Caterpillar, the big farm equipment manufacturer, is facing a possible strike in a few weeks after 6,000 members at its plants in Illinois and Pennsylvania voted overwhelmingly to authorize one. Their contract expires March 1. A powerful encouragement for the Caterpillar labor action has been the strike at another farm equipment firm, John Deere, a few months ago that netted the workers a very good contract.
DISNEY WORKERS URGED TO VOTE NO ON LATEST OFFER
The 45,000 members or Florida’s Service Trades Council who work for Disney were urged to vote no on what the company says is its “best offer.” Although the union has not yet voted for an authorization for a strike, the situation remains volatile
KING KULLEN WORKERS AUTHORIZE WAKOUT
On Long Island, New York, several thousand employees of the King Kullen grocery chain, members of Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers voted to authorize a strike. Their contract expired in December.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/22-29
UE REGISTERS BIG WINS AMONG GRAD WORKERS
Thousands of graduate school workers have voted to be represented in collective bargaining by the United Radio and Machine Workers (UE) over the past few weeks. Among them are 3,000 workers at Northwest University in Evanston, Illinois where UE won over 93 percent of the vote and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore which saw 97 percent of its 31,300 grad workers voting to join UE. Still waiting final a final vote count on March 18 are 3,000 more at the University of Chicago.
A three-member panel of the NLRB on February 13 upheld a judges finding two years ago that Starbucks repeatedly violated labor law by firing workers who were in the process of organizing a store in Philadelphia. The board the reinstatement wirh back pay for the workers who were dismissed in late 2019 and ealy 2020.
Editors and workers in the marketing, sales and other departments at HarperCollins publishers, who have been out on strike since November 10, have ratified a new contract and returned to work. The contract gains higher pay, a company commitment for more staff diversity, and greater union rights, the three major issues in the strike. A one-time bonus of $1,500 per worker upon ratification was also part of the settlement. HarperCollins is the only one of the five major publishers that is unionized but the settlement has the potential of encouraging unionizing efforts at other publishers.
In what appears to be a major concession, workers at Wxarrior Met coal in Brookwood, Alabama, on strike for nearly two years have made an unconditional offer tt return to work without a contract. The local of the United Mine Workers union have been on strike over the issue that they made concessions several years ago to keep the company afloat when it was in trouble but the concessions were not rescinded now that the company has become highly profitable. The strike originally involved 1,100 workers but only 800 of them are now available to return to work. During the strike, judges outlawed picketing of the company’s facilities and hundreds of workers scabbed. Union members then picketed the corporate offices of the company in New York The union’s offer recognizes a stalemate in the strike which saw Met Warrior’s quarterly net income drop to $99.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared with $138.5 million for the same period the year before. The fact that it still recorded a healthy profit means that it can afford to negotiate a decent settlement with the union. The union’s offer included the statement that negotiations would continue until a contract is reached.
Labor actions among workers on public transit lines increased this month. So far, a strike is now in its eighth week in Loudoun County, Virginia, led by the American Transit Union Local 689 against the private company running the system. Not far from there in Virginia’s Prince William County about 150 transit workers who belong to Teamsters Local 639 shutdown the county’s OmniRide system when they struck against the same company. In Columbia, Missouri, transit workers along with other public workers organized and held rallies for a 10 percent pay hike and against a proposed cut in public transit service. Leading the action there is Laborers Local 955. Meanwhile, members of UAW Local 2300, representing transit workers in Ithaca, New York, approved a contract after eight months without one.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/29 – 2/19
OTHER UNIVERSITY WORKER ACTIONS
Awaiting a ratification vote is a contract negotiated by AFT Local 6290 for 600 grad school workers at Temple University in Philadelphia. After 10 months of negotiations, the clerical workers union at Harvard has set up picket lines. And in a new development, undergraduate students at Dartmouth College employed at campus jobs have won a $21 minimum wage after organizing last and recently threatening to strike.
