The Clark County school district in Nevada is the 5th largest school district in the country. Its teachers union, the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), is not affiliated with either of the two national teacher unions, the National Educational Association or the American Federation of Teachers.

Teachers demonstrating for a fair contract at a meeting of the Clark County School Board in late August
Photo courtesy: Clark County Education Assn.

But the current fight taking place there is a microcosm of the situation unfolding around the country as individuals pushing anti-teacher and anti-education agendas and hostility toward teachers unions run for and sometimes get elected to local school boards. And when that hasn’t worked, state officials in places like Texas and Florida have sometimes moved to intercede with school curricula and administration.

In the most glaring example, one that made national news, the governor of Texas dismissed the Houston city elected school board and school superintendent and installed his own superintendent to run the schools. The new appointee, a former army ranger with no credentials or experience in teaching or school administration and probably couldn’t tell a lesson plan from a McDonald’s menu is now in charge of the education of children in the largest city in the state.

Unlike the more publicized situations, Clark County has not made national news. But the teachers in its schools and their union are currently locked in a battle with school district leadership, led by the school superintendent, Jesus Jara, that is treating teachers seeking to bargain for a contract with contempt. And it’s just a piece of the larger national picture.

The teachers there have been working without a contract this school year and their pay has stagnated. Earlier this year, they went to the state capital in Carson City to lobby for additional funds to pay for long overdue salary increases. They succeeded in getting the legislature to pass a bill and the governor to sign it that appropriated $250 million, specifically for teacher raises. It was part of a larger $2 billion education budget passed by governor Joe Lombardo. But the district school superintendent refused to access the state fund for teachers and will not even present the option to the school board for approval.

The lowest salary for teachers there right now is $50,115. The highest is $101,251. But getting to the maximum is complicated.” One Clark County educator said, “There have been years where salary increases have been frozen. Many veteran teachers feel like they are not being paid what they’re owed and make as much as a brand new teacher. It’s unfair.” Speaking of  the CCEA’s proposed contract demands, she added “This could be a once in a career raise for us. We are fighting for equity here. We have dealt with unfair salaries for too many years and we want the Clark County School District to use the money the state has given us. Teachers fought for that money in Carson City, and these raises are long overdue.”

The union has repeatedly called upon the  district leadership to negotiate a new contract and has presented proposals that would raise teacher salaries by 10 percent the first year and 8 percent the second year. It also called for an additional $5,000 adjustment to attract teachers where there are hard to fill vacancies and a 5 percent adjustment for Special Education teachers. Whereas the district contributes close to $1000 a month in health insurance premiums for school principals, it only pays about $700 a month for teachers, the union simply wants the district to pay the same amount monthly for teachers health insurance as they do for principals. In addition, an increase of 1.8% in state pension contributions started being taken from teacher paychecks this summer; the union wants the district to cover this increase. They have also called for time-and-a-half pay for overtime work spent on supervising after school extracurricular activities.

The district has refused to bargain with the union. Instead, it came back with an offer of only a 6 percent raise the first year and 1 percent the following year but with two stipulations – that teachers had to work a longer day and a sunset clause that the raises would expire after two years, and unless renewed, teachers would go back to their current salaries.

All summer long the union called upon the district leaders to engage in bargaining but the district leaders kept postponing bargaining sessions in what amounted to stalling tactics. Thus, the beginnings of the school year in August saw teachers without a new contract and stuck in the same mold as before.

The CCEA, spurred on by aroused resentment among its members, has begun to hold public protest demonstrations. When the school superintendent scheduled community meetings at coffee shops in Las Vegas to advocate his agenda, teachers showed up to demonstrate and present their side. The superintendent then decided to cancel all subsequent coffee shop meetings. At the early August meeting of the school board of trustees,  thousands of teachers demonstrated outside the meeting. The board shortened public comments due to the teachers presence, which caused an uproar that led to the meeting ending early. Another demonstration, perhaps larger, was set for the August 24 board meeting.

