The week in US unions, November 27th-December 4th (or so)

A mid-week edition due to other work (and a big week in labor (see items on the UAW and the railroads below)) means there’s a little bit of this week in here, but I’ve found the newsletter readership to be very forgiving. Thanks as always for reading, for chipping in a few bucks to those of you who do, and more than anything for sharing with other folks who want to know more about what’s happening in the US labor movement.

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

The UAW megastrike at the University of California rages on, and though the postdocs and researchers (two of the three groups on strike) have tentative agreements, they’re staying out for now; as are several hundred faculty members who’ve chosen to honor the line. Meanwhile, 17 strikers were arrested in a sit-in as the union escalates tactics. On the other coast, 1800 New School adjunct faculty with UAW Local 7902 remain on strike, with federal mediators stepping in after Philip Glass couldn’t get the job done. The University of Michigan is also seeking mediation, since they refuse to engage in open bargaining with the 2300 grad workers of GEO, AFT Local 3550. Meanwhile, Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, FL isn’t bothering with any of those procedural moves, and is instead moving to simply un-recognize its faculty’s AAUP union (the linked piece from Andrew Pantazi is really worth a read, with several jaw-dropping details such as the longshoreman union leader who serves on the school’s board saying he supports workers having union rights only if their employers agree). At Rutgers, faculty and grad workers with AAUP-AFT rallied for a fair contract, as theirs is six months expired. And in blue collar higher ed, custodians with Teamsters Local 251 at Providence’s Rhode Island School of Design have authorized a strike by 95%.

Journalists and newspaper production workers in Pittsburgh remain on an open-ended strike, and Fort Worth, TX journalists started an Unfair Labor Practice strike of their own this week. Meanwhile, New York Times NewsGuild members plan to strike for 24 hours on Thursday if they don’t have a deal. Outside the Guild, IBEW Local 4 broadcast engineers at KSDK in St. Louis are taking a strike authorization vote.

The Minnesota Nurses Association served another ten-day strike notice covering some 15,000 nurses in the Twin Cities and Duluth, and pretty quickly won new tentative agreements, which still have to be ratified but the strikes have been called off in the meantime. Nurses at Lake View Hospital in Two Harbors, MN are the last remaining group not to have a deal; presumably they’ll still strike starting Sunday, though I haven’t found explicit confirmation of that. In Tarzana, CA, 700 nurses with SEIU Local 121RN have authorized a strike at the Tarzana Medical Center, and in Kalamazoo, MI, nurses at the Ascension Borgess Hospital are currently taking a strike vote. Meanwhile, at King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, KY, management says they are nullifying the existing SEIU 1199 WV/KY/OH contract covering 500 workers as part of the University of Kentucky takeover of the hospital. Howard Brown Health in Chicago, whose staff recently unionized with the Illinois Nurses Association, is planning to lay off 100 workers – 15% of its staff – and is being met with protests.

800 dockworkers at the Port of Mobile, AL apparently remain on strike with ILA Local 1410, though I have seen very little coverage of it outside of Michael Sainato’s great work tracking updates.

Several dozen janitors with SEIU Local 87 at Twitter HQ in San Francisco struck this week, and in response, the company abruptly changed contracts (the vast majority of building services workers are contracted through third parties, not directly hired by the companies they service), probably in violation of local law.

1100 paper mill workers with Steelworkers Local 507 in Canton, NC have voted down their second contract offer in a row at Evergreen Packaging, raising the possibility of a strike. As an aside, between strikes in Washington, Alabama, and now potentially in North Carolina, I’d love an explainer on what’s going on with the paper mills these days, and why they keep provoking this level of worker activity.

The NLRB Union is raising the alarm not just about their existential funding issues but also management efforts to end telework, as if furloughs and constant underfunding weren’t enough to make staff want to quit. The telework fight at the EEOC, which led to FLRA charges, has apparently been resolved, per AFGE Council 216. State workers with CWA in New Mexico are similarly speaking out on telework policy changes.

In news from several blue collar rust belt fights, nearly 200 Teamsters Local 135 members are now locked out at chemical producer MonoSol in Laporte, IN after rejecting a contract that wouldn’t have addressed rampant forced overtime at the plant; you can donate to their solidarity fund here. In Bloomsburg, PA, around 270 workers who make auto insulation for Autoneum are on strike with Workers United Local 1700 (they’re not all baristas!). Members of Machinists Local 1802 who make dispensers for industrial adhesives at Nordson in Amherst, OH are back to work after ratifying a contract after two weeks on strike.

