Starbucks, which has been using all kinds of tricks, legal, borderline, and down-dirty, to combat the union organizing drive in its stores, now is possibly involved in a new one. At three Starbucks locations where workers have voted for the Starbucks Workers United union, a worker has filed a petition to decertify the union.
The three stores are all in New York State, two in Buffalo where the union first took hold, and one in New York City. In NYC, the petition filer is represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an outfit connected to right-wing, anti-union financiers.
The union expects that the decertification will be dismissed in light of the charges of unfair labor practices filed by the union against the company now pending before the National Labor Relations Board. In cases like this, the NLRB can bar decertification elections from being held until the allegations are adjudicated on grounds that company actions cannot guarantee that a fair election can take place. But it is part of a Starbucks strategy to delay bargaining with the union among its other tactics of firing union activists and providing benefits to workers at its non-union stores.
FLAGSHIP BARNES & NOBLE STORE WORKERS FILE FOR UNION
Workers at the Barnes and Noble flagship store in Union Square, New York City, have filed for a representation election after they announced the formation of a union. They have affiliated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The election filing came after the union said that the company had refused to voluntarily recognize the union. The store employs over 100 workers. The union says a majority of them have signed union authorization cards.
In the face of the stiffest company opposition, workers at Starbucks continue their organizing drive. A store in Sacramento, CA has become the 300th Starbucks facility to win a union election.
Starbucks United website, 4/28
YOUNG WORKERS ARE SPARKING MOST UNION DRIVES
According to a Gallup poll, the new spark in union organizing has come from young workers, many of them college educated. The poll reveals that 77 percent of people under 35 approve of unions and form the backbone of people joining and organizing labor unions. The New York Times has referred to the development as “the revolt of the college-educated working class while others call them “Generation U).
A three-day strike beginning April 23 at the two campuses of New York’s Fordham University has resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of classes on those three days. The strike was called by the Fordham Graduate Student Workers Union after a series of fruitless negotiating sessions.
The union is affiliated with Local 1104 of the Communications Workers of America. The union is demanding significant pay increases, more administrative support for international students, adoption of a “just cause” standard for disciplinary actions, university-provided computers, a ban on non-disclosure agreements, and $4,000 in annual child care subsidies for workers with children under the age of 5.
In the face of sometimes dangerous and unsafe conditions, workers at New York City’s outdoor farmers markets are forming a union. The move comes in the face of several incidents at the Union Square and Tompkins Greenmarkets in which workers faced incidents of harassment and racial threats by passersby and an out-of -control car crashed across the curb nearly killing workers and customers at Tompkins Square.
The markets that sell produce, organic baked products and eggs from farms in the NYC metropolitan area are run by GrowNYC, a non-profit group. Market employees are hourly employees earning about $20 an hour with no benefits or job security. They sometimes have to work 12-hour shifts with erratic schedules under various weather conditions. They seek to improve their wages, benefits and safety conditions.
On April 26, 200 workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a union election after management did not respond to their earlier request for voluntary union recognition. They are being represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
NY Times print edition, 4/27
TEAMSTERS BEGIN TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS WITH UPS
With the Teamsters Union set to begin bargaining sessions with United Parcel Service, some major obstacles have popped up in the opening stance of the company.
UPS now says that it will not discuss economic questions with the union, which complicates the bargaining process set to begin April 17. Economic questions are the heart of any collective bargaining agreement. Union contract proposals were advanced earlier this month. They included more holidays and ick days, improvements in the grievance procedures, more full-time jobs, along with payroll issues. They have rejected concessions and what the company calls “cost-neutral” bargaining.
After striking for nearly two months, frontline health care workers at Kaiser’s Maui Health System in Hawaii ratified a three-year contract that provides a 10.5 percent pay raise for all, pay scale adjustments for all job classifications and a one-time lump sum payment. More specific details of the new contract have not been widely circulated. The workers are represented by United Public Workers Local 646, AFSCME.
The striking workers included licensed practical nurses, nurses aides, respiratory therapists, cooks, housekeepers, and other employees at Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital, and L’ana’i Community Hospital.
Two days after the Starbucks chairman and former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled during a Senate committee hearing on the company’s response to union organizing at its stores, and after he vehemently denied firing workers for union activity, Starbucks fired three union organizers and disciplined another organizer in the Buffalo, New York, area where the union campaign began. (See item on Starbucks below.)