About 100,000 civil servants in the UK are set to strike next month, affecting services around the country. Workers for 124 government departments and agencies will walk out on February. 1, impacting a range of public services including driving tests, passport applications and welfare payments, the Public and Commercial Services Union said in a statement. If the strike takes place, the government workers will join the thousands of rail workers, transport workers National Health Service workers and others already on strike in a series of labor actions the UK has not seen in years as workers protest cuts in pay.
You’re invited! Locker Associates is hosting a Book Launch Party for an important new book, Labor Power & Strategy by John Womack, Jr. and edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perusek.
Place: Locker Associates, 225 Broadway, Suite 2625, NY, NY 10007
Date: February 6th
Time: 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Labor Power & Strategy offers major insights into a key question facing the U.S. labor movement, including how to marshall power to win organizing drives in the twenty-first century. The collection of articles is a must-read for a new generation of labor organizers who are on the front lines at Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joes. Experienced labor leaders will also find this material very stimulating and evocative.
If you would like to attend, please respond to this email at [email protected] by January 23rd.
Last year saw a record 17-year high in strike activity by unions, according to Bloomberg News, driven in part by actions at over 100 Starbucks stores. The number of strikes was more than double the year before, although in terms of the number of workers involved, it did not match the years 2018 and 2019 when strike waves swept educational institutions. In those years, 80 percent of the strikers were in the field of education.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/8-1/15
DISNEY UNIONS RECOMMEND REJECTION OF INSULTING PAY OFFER
The Service Trades Council Union, comprised of six unions representing the 42,000 workers art Disney World in Orlando, Florida, has recommended that its members turn thumbs down on the $1 an hour pay raise offer of Disney in their upcoming contract . The insulting offer to workers, who currently earn an average of $16 an hour, signals tough negotiations ahead.The six unions ion the STCU are IATSE Local 631, Teamsters Local 385, TCU-I(AM Local 1908, UFCW Local 1625, and Unite Here Locals 362 and 737.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/18-1/15
HARPERCOLLINS WORKERS RALLY IN SUPPORT OF STRIKE
In a development in late January, both HarpderCollins and UAW Local 2120, the union representing the 200 HarperCollins who have been out on strike since November, have agreed to a mutually acceptable mediator to help settle the strike.
Workers in the editorial, sales, marketing, and other departments, at HarperCollins publishers, on strike since November 10, marked the 50th day of their strike with a large rally in front of News Corporation in Manhattan, parent company of the publisher. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing media tycoon, and is also the parent company of the ultra-right Fox News.
Union members of UAW Local 2110 are striking for higher pay (their current wage goes not enable them to live in a high priced area like New York so many have to rely on the income of spouses or parents), a commitment to diversifying the staff, and stronger union protection. Negotiations have been going on and off since December 2021 and workers have been working without a contract since April 2022. After months of failed negotiations and a one-day strike on July 20, 2022, the union authorized another strike last November.
“Management has been very uninterested in bargaining with us over our proposals,” said Laura Harshberger, union chairperson and senior production editor for HarperCollins Children’s Books. “I don’t know why the company has been so antagonistic to us this time around … My only understanding of it is that they don’t believe that HarperCollins should have a union, and they’re trying to union-bust, but we’re not letting them.”
The company has hired temporary editors as strikebreakers but many of its authors have refused to work with them and have honored the picket lines.
Among the latest group of workers to vote for union representation are; employees at Peet’s coffee chain in North Davis, California, who voted 14-to-1 to be represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 1021. In their petition for representation, they wrote, “We are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid.” They were assisted in their organizing drive by the Starbucks United union organizers.
Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers. were voted to be the union representing then 250 workers at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The union says it represents about 35,000 workers in cultural institutions nationwide.
Starbucks workers at 100 of their unionized stores staged a weekend strike earlier this month to protest the company’s refusal to bargain with the union. Starbucks has engaged in illegal union-busting tactics like firing union organizers, denying workers at unionized stores the same benefits as other stores, closing unionized stores and other violations of labor laws, all of which the NLRB is investigating. Some 270 stores in the Starbucks chain have voted to be represented by Starbucks Workers United in the past year.