After authorizing a strike, Delta ALPA pilots have a contract offer from the company that includes 34 percent raises; members will have to vote on the deal, but the airlines seem to think it could move things at the other tables where things have stalled, including American (where the bargaining committee rejected a deal), United (where members rejected a deal), and Southwest (where TWU Local 550 dispatchers just held a rally and SWAPA pilots protested on Wall Street). At United, five unions (ALPA, AFA-CWA, IAM, Teamsters, and PAFCA) have formed a bargaining coalition, which is always promising but in practice can mean many different things.

Speaking of bargaining coalitions, workers at Disney in Kissimmee, FL rallied as their expired contract hit the two-month mark; the coalition of six unions involved (UNITE HERE Local 362, UNITE HERE Local 737, Teamsters Local 385, TCU-IAM District 1908, UFCW Local 1625, and IATSE Local 631) represents around 42,000 workers.

Amazon workers walked out in Joliet, IL with Teamsters cheering them on. Meanwhile in Staten Island, the NLRB used its most reliable enforcement tool to force management to read a public notice about how naughty they’ve been in flagrantly violating the law. The NLRB has also once again found Starbucks to be breaking the law, and must sit down to bargain with Starbucks Workers United (at one of the 300 or so organized stores).

Two transit strikes didn’t happen this week, with ATU Local 998 in Milwaukee coming to an agreement, and ATU Local 1447 in Louisville doing the same, after each authorized strikes. One transit local, ATU Local 1493 in Roanoke, VA, held info pickets for a new contract from First Transit, which operates the area’s Valley Metro.

A tentative agreement means a Covina, CA K-12 strike was narrowly averted. United Teachers of Richmond (CA) has hit an impasse in bargaining with the West Contra Costa County school district; the union is engaging in recurring “work to rule” days, and is talking about (avoiding) a strike. Educators in Buffalo, NY are also at an impasse in bargaining, as are newly-unionize teachers at San Diego charter school High Tech High. 2800 educators in Akron, OH are bringing in federal mediators to try to come to a deal with the district; they’ve been without since June, though the union has not yet served its ten-day strike notice. Teachers in St. John’s County, FL have rejected a contract offer with a piddling $1200 raise. Educators in Fairbanks, AK are also going into mediation as their impasse extends. Teachers in Joliet, IL have a tentative agreement, as do those in Keene, NH. Teachers in Scranton, PA ratified an early bird contract that will bring up starting salaries by 25% (just over $52k a year), though their current deal doesn’t expire until September; sounds like management really doesn’t want another strike. 

City workers in Bloomington, IN with AFSCME Local 2487 have a tentative agreement. Plant City, FL firefighters with IAFF are at an impasse, seeking a 36% increase over three years. County workers in Aitkin County, MN (AFSCME Local 1283) and Multnomah County, OR (AFSCME Local 88) have deals.

POLITICS & LEGISLATION

Joe Biden, with the help of the Democratic and Republican parties, imposed a contract on some 60,000 rail workers (those four unions which had rejected agreements: SMART-TD, BMWED-IBT, BRS, and the Boilermakers), denying them paid sick days or any other meaningful improvements to a critical industry that is nearing operational collapse due to financialized profiteering and mass worker exodus, by design. For that big picture view, I encourage everyone to return to Joe DeManuelle-Hall’s piece on the industry (Joe is the real Labor Notes rail guy, I just tweet more) from back in February. I won’t rehash everything I’ve written or said or every bit of coverage, but I spoke to Ross Grooters of Railroad Workers United, once for Labor Notes & Jacobin, and once with Chapo Trap House (joined by Deven Mantz), and also talked to some former Obama and Biden insiders. I guess the things I’d like to briefly emphasize here are: (1) Biden could’ve acted otherwise; the September kick-the-can deal could’ve included sick days, and his push for an imposed agreement could have as well. The economics here were really not at question; the carriers could easily afford the days, the shippers actively lobbied for the days, Congress doesn’t care one way or the other, and even the rail workers and unions seemed to be treating the days as a semi-symbolic proxy for the severe understaffing and overwork that’s killing rail workers (literally and metaphorically). And (2) the unions could’ve acted otherwise; they chose an inside strategy that relied entirely on Joe Biden doing the right thing, and refused to do anything – mobilize members, strike (two unions unilaterally moved strike deadlines without new TAs, several others moved them months down the line, losing all political leverage before the midterms), or work with progressives or others who might’ve made important allies when Biden twisted the knife. It’s not a surprise that Congress intervened; this is what has happened in every case since at least World War II where a contract dispute has gotten this far. But it was always a question of under what terms – would workers get a chance to walk, would the imposed deal be worse, the same, or better than the rejected deals, would it be directly imposed or arbitrated? The political punchline is Joe Biden sided with capital when the chips were down, no matter how many union halls he uses for photo ops. The union punchline is that if labor relies exclusively on the Democratic Party inside track, and won’t use its people power or think creatively politically, we’re doomed.

