The Weekly Download

“There have been a lot of headline-grabbing strikes in the United States this year but at UPS, you won big with the threat of a strike alone. When you reflect on this year, not just for your union but for the entire US labor movement, how do you characterize it?”

“2023 was a very important year for collective bargaining --- perhaps the most important in a generation. This year certainly proved, yet again, collective bargaining can successfully address workplace problems. We already knew that. This year’s collective bargaining brought more. Collective bargaining produced generational changes in workers’ lives.”

"After months of negotiation gridlocks, Starbucks union workers represented by Workers United may have a contract in sight. Starbucks sent a letter Friday to Workers United President Lynne Fox saying the company is ready to bargain and wants to finalize contracts for all stores in 2024.”

“Microsoft Corp. has agreed to union contract language governing its use of artificial intelligence, creating an avenue for workers to challenge how it deploys the evolving technology. As part of negotiations with the Communications Workers of America – the first US collective bargaining in the company’s history – Microsoft has reached a tentative agreement on an AI article to include in a contract covering a few hundred staff at Microsoft’s video game studio ZeniMax.”

“Southwest Airlines flight attendants have voted down a contract offer reached by negotiators for the airline and the union. The Transport Workers Union Local 556 said Friday that the proposal was voted down 64% to 36%. The local’s president, Lyn Montgomery, said the vote followed five years of negotiations during which the flight crews have not received pay raises.”

“Over 80% of Graduate Student Workers at the University of Southern California (USC) have voted to ratify a first-ever contract…The agreement includes significant wage increases, lump sum bonuses for every graduate worker and arbitrable protections from harassment and discrimination. The deal also ends the university’s ability to implement wage freezes.”

“Gomez is one of 700 Minnesota janitors for big box or retail stores negotiating a new union contract with SEIU Local 26. Her current one, which expires February 28, 2024, does not include any guaranteed paid holidays or sick days.”

“Game studios and publishers have collectively laid off an estimated 9,000-plus workers this year. Microsoft (which itself has laid off workers from Xbox teams in 2023) is bucking the trend to a certain extent by hiring dozens of ZeniMax quality assurance contractors as unionized employees.”

“With its recently announced drive to organize non-union automakers, the UAW is tackling the legacy of previous failures to organize the South. The union is wagering that the momentum of its Big Three strike will allow it to win where it’s fallen short before.”

“Since December 2021, nearly 1,000 animation professionals employed by about a dozen different studios have been cleared to unionize under the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 839, the official local known as the Animation Guild — a large figure considering the union has amassed about 6,000 members total since its founding in 1952, and had long grown slowly despite efforts to expand. At least 668 of those new or soon-to-be new members fall under the job classification of production worker, which includes production coordinators, assistants, supervisors and managers. They are the liaisons and planners who ensure each stage of the production process runs smoothly from start to finish by facilitating communication between the studio and the artists, scheduling meetings, providing their co-workers with the materials they need to do their jobs and keeping everyone on track.”

“Registered nurses at University Medical Center (UMC) in New Orleans, La., have voted in favor of joining National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the United States. In a three-day vote from Dec. 7 to Dec. 9, UMC nurses voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining the union. Despite a disgusting union-busting effort from management, nurses voted 82% yes with over 90% turnout. Altogether, 74% of eligible voters said yes to the union.”

“The United Auto Workers union said Monday it filed unfair labor practice charges against Honda Motor (7267.T), Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) and Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), citing aggressive anti-union campaigns to deter workers from organizing. The union's filings with the National Labor Relations Board and a video address Monday evening by UAW President Shawn Fain are the latest steps by the union to draw attention to its effort to organize workers at Tesla and foreign-owned U.S. auto plants.”

“More than a year and a half after Amazon workers on Staten Island voted to form the company’s first union in the United States, the company appears to be taking a harder line toward labor organizing, disciplining workers and even firing one who had been heavily involved in the union campaign. The disciplinary actions come at a time when union organizers appear to be gaining ground at a major air hub operated by Amazon in Kentucky, where they say they have collected union authorization cards from at least one-quarter of hourly employees. Workers must typically demonstrate at least 30 percent support to prompt a union election. In disciplining the employees, Amazon has raised questions about the extent to which they are free to approach co-workers to persuade them to join a union, a federally protected right.”

“How much does GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley hate unions? The former South Carolina governor once devoted more than three minutes of her ‘State of the State’ address to a diatribe against organized labor, boasting about her state’s low unionization rate. ‘We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina,’ she said. She waged a years-long personal crusade against a union organizing a Charleston-area factory, putting an anti-union lawyer in her administration expressly to help her ‘fight’ the campaign. She later lent her voice to radio ads urging factory workers to reject the union effort.”

“Three cases that directly address employment law issues are currently on the Supreme Court’s docket for this term: a gender discrimination case involving a police officer (Muldrow v.  St. Louis, MO), a whistleblower retaliation case involving a financial strategist (Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC), and a forced arbitration case involving truck drivers (Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St.).  This post will describe and analyze these three cases.”

“One of the reasons it’s hard for the Department of Veterans Affairs to keep certain healthcare workers is the fact that the VA has refused to correct payment errors in employees’ paychecks. This accuracy problem routinely happens, and the employees can’t do anything about it…To resolve the issue, AFGE is working with members of Congress to pass H.R. 6538, the ‘VA Correct Compensation Act of 2023’ that would allow Title 38 employees to challenge these payment errors.”

“Union workers across America flexed their collective muscle this year, using strikes, strategic walkouts and picket lines large and small to elicit concessions from their employers. This year proved to be one of the busiest for strikes in recent years. In October, for example, there were 4.5 million days of idleness because of work stoppages nationwide, the most of any month in four decades, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

“The four-day rolling walkout of professors and other workers this week at multiple California State University campuses is significant in its own right. But it also has the distinct aura of prelude.”

“After five months of on-and-off strikes by Southern California hotel workers, there are signs of progress toward a resolution. On Friday, Unite Here Local 11 announced it had reached a tentative contract agreement with the Beverly Hilton covering more than 500 unionized workers.”

“UPS Inc. has reinstated 35 unionized workers at its Louisville, Kentucky, ground hub who it had laid off late last week, thus averting a threatened work stoppage by the Teamsters union that could have affected operations at UPS’ ground hub and its primary air hub there.”

“Ai-jen Poo, a labor organizer and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, has been shining the spotlight on the crisis of care in the United States for almost three decades. She advocates for some of the nation’s lowest paid workers — those who tend to our children, the elderly and the disabled.”