has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the management of the Toledo Blade for failure to safely bargain, including pointing a huge fan that blew air from management’s side of the room to the union’s side. Nasty.

Adjunct professors at Elon University in North Carolina have been organizing with SEIU since 2018, and just received what is at least their second ruling from the NLRB affirming their right to bargain. It should not take 3 years for workers -- especially a very standard class of workers, private sector adjunct professors -- to gain bargaining rights. Paradoxically, this ruling, though good for Elon adjuncts, is bad for many other private sector adjuncts, as Inside Higher Ed explains.

An arbitrator has ruled against the administration of Ithaca College, who accused contingent faculty union members with SEIU 200 of calling for a strike, when they were in fact suggesting work-sharing among union members during the pandemic.

K-12: There has generally been less concrete strike talk as vaccinations become more of a reality for more teachers across the country, but union response continues to take totally different shape across geographies. Here are some (but certainly not all) examples from Louisville, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Montgomery County, MD, Howard County, MD, Brainerd, MN, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Los Lunas, NM, Alameda, CA, Berkeley, CA, Washington State, Maplewood, NJ, Anaconda, MT, Orange County, CA.

LEGISLATION & POLITICS

Joe Biden has reversed a Trump executive order that jeopardized collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense employees; this is a big deal for AFGE and others who represent federal workers.

It’s not union news per se, but a woman has begun a hunger strike at the Kansas Department of Labor in protest of thousands of dollars of unemployment insurance she is owed.

The union of graduate students at the University of Hawai’i is suing the state for collective bargaining rights. Hawai’i labor law doesn’t automatically grant public sector workers bargaining rights, but designates specific units that are allowed to collectively bargaining, which is extremely stupid and undemocratic, as I will note every time I talk about the US’s widespread practice of legally restricting union rights.

Black Lives Matter Los Angeles is targeting police unions, calling for their expulsion from the Central Labor Council and ultimate disbandment. 

The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill declaring public employees strikes unlawful, on the third anniversary of the 2018 WV teachers strike. My understanding from covering the strikes at the time is that they existed in a legal gray zone, so now the state is formalizing punishments, all of which is 90% just messaging, considering that the reason the strikes were successful was not because they were legal, but because they were so widespread as to be unbreakable. As organizers say, there’s no such thing as an illegal strike, only an unsuccessful one. Which is not to miss the fact that outlawing strikes is a feature of autocracies, not democracies.

UNION LEADERSHIP

Labor Notes republished Steve Early’s very good breakdown of the IAFF leadership election that’s still ongoing. My understanding is mail-in voting by delegates is going to wrap up soon, and we should know the results in the next week or two.

ESPN has a very deep dive on NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith. The NFL is obviously a unique workforce, but the story has so many of the tensions (to put it generously) of contract negotiations and high profile union leadership on full display.