The week in US unions, October 15th-22nd, 2022
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STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS
The largest strike in country, the 10-week, 2,000-worker mental healthcare strike by NUHW members at Kaiser in Northern California, has come to an end with a contract, finally, apparently mediated by the mayor of Sacramento.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike has spread to the NewsGuild, who went out on a ULP strike on Monday, and launched their own strike paper (a NewsGuild tradition); the dispute started with CWA and Teamsters workers who do the physical printing and related work, but now that it’s spread to the journalists, management likely has a much bigger headache to deal with.
700 workers who make electrical components for military contract Amphenol in Sidney, NY struck for four days with Machinists Local 1529, winning a contract that apparently eliminates a two-tier pay system established in 2013.
My Labor Notes coworker Luis Feliz Leon has a great deep dive into last week’s walkouts at Amazon, and gets into the nitty gritty of how workers are using leverage across the company’s different distribution facilities and chokepoints to strategize. On a similar theme, Peter Olney and Rand Wilson sketch out what a restive peak season might look like this winter as workers gear up for more action at both Amazon and UPS.
I’ve said it before, but Starbucks increasingly appears to be going for a slow-motion kill shot against Workers United; this Twitter thread from the union is worth a read, but the gist is that the company made a big show of offering bargaining dates, but in response to over 150 stores trying to take them up on it, the company has increased its store closures and firings, and has only met with a whopping three stores. Workers continue to strike, like in Ladue, MO and Portland, OR, to sue the company, like in Anderson, SC, and push the state to take action like in New York City, plus continuing to organize new stores (see filings below).
In Alabama, the WestRock paper mill lockout of 500 Steelworkers continues; the Working People podcast has the story. (And speaking of paper mill workers, Machinists at Weyerhaeuser in Washington are gearing up for another ratification vote that could end their weeks-long strike, after rejecting the most recent offer). Further south, several hundred longshoremen with ILA Local 1410 in Mobile, AL were set to strike, but had a last minute deal through federal mediation that has, for now, “postponed” the action, per Michael Sainato.
Around 400 municipal workers in Santa Cruz, CA struck for four days with SEIU Local 521 before reaching a tentative agreement; it sounds like the strike got pretty heated, with trash collection halted and one striker being arrested.
Transit workers with ATU Local 1447 in Louisville have authorized a potentially “illegal” strike (public employees aren’t authorized to strike in Kentucky, but, as my friend Chris Brooks would say, they’re not God’s laws) by 95% as they push for a 3-year contract with 21.5% raises.
And speaking of “illegal” strikes, educators in two school districts in Massachusetts struck and won this week, despite the law. In Malden, MA, workers struck for a day and won a new contract, while in Haverhill, MA it took a little longer, with a judge granting an injunction against the strike, but educators still holding out, coming out with a deal late Thursday. Elsewhere in K-12 unionism, contract negotiations in Elizabeth, NJ are at an impasse.
The Haverhill injunction took the form of fines on the union; further south in Plympton, MA, striking members of Teamsters Local 653 faced sharper state aggression in the form of arrests as they blocked trucks at a Sysco facility. Sounds like it was worth it, as the union overwhelmingly ratified a new agreement with $11 an hour raises over five years (which is something like a 39% increase to the base rate). And speaking of Teamster ratifications, 18,000 workers at Costco ratified the first “national” master agreement at the company; I only put national in quotes because that makes it sound like it covers the whole chain, when only something like 10% of Costcos are organized.
Dining workers at Pomona (CA) College have authorized a strike with UNITE HERE Local 11 for higher wages; UNITE HERE Local 23 has finally ratified a deal with the contractors at the US Senate cafeteria to bring workers up to a $20 minimum wage.
Staten Island Ferry workers with MEBA are still without a contract, their last one having expired in 2010, and are hoping a judge’s decision will bring wages up to this decade.
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
The Prince William County, VA school district has become the latest Virginia jurisdiction to pass a collective bargaining ordinance, but union activists are decrying it as weak, both in terms of holding formal elections and in the actual “bargaining” it allows for.
From the New Yorker, a dive into the Wisconsin Senate race, and organized labor’s role in it. Mandela Barnes is “trying to run a campaign that draws on the spirit of labor,” yet another progressive valiantly huffing and puffing on the embers of organized labor, especially in states like Wisconsin, which has lost over a third of its union members over the past ten years, and has fallen from 17th to 27th in union density by state.
