The Weekly Download

“The discussion began with a focus on the negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three automakers. I made a prediction regarding the likelihood of a strike. Watch the clip below to see my prediction. The conversation quickly moved to the relationship between the UAW negotiations and President Biden's climate policies, particularly regarding the transition to electric vehicles and whether the jobs in that industry would be good union jobs.”

“On August 8, Vice-President Kamala Harris announced the first comprehensive reform of the methods for calculating prevailing wages on federally assisted construction projects in more than 40 years. As technical as that sounds, these new Labor Department regulations are an important public policy contribution to building worker power, especially in light of the hundreds of billions of federal dollars that will be spent on construction under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.”

“The National Labor Relations Board is poised to release a number of decisions in the next two weeks with the potential to significantly alter the nation’s labor doctrine in favor of unions, as Democratic board member Gywnne Wilcox’s term draws to a close later this month. The cases, which have been fully briefed, are part of an effort NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo outlined two years ago to overturn roughly 50 board precedents. The board has already adopted several of her desired changes to labor law, including protections for workers using profanity and limiting handbook provisions that could interfere with employees’ rights to organize.”

“Research suggests it is difficult to definitively determine how AI will affect everyone’s jobs down the line, and each sector may experience the impact of this technology differently. According to a Pew Research Center report, working in a job with higher exposure to AI technology—where essential components of the job could be either performed entirely or partially assisted by AI technology, such as analysts, technical writers, and website developers—does not necessarily indicate whether AI will replace human workers. The research center also found many workers in jobs with higher exposure to AI technology still felt optimistic that the technology will help them in their work instead of hurting their jobs.”

“Since the minimum wage for tipped workers is so low, those workers rely on tips to make a living. So, when you tip, you’re not simply providing workers with a treat for doing a good job- you’re paying for their sustenance. ‘While some tipped workers do make good money, particularly in high-volume bars and fine dining restaurants, most do not,’ said Restaurant Workers United, a union for restaurant, bar, and cafe workers, in a written statement. ‘Tips are a very unreliable source of income; no one should have to worry about paying for essentials because they got stiffed on a few tables.’ Tipped airport service workers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, for example, struggle to make ends meet, said Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The minimum wage for tipped employees in Washington, D.C. recently rose from $6.00 per hour to $8.00.”

“Concurrent with the precipitous decline in private sector unionization over the past half century, there has been a shift in the type of work covered by unions. We take a skill-based approach to studying this shift, using data from the Current Population Survey combined with occupation-specific task requirements from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the Occupational Information Network. We partition skills into four groups based on two dimensions of task requirements: non-routine cognitive, non-routine manual, routine cognitive, and routine manual.”

“Bo Ellis has been a devoted member of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) for nearly four decades, but the 64-year-old is waging a campaign against the union to extend his flying career. ALPA and other pilot unions oppose a bill in the U.S. Congress that seeks to raise the retirement age for commercial airline pilots to 67 from 65, arguing it will 'introduce new risk' into the aviation system as no safety agency has studied its implications. The measure, however, is estimated to provide 5,000 pilots like Ellis the option to continue working over the next two years, according to the Regional Airline Association (RAA). Increasing the age limit by two years would also align pilot retirement with the minimum federal retirement age, allowing them to receive full social security benefits.”

“At 9:00 A.M. sharp on August 10, a small phalanx of smiling, well-coiffed elderly women began herding a crowd of several dozen people into the auditorium of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, West Virginia. Among the crowd were former coal miners and their spouses, lawyers, pulmonologists, black lung clinic staff, environmental activists, local media, union representatives, and concerned citizens — all there to attend a public hearing for a new proposed rule from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) that seeks to limit silica exposure in the nation’s coal mines to 50 micrograms per cubic meter, down from 100.”

 “In this blogcast, Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris spoke with Maida Rosenstein, the organizing director for the UAW local 2110, and three museum employees she worked with— Jordan Barnes, Karissa Francis, and Erika Wentworth. Listen to what they have to say about their experiences, founding unions, partnering with the local 2110, working to ratify their unions' first contracts with their employers, and much more.”

