Posts tagged bargaining unit
Governor DeSantis signs bill tightening rules for public sector unions
May 4, 2026 // It requires at least 50% of employees in a bargaining unit to participate in certification or re-certification elections. A majority of those voting must back the union. Police, firefighters, correctional officers, EMTs and other public-safety units are treated differently under the bill.
How Representative Are Pennsylvania’s Public Sector Unions?
April 21, 2026 // In one sense, this is a small ask of union officials, who are already legally bound to fairly represent all employees once the union is certified as representative of a given workplace—whether those employees voted for the union or sign up to become union members. In most states with unionized government workplaces, state agencies, counties, and cities can withdraw recognition from a union and refuse to bargain if they doubt that the union truly represents a majority of their employees. Yet, according to election data obtained by the Commonwealth Foundation, many of Pennsylvania’s government unions won the right to represent workplaces (or “bargaining units”) without majority support from employees. In fact, public records from 302 government union representation elections, conducted from 2011 to 2025, reveal that one in every seven unions won without majority support.
Cemex Survives: Board Declines Chance to Overturn Novel Representation Framework
April 12, 2026 // While many expected that the Board in Trump’s second administration would quickly overturn Cemex, likely via a representation petition – the procedural posture where the issue would first come up – the decision in St. John’s College indicts just the opposite. The Board’s approach here instead appears consistent with the Board’s broader current goal of clearing its substantial backlog, which has led to the Board ruling narrowly in some recent cases. The Board did somewhat expand an employer’s ability to file an RM petition to test a union’s majority status more than two weeks after it received a demand for recognition, but left open the key question of whether a “late” filed RM petition would serve as a defense to a later unfair labor practice charge. We will need to wait for a later unfair labor practice case in order to gain clarity on this important question.
9th Circuit Case Against UTLA Fully Briefed, Awaiting Oral Argument
March 28, 2026 // “UTLA’s position boils down to this: Accept our representation or give up your career,” said Shella Alcabes, Freedom Foundation litigation counsel. “That’s not a choice the Constitution permits the government to impose. These teachers opted out of this union for good reason, and no court has ever said the First Amendment allows what California is doing here.” Among the actions the plaintiffs attribute to UTLA: spending $700,000 to elect a school board candidate who promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories; funding members’ attendance at anti-Jewish rallies; endorsing a “Teach Palestine” curriculum that misrepresents Jewish history; and, passing resolutions supporting the BDS campaign against Israel.
CTU alleges rival union conspired with the boss in fight over low-wage CPS employees
February 3, 2026 // In an escalation of an ongoing turf war over low-wage school district employees, the Chicago Teachers Union has accused the Chicago Board of Education of conspiring with a rival union to undermine its bargaining unit. The allegation is the latest example of ongoing acrimony between the two once-allied progressive labor unions, a fracture with major implications for city politics and for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union called the accusation of conspiring with the boss “unfortunate, baseless, and unsupported by any evidence” and said its goal was only to improve the wages and working conditions of the workers.
Some Post-Gazette workers call for new union leadership
January 25, 2026 // The division comes roughly three weeks after the paper’s publisher, Block Communications Inc., announced the decision to shutter the paper in May. It followed failed attempts to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a lower court order that required the company to make changes to its health insurance coverage for union workers.
MICHIGAN: SEIU gains power over 32,000 workers with 4,200 votes
October 30, 2025 // This is the second time in recent decades that the SEIU has installed its dues skim, which takes money from people who receive state stipends to care for someone else, usually a family member. It did so after receiving a majority vote from a tiny fraction of those it purports to represent before state officials. There are 32,000 home health care providers in the Michigan. Only 5,527 valid ballots were cast on the matter of unionization, with 4,205 votes in favor. Another 1,502 providers voted against the effort, according to the Michigan Employment Relations Commission.
‘Harder for All of Us’: Confusion Reigns After Harvard Excludes 900 Grad Students From Union
August 19, 2025 // Lindsey E. Adams, a Ph.D. student in Harvard’s virology program, opened her pay stub on July 1 to a strange sight: Her research stipend was no longer listed as a union stipend, and no union dues were deducted from her pay. But nothing about Adams’ job was different — not her hours, not her supervisor, not the lab where she works or the tasks she completes every day. “My work day-to-day has not changed at all,” she said. Adams was one of the more than 900 students on research-based stipends removed from Harvard’s graduate student union’s bargaining unit in July shortly after the union’s second contract with the University expired.
Penn Museum workers demand raises, protest Univ. pay proposals in picket after authorizing strike
July 10, 2025 // “The average annual salary in the bargaining unit is less than $45,000,” Shaw said. “We’re looking for raises that will not only allow workers to keep up with increases in the cost of living, but to do better over time.” Union leaders also handed out flyers that emphasized Penn’s continued “lowball pay proposals” despite the University’s “annual operating budget of $4.7 billion.” “It’s not so much to ask from the University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer and one of the wealthiest in the city,” Shaw said.
Democracy in the Workplace Is Under Threat
June 30, 2025 // The National Labor Relations Board, which the NLRA created, initially agreed with the majority-of-a-unit standard. In a 1936 decision involving Chrysler, the board rejected a unionization election in which only 125 out of an eligible 700 workers had voted. While 97 percent of the voting workers supported organizing, the board rightly concluded that a mere 17 percent of workers didn’t represent the views of the majority. The law’s text required that ruling. But the NLRB reversed course within months, giving a minority of workers the power to determine the majority’s future in a case involving newspaper workers. In a separate decision, the board declared that it couldn’t require a majority of workers to vote in favor of unionization, nor could it require the lower bar of a quorum. The NLRB, in the 1930s, defended its rejection of the law’s plain text by saying that, with a majority requirement, “the purpose of the [NLRA] would be thwarted.” But the board itself is doing the thwarting of workers’ rights and workplace democracy.