As we prepared this article the union is considering next steps. while the union and district continue to negotiate and the union decides what further actions it will take. Strikes by public employees are outlawed in the state of Nevada which makes the situation more difficult. And the district has further attacked the Clark County Education Association by suing it, seeking to take away its right to bargain for teachers for threatening a strike.

The United States was a pioneer in the establishment of free public education and teacher unions in the last 50 years have raised the status of the teachers and fought for more resources for public schools. The fight of Nevada teachers in this school district is part of the fight taking place all over the country for good schools with well-paid teachers and the ongoing battle to preserve American education.

UAW is threatening to strike as early as Sept. 15 at any of the Big Three automakers if their contract demands are not met. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya/File / AP Images)

The Big Three auto manufacturers – GM, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) are facing a different kind of union leadership as negotiations began on a new contract this year. With some of the old leaders now in jail, guilty of embezzling union funds and a referendum two years ago that mandated direct elections of the leadership, the auto giants are now confronted by a leadership with close ties to the rank-and-file members and a renewed determination to wage a strong fight for their interests.

“The UAW is back in the fight,” said newly elected President Shawn Fain, speaking for the new spirit in the union. as he delivered the UAW bargaining demands August 1. While speaking, he was framed by two images in the background. One displayed headlines from the previous week, when the Big Three reported their quarterly earnings, which included soaring profits. The other image detailed how UAW members have lost ground over the past two decades. For instance, current starting wages are $18.04, lower than the rate workers received in 2007, which amounted to $19.60 when adjusted for inflation.

“When you put these two images together, they paint a damning picture of what’s happening,” said Fain. “Not just in our industry but across the economy: the rich are getting richer while the rest of us are getting left behind.”

The current contract, a master agreement for the three auto companies large plants – GM’s Factory Zero Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, Stellantis’s Sterling Heights Assembly plant and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne – cover some 150,000 workers. It expires September 14.

Among the union’s negotiating priorities presented to the companies are: strong double-digit percentage increases in pay, ending a two-tier wage system, converting all temporary workers into permanent positions and placing strict limits on the future use of such workers, restoring cost of living allowances (COLA) and retiree health care benefits conceded by workers in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, increasing pension benefits for current retirees as well as ensuring all workers receive defined-benefit pensions, and bolstering paid time off.

Fain compared the compensation of auto executives with that of auto workers. GM’s CEO Mary Barra drew compensation of $29 million last year while the starting pay at the GM joint venture Ultium Cells battery plant in Ohio gets only $16.50 an hour. “Our members are working sixty, seventy, even eighty hours a week just to make ends meet,” he said. “That’s not a living; it’s barely surviving, and it needs to stop.”

One of UAW’s big concerns are the new joint venture plants producing batteries for electric vehicles, which were not covered by the union’s contract with the Big Three and have much lower pay and benefits.

When one company, claiming that union demands would nor make it competitive, made an offer that wasn’t even in the same ball park with union proposals, Fain symbolically tossed it in the trash.

As the situation heats up with the threat of an industry strike pending and tensions rising, major parts of the American economy that supply the auto makers are holding their breaths. A strike could severely affect their businesses.

Stay tuned.

Jacobin, 8/4; Fortune, 8/9

This one is hard to believe. In Austin and Dallas, Texas, ordinances had mandated 10-minute breaks for construction workers every four hours. These workers, 60 percent of whom are Latino, mostly work outdoors, often in blistering Texas heat. The 10-minute breaks allow them to rest, drink water their bodies have lost, and generally take a brief respite from the heat. A simple act of humanity, yes?

But the Republican state legislature and Republican Governor Greg Abbott say no! According to them, it is just another one of those “hodgepodge of onerous and burdensome regulations” on Texas businesses. A measure passed by the legislature and recently signed into law by Abbott, to take effect in September, nullifies the Austin and Dallas ordinances and prevents any other local governments from passing similar protections for workers.

