The Weekly Download

“[Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris] appeared on MSNBC's 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle on Monday, September 25 to discuss the tentative agreement in the Writers Guild of America strike against the Hollywood studios and, briefly, the UAW strike against the Big Three automakers.”

“President Joe Biden grabbed a bullhorn on the picket line Tuesday and urged striking auto workers to ‘stick with it’ in an unparalleled show of support for organized labor by a modern president…Asked if UAW members deserved a 40% raise, one of their demands over the course of negotiations, Biden said: ‘Yes. I think they should be able to bargain for that.’...The White House said Biden was the first modern president to visit a picket line, a sign of how far he’s willing to go to cultivate union support as he runs for reelection.”

“The United Auto Workers union says it will announce on Friday how it plans to expand its strike against Detroit’s three automakers. The union says President Shawn Fain will make the announcement at 10 a.m. Eastern time in a video appearance addressing union members. Additional walkouts will take place at noon Friday without serious progress in contract talks, the union said. The union went on strike Sept. 14 when it couldn’t reach agreements on new contracts with Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis.”

“More than 75,000 workers at the largest nonprofit health-care provider in the United States threatened Friday to strike if an agreement is not reached to resolve a staffing crisis by the end of next week. A union coalition warned Kaiser Permanente that its members will walk out for three days in October at hundreds of health facilities across California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and Washington D.C., if a deal is not reached to relieve the issue.”

“Hospitality workers in Las Vegas have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against major resorts along the Strip, a critical step toward a walkout as the economically challenged city prepares for major sporting events in the months ahead.”

“On September 22, citing inadequate progress by GM and Stellantis in contract talks, the UAW expanded its strike against these two companies to an additional thirty-eight sites across the country. The union has so far decided not to take further action against Ford.”

“Voice actors and motion capture performers in the multi-billion dollar video game industry voted overwhelmingly on Monday to authorize a strike if negotiations on a new labor contract set to begin Tuesday fail, setting the stage for another possible work stoppage in Hollywood. SAG-AFTRA said 34,687 members cast ballots, 27.47% of eligible voters. SAG-AFTRA is the same union representing film and television actors who went on strike in July, putting Hollywood in the midst of two simultaneous work stoppages for the first time in more than six decades.”

“The Power At Work Blog proudly presents the fourth and final installment of our Labor Day blogcasts, an exclusive and important interview with Brent Booker, newly elected General President of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA). Booker has been at the forefront of labor and industry initiatives to improve workplace standards and broaden middle-class career paths throughout his career.”

“On Thursday, September 21, the graduate student workers at Northeastern University ended nearly 8 years of organizing by voting to be represented by the Graduate Employees of Northeastern University – United Auto Workers (GENU-UAW). The union’s victory was secured with 94% of the votes cast.”

“WGA members will now vote on whether to ratify the deal, which includes higher pay than the studios were originally willing to offer, improved healthcare benefits, viewership-based streaming residuals, minimum staffing requirements for television writers’ rooms, and regulations constraining studios’ use of artificial intelligence.”

“The educators, researchers, and lab technicians at the prestigious Science Museum of Minnesota have been fighting not only to form a union, but to keep union members’ jobs, in the face of what they say is retaliation from management. Their efforts—and frustrations—show how when workers vote to form a union, the struggle is not over, but is just beginning.”

“With the UAW strike spreading, GM is dispatching nonunion workers and managers to try to keep their parts distribution centers running. ‘I wish them luck,’ one striking worker said. ‘They’re gonna be so goddamn lost.’”

“Hames, an airline cabin cleaner who works for JetStream, an American Airlines contractor at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, contends the job is physically demanding and potentially dangerous due to high turnover and exposure to extreme heat without access to water or breaks. That’s too much to bear for $14 an hour.”