More Perfect Union, 12/17
ILLINOIS GUARANTEES UNION BARGAINING RIGHTS
Amid all the attention paid to candidate races in the November elections some other important issues were on the ballot in several states in the form of referenda. A major one, largely overlooked, was an amendment to the Illinois state constitution guaranteeing the right of workers to organize into unions and the right to collective bargaining. “No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively,” the amendment reads.
It effectively creates a shield against actions taken in many other states that have passed so-called “right-to-work” laws forbidding unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements and laws that cancel or weaken collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public sector workers.
Frustrated by stalled contract negotiations, hundreds of journalists and other staff members at the New York Times staged a one-day strike Dec. 8. Their old contract expired in March 2021 and Times employees, from writers to security guards are increasing upset at the slow pace of negotiations.
Among the issues are retirement benefits and the company’s plan to phase out its pension plan. The Times walkout was one of several newspaper strikes around the country. Journalists are currently striking at the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
NEW MEXICO GRAD SCHOOLWORKERS GAIN UNION CONTRACTS
New contracts for graduate school workers at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University will give them pay raises of 7.12 percent and 5.8 percent respectively. The contracts, negotiated by United Electrical Workers Local 1466 at UNM and Local 1498 at NMSU (UE). also gives them two weeks of paid medical leave each semester and reimbursement for foreign students for the fees they have to pay to work in the United States. The contracts, ratified by the membership this month, were the first at the state’s colleges after staff members chose the UE locals as their bargaining agents.
In another win for UE, members of its Local 696 at Planned Parenthood in Western Pennsylvania ratified their first contract Dec. 12. It provides for an average wage hike of $2- an-hour in the first year and a minimum wage of $20-an-hour minimum base pay after three years of service.
UE News, 12/17
NLRB GETS FUNDING HIKE TO ENFORCE LABOR LAWS
For years, funding for the National Labor Relations Board has been cut to the bare bones, preventing it from adequately enforcing the nation’s labor laws. The result has been the open flouting of these laws by employers. They have engaged in anti-union actions like firing union organizers, delaying union recognition and collective bargaining until union activists are gone and the union is broken, and forcing workers into meetings on company time to hear anti-union harangues.
However, a section in the recent bipartisan spending bill will increase the NLRB budget by nine percent, or an additional $25 million to help it enforce the labor laws. It will go a long way toward relieving the pressure on the board that has seen it forced to reduce its staff by half in recent years even as its workload has increased, particularly in the face of increased union drives and worker demands for union elections.
FEBRUARY BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsSTRIKE VOTE AUTHORIZED AT CATERPILLAR
Caterpillar, the big farm equipment manufacturer, is facing a possible strike in a few weeks after 6,000 members at its plants in Illinois and Pennsylvania voted overwhelmingly to authorize one. Their contract expires March 1. A powerful encouragement for the Caterpillar labor action has been the strike at another farm equipment firm, John Deere, a few months ago that netted the workers a very good contract.
DISNEY WORKERS URGED TO VOTE NO ON LATEST OFFER
The 45,000 members or Florida’s Service Trades Council who work for Disney were urged to vote no on what the company says is its “best offer.” Although the union has not yet voted for an authorization for a strike, the situation remains volatile
KING KULLEN WORKERS AUTHORIZE WAKOUT
On Long Island, New York, several thousand employees of the King Kullen grocery chain, members of Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers voted to authorize a strike. Their contract expired in December.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/22-29
UE REGISTERS BIG WINS AMONG GRAD WORKERS
Thousands of graduate school workers have voted to be represented in collective bargaining by the United Radio and Machine Workers (UE) over the past few weeks. Among them are 3,000 workers at Northwest University in Evanston, Illinois where UE won over 93 percent of the vote and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore which saw 97 percent of its 31,300 grad workers voting to join UE. Still waiting final a final vote count on March 18 are 3,000 more at the University of Chicago.