Among those to lose their jobs was Lexi Rizzo, a shift supervisor for seven years in Buffalo at one of the first stores to unionize and a leading founder of the union campaign. The union has characterized the actions as retaliation.
Amid a years-long wave of unionization in the hospitality industry, the workers behind two of Food Network’s most popular television shows have formed a union. According to the anWriters Guild of America, East, “overwhelming majority” of workers of BSTV Entertainment, the studio that produces The Kitchenand Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, have signed cards to form what organizers say is the first nonfiction food television union.
In recent months the illegal use of chid labor has increased, often under wraps, as a recent NY Times expose revealed. Corporate lobbyists have been at work trying to get state legislatures to cancel the protections for child labor that have been in place for about a hundred years. In the most extreme recent case, a bill under consideration in Iowa, pushed by the state’s Restaurant Association would allow children as young as 16 to work in very dangerous meatpacking facilities, high-volume soda bottling plants and demolition construction sites where more than 5,000 workers nationwide died last year. Is this the 21st century or the world of Charles Dickens?
More Perfect Union, 4/3
STARBUCKS GRILLED ON UNION-BUSTING ACTIVITIES
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz came under sharp questioning March 29 at a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Democrats on the committee, led by its chairman, Sen.Bernie Sanders, cited incidents of illegal union busting including, among other things, firing workers for union activities, threatening workers who want to join the union, denying workers at unionized stores the benefits and pay raises at other stores and refusing to bargain with workers at stores that have chosen the union. Schultz’ insisted he had done nothing illegal. The hearing, called to highlight and correct lapses in the country’s labor laws and their enforcement, was attended by a contingent of members of the union, Starbucks Workers United, who wore shirts prominently displayed with the union logo.
By contrast, committee Republicans were effusive in their praise for Schultz for leading a billion dollar business and getting people to pay a big price for a cup of coffee while they ignored the issue of union busting around which the hearing was based.
For a view of the hearing, followed by and the testimony of Starbucks workers , you can watch the video below.
The Department of Homeland Security has widened its investigation into migrant children found cleaning slaughterhouses and is now working with the Justice Department to examine whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation.
In a historic win for a union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has successfully negotiated a contract covering its workers at Lockheed Martin plants all across the country.
The agreements cover 4,000 workers at the company’s facilities in Georgia, California, Florida, West Virginia, and Mississippi. It provides for historic pay increases, varying from 34.7 percent to 41.5 percent – depending upon the individual facility – over the life of the contract. It also provides for a $5,000 bonus, and an increase in the annual cost of living supplement. Non-salary item benefits include reductions in the cost of their comprehensive healthcare coverage and doubling the company’s contributions to their retirement fund. The contracts will last six years for Lockheed plants in Georgia, West Virginia and Mississippi and five years for the five plants in the other states.
Lockheed Martin is one of the largest US military and space equipment manufacturers.
NYC TRANSIT UNION SEEKS TO CHANGE STRIKE-BUSTING NY STATE LAW
Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing the thousands of city bus and subway workers, are strongly pushing efforts by two state legislators to amend the New York State’s Taylor Law which outlawed strikes by public workers in the state. The law provides for stiff fines for unions that strike and some jail time for its leaders. The proposed bill would eliminate the penalties for unions that strike.
In the wake of the disastrous derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year, a worker at Union Pacific rail has come forward to claim that ignoring safety rules is part of the nation’s rail industry.
In a a leaked audio, a manager for Union Pacific is overheard telling Stephanie Griffin, a former carman for the company, to stop marking rail cars for broken bearings. Part of a carman’s job is to inspect cars and send those in need of repairs to the rail yards. Her manager told her that the process would delay train schedules.
The East Palestine disaster involved a train carrying toxic chemicals. It has disrupted life in the entire town as more and more residents complain of illnesses related to the release of toxic elements in the air and water supply. The Norfolk Southern derailment there was caused by a failure in the train’s wheel bearings, the same thing for which Griffin was ordered to stop marking cars for repairs at Union Pacific.
Griffin claimed that the practice was widespread throughout the industry. “It’s obvious that management is not concerned with public safety and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” she said.
