The Weekly Download

“In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Hazel Court and David Pham from the Washington Post Tech Guild organizing committee. Watch now to hear Court and Pham share the story behind the newly formed union, the challenges to organizing under Jeff Bezos, how they were able to succeed, and what’s next for the union!”

“Episode #2 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived! Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are McKenna Schueler, reporter at Orlando Weekly, William Samuel, former Director of Government Relations at the AFL-CIO, and Ruben Garcia, law professor at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas. The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks.”

“18 Tips from UAW Organizer Brian O. Shepherd: Organizing isn’t just a science, it’s also an art. Normally the latter is passed on through phone calls, debriefs, meetings, and late-night shit talk. This is an attempt to share with the next generation of union organizers some of those lessons learned along the way, some in victory, some in defeat. None of this is new. None of this is mine. I certainly don’t have the answers, I just know it’s something that I’ve given my life to over the past quarter of a century. The art requires staying close to the ground where people are—and that’s messy. It requires us to relate to others, take chances, innovate, all while asking the hard questions of others and ourselves. All of it is simple. None of it is easy.”

“Florida, like other states in the South, is regularly dismissed as a “non-union” state, where decades of anti-union policies, and deep-rooted corporate and political resistance to unions have stunted and degraded the labor movement’s power. Only about 6% of workers in Florida even have union representation, and just 5% are dues-paying union members — below the national average. But new organizing does happen here in the Sunshine State, maybe more often than you’d think. In order to file a petition for a union election, at least 30% of workers need to sign what are known as showing-of-interest cards demonstrating their support for unionization (generally, organizers shoot for a higher percentage, in case the employer tries to water down support for the union ahead of the election). Unions can also seek certification through a voluntary recognition/card-check process, which requires showing that a majority (more than 50%) of workers support unionization. Here’s a rundown of new organizing drives that launched last month and union election results.”

“Media, culture, and tech workers in the United States and Canada are increasingly turning to unions and — to a lesser but still significant extent — co-operatives to confront poor working conditions and systemic inequalities in their industries. Since 2015, thousands of workers in digital media, video games, museums, and more have unionized. Likewise, during the last decade, the idea of platform cooperativism has spread and worker-owned businesses have emerged in fields from journalism to photography to tech. These workers view unions and co-ops as ways to collectively address low pay and job insecurity, weak social protections, racism, sexism, excessive hours, and a lack of voice.”     

“More than two years after voting in a union, the 220 workers at TCGplayer, the eBay-owned online marketplace for trading cards, hoped they might be getting close to securing a first contract. Instead, they’re fighting to save their jobs. On May 22, the company abruptly announced that it was shuttering its Syracuse, New York, authentication center and moving operations to Louisville, Kentucky. Spurred by unfair discipline and low pay, workers at TCGplayer became the first U.S. eBay workers to organize a union, joining Communications Workers Local 1123 in a March 2023 vote. According to a CWA report released last year, 60 percent of workers at the Syracuse center earn less than $19 an hour—and nearly 90 percent earned under $21 an hour. eBay brought in $2 billion in profits last year.”    

“The Trump Administration is unleashing an unprecedented assault on the federal civil service. Even though civil servants enjoy removal protections under federal law, the Administration is mass-firing tens of thousands of civil servants nevertheless. The Administration’s decision to ignore these statutory protections is not surprising, given that the Supreme Court has constructed an increasingly muscular conception of the president’s power to fire executive branch officials. It is plausible that the Court will soon hold that the president’s removal power overrides civil servants’ removal protections, as the Administration has suggested. But even if the president’s removal power supersedes these statutory protections, it does not prevail over the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Supreme Court has held that civil servants possess property rights in their continued employment. The history of civil servants’ due process rights is detailed in the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Trump complaint. That case challenges the Administration’s recent executive order reinstating Schedule F, which attempts to undermine civil service protections by reclassifying certain civil servants as at-will employees. Because civil servants possess property rights in their continued employment, any action to deprive civil servants of their jobs must comport with both procedural and substantive due process.”

“The Trump administration faced another legal setback on Monday when a judge temporarily blocked their plan to dissolve labor unions at a federal agency. The White House moved in March to revoke collective bargaining rights at the Transportation Security Administration, aiming to nullify the union contract for some 47,000 airport security officers. But U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman in Seattle, Washington, granted an injunction Monday at the request of the union, the American Federation of Government Employees…The order means that the Trump administration must honor the union’s collective bargaining agreement for now. But the White House could still win the underlying case and succeed in having the contract tossed out.”

