In a post published at the end of March 2023, I posited that "2023 could be the most important year for collective bargaining agreements in recent history." Of course, collective bargaining agreements have great importance to the workers, unions, and employers governed by them. They are sometimes called the "law of the workplace" because they set forth many of the rules governing the relationship between employees and their employers. But collective bargaining agreements also can have importance beyond a particular workplace. They can influence the risk-benefit analysis workers in other workplaces undertake when deciding whether to organize their own union. Is the grave risk of organizing a union worth the potential reward? One employer's collective bargaining agreement can inform another employer's workers about the potential rewards if they organize.
We are now more than halfway through 2023 and it seems like an appropriate time to offer a preliminary assessment of the state of this year's collective bargaining. I won't pretend to have conducted a thorough analysis of every collective bargaining outcome in 2023. That's a task for better labor-relations researchers than me. Rather, in my earlier post, I suggested three categories of collective bargaining situations to help us understand the potentially broad and deep importance of some of the biggest negotiations in 2023: (1) first contracts that could influence future organizing, (2) economically impactful contracts, and (3) new labor leaders’ “measuring stick” contracts (categories explained here). In this post, we will consider the negotiations included in each of those three categories.
Because I am a teacher, I will assign a grade to each category. The grades are a mixed bag, to say the least.
First Contracts That Could Influence Future Organizing - Grade: F
This category consisted of two employers and the unions representing their employees: Starbucks and Workers United, and Amazon and the Amazon Labor Union. Back in March, I wrote, "[e]ntirely because of dilatory tactics by those two employers and a labor law that lacks effective penalties for a refusal to bargain in good faith, Workers United and the Amazon Labor Union respectively have not yet been able to secure collective bargaining agreements." That assessment remains true today.
In April, National Labor Relations Board prosecutors charged Starbucks with a failure to bargain in good faith at 144 unionized stores. No Starbucks store's employees have yet secured a collective bargaining agreement from the company. Instead, Starbucks has lifted up efforts in 8 stores to decertify the union. So, Starbucks' strategy is pretty clear: refuse to bargain, avoid reaching an agreement, and seek to destroy the union. As I noted, watered-down labor laws make this strategy possible with little cost to Starbucks. The laws need to be changed. In the meantime, Workers United will have to find another way to force Starbucks to bargain. One strategy has already emerged: pressuring universities to end their contracts with the coffee company. This strategy is already being implemented at Cornell University, the University of California, and the University of Washington.
Amazon appears to have adopted a version of Starbucks' strategy by refusing to bargain with the Amazon Labor Union about the wages and working conditions in Amazon's JFK8 warehouse. Like Starbucks, the NLRB's regional director charged Amazon for failure to bargain in mid-July and ordered Amazon both to bargain in good faith and to make whole the bargaining-unit employees. The latter part of the order seemingly implements a new policy announced by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo in 2021 to prioritize 100% make-whole relief for workers harmed by employers' unfair labor practices. We will have to see if the e-commerce behemoth is moved by these remedies. In the meantime, the Amazon Labor Union is in the midst of an internal battle over officer elections and who makes decisions for the organization. The workers in JFK8 are left to wait for their contract.
Two employers, two unions, zero contracts. The grade is F. That grade belongs to Starbucks and Amazon.
Economically Impactful Contracts - Grade: Incomplete
Three negotiations defined this category: (1) the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bargaining a contract for workers at the West Coast ports, (2) the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and the U.S. Postal Service, and (3) the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Ultium Cells. I saved two bargaining relationships that easily could have fit into this category for the next category, so be patient.
In this category, there is substantially more progress, but no final deals. The best news is that the ILWU and PMA struck a tentative agreement in mid-June, almost one full year after the expiration of their last contract. That's an impressive level of resilience and commitment to collective bargaining by both parties. Now, the ILWU's members must ratify the contract pursuant to an extensive process that could take months. NALC and the U.S. Postal Service are continuing to negotiate even though their last contract expired in May and their mandatory 60-day mediation period expired in mid-July. There have been no public indications that the negotiations are in trouble or headed for conflict. Although the Postal Service and its employees have reach at least as far and wide as that of UPS and its Teamster-member employees, the NALC-USPS negotiations have not received anything like the same level of public attention as the Teamsters-UPS negotiations. That's likely because NALC's members, like other postal employees, are prohibited by law from striking.
Negotiations between the UAW and the electric-vehicle-battery-maker Ultium Cells are underway, but they have already turned contentious and complex. Ultium Cells is the first unionized battery manufacturer. The UAW appears to be trying to use these negotiations to address broader issues. Most important, the UAW wants Ultium Cells and the other battery joint ventures between the Big Three automakers and electronics companies included in the master agreement that the UAW and each of the Big Three are currently negotiating. If the battery plants remain outside the master agreement, then the UAW will have to organize the battery plants individually and negotiate a contract for each one. If they are included, then the master agreement will cover the plants and their employees will be UAW members. As noted below, this is not the only issue in the UAW-Big Three negotiations. It's a high-stakes struggle for both sides, and for President Biden's climate change and good jobs agenda.
While the ILWU and PMA have completed a tentative agreement, ratification awaits. The other two negotiations are still (or just) underway. For now, all the parties get an "incomplete."
New Labor Leaders’ “Measuring Stick” Contracts - Grade: A/Partial Incomplete
Two negotiations occupied this category: (1) the Teamsters and UPS, and (2) the UAW and the Big Three automakers. In late July, the Teamsters and UPS announced that they had reached a tentative five-year agreement that would govern more than 340,000 (perhaps as many as 365,000) Teamster members in the largest private-sector bargaining unit in the country. The agreement, which must be ratified by the Teamsters' UPS members, includes an impressive number of substantial improvements for UPS drivers, including pay increases for full-time and part-time workers, the end of a hated two-tier employment system, no more forced overtime, transitioning thousands of part-time workers to full-time jobs and hiring for more than 20,000 unfilled jobs, a holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, and a plan to address heat hazards in delivery trucks. My bet is that the members will ratify the agreement, although some part-time workers have complained on social media.
The UAW negotiations began in mid-July with separate meetings with Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors amidst strike threats by new UAW President Shawn Fain. President Biden has appointed longtime White House economic advisor Gene Sperling to assist the parties with the negotiations, but the President not going to take a formal government action to end or control a strike or negotiations. The issues in the negotiations are large enough and complicated enough without injecting politics, or even public policy, into the mix. Like the Teamsters, the UAW will seek to end a two-tier employment system and secure wage and pension improvements that restore pay to the level they would have reached absent concessions bargaining over the last 45 years. The future of the UAW in the joint-venture electric-vehicle-battery plants looms very large. And there are other issues. The parties' current contract expires in mid-September. My best guess is that a strike against one or more of the automakers is more likely than not, but that should motivate the parties to work even harder to reach a resolution.
Because these two negotiations were on very different timelines, I have to split the grade. The Teamsters and UPS earn an A for reaching a direction-changing agreement without a strike. The UAW and the automakers get an incomplete, with lots and lots of action yet to come.
