Posts tagged COVID-19
Graduate students organize a push for unionization
September 7, 2023 // Chase said Iowa State’s potential union will be able to rely on UE for assistance in negotiations. “For example, University of Iowa is able to lean on their parent union and say, ‘Hey, we want an increase in salary, we want more health care supports,’ or ‘We want to waive or reduce these student fees,’ and through collective bargaining, they can negotiate for those things,” Chase said. Cain spoke on how graduate students are not considered employees, but they are held to the same standards as faculty.
Nearly four decades after infamous strike, Hormel workers in Austin march on Labor Day for better pay
September 6, 2023 // Meatpacking workers in Austin say they need a raise from Hormel Foods Corp. to keep pace with inflation and potentially avert a strike. The Labor Day march aimed to rally support as the local United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) bargaining team and Hormel leadership are running out of time to negotiate a new four-year contract. Many carried the memory of the bitter 1985-86 strike against Hormel, one of the most infamous episodes in modern U.S. labor history. Workers stopped at the Spam Museum, raising as much noise as possible while onlookers took video on their phones, then went north to Hormel offices and the Spam Museum's former location, before returning to the Austin Labor Center just a few blocks west of the Cedar River. As of last week, workers are seeking $6.50 wage increases by September 2025, while Hormel is offering $2.15 over four years. The two sides are also split on insurance increases, bereavement and pension increases, among other issues. The contract talks come as Hormel profits, and the prices of bacon, turkey and other commodities, dip as markets adjust to post-pandemic conditions. The company recently lowered its financial forecast for the rest of 2023, estimating its sales will decline as much as 4% or remain flat compared to 2022.
COMMENTARY: What Big Labor Doesn’t Want You to Know This Labor Day
September 5, 2023 // "Yet, instead of adapting and finding ways to still provide value to workers, unions have maintained strictly seniority-based compensation structures and rigid workplace rules that reduce workers’ productivity, pay, and flexibility. That ends up hurting workers who desire autonomy and flexibility. For example, young workers who are parents typically lack the seniority needed to choose the hours they want. And workers who want to put in extra effort to earn a pay raise have little incentive to do so because most union contracts prohibit employers from giving employees performance-based pay raises or bonuses that exceed the union-negotiated pay scales."
Elisabeth Messenger: Where Do Your Union Dues Go?
September 1, 2023 // I think when a union can stay very independent and hyper-local, it can be what it was meant to be, and that is a force to speak for all, to help all, to protect all, to raise all at the same time. But again, it’s only when it’s independent it’s not tied to a national, bloated corporate union. And it’s only when it’s at the local level.
From Detroit to Hollywood, New Union Leaders Take a Harder Line
August 18, 2023 // The full-throated demands can also backfire in economic terms. Yellow, a trucking company with 30,000 employees, declared bankruptcy several months after talks with the Teamsters broke down. The company’s chief executive said in a statement that the Teamsters’ intransigence drove Yellow out of business, though analysts note that the company showed signs of mismanagement for years. The risks may be even higher in industries under pressure to embrace a new business model. The major U.S. automakers have said that they need the ability to team up with nonunion battery manufacturers to secure additional capital and expertise. But Mr. Fain, the new U.A.W. president, has said that the failure to organize more battery workers was a major failure of his predecessors, and that battery workers must receive the same pay and working conditions that union workers enjoy at the Big Three. Many U.A.W. members say the tension between the automakers’ goals and the union’s indicates that a strike will be hard to avoid when their contract expires in mid-September. But they do not appear to be shrinking from that possibility.
Feds: Carpenters union gets $183M of stimulus to restore cut pensions
August 18, 2023 // The retirement plan covering nearly 5,400 Southwest Ohio union carpenters got a nearly $183 million government bailout on Tuesday, according to an announcement by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The money comes from a program aimed at shoring up pension plans, created as part of the broader stimulus package enacted in 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The money will benefit members of the Southwest Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Plan, which in 2019, slashed pension benefits for thousands of members by an average of 18% to remain solvent. PBGC’s approval enables the plan to restore benefits previously suspended and to make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit suspensions, the federally chartered corporation said in a statement. The funding will enable the plan to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future.
After unionizing last summer, some Utah Starbucks workers now want out
August 4, 2023 // Before a petition can be filed, federal labor law says a year must pass after a successful union vote and 30% of a location’s workers need to support decertification. The National Right to Work Foundation, which is providing free legal representation to the workers who support the petition, said a contingent of the store’s workers don’t want the union to have “monopoly representation powers” when negotiating with the company. “They called us,” said foundation president Mark Mix. “They walked through this process and we [are helping] them get an election. That's the goal, not to put our thumb on the scale one way or the other, but just get the election so that their voices can be heard in the workplace.”
GPO vacates regional offices, embraces 100% telework for all eligible employees
August 4, 2023 // In contrast to GPO’s latest decision, many executive branch agencies have started announcing upcoming increases to their requirements for employees to work in the office. Federal News Network has compiled a running list of what we know so far about agencies’ return-to-office plans. GPO is unlike other federal agencies, Somerset told Federal News Network. Consequently, the Office of Management and Budget memo from April does not apply to GPO. Still, the agency is continuing to measure productivity in its workforce, similar to executive branch agencies. “GPO runs as a business, so our primary measurement of productivity is revenue,” Somerset said in an email.
Teamsters Sacrifices 30,000 Workers: 3 Ways Union Contributed to Yellow Trucking’s Demise
August 2, 2023 // A key reason Yellow was said to be closing its doors is that the union was refusing Yellow’s restructuring and modernization efforts. Part of that restructuring would have included efficiency savings by enabling an additional 600 utility truck drivers to also sometimes perform dock work, but the union controls what tasks workers are allowed to perform, and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien asserted that this restructuring “would have decimated thousands of Teamsters jobs.” Instead, the union’s refusal to allow company management to do what it felt necessary to save the business contributed to the decimation of 22,000 Teamsters jobs.
LA Strikes Embody Widespread Anxiety Over Worker Pay, Rise of AI
July 31, 2023 // The city has almost accidentally become a microcosm for worker unrest. Actors and writers—on strike simultaneously for the first time since 1960—have paralyzed Hollywood. Cleaners and cooks are sporadically picketing outside hotels, including the Beverly Hilton, the longtime venue of the Golden Globe Awards. Thousands of UPS drivers could strike next week if the Teamsters rank and file don’t quickly approve a tentative agreement announced Tuesday, following in the footsteps of port workers who walked off the job last month. Los Angeles Unified School District teachers also went on strike this year, winning a 30% pay increase after more than 400,000 students were out of class for three days. And in May, performers at a North Hollywood bar formed the first strippers’ union in the US in nearly three decades. Companies say they’re being unfairly blamed for the rising cost of living while they try to find common ground with unions—a dominant source of worker angst that has also resulted in California having the highest rate of homelessness in the nation.