“In a landslide vote, graduate students at Duke University have won their election to unionize, a major milestone in their pursuit to form a formally recognized labor union. If the results are certified, PhD students who work at Duke as teaching assistants and researchers will form the largest graduate student union at a private university in the South. The final vote count on Tuesday was 1,000 votes for the union to 131 against. Supporters of the union needed to win a simple majority of returned ballots to succeed; they received 88%.”

“In August 2021, a few Starbucks workers in Buffalo formed Starbucks Workers United. The union has now organized more than 350 stores and represents over 5,000 workers. But Starbucks has refused to come to the table and negotiate in good faith with those workers. More Perfect Union just learned that a billionaire-funded, right-wing group is doing Starbucks’ dirty work to try to crush the union from the inside with what’s known as a decertification campaign.”

 “A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board submitted a filing on Monday accusing Amazon of illegally calling the police on workers and other unlawful union-busting tactics during its effort to crush an organizing campaign at a warehouse near Albany, New York.”

"The dinner-theater chain Medieval Times broke the law repeatedly as it tried to stop a union organizing campaign at its New Jersey castle last year, according to a complaint issued Monday by the National Labor Relations Board. The agency’s general counsel alleges that the company illegally fired a union supporter, withheld raises from workers who had unionized, and sought to have the union’s TikTok account banned by the social media platform in an apparent effort to muzzle employees. The charges directly implicate Medieval Times’ chief executive, Perico Montaner, who has fought the organizing campaign from the start.”

“The past 18 months have been marked by loud labor organizing efforts — and opposition — at several massive corporate enterprises, including Starbucks and Amazon. Public approval of unions, meanwhile, is up to 71%, the highest level since 1965, according to a Gallup poll from August 2022. Yet according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the union membership rate of 10.1% last year was the lowest since records were kept, dating to 1983. There’s certainly no single reason for those seemingly contradictory sets of statistics. But there is a main culprit: the country’s wildly outdated labor laws.”

 “As 150,000 members of the United Auto Workers gear up for a possible strike against the 'Big Three'—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors—we are seeing the re-emergence of a well-worn media trope: fearmongering about how a collective work stoppage could harm 'the economy.' This slant is common, from the media buildup to the potential rail strike to the potential UPS strike. This time, media outlets are throwing around a scary-sounding number: $5 billion.”

“As Hollywood writers breezed past the 100th day of their strike last week, some 11,000 city employees walked off their jobs and picked up placards, demanding better pay. This year alone, public school teachers, hotel employees, health-care workers and actors have also called work stoppages across Los Angeles, shutting down some of the city’s largest institutions and most important industries…For much of its early history, the Los Angeles business and political class treated unions like a public enemy. The attitude was an extension of the city’s deeply conservative environment, which stood in stark contrast to San Francisco, a more labor-friendly city with a longer tradition of active unions.”

“Amid talk of labor strikes, many salaried white-collar workers are wondering whether they have the right to not cross a picket line, in support of lower-paid colleagues. The Detroit Free Press reported that Ford Motor Co. has been preparing its salaried workers to assume jobs in parts depots in case of a strike. So the issue of what is — and isn't allowed — in a strike situation is top of mind.”

“UAW President Shawn Fain will be joining practice pickets this week in Detroit, Mich., and Louisville, Ky. Practice pickets are not work stoppages; no entrances will be obstructed, and workers will report to their shifts as usual. (Dates, times and locations of all three practice pickets are below.) Fain’s visits to the practice picket lines come as 150,000 UAW members at the Big Three are holding strike authorization votes. Voting is scheduled to end by Aug. 24 and results are expected to be announced on Aug. 25. Bargaining at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis began in mid-July and the union’s contracts with the companies expire on Sept. 14. Fain has called the date ‘a deadline, not a reference point.’”

"1,700 nurses are currently on strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They are members of United Steel Workers Local 4-200."