UE News, 1/18, 2/2
NLRB RULES STARBUCKS UNION-BUSTING BROKE THE LAW
A three-member panel of the NLRB on February 13 upheld a judges finding two years ago that Starbucks repeatedly violated labor law by firing workers who were in the process of organizing a store in Philadelphia. The board the reinstatement wirh back pay for the workers who were dismissed in late 2019 and ealy 2020.
Huffington Post, 2/14
HARPERCOLLINS WORKERS RATIFY NEW CONTRACT
Editors and workers in the marketing, sales and other departments at HarperCollins publishers, who have been out on strike since November 10, have ratified a new contract and returned to work. The contract gains higher pay, a company commitment for more staff diversity, and greater union rights, the three major issues in the strike. A one-time bonus of $1,500 per worker upon ratification was also part of the settlement. HarperCollins is the only one of the five major publishers that is unionized but the settlement has the potential of encouraging unionizing efforts at other publishers.
Vice, 2/17
WARRIOR MET MINERS OFFER TO RETURN TO WORK
In what appears to be a major concession, workers at Wxarrior Met coal in Brookwood, Alabama, on strike for nearly two years have made an unconditional offer tt return to work without a contract. The local of the United Mine Workers union have been on strike over the issue that they made concessions several years ago to keep the company afloat when it was in trouble but the concessions were not rescinded now that the company has become highly profitable. The strike originally involved 1,100 workers but only 800 of them are now available to return to work. During the strike, judges outlawed picketing of the company’s facilities and hundreds of workers scabbed. Union members then picketed the corporate offices of the company in New York The union’s offer recognizes a stalemate in the strike which saw Met Warrior’s quarterly net income drop to $99.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared with $138.5 million for the same period the year before. The fact that it still recorded a healthy profit means that it can afford to negotiate a decent settlement with the union. The union’s offer included the statement that negotiations would continue until a contract is reached.
AL, 2/16
PUBLIC TRANSIT WORKER ACTIONS
Labor actions among workers on public transit lines increased this month. So far, a strike is now in its eighth week in Loudoun County, Virginia, led by the American Transit Union Local 689 against the private company running the system. Not far from there in Virginia’s Prince William County about 150 transit workers who belong to Teamsters Local 639 shutdown the county’s OmniRide system when they struck against the same company. In Columbia, Missouri, transit workers along with other public workers organized and held rallies for a 10 percent pay hike and against a proposed cut in public transit service. Leading the action there is Laborers Local 955. Meanwhile, members of UAW Local 2300, representing transit workers in Ithaca, New York, approved a contract after eight months without one.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/29 – 2/19
OTHER UNIVERSITY WORKER ACTIONS
Awaiting a ratification vote is a contract negotiated by AFT Local 6290 for 600 grad school workers at Temple University in Philadelphia. After 10 months of negotiations, the clerical workers union at Harvard has set up picket lines. And in a new development, undergraduate students at Dartmouth College employed at campus jobs have won a $21 minimum wage after organizing last and recently threatening to strike.
Who Gets the Bird, 1/29 – 2/19
JANUARY BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsSTRIKES ENGULF BRITAIN AS WORKER DISCONTENT RISES
About 100,000 civil servants in the UK are set to strike next month, affecting services around the country. Workers for 124 government departments and agencies will walk out on February. 1, impacting a range of public services including driving tests, passport applications and welfare payments, the Public and Commercial Services Union said in a statement. If the strike takes place, the government workers will join the thousands of rail workers, transport workers National Health Service workers and others already on strike in a series of labor actions the UK has not seen in years as workers protest cuts in pay.
Bloomberg, 1/11; also see Rail Strike Bloomberg, 1/11
BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
“Management has been very uninterested in bargaining with us over our proposals,” said Laura Harshberger, union chairperson and senior production editor for HarperCollins Children’s Books. “I don’t know why the company has been so antagonistic to us this time around … My only understanding of it is that they don’t believe that HarperCollins should have a union, and they’re trying to union-bust, but we’re not letting them.”