Train derailments are more widespread than most people are aware of. In 2022, there were 818 derailments with 447 cars carrying hazardous materials that were damaged or derailed.
Strikes and work stoppages continued to increase last year as workers, dissatisfied with low pay and poor working conditions took direct action in confronting employers. Most of the work stoppages were conducted by unions but some of them involved walkouts by workers not affiliated with established unions. The largest percentage on these actions took place in the food services and accommodation industry, historically the one with the worst wages and working conditions.
According to figures compiled by Cornell University Institute of Labor Relations, there were 424 work stoppages in 2022, 417 strikes and seven lockouts. They involved about 224,000 workers taking part in 4,447,588 strike days. Employees in the food services and accommodations industry accounted for more than one-third of all the actions but since they usually worked at small establishments, the total number of these workers was small. Most of them were led by Starbucks Workers United. The majority of workers involved in strike actions were in educational services as grad student employees were organizing on an unprecedent scale and teachers struck in a number of places.
ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES –THIS TIME FOR THE BETTER
Last November’s election brought Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office in Michigan, the first time the state had a trifecta like this in decades. The result was a huge boost for the labor movement and its ability to organize workers.
Earlier this month, the legislature repealed the state’s so-called “right to work” law that had been enacted by Republicans. These “right to work” laws, in force in a number of states, enables workers to receive the benefits of their union’s collectively bargained raises and benefits while exempting them from paying any dues to their union. It encourages workers to leave their unions to save money on union dues, thinking erroneously that their benefits will continue even if the union is weakened.
The new law goes to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk and she is expected to sign it. The United Auto Workers has a strong presence in Michigan and its future strength and those of other unions will be greatly aided by the law to the benefit of working people in the state.
UE LOCAL GETS COMPANY TO END TWO-TIER PENSION SYSTEM
After an intensive campaign, Local 770 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) signed a contract with Hendrickson Truck Suspension company that ended its two-tier pension system. The system, along with a two-tier wage system that discriminates against younger workers, had been imposed on workers in 2010 when the company threatened to close its Kendalville, Indiana plant. The union was able to get rid of the two-tier wage system in a subsequent contract. Now the two-tier pension system has also bitten the dust in the latest contract with the company, which was approved by the union membership in a 2-to-1 vote. Hendrickson manufactures medium and heavy-duty vehicle suspensions and components for the global commercial transportation industry.
The Professional Staff Congress, representing about 30,000 faculty and staff at the campuses of the City University of New York has made its priorities known as it prepares to go into negotiations with the city. In addition to better salaries it is demanding better job security, and health, safety, and “salary equity for the 11,000 adjunct faculty, lab technicians and other lower paid workers in the system. Their contract, which expired at the end of February, has already established the principle that their jobs required extensive work ourside the classroom, like preparing for classes, grading papers and exams, etc. It gave them one hour’s pay for every three hours in the classroom. This time, the union is trying to get them parity with what other faculty -primary lecturers – on the same level are paid.New York City Mayor Eric Adams meanwhile is demanding cuts the union says is disruptive to the university.
In mid-February, a few days after Tesla workers in Buffalo announced their intention to unionize, about 30 of the workers were fired. The company’s union-busting move is another in a long line of illegal actions taken to thwart its workers right to unionize, a right written into labor law. One of the workers, Arian Berek, had recently received a promotion one two pay raises after getting good performance raises but was fired after becoming an organizer for the union, Tesla Workers United.
MAY BITS & PIECES
Labor BriefsSTARBUCKS TRYING TO DECERTIFY 3 UNION STORES
Starbucks, which has been using all kinds of tricks, legal, borderline, and down-dirty, to combat the union organizing drive in its stores, now is possibly involved in a new one. At three Starbucks locations where workers have voted for the Starbucks Workers United union, a worker has filed a petition to decertify the union.
The three stores are all in New York State, two in Buffalo where the union first took hold, and one in New York City. In NYC, the petition filer is represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an outfit connected to right-wing, anti-union financiers.
The union expects that the decertification will be dismissed in light of the charges of unfair labor practices filed by the union against the company now pending before the National Labor Relations Board. In cases like this, the NLRB can bar decertification elections from being held until the allegations are adjudicated on grounds that company actions cannot guarantee that a fair election can take place. But it is part of a Starbucks strategy to delay bargaining with the union among its other tactics of firing union activists and providing benefits to workers at its non-union stores.