“Two federal agencies are violating a federal court order prohibiting them from engaging in mass layoffs, a group of federal worker unions alleged Tuesday. The American Federation of Government Employees along with other unions and nonprofits said in a court filing that the US State Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development have continued to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order to drastically reduce the size of the government despite a federal court’s preliminary injunction blocking the firings. The plaintiffs said they received reports that the State Department plans to issue widespread reduction in force notices to employees soon and that HUD had begun to re-terminate probationary workers.”

“A teacher's union is sounding the alarm after thousands of teachers found themselves out of work amid mass layoffs. ABC7 reported that some 3,000 teachers and counselors have been affected. The California Teachers Association (CTA) told Newsweek that it has confirmed that at least 977 teachers have been laid off out of the roughly 3,000 who were issued notices earlier in the year, and about 500 have been rescinded. A union spokesperson said it is still waiting to hear back from 36 school districts about the number of layoffs. CTA President David Goldberg said in a statement to Newsweek: ‘Layoffs further exacerbate issues in our schools, including creating a climate where young people don't see teaching or other education jobs as viable careers.’”

“A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to allow President Donald Trump's administration to carry out mass layoffs of federal workers and a restructuring of agencies, leaving a lower court order in place that blocked the sweeping government overhaul. The decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that, for now, the Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to shed tens of thousands of federal jobs and shutter many government offices and programs.”

“In a major win for Oregon unions, the state got one big step closer to providing unemployment benefits for striking workers on Wednesday. The House of Representatives voted 33-23 to authorize the unemployment payments after hours of heated debate. Among Democrats,only John Lively of Springfield joined all House Republicans present Wednesday in voting no, allowing the bill to surpass the 31 votes needed to pass it. Senate Bill 916, which would removes a rule prohibiting striking workers from collecting unemployment in Oregon, was approved by the Senate in March on a vote of 16-12.”

“Donald Trump, once ‘totally against’ Nippon Steel of Japan’s controversial $14bn takeover bid for US Steel, the second largest US steel producer, is now hailing the deal as a turning point for the struggling industry. ‘We won’t be able to call this section a Rust belt any more,’ the US president declared at a plant in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, on Friday. ‘It’ll be a golden belt.’ Workers are not holding their breath as they await details. ‘Our members know from decades of negotiating contracts: trust nothing until you see it in writing,’ David McCall, president of United Steel Workers, said in a statement last week. And veterans of the sector, which has withered for decades, are dubious.”

“A report released Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation, a global network of unions, states that workers' rights around the world are in ‘free fall’—including in the United States, where U.S. President Donald Trump has taken ‘a wrecking ball to the collective labour rights of workers.’ The report, titled The 2025 ITUC Global Rights Index, details ‘a stark and worsening global crisis for workers and unions.’ The index, which first began in 2014, is a review of workers' rights in law and in practice. It ranks countries along a criteria of nearly 100 indicators, such as whether there is a ‘general prohibition of the right to collective bargaining’ or whether ‘killing or enforced disappearance of trade unionists’ take place. Depending on how many indicators they rack up, countries are ranked from 1-5+, based on their degree of respect for workers' rights. 5+ is the worst ranking a country can get. Each year, violations are recorded from April until March. According to the index, in 2025, average country ratings deteriorated in three out of five global regions, with Europe and the Americas recording their worst scores since 2014.”

“As the administration of President Donald Trump dismantles reforms enacted under Joe Biden, workers and management at a Fort Valley, Georgia, school bus plant are thriving because of the same policies. On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order that would freeze future spending under two Biden-era laws: The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized funding of more than $2 trillion. Under Biden, those grants often went to companies that supported worker unions, according to the Center for American Progress. Several workers at Blue Bird Corp., a school bus manufacturer with 1,500 union employees at its plant in Fort Valley, said that support transformed their workplace. They pointed to better job conditions under a union contract and said that the company has thrived under a grant and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to federal support for electric buses. Observers, including former acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, said that Trump’s actions could mean an abrupt end to successful government programs that have already improved the lives of workers across the country and added to companies’ bottom lines.”

“A federal court is expected to rule this week on the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 200,000 Haitians. On May 28, a high-stakes legal battle with sweeping implications for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants played out in a Brooklyn federal courtroom as a labor union and nine Haitian TPS holders challenged the federal government’s efforts to strip their protections and work authorization. The lawsuit, Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association v. Trump, which was filed in March, challenges the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation—a move that would make over 200,000 Haitians eligible for deportation as early as Aug. 3. Plaintiffs argue that the decision violates both the TPS statute and the Administrative Procedure Act. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is named in the suit for her role in vacating Haiti’s TPS status.”

“On Tuesday May 20, 2025, U.S. District Judge for the District of Oregon, Michael H. Simon issued a decision in Casala LLC, d/b/a Bubble’s Hash and Rec Rehab Consulting LLC, d/b/a Ascend Dispensary v. Tina Kotek, in her official capacity as Governor of the State of Oregon, et al., Case No. 3:25-cv-244-SI (D.Or. May 20, 2025), striking down Oregon’s United for Cannabis Workers Act and holding that the law is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act (‘NLRA’) in violation of the Supremacy Clause and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Shortly after Oregon’s United for Cannabis Workers Act took effect, two cannabis employers Bubble’s Hash and Ascend Dispensary (collectively, ‘Plaintiffs’), filed suit for declaratory and injunctive relief, and sought a permanent injunction to enjoin the Oregon Governor, Oregon Attorney General, Chair of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (‘OLCC’), and Executive Director of the OLCC (collectively, ‘Defendants’), from enforcing the United for Cannabis Workers Act against them.”

“The strike at Cummins will continue for at least another month. The United Auto Workers union and Cummins will have to return to the negotiating table again after UAW Local 291 membership rejected the company’s latest labor proposal at a union meeting June 2. Faced with a package that would’ve ended the more than two-month strike, membership voted 46-34 against accepting Cummins’ most recent offer to return to the manufacturing plant at 1005 High Ave.”

“Over 1,000 unionized dairy workers with the Dairy Farmers of America voted to authorize a strike amid what it called stalled contract negotiations in several states, including Colorado. The workers who voted work at dairy processing and distribution centers in California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Utah. The Colorado locations include Henderson, Greeley, and Fort Morgan. The contract negotiations dealt with issues including pay, benefits, and workplace safety.”

“A promised pay raise for Baltimore County teachers is inching closer to reality, but the teachers' union says the current proposal still falls short of what was originally agreed on. Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) had initially committed to a 5% raise for educators as part of a three-year compensation package. However, after the district received less funding than requested from County Executive Kathy Klausmeier's budget, the offer was reduced to 1.5%. Following pushback from the Teachers Association of Baltimore County (TABCO), including rallies and a shift to ‘work to rule;’ — where educators limit their work strictly to contracted hours — the district returned from negotiations with a revised offer of 2.5%. But it was still below the union's expectations.”

“After months of negotiations, transit union workers with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) have approved a new contract, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 announced early Wednesday. The vote comes a couple of months after a strike that put union members out of work for weeks as they demanded increased wages and more benefits. Union members approved the new VTA contract on Tuesday with 689 yes votes and 298 no votes, according to ATU Local 265. ‘We acknowledge and recognize that these past several months have been really difficult, that this offer did not completely address all of our needs,’ Raj Singh, president of Local 265, wrote in a statement to union members. ‘However, you, the majority have spoken and the democratic process must be recognized.’”

“The 196-day strike of Kaiser Southern California mental healthcare workers is over. The 2,400 therapists, psychiatric nurses, social workers and psychologists won significant gains not just for themselves but for their patients in a time of an acute national mental healthcare crisis. They are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. They outlasted Kaiser, the huge California-based health maintenance organization, with six and a half months of picket lines from Modesto to San Diego. They held rallies at Kaiser’s Southern California medical centers. They blockaded the Sunset Strip. They held a hunger strike, putting their own health on the line to improve care for patients and reverse Kaiser’s record of misconduct.”

“Hollywood has tackled both eat-the-rich narratives and “tech will save us” narratives. But it’s not so often that a film focused on a blue-collar worker fighting the system gets made into a movie. That is, until very recently. Thirty years ago, a woman named Lilly Ledbetter took up work at a Goodyear Tires factory in Alabama. She was eventually was promoted to a management position, the only woman in her rank. But as she got older and the company homogenized their workforce to advance and promote young men, she was pushed aside. After years of dealing with exclusionary colleagues and management and fighting tooth-and-nail to reach her position, she decided to pursue legal action….Her story was made into a movie called LILLY—and I interviewed the director, Rachel Feldman, about her experience writing and getting funding for a feature film about blue-collar labor and women.”