Politico took a look at the newborn Democratic trifectas in Michigan and Minnesota, and what labor hopes to gain from them. 

The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which Houston firefighters (and presumably those across the state) collective bargaining rights are at stake.

And I haven’t watched it yet, but there’s no way this isn’t a great conversation – Mark Dudzic of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer went on the Valley Labor Report to talk about the Labor Party efforts of the 1990s and 2000s.

INTERNAL UNION POLITICS

There is an absolute earthquake underway at the UAW, as reformers sweep into office in that union’s first-ever direct elections for top officers. UAW Members United, the slate backed by reform caucus UAWD, challenged for seven of fourteen spots on the International Executive Board and won five of them outright; the other two (Region 9 Director, covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Western New York; and the freakin’ President, covering the whole union) will go to runoffs beginning in January. Looking at the anti-incumbent margins (hovering around 60 percent voting to “throw the bums out” as they say), it’s hard to imagine President Ray Curry hangs onto his seat, which means new leadership will be bargaining a Big Three contract that expires in mid-September, which means negotiations are likely to be a lot more aggressive. It’s hard to overstate how much of an earthquake this is; very few predicted such a decisive outcome, and democratic elections with new, fighting leadership at the top of the UAW has been a dream of the left labor movement for literally generations.

Obviously it’s a much smaller scale, but the throw-the-bums-out energy is not limited to auto workers; IATSE Local 52 has elected new leadership, with Mandie DeMeskey, who is married to IATSE’s international president, losing handily, in the first leadership change in the union since 2004. Which is not to say incumbents aren’t still winning the vast, vast majority of union leadership elections; IATSE Local 700 easily re-elected its leadership.

NEW ORGANIZING

New election filings at the NLRB: 3,000 grad student workers at the University of Chicago have formally filed to join the UE, as the union continues to pick up huge grad worker units. 1,000 HelloFresh workers at a warehouse in Newark, NJ are supposedly unionizing with the “United Construction Trades and Industrial Employees Local 621”; the last time one of these very dubious unions filed at a HelloFresh, they quickly withdrew the petition, and if I had to bet I’d say that’s what will happen here. 142 more grocery workers in Cedar Hills, OR are organizing with the independent New Seasons Labor Union. 75 workers who make chemicals for Nouryon in La Porte, TX are organizing with the Steelworkers. 73 workers at three Fresenius Dialysis Centers in San Diego, Ventura, and Fontana, CA are unionizing with SEIU UHW. 70 workers who make manufactured homes for Eagle River Homes in Ephrata, PA are unionizing with Machinists District 98. 65 more baristas at three locations in Houston, Kingwood, TX, and Ashburn, VA are joining Starbucks Workers United. 37 fast food workers at a Burgerville in Portland, OR are unionizing with the IWW. 32 skilled maintenance workers at Northwestern Medicine Palos Hospital in Palos Heights, IL are joining Operating Engineers Local 399. 28 workers who work on F-16s for Kay & Associates in New Orleans are unionizing with IUE-CWA. 22 broadcasters at KVEA, an NBC/Telemundo station in Universal City, CA, are joining SAG-AFTRA. 12 aviation mechanics at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, NC are joining the Machinists. Ten drivers for Overnight Express in Carson, CA are joining Teamsters Local 848. Ten case managers at Oroville Hospital in Oroville, CA are joining the Steelworkers. Nine workers at Blue Plains wastewater treatment facility in DC are joining Operating Engineers Local 99, and five auto mechanics at FBI headquarters in DC are doing the same. Four bus technicians at Sunrise Transportation in Bellwood, IL are joining Machinists Local 701. Three chaplains at Swedish Medical Center in Edmonds, WA are joining SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. Two maintenance workers who service Chase banks in Dedham, MA are joining Operating Engineers Local 877. 