Restaurant Dive, 5/12; Courtesy Locker Associates, New York.
FLAGSHIP BARNES & NOBLE STORE WORKERS FILE FOR UNION
Workers at the Barnes and Noble flagship store in Union Square, New York City, have filed for a representation election after they announced the formation of a union. They have affiliated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The election filing came after the union said that the company had refused to voluntarily recognize the union. The store employs over 100 workers. The union says a majority of them have signed union authorization cards.
The Villager, 4/28, Publishers Weekly, 5/1
STARBUCKS UNION MARKS 300th STORE
In the face of the stiffest company opposition, workers at Starbucks continue their organizing drive. A store in Sacramento, CA has become the 300th Starbucks facility to win a union election.
Starbucks United website, 4/28
YOUNG WORKERS ARE SPARKING MOST UNION DRIVES
According to a Gallup poll, the new spark in union organizing has come from young workers, many of them college educated. The poll reveals that 77 percent of people under 35 approve of unions and form the backbone of people joining and organizing labor unions. The New York Times has referred to the development as “the revolt of the college-educated working class while others call them “Generation U).
The Nation, 5/1
APRIL BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsFORDHAM GRAD SCHOOL WORKERS STAGE 3-DAY STRIKE
A three-day strike beginning April 23 at the two campuses of New York’s Fordham University has resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of classes on those three days. The strike was called by the Fordham Graduate Student Workers Union after a series of fruitless negotiating sessions.
The union is affiliated with Local 1104 of the Communications Workers of America. The union is demanding significant pay increases, more administrative support for international students, adoption of a “just cause” standard for disciplinary actions, university-provided computers, a ban on non-disclosure agreements, and $4,000 in annual child care subsidies for workers with children under the age of 5.
The City,4/25
WORKERS AT NYC FARMERS MARKETS ORGANIZING UNION
In the face of sometimes dangerous and unsafe conditions, workers at New York City’s outdoor farmers markets are forming a union. The move comes in the face of several incidents at the Union Square and Tompkins Greenmarkets in which workers faced incidents of harassment and racial threats by passersby and an out-of -control car crashed across the curb nearly killing workers and customers at Tompkins Square.
The markets that sell produce, organic baked products and eggs from farms in the NYC metropolitan area are run by GrowNYC, a non-profit group. Market employees are hourly employees earning about $20 an hour with no benefits or job security. They sometimes have to work 12-hour shifts with erratic schedules under various weather conditions. They seek to improve their wages, benefits and safety conditions.
On April 26, 200 workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a union election after management did not respond to their earlier request for voluntary union recognition. They are being represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
NY Times print edition, 4/27
TEAMSTERS BEGIN TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS WITH UPS
With the Teamsters Union set to begin bargaining sessions with United Parcel Service, some major obstacles have popped up in the opening stance of the company.
UPS now says that it will not discuss economic questions with the union, which complicates the bargaining process set to begin April 17. Economic questions are the heart of any collective bargaining agreement. Union contract proposals were advanced earlier this month. They included more holidays and ick days, improvements in the grievance procedures, more full-time jobs, along with payroll issues. They have rejected concessions and what the company calls “cost-neutral” bargaining.
The current contract is set to expire in August.
Labor Press, 4/17
500 MAUI HEALTH CARE WORKERS END TWO MONTH STRIKE
After striking for nearly two months, frontline health care workers at Kaiser’s Maui Health System in Hawaii ratified a three-year contract that provides a 10.5 percent pay raise for all, pay scale adjustments for all job classifications and a one-time lump sum payment. More specific details of the new contract have not been widely circulated. The workers are represented by United Public Workers Local 646, AFSCME.
The striking workers included licensed practical nurses, nurses aides, respiratory therapists, cooks, housekeepers, and other employees at Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital, and L’ana’i Community Hospital.
Portside, 4/14
STARBUDKS FIRES THREE MORE UNION ACTIVISTS
Two days after the Starbucks chairman and former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled during a Senate committee hearing on the company’s response to union organizing at its stores, and after he vehemently denied firing workers for union activity, Starbucks fired three union organizers and disciplined another organizer in the Buffalo, New York, area where the union campaign began. (See item on Starbucks below.)