Days later, a 35-year-old utility lineman who was working in 100-degree temperature to restore power in Marshall, Texas, died of heat exhaustion. Unions and civil rights groups have been enraged by the new law, warning that it will cause more heat-related deaths and illnesses in a state that already tallies the highest number of worker deaths due to high temperatures.

“In the midst of a record-setting heatwave, I could not think of a worse time for this governor or any elected official who has any, any, kind of compassion, to do this,” said David Cruz, the communications director for League of United Latin American Citizens National (Lulac), a Latino civil rights group. “This administration is incrementally trying to move us backwards into a dark time in this nation when plantation owners and agrarian mentalities prevailed.”

A simple question could be asked of Abbott and the Texas lawmakers: “Are you guys human?’

The Guardian, 6/26

“Fred Wright cartoon courtesy of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)”.

“The teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter the size or the depth of their pockets,” was the defiant response of Teamster Union President Sean O’Brien to the latest Supreme Court decision that sharply impedes the ability of labor to conduct strikes. “The political hacks at the Supreme Court have again voted in favor of corporations over working people,” he declared. “Make no mistake – this ruling has everything to do with giving companies more power to hobble workers if any attempt is made to fight back against a growing system of corruption…. American workers must remember that their right to strike has not been taken away. All workers, union and nonunion alike, will forever have the right to withhold their labor.”

O’Brien’s sharp comments were the Teamsters’ reaction to the Court’s ruling June 1 saying that employers could sue unions in state courts for damages to their goods during a strike, overturning years of legal precedent that the National Labor Relations Board had the initial jurisdiction in the case.

The case, Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, involved unionized members of a concrete mixing and pouring company. The company and the union were in negotiations for a contract when negotiations broke down and the union called a strike. The workers, who had reported to work that day, had already poured wet concrete in their trucks. The workers took precautions to keep the trucks running to prevent the hardened cement from damaging the trucks, meeting legal standards for taking responsible steps to avoid harming the employer’s property. The lost concrete on the trucks simply amounted to lost spoilage of a product for which unions have not been held legally responsible.

Nevertheless, Glacier Northwest sued the union for damage to the cement. In cases like this, the National Labor Relations Board is the adjudicator in the dispute. And in fact, the NLRB general counsel had already found that by preventing damage to the trucks, the workers had taken the necessary steps to prevent harm to the employer’s property and that the union was, in legalese, “arguably protected” from spoilage to the product that normally often occurs during a strike. After all, the whole purpose of a strike is to cause the employer economic harm and pressure him to negotiate a satisfactory contract, providing there is not malicious vandalism to his property.

Ignoring precedent and facts in the case, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the eight justice majority, said that the union workers were responsible for the damage to the cement and that the state court in Washington should hear the company’s lawsuit. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter. The other two liberal justices joined in the majority opinion and there is speculation that they did so to obtain a bargained compromise to avoid a much harsher judgment against unions.

Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, writing for himself and Justice Gorsuch, said that the court should reconsider whether the NLRB should even have initial jurisdiction in such cases. Justice Alito went even further, questioning the NLRB’s legal right to decide labor cases.

The ruling is only the latest in a string of decisions in favor of corporations against unions issued by this court in the past several years. A decision in 2018, contrary to the National Labor Relations Act, said that companies could prohibit workers from collectively bringing legal actions against employers. Also in 2018, the court ruled that public sector unions could not require nonmembers to pay fees for the benefits that the union’s bargaining had gained for them. Three years later, the court did it again, deciding that a California law that allowed organizers for the Farm Workers union access to the employer’s property to speak to workers during their lunch time and breaks, was unconstitutional.

The latest ruling, while not prohibiting strikes, makes it more difficult for unions, since they will have to consider the economic effects of company lawsuits and the resulting uncertainty of court decisions, particularly with a Supreme Court biased in favor of employers. Often, it is just the threat of a strike that helps unions win concessions. Since unions would now hesitate to use the strike weapon, “without the threat of a strike, you have little leverage in negotiations,” commented Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

NY Times, 6/1, also see Elie Mystal’s This is not the End of the Supreme Court’s War on Labor in The Nation, 6/2