 “For the first time since I started working at UPS 15 years ago, it feels like unions across the country are on the rise. UPS Teamsters mobilized for a massive contract campaign to win the best contract we’ve ever had. Now it’s the Auto Workers’ turn.”

“Averting a strike that could have shaken the U.S. economy, the union representing more than 300,000 United Parcel Service employees announced Tuesday that its members had ratified a new labor agreement with the shipping giant. The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said that its UPS members approved the five-year contract with more than 86 percent support. The Teamsters have said that the agreement includes wage gains of at least $7.50 an hour for current employees over its five-year term. It also raises the minimum pay for part-time workers to $21 an hour from under $17, and raises the top rate for full-time delivery drivers to about $49 on average.”

“A day after Walt Disney Studios was bustling with thousands of union members for the National Day of Solidarity, the mood Wednesday was more subdued at the Burbank lot as writers voiced their frustrations with the latest offer from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers…The AMPTP on Tuesday night released details of its Aug. 11 offer to the WGA that included percentage increases in salary, span protections and some guardrails on the use of generative artificial intelligence. But it was the notion that the AMPTP put out the details of its offer that seemed to strike the biggest chord with writers. The guild criticized the counteroffer and its release to the public as a ploy ‘not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy — to bet that we will turn on each other.’”

“Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, said that he viewed the 40 percent pay increases received by the auto industry’s CEOs as a benchmark for the pay increase the union’s members should be receiving in their next contract. It’s not clear if he intends to make the pay of the CEOs and other top management a topic in negotiations, but it would be great if he did. While there has been some shift from wages to profits over the last four decades, most of the upward redistribution went from ordinary workers to high-end workers like CEOs and other top managers, Wall Street types, and the elite in the tech sector. If the union can put some serious downward pressure on the pay of top management it could be a big step in reversing this upward redistribution.”

“After almost a year of stalled negotiations for a new bargaining agreement, CWA and IBT passenger service members at American Airlines rallied outside 10 airports as part of a national day of action to demand better pay, job security, and working conditions. Union members both in the airline industry and other sectors joined passenger service workers in solidarity on informational picket lines in Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, St. Louis, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. CWA District 3 Vice President Richard Honeycutt, who is also Chair of CWA’s Passenger Service Airline Council, joined the line in Charlotte and CWA District 2-13 Vice President Mike Davis participated in Philadelphia.”

“The largest union at Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works in Maine overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract, the union said Sunday, averting another strike like the one three years ago that contributed to delays in delivering ships. The contract, which takes effect Monday, raises pay a range of 2.6% to 9.6% in the first year with differences due to a mid-contract wage adjustment that already took effect for some workers, and will be followed by a 5% increase in the second year and 4% increase in the third. Workers are receiving an increase in contributions to their national pension plan while health insurance costs will grow. Machinists’ Union Local S6, which represents about 4,200 production workers, touted the biggest pay raises by percentage since the union’s founding in the 1950s.”

“Support staff at Maryland’s flagship public university are seeking fair pay, safer working conditions and more. Nearly 100 workers at the University of Maryland-College Park, as well as students and community allies, held a rally on Aug. 16 on the UMD campus, just outside Washington, D.C. Housekeeping and facilities staff and others called attention to ongoing issues such as insufficient pay that barely keeps up with the cost of living, stressful and unmanageable workloads, a reliance on underpaid contractual workers who have few rights or benefits, discrimination and bullying by management staff, and more.”

“The University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees’ Organization held a vote Monday evening on whether or not to authorize their bargaining team to agree to the University’s ‘last, best and final’ contract offer, which was proposed to GEO over the weekend. According to a GEO press release shared with The Michigan Daily Tuesday morning, GEO voted to authorize the contract, which, if accepted, would end almost five months of striking. GEO will formally vote on the contract later this week.”

"Chicago hotel workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 1 at Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt-operated properties have ratified a new contract. The announcement comes two weeks ahead of the August 31st contract expiration date."

“Hospitals portray unions as opposed to the interests of patients. The opposite is true: health care unions have been the strongest advocates for safer conditions and patients who can’t pay debts.”