Among those to lose their jobs was Lexi Rizzo, a shift supervisor for seven years in Buffalo at one of the first stores to unionize and a leading founder of the union campaign. The union has characterized the actions as retaliation.
The Guardian, 4/3
WORKERS AT TV’S FOOD NETWORK FORM UNION
Amid a years-long wave of unionization in the hospitality industry, the workers behind two of Food Network’s most popular television shows have formed a union. According to the anWriters Guild of America, East, “overwhelming majority” of workers of BSTV Entertainment, the studio that produces The Kitchenand Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, have signed cards to form what organizers say is the first nonfiction food television union.
Portside, 3/20
DANGERS MOUNT FOR CHILD LABOR PROTECTION
In recent months the illegal use of chid labor has increased, often under wraps, as a recent NY Times expose revealed. Corporate lobbyists have been at work trying to get state legislatures to cancel the protections for child labor that have been in place for about a hundred years. In the most extreme recent case, a bill under consideration in Iowa, pushed by the state’s Restaurant Association would allow children as young as 16 to work in very dangerous meatpacking facilities, high-volume soda bottling plants and demolition construction sites where more than 5,000 workers nationwide died last year. Is this the 21st century or the world of Charles Dickens?
More Perfect Union, 4/3
STARBUCKS GRILLED ON UNION-BUSTING ACTIVITIES
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz came under sharp questioning March 29 at a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Democrats on the committee, led by its chairman, Sen.Bernie Sanders, cited incidents of illegal union busting including, among other things, firing workers for union activities, threatening workers who want to join the union, denying workers at unionized stores the benefits and pay raises at other stores and refusing to bargain with workers at stores that have chosen the union. Schultz’ insisted he had done nothing illegal. The hearing, called to highlight and correct lapses in the country’s labor laws and their enforcement, was attended by a contingent of members of the union, Starbucks Workers United, who wore shirts prominently displayed with the union logo.
By contrast, committee Republicans were effusive in their praise for Schultz for leading a billion dollar business and getting people to pay a big price for a cup of coffee while they ignored the issue of union busting around which the hearing was based.
For a view of the hearing, followed by and the testimony of Starbucks workers , you can watch the video below.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NCe_BHsCQQ[/embedyt]
MARCH BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsDHS WIDENS PROBE INTO ILLEGAL MIGRANT CHILD LABOR
The Department of Homeland Security has widened its investigation into migrant children found cleaning slaughterhouses and is now working with the Justice Department to examine whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation.
Labor Start, 3/3
IAM WINS BIG CONTRACT AT LOCKHEED
In a historic win for a union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has successfully negotiated a contract covering its workers at Lockheed Martin plants all across the country.
The agreements cover 4,000 workers at the company’s facilities in Georgia, California, Florida, West Virginia, and Mississippi. It provides for historic pay increases, varying from 34.7 percent to 41.5 percent – depending upon the individual facility – over the life of the contract. It also provides for a $5,000 bonus, and an increase in the annual cost of living supplement. Non-salary item benefits include reductions in the cost of their comprehensive healthcare coverage and doubling the company’s contributions to their retirement fund. The contracts will last six years for Lockheed plants in Georgia, West Virginia and Mississippi and five years for the five plants in the other states.
Lockheed Martin is one of the largest US military and space equipment manufacturers.
IAM, 2/25
NYC TRANSIT UNION SEEKS TO CHANGE STRIKE-BUSTING NY STATE LAW
Transport Workers Union Local 100, representing the thousands of city bus and subway workers, are strongly pushing efforts by two state legislators to amend the New York State’s Taylor Law which outlawed strikes by public workers in the state. The law provides for stiff fines for unions that strike and some jail time for its leaders. The proposed bill would eliminate the penalties for unions that strike.
AMNY Newsletter, 3/17
RAIL COMPANY TOLD WORKERS TO SKIP INSPECTIONS
In the wake of the disastrous derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year, a worker at Union Pacific rail has come forward to claim that ignoring safety rules is part of the nation’s rail industry.
In a a leaked audio, a manager for Union Pacific is overheard telling Stephanie Griffin, a former carman for the company, to stop marking rail cars for broken bearings. Part of a carman’s job is to inspect cars and send those in need of repairs to the rail yards. Her manager told her that the process would delay train schedules.
