The Weekly Download

“Nearly 200 workers at Webasto Roof Systems have voted to join UAW Local 3000, in the latest organizing victory for the union. The workers, who make convertible tops for the Mustang, Jeep, Bronco, and Corvette, launched their organizing drive in November, and faced an intense anti-union campaign from management. ‘We’re doing this for our coworkers,’ said Sheron Johnson, a production worker at Webasto. ‘People have been mistreated, not getting paid, having their schedules changed with no notice. We want to leave this place better for the next generation.’...‘These brave workers stuck together in the face of fierce opposition from the company,’ said UAW Local 3000 President Steve Gonzales. ‘As they move from this organizing victory to the fight for a first contract, we’ve got their back 100 percent.’”

“The historic wave of cultural workers organizing continues as employees of yet another Chicago museum are forming a union. Workers at the Museum of Science and Industry announced this month that they are organizing with AFSCME Council 31. The union, known as Museum of Science & Industry Workers United (MSIWU)/AFSCME, will represent about 140 employees in the museum’s guest experience, guest operations and education departments…MSI employees say they are organizing to win pay equity, improved professional development opportunities, an end to discrimination, and better workplace health and safety protocols.”

“This is a special live episode of Working People produced in collaboration with the Action Builder / Action Network team on March 21 in Atlanta, Georgia. In this panel discussion, Max speaks with local organizers about the specific challenges workers in the South face in their workplaces and in their efforts to organize — and how they are finding creative ways to overcome those challenges today. Panelists include: Chris Daniel of the Georgia AFL-CIO; Melanie Barron of the Communications Workers of America / United Campus Workers; and Maurice ​“Mo” Haskins of the Union of Southern Service Workers.”

“Amazon has annual turnover of 150 percent. ‘They design the productivity quota, the rates system, to be a constant speedup situation, and that makes it hard to keep the job,’ said Medina, who still works at the warehouse. Several ALU leaders have been fired. Still, ALU, an independent union now with affiliates in Kentucky and California, was able to collect enough valid cards and win its election in 2022. ‘The faster the turnover is, the harder it is to organize,’ said Medina. ‘You can still do it, but it’s obviously a challenge.’ Despite the churn, at Amazon, in charter schools, in restaurants, and among student workers, unions are developing strategies to organize high-turnover workplaces.”

“Organising efforts at Storm King, the PMA, the Hispanic Society and elsewhere reflect a trend that has been growing in the US art and heritage sector over the course of the past five years and accelerated with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Workers at more than 20 institutions have formed a union since 2020 or are actively in negotiations for their first contract, including the Jewish Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Mass Moca in Massachusetts. In March, after 16 months of negotiations, workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who had formed a union in spring 2021, ratified their first contract.”

“Thanks to the dedication of members and leaders at the Communications Workers of America (CWA), civil rights groups, and consumer advocates fighting against the financialization of local news, the effort of hedge fund Standard General and its private equity partner Apollo Global Management to take over local news broadcaster TEGNA appears to have failed.”

“Amazon.com Inc. repeatedly violated federal labor law by unilaterally changing policies and terminating union supporters at its sole unionized warehouse, US labor board prosecutors alleged in a complaint, which also accuses Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy of personally making illegal anti-union comments…The agency alleges Amazon changed its policy on off-duty workers’ access to the premises, as well as its practices on announcing and providing paid leave for Covid-19 cases, without negotiating with the union at the Staten Island facility. It also accuses the company of terminating two employees because of their involvement in the Amazon Labor Union. Amazon should be forced, among other measures, to rescind its off-duty access policy for at least three years, the complaint says.”

“A pattern of similar worker accusations — and corporate denials — has arisen at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI as retail workers have sought to form unions in the past two years. Initially, the employers countered the organizing campaigns with criticism of unions and other means of dissuasion. At Starbucks, there were staffing and management changes at the local level, and top executives were dispatched. But workers say that in each case, after unionization efforts succeeded at one or two stores, the companies became more aggressive. Some labor relations experts say the companies’ progressive public profiles may help explain why they chose to hold back at the outset.”