The company has hired temporary editors as strikebreakers but many of its authors have refused to work with them and have honored the picket lines.
Publishers Weekly, Jan. 13, Jan. 18; Portside,Jan. 19
LATEST WORKRS TO ORGANIZE
Among the latest group of workers to vote for union representation are; employees at Peet’s coffee chain in North Davis, California, who voted 14-to-1 to be represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 1021. In their petition for representation, they wrote, “We are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid.” They were assisted in their organizing drive by the Starbucks United union organizers.
Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers. were voted to be the union representing then 250 workers at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The union says it represents about 35,000 workers in cultural institutions nationwide.
Portside, 1/24,1/20
DECEMBER BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsUNIONIZED STARBUCKS WORKERS STAGE WEEKEND STRIKE
Starbucks workers at 100 of their unionized stores staged a weekend strike earlier this month to protest the company’s refusal to bargain with the union. Starbucks has engaged in illegal union-busting tactics like firing union organizers, denying workers at unionized stores the same benefits as other stores, closing unionized stores and other violations of labor laws, all of which the NLRB is investigating. Some 270 stores in the Starbucks chain have voted to be represented by Starbucks Workers United in the past year.
More Perfect Union, 12/17
ILLINOIS GUARANTEES UNION BARGAINING RIGHTS
Amid all the attention paid to candidate races in the November elections some other important issues were on the ballot in several states in the form of referenda. A major one, largely overlooked, was an amendment to the Illinois state constitution guaranteeing the right of workers to organize into unions and the right to collective bargaining. “No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively,” the amendment reads.
It effectively creates a shield against actions taken in many other states that have passed so-called “right-to-work” laws forbidding unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements and laws that cancel or weaken collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public sector workers.
Economic Policy Institute, 12/7
NY TIMES STAFF STAGE ONE-DAY STRIKE
Frustrated by stalled contract negotiations, hundreds of journalists and other staff members at the New York Times staged a one-day strike Dec. 8. Their old contract expired in March 2021 and Times employees, from writers to security guards are increasing upset at the slow pace of negotiations.
Among the issues are retirement benefits and the company’s plan to phase out its pension plan. The Times walkout was one of several newspaper strikes around the country. Journalists are currently striking at the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Los Angeles Times, 12/8
NEW MEXICO GRAD SCHOOLWORKERS GAIN UNION CONTRACTS
New contracts for graduate school workers at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University will give them pay raises of 7.12 percent and 5.8 percent respectively. The contracts, negotiated by United Electrical Workers Local 1466 at UNM and Local 1498 at NMSU (UE). also gives them two weeks of paid medical leave each semester and reimbursement for foreign students for the fees they have to pay to work in the United States. The contracts, ratified by the membership this month, were the first at the state’s colleges after staff members chose the UE locals as their bargaining agents.
In another win for UE, members of its Local 696 at Planned Parenthood in Western Pennsylvania ratified their first contract Dec. 12. It provides for an average wage hike of $2- an-hour in the first year and a minimum wage of $20-an-hour minimum base pay after three years of service.
UE News, 12/17
NLRB GETS FUNDING HIKE TO ENFORCE LABOR LAWS
For years, funding for the National Labor Relations Board has been cut to the bare bones, preventing it from adequately enforcing the nation’s labor laws. The result has been the open flouting of these laws by employers. They have engaged in anti-union actions like firing union organizers, delaying union recognition and collective bargaining until union activists are gone and the union is broken, and forcing workers into meetings on company time to hear anti-union harangues.
However, a section in the recent bipartisan spending bill will increase the NLRB budget by nine percent, or an additional $25 million to help it enforce the labor laws. It will go a long way toward relieving the pressure on the board that has seen it forced to reduce its staff by half in recent years even as its workload has increased, particularly in the face of increased union drives and worker demands for union elections.
NY Times, 12/20; The American Prospect, 12/20