The East Palestine disaster involved a train carrying toxic chemicals. It has disrupted life in the entire town as more and more residents complain of illnesses related to the release of toxic elements in the air and water supply. The Norfolk Southern derailment there was caused by a failure in the train’s wheel bearings, the same thing for which Griffin was ordered to stop marking cars for repairs at Union Pacific.
Griffin claimed that the practice was widespread throughout the industry. “It’s obvious that management is not concerned with public safety and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” she said.
Train derailments are more widespread than most people are aware of. In 2022, there were 818 derailments with 447 cars carrying hazardous materials that were damaged or derailed.
The Guardian, 3/3
LABOR ACTIONS STEPPED UP IN 2022
Strikes and work stoppages continued to increase last year as workers, dissatisfied with low pay and poor working conditions took direct action in confronting employers. Most of the work stoppages were conducted by unions but some of them involved walkouts by workers not affiliated with established unions. The largest percentage on these actions took place in the food services and accommodation industry, historically the one with the worst wages and working conditions.
According to figures compiled by Cornell University Institute of Labor Relations, there were 424 work stoppages in 2022, 417 strikes and seven lockouts. They involved about 224,000 workers taking part in 4,447,588 strike days. Employees in the food services and accommodations industry accounted for more than one-third of all the actions but since they usually worked at small establishments, the total number of these workers was small. Most of them were led by Starbucks Workers United. The majority of workers involved in strike actions were in educational services as grad student employees were organizing on an unprecedent scale and teachers struck in a number of places.
Labor Action Tracker, Cornell University institute of Labor Relations, 2/25
ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES –THIS TIME FOR THE BETTER
Last November’s election brought Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office in Michigan, the first time the state had a trifecta like this in decades. The result was a huge boost for the labor movement and its ability to organize workers.
Earlier this month, the legislature repealed the state’s so-called “right to work” law that had been enacted by Republicans. These “right to work” laws, in force in a number of states, enables workers to receive the benefits of their union’s collectively bargained raises and benefits while exempting them from paying any dues to their union. It encourages workers to leave their unions to save money on union dues, thinking erroneously that their benefits will continue even if the union is weakened.
The new law goes to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk and she is expected to sign it. The United Auto Workers has a strong presence in Michigan and its future strength and those of other unions will be greatly aided by the law to the benefit of working people in the state.
The American Prospect, 3/9
UE LOCAL GETS COMPANY TO END TWO-TIER PENSION SYSTEM
After an intensive campaign, Local 770 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) signed a contract with Hendrickson Truck Suspension company that ended its two-tier pension system. The system, along with a two-tier wage system that discriminates against younger workers, had been imposed on workers in 2010 when the company threatened to close its Kendalville, Indiana plant. The union was able to get rid of the two-tier wage system in a subsequent contract. Now the two-tier pension system has also bitten the dust in the latest contract with the company, which was approved by the union membership in a 2-to-1 vote. Hendrickson manufactures medium and heavy-duty vehicle suspensions and components for the global commercial transportation industry.
UE News, 3/11
CUNY FACULTY UNION NGEARS UP FOR NEGOTIATIONS
The Professional Staff Congress, representing about 30,000 faculty and staff at the campuses of the City University of New York has made its priorities known as it prepares to go into negotiations with the city. In addition to better salaries it is demanding better job security, and health, safety, and “salary equity for the 11,000 adjunct faculty, lab technicians and other lower paid workers in the system. Their contract, which expired at the end of February, has already established the principle that their jobs required extensive work ourside the classroom, like preparing for classes, grading papers and exams, etc. It gave them one hour’s pay for every three hours in the classroom. This time, the union is trying to get them parity with what other faculty -primary lecturers – on the same level are paid.New York City Mayor Eric Adams meanwhile is demanding cuts the union says is disruptive to the university.
Workbites, 3/1
30 TESLA WORKERS FIRED FOR INTENTION TO UNIONIZE
In mid-February, a few days after Tesla workers in Buffalo announced their intention to unionize, about 30 of the workers were fired. The company’s union-busting move is another in a long line of illegal actions taken to thwart its workers right to unionize, a right written into labor law. One of the workers, Arian Berek, had recently received a promotion one two pay raises after getting good performance raises but was fired after becoming an organizer for the union, Tesla Workers United.
More Perfect Union,m 3/3