INTERNAL UNION POLITICS
UAW members are officially voting in the first-ever direct elections for national officers in the union. It’s very unclear how many members will vote; in last year’s referendum that led to this election, turnout was around 14%. And because the Constitutional Convention rejected ranked-choice voting, there are likely to be run-off elections in 2023 for at least the top spot, where five candidates (the incumbent Ray Curry; the Members United reform challenger Shawn Fain; the very-active-on-Facebook Brian Keller; the “World Socialist Web Site” candidate Will Lehman; and UAW Local 163 leader Mark “Gibby” Gibson) are challenging for one spot; and probably for at least one Vice President, where eight candidates are vying for three spots. You can read up on all the candidates here. In Region 9A, where UAW Members United candidate Brandon Mancilla is going up against incumbent Administration Caucus candidate Beverly Brakeman, some members aren’t receiving ballots.
The 65,000 members of ALPA have a new president after a contested election; some context here.
And as part of the extended fallout from the ongoing contentious rail negotiations, Reece Murtagh, a local chairman out of Machinists Lodge 696 out of Richmond, VA is planning to challenge incumbent Kyle Loos for the presidency of Machinists District Lodge 19, the 6,000-member district of rail machinists, around 4,000 of whom work on the freight railroads covered under the ongoing negotiations.
The 42,000-member NYSNA has voted to affiliate with NNU, which I believe makes NNU the country’s second-largest healthcare workers union behind SEIU (and now fully ahead of AFT).
Members of NABET-CWA Local 41 in Chicago are suing the national union over a trusteeship imposed in September against local officers who were elected in March.
Hamilton Nolan has another great column over at In These Times, this time on the UFCW international’s mealy-mouthed response to the proposed Kroger-Albertsons megamerger, and that union’s general weakness. Sometimes it’s worth saying plainly what’s plain.
NEW ORGANIZING
New election filings at the NLRB:
Big & medium-sized shops: A whopping 3,000 grad student workers at Boston University have filed to join SEIU Local 509, which isn’t news (they announced their intentions last week and have been organizing publicly for a couple months) but is still a big fat petition. 135 wind turbine technicians for GE Renewable Energy in Schenectady, NY are organizing with the Utility Workers, an encouraging sign for those of us concerned that the green transition is going to be heavily non-union. 57 RAs at Barnard College in NYC are unionizing with OPEIU Local 153, another instance of undergraduate student workers organizing. 53 more workers at two shops in Bellingham and Puyallup, WA have filed for elections with Starbucks Workers United.
Teamsters: 161 school bus drivers for Student Transportation of America in Florissant, MO are joining the Teamsters, and six more for First Student in Delta Junction, AK are joining Teamsters Local 959. 120 workers at Packaging Corporation of America in Kingsburg, CA are organizing with Teamsters Local 431. 74 paratransit drivers for Owl Transportation in Maywood, IL are organizing with Teamsters Local 727. 63 workers at whiskey maker Woodford Reserve in Versailles, KY are unionizing with Teamsters Local 651. 34 concrete truck drivers for United Materials in Lancaster, Orchard Park, and Springville, NY are unionizing with Teamsters Local 449. 41 sanitation workers for GreenWaste in Santa Clara, CA are joining Teamsters Local 350, and 30 more at Waste Management in Bremerton, WA are organizing with Teamsters Local 589. 11 more drivers at Sysco in Grand Rapids, MI are joining Teamsters Local 406; the union organized the vast majority of this facility last year, six years after first filing in 2015. Four AmeriGas Propane drivers in Cortland, OH are joining Teamsters Local 377.
Small shops: 27 skilled maintenance workers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH and 10 helicopter mechanics (I think) at Fort Hood, TX are joining the Machinists. 23 workers at Serenity detox facility in Union, NJ are joining (or forming) the Alliance Frontline Workers Union, which I’ve never heard of and I can’t find anything on. 21 dancers at the St. Louis Ballet are unionizing with AGMA. 17 LPNs at West River Rehab in Milford, CT are joining SEIU 1199 New England. 16 food service workers at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia are unionizing with UFCW Local 1776, and 15 more baristas at two more locations of Ultimo Coffee also in Philadelphia are joining Workers United. 15 sales and service reps for industrial dishwasher company Auto Chlor in Kent, WA are unionizing with IBEW Local 46. 14 “digital optimization team” workers for news giant Gannett in Louisville, KY are joining the Indianapolis NewsGuild. 13 therapists at a CommonSpirit facility in Sacramento are joining SEIU UHW. 10 dispensary workers at Trulieve in Framingham, MA are unionizing with UFCW Local 1445. Five workers at the Valley View Medical Clinic in Pleasant Hill, IA are joining UFCW Local 431. Five air traffic controllers at the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in Belgrade, MT are joining NATCA.