NLRB election wins…: 98 First Student school bus workers in Amarillo, TX voted 61-9 to join Teamsters Local 577; the same local organized 17 drivers for Hallcon Corporation in Amarillo, Dalhart, TX, and Liberal, KS. 78 truck drivers for USPS contractor 10 Roads Express out of the Peoria, IL hub voted 53-10 to join APWU. 60 weed delivery drivers for Element 7 in South San Francisco voted 25-4 to join UFCW Local 5. 47 workers at Methodist Hospital of Sacramento voted 31-10 to join SEIU UHW. 45 workers for Keurig Dr. Pepper in Lenexa, KS and Warrensburg, MO joined Teamsters Local 838 in a 34-3 vote. 26 workers for cancer radiation provider IsoRay Medical in Richland, WA voted 14-11 to join UFCW Local 3000. 20 workers at Fresenius dialysis in San Juan, PR voted 11-6 to join SEIU 1199. 19 clerks at a Safeway grocery warehouse in Tracy, CA voted 16-2 in two votes to join Teamsters Local 439. 16 massage therapists and nail techs at a Marriott in Los Angeles voted 11-4 to join UNITE HERE Local 11. 15 more baristas at two Ultimo Coffee locations in Philadelphia voted to join Workers United, 8-4 in two votes. 15 RNs at Tri-Cities Community Health in Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, WA voted 12-0 to join UFCW Local 3000. 14 Blizzard video game workers in Schenectady, NY voted unanimously to join CWA, in another win at the aggressively anti-union company. 13 DHL workers in Miami voted 9-2 to join Teamsters Local 769. All ten “communication operators” at behavioral health center PeaceHealth in Bellingham, WA voted to join SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. Six maintenance workers for food and beverage wholesaler Mendez & Co in Guaynabo, PR voted unanimously to join Teamsters Local 901. In an interesting small retail win, IUE-CWA Local 81408 organized four optometrists at a Visionworks in Plymouth Meeting, PA after a 3-1 vote.

Starbucks Workers United won one shop of 27 workers in Bellingham, WA, 15-6, and lost one shop of 27 workers in Puyallup, WA, 9-13. 

…and losses: 295 live performance techs and stagehands with Rhino California in San Diego voted overwhelmingly, 54-121, against joining IATSE Local 122. 35 sanitation workers at Waste Management of Washington voted 10-22 against joining Teamsters Local 589. 28 workers for military contractor BAE Systems in San Diego voted 3-9 not to join Machinists District Lodge 725. 27 subcontracted workers at the Seattle Passport Agency voted 9-13 against joining Machinists District Lodge 160. 16 workers for Auto-Chlor System in Kent, WA, which provides commercial kitchen cleaning services, voted 4-9 against joining IBEW Local 46. 15 cannabis dispensary workers at LivWell in Denver voted against joining UFCW Local 7, 3-10, and ten more at Good Day Farm in Affton, MO voted 2-5 against joining UFCW Local 655.

Decertifications and raids: On cue, just over a year after they organized, 33 freight drivers with XPO Logistics in Albany, NY are facing a decertification of Teamsters Local 294; it’s one of just three organized XPO hubs, a years-long target for the Teamsters but where they clearly haven’t won much more than a toehold. Not sure whether it’s a raid, but 18 interns and residents at LifeLong Medical Care in Berkeley, CA are unionizing with CIR SEIU but with SEIU UHW and AFSCME Local 206 (the Union of American Physicians and Dentists) listed as intervenors. 14 drivers for Tri-State Asphalt in Morris, IL voted 2-10 to decertify Teamsters Local 179. 13 cement truck drivers for Oldcastle APG in Greensboro, NC voted 4-9 to drop Teamsters Local 71. 

Outside the NLRB: OK, it’s not outside the NLRB, but I haven’t seen the filings yet, so I’ll put it here: Peet’s Coffee workers, apparently with the help of Starbucks Workers United, are unionizing as the barista union movement continues to explode. Dining workers at the University of Vermont have won a neutrality agreement as they seek to unionize with the UNITE HERE New England Joint Board. 90 staffers for the Academy Foundation (as in, the Oscars) won their union through a card check election with AFSCME Council 36 in Los Angeles. The staff of racial justice non-profit SURJ had their independent union voluntarily recognized. The staff of KIPP charter school in Columbus, OH, did not; presumably they’ll take it to the NLRB.

Finally, if you haven’t had enough Jonah Furman content for the week, I went on Dave Infante’s Fingers podcast to talk about Starbucks and food chain organizing and general labor stuff; it was a good time.