“Thousands of fire fighters and emergency medical workers in the United States would benefit from the reintroduced bipartisan Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which would allow public safety workers to form a union, collectively bargain for fair hours and wages, and provide mechanisms for resolution during negotiation impasses.”

“The Illinois AFL-CIO and Chicago Workers Collaborative stood with legislators, advocates and workers on Latino Unity Day to urge the passage of the Temp Worker Fairness and Safety Act (SB281)… The Temp Worker Fairness and Safety Act would support workers by improving safety standards, and mandating equal pay for equal work after a 60-day grace period. It creates a whistleblower right of action to allow worker advocates to bring enforcement actions against abusive employers.”

“In a groundbreaking move, the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) has secured a unique enhanced compliance agreement with Donald Drywall, L.L.C., a Lakewood subcontractor, as part of its strategic enforcement initiative focusing on the drywall industry. This follows investigators uncovering significant wage, hour, earned sick leave, and employee misclassification violations within the company…Donald Drywall has been ordered to pay back wages, damages, penalties, and fees totaling $167,060.60.”

“The 3,000 teachers and support staff of the Oakland Education Association walked out May 4, shutting down all 85 elementary, middle, and high schools. Community support was immediate and widespread—parents were already familiar with the cuts the district had inflicted or proposed. Many donated food and joined our picket lines to walk, dance, and chant in solidarity.”

“More than 150 trainee doctors went on strike Monday at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, the first physician strike at a hospital in New York City in more than 30 years. Chief among their grievances is the fact that they are generally paid less working at a public hospital in Queens, where they care for poor patients, than their counterparts are paid at wealthier Manhattan institutions…Now the striking young doctors say the experience of the pandemic has encouraged activism and organizing — and a growing willingness to challenge the relatively low salaries that resident physicians, as doctors in training are called, receive for working long and grueling hours.”

"A Popeyes location in Oakland, California, closed its doors on Thursday, May 18, due to complaints of child labor violations and unsafe working conditions. Teenaged employees filed a report with the California Labor Commissioner and the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (CalOSHA) alleging excessive work hours and shifts on school days that were restricted by California law, among other workplace irregularities…Per California labor laws, workers who are between 16 and 17 years old cannot work more than four hours per day when school is in session. The limits are even stricter for those aged 13 to 15. According to employees, a 13-year-old worker clocked 40-hour weeks with shifts lasting until midnight on school nights, in violation of state restrictions. Workers also claimed the franchisee failed to request work permits when hiring teenage employees. In response to the reported violations, protesters took to the sidewalks outside the Oakland store's location at 7007 International Boulevard. Popeyes employees went on strike, speaking out about their complaints, excessive work schedules, and resulting struggles to meet school performance standards.”

“More than 70 percent of Americans—including a clear majority of Trump supporters—support the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike for better pay, working conditions, and job security, according to a new poll commissioned by More Perfect Union via Blue Rose Research. The two-way poll found overwhelming support for the strike that cuts across racial, age, gender, and even political lines—even 63 percent of Trump voters with an opinion on the strike back the writers’ effort, while just 37 of those same Trump voters back the studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).”

“As SAG-AFTRA prepares to begin contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7, it has laid the groundwork for some hard bargaining with the companies, telling members that ‘the AMPTP will often make proposals designed to cut costs at member expense in order to pad corporate profits and fund lavish executive compensation.’ The Writers Guild of America is now in the 21st day of its strike, and the Directors Guild of America began its contract talks with the AMPTP on May 10.”

“Bosses from CEOs to front-line managers don’t seem to like being alone in empty offices and darkened hallways. Most of them understood they could not force their employees back to work in confined spaces while the COVID-19 pandemic was raging. Yet now that the pandemic emergency (but not all risk of COVID infection) has ended, bosses in many industries are getting cranky about their employees working from locations outside their offices. So, they are seeking in growing numbers and in various ways to enforce return-to-work-site plans."