NLRB election wins…: 119 workers at a second New Seasons grocery store in Portland, OR have joined the independent New Seasons Labor Union in a 62-14 vote. Teamsters Local 104 eked out a narrow victory among 113 sanitation workers at Republic Services in Phoenix, 47-44. In Charlotte, NC, 61 drivers for US Foods voted 28-24 to join the Teamsters. 61 nursing home workers at Shenandoah (PA) Senior Living voted 39-17 to join SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, and 29 more nursing home workers at Arc of Southington in Plantsville, CT voted 15 to zip to join SEIU 1199 New England. 39 workers at two more shops, in Easton, PA and Denison, TX, voted to join Starbucks Workers United, 24-7 all told. 17 workers at a CVS in Calexico, CA voted 8-3 to join UFCW Local 1167, and both pharmacists at the CVS in Santa Ana, CA voted to join UFCW Local 324. 17 workers for Maytag Aircraft in Fort Worth, TX voted 10-0 to join the Machinists; five more for CAE on the Air Force base in Little Rock, AR voted unanimously to do the same. 15 ticket agents at a bus station in Delaware Water Gap, PA voted 7-6 to join ATU Local 1119. 11 social workers at Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, CA voted 10-zero to join SEIU UHW. Ten staffers at literary non-profit Hugo House in Seattle voted 8-1 to join Machinists District Lodge 751. Eight maintenance engineers at a Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA voted 3-2 to join Operating Engineers Local 39.
…and losses: The Amazon Labor Union lost handily in its third election, at a fulfillment center in Castleton, NY, with 949 workers voting 206-406 against unionizing; the union came out with a statement calling it a “sham election” due to rampant employer interference, and says they’ll be asking the NLRB for a bargaining order rather than a re-run. Whatever you think of the results, at some point the unions will need to call the question on rampant union-busting; if we’re not going to pass the PRO Act, working the NLRB is one of the only other regulatory pathways available. 76 nurses at the Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Ontario, OR voted 16-44 against joining the Oregon Nurses Association. 53 workers at three shops voted against joining Starbucks Workers United, for a combined vote of 15-22 in Seattle (this was a rerun the union had already lost in the first round), Breckenridge, CO, and Abington, PA. 38 sanitation workers for Republic Services in Imperial, CA voted against joining Teamsters Local 542, 11-15. 15 dispensary workers at Strawberry Fields in Pueblo, CO voted 7-8 against unionizing with UFCW Local 7. 14 workers at Chicago’s Eurostars Magnificent Mile Hotel deadlocked 6-6 on joining UNITE HERE Local 1. Ten workers for Jet Pulverizer, who I think make machines that pulverize powders and similar, in Moorestown, NJ voted 3-6 not to join UFCW Local 360. Nine workers at Ozinga Ready Mix Concrete in Mokena, IL voted 1-7 against joining Operating Engineers Local 150. All five technicians at an Acura dealership in Escondido, CA voted against joining Machinists Local 1484.
Decertifications and raids: Another big decertification went through at the Mayo Clinic, this time among a unit of 106 support staffers and techs who voted 12-64 to drop Steelworkers Local 11-00578 in Austin, MN; nearly 500 nurses at Mayo Clinic in Mankato and a couple dozen more Mayo Clinic workers in St. James lost their unions over the summer. 76 workers at an industrial healthcare laundry facility, Hospital Central Services in Camden, NJ, left Workers United in an 11-46 vote. In a filing that should set off huge blaring sirens for everyone in the labor movement, 30 workers at a Starbucks in Nichols Hills, OK have apparently filed to decertify Starbucks Workers United, a store which was only officially organized in May; I’m not a labor lawyer, but I thought de-certs weren’t valid within the first year, and plus the amount of open ULPs at this store and nationally mean this petition will almost certainly be thrown out but it’s a sign of what’s to come at stores across the country as the employer continues its scorched earth campaign. 27 concrete workers at Regional Ready Mix in Rochelle, IL voted 7-1 to stick with Operating Engineers Local 150, and 24 Operating Enginers Local 399 members at Northwest Community Healthcare in Arlington Heights, IL voted 12-8 to do the same. Four subcontracted chemical workers at a USALCO plant decertified Steelworkers District 13, 1-3.
80 tech workers for ActBlue have won union recognition with CWA Local 1400 (CODE-CWA) after a card check process.
Workers who produce TV commercials have won a neutrality agreement through IATSE with the employers’ association; they’ll still have to win a union, but agreeing on ground rules can be an important part of that process.
Finally, for More Perfect Union, I wrote about a group of workers at a Chipotle in Lawrence, KS, who are organizing a union, with help from EWOC; management (likely illegally) threw out their union petition, so they’re drawing up another and filing an unfair labor practice for good measure.