Posts tagged CWA
Google lays off contractors who unionized last month
July 17, 2023 // “Last week we received news that 80 of our nearly 120 recently unionized Google Help coworkers would be laid off,” said Julia Nagatsu Granstrom, Senior Writer and member of the Alphabet Workers Union- CWA. “We had exercised our right to organize as members of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA in order to bring both Google and Accenture, a Google subcontractor, to the bargaining table to negotiate on several key demands, including layoff protections.” Nagatsu Granstrom describes the layoffs as “absolutely unacceptable,” given the timing of an active union campaign “with overwhelming support from workers.”
Cummings wins runoff, will be Communications Workers first African-American president
July 12, 2023 // Cummings is the union vice president who leads CWA’s District 6, headquartered in Austin, Texas, and was the longtime president of Houston-based Local 6222. He defeated Ed Mooney, the union vice president and leader of mid-Atlantic District 2-13. Cummings succeeds current President Chris Shelton, who is retiring at the end of this convention, on July 13, in St. Louis. Mooney suffered from credible accusations, disclosed by an outside investigating panel after complaints from nine former and present local leaders of sexual harassment, dislike of gays, bullying, intimidation, and retaliation against foes within the union.
St. Louis Public Radio’s news, programming and marketing employees vote to unionize
July 7, 2023 // Seventy-eight percent of the eligible employees voted yes this week to create the St. Louis Public Radio Guild, part of the Communications Workers of America. The STLPR Guild is the first public media union in Missouri. The vote was conducted under laws governing public-sector employees via a secret ballot, administered by the Missouri Board of Mediation. The results will be certified after a 10-day waiting period, as required by board policy.
Sega of America workers in Irvine file for union election
May 1, 2023 // 144 employees seeking to unionize want higher wages, improved benefits and increased staffing, among other upgrades