“American Airlines has reached a tentative labor agreement with pilots who recently raised the possibility of a strike against the nation’s biggest airline if they were unable to get a new contract with higher pay.”

“After a unified and strong week-long strike, ATU Local 1212-Chattanooga, TN, school bus workers in Dalton, GA, voted overwhelmingly to approve a strong collective bargaining agreement with First Student to end their strike. Nearly 40 bus drivers, monitors, mechanics, and other student transportation workers walked off the job on May 15 after the company continued to violate federal laws and refused to negotiate with their Union…The new 3-year contract with First Student includes substantial wage increases, their first ever paid vacation days, a retention bonus, a new strong grievance procedure, a better seniority system, and other improvements. The Union plans to continue to pursue Unfair Labor Practices charges against the company.”

“Engineers who operate trains for Union Pacific will soon have much more predictable schedules that will allow them to plan when they are going to be off, a change addressing one of the key quality-of-life concerns that pushed the rail industry to the brink of a strike last fall. The Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad announced a deal with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union Wednesday that will let UP’s roughly 5,600 engineers plan on having four days off in a row after spending 11 days straight on call. Within those 11 days, there will likely be some breaks between shifts because federal rules require 24 hours off after engineers work four straight days, but it’s hard to predict where that time off will fall.”

“The president of the union that’s been organizing Starbucks stores has a message for the coffee chain: Come to the bargaining table — and make it just one table, not hundreds. The union Workers United has been trying to negotiate first contracts for the more than 300 Starbucks locations that have formed unions since late 2021. But since those stores unionized one by one, the coffee chain has maintained that each store should negotiate its own contract. Lynne Fox, the union’s president, told HuffPost that workers want to consolidate the talks so they can start making headway on an accord. Workers have gotten nowhere with the company even though many unionized more than a year ago, she said.”

“The New York Times reached a deal on Tuesday for a new contract with the union representing the majority of its newsroom employees, ending more than two years of contentious negotiations that included a 24-hour strike. The agreement, if ratified, will give union members immediate salary increases of up to 12.5 percent to cover the last two years and 2023, and will raise the required minimum salary to $65,000, up from about $37,500. The previous contract expired in March 2021, and union members have not received contractual raises since 2020.”

“Union workers at the Clarios battery facility in Holland have turned down a tentative deal with the company that was put together over the weekend, a union representative tells 13abc. A UAW representative said the union’s goal right now is to understand what the workers want so they can go back to the company. They have not yet set a date for further meetings with Clarios.”

“Watch the Burnes Center for Social Change's Seth Harris in conversation with Daniel Ratner, partner at Levy Ratner, as they discuss the incredible story of the Battle of Bronxville, Ratner's history as a union organizer, some of the biggest cases in labor now, and more.”

“Listen to the Burnes Center for Social Change's Seth Harris in conversation with Daniel Ratner, partner at Levy Ratner, as they discuss the incredible story of the Battle of Bronxville, Ratner's history as a union organizer, some of the biggest cases in labor now, and more.”

"One of the important differences between working in a unionized workplace and working in a non-union workplace is that union-represented employees typically have “just cause” protections in their collective bargaining agreements. Just-cause provisions essentially hold that the employer may discipline and/or discharge an employee only for a legitimate, provable reason. Some public-sector workers have similar protections under their states’ civil service laws, but not all."

"Two weeks in, the writers strike already has at least one icon—and she’s not a writer. Lindsay Dougherty is a Teamster boss who heads up Los Angeles’s Local 399 and is director of the Teamsters Motion Picture Division, among other jobs. She got screenwriters’ attention when she appeared, along with other entertainment industry union heads, at the first big WGA members’ meeting after the strike was called against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the association that represents film and television studios. Standing on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium, she told the crowd that the Teamster trucks that are so crucial to production would not cross picket lines. And she sent a raucous message that rang out through Hollywood: “What I’d like to say to the studios is: If you want to fuck around, you’re gonna find out.”