“Drew Lakey quit her job as a physician assistant at the Skin and Cancer Institute in Delano, Calif., in November. She gave four months’ notice…Ms. Lakey had signed a training repayment agreement, or T.R.A., when she was hired. The contracts require workers to pay back training costs if they leave their jobs before the end of a certain period. The agreements are frequently presented late in the hiring process as a take-it-or-leave-it provision: No T.R.A., no job…Nearly 10 percent of workers who participated in a 2020 study by the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University reported being covered by a T.R.A. The arrangements are especially common in the nursing field and the trucking industry; one survey by National Nurses United found that nearly 40 percent of nurses who had joined the profession in the last decade had been subject to the practice.”

“A workers rights group called Arise Chicago has hundreds of members who do domestic work in the city. But the group said very few have been able to secure written contracts. Ania Jakubek is an organizer with the group. ‘People just don’t know about it, that this is mandated,” she said. “There needs to be more education and outreach.’”

“Hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the DMV are bracing for yet another government shutdown given the impasse in Congress that many expect to be financially traumatic, especially coming after the coronavirus pandemic…’For our membership, many people in the federal sector, they live paycheck to paycheck,’ said Carter, the local president of the American Federation of Government Employees union. ‘How am I going to eat and feed my family? Couple that with the most recent pandemic and people are just starting to find their way out of that and now we get hit with this.’”

“When Donald Trump’s private jet touches down in Michigan tonight, working people know what to expect from the former president. Underneath his multimillionaire-class status and luxurious private estates, his $100,000 plated Bedminster dinners and Mar-a-Lago golden galas, he’ll claim to lend a hand to working people. It’s the same lie he told us in 2016, when he first ran for president. But there’s a critical difference now: Trump has a record. And that record was nothing short of catastrophic for workers, highlighting an open hostility especially to union families. He never cared about our jobs. Or our wages. Or our pensions and health care. Or even our safety. Trump just cared about making his rich buddies even richer at our expense.”

“For the first time since SAG-AFTRA went on strike in July, the performers’ union and Hollywood studios and streamers have set a date to return to the bargaining table. ‘SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP will resume negotiations for a new TV/Theatrical contract on Monday, October 2. Several executives from AMPTP member companies will be in attendance,’ both sides said in a joint statement Wednesday evening. The news was announced Wednesday, the day that the Writers Guild of America’s nearly 150-day-long strike concluded.”

“For the sake of students and parents, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 New York City school bus workers have reached a tentative agreement with five major school bus providers after marathon contract talks over the past few weeks, averting a strike. The strike had the potential to impact anywhere between 85,000 to 150,000 students in the city.”

“Thousands of state government workers will see fair and much-needed pay increases under a new contract negotiated through their union, Oregon AFSCME, and ratified last month. The contract offers more evidence of the union difference and benefits of workers securing a voice on the job. Negotiated by an Oregon state bargaining team known as the ‘Central Table,’ the contract covers employees of 19 departments, agencies and offices.”

“Once talks resume between SAG-AFTRA and the studios, the AI debate could prove even stickier for them than it was with the writers. Some see the threat of displacement posed by the technology as more imminent for actors than it is for writers, which could incentivize SAG-AFTRA to pursue a longer, more aggressive strike in a bid to proactively regulate a technology that grows more powerful every year.”

“Our guests Senator Jessica Ramos and Debby King describe the current program in New York state to help working people find childcare, which is in high demand but low supply, and the impact it has on young people, especially young moms. There are some great ideas in here to bolster worker power that unions in other states should pay close attention to this fantastic program.”

“The labor movement has a special responsibility — and existential need — to defend transgender* people and their loved ones from these escalating attacks. Transgender people are disproportionately poor and working-class. They are counted among members of unions, and leaders in unionization drives. And management has used anti-transgender policies to undercut union drives. Starbucks, for example, has threatened to punish unionized shops by withholding gender-affirming care benefits from workers at those stores, in what workers say is an anti-union tactic ... .Here are five things the labor movement can do to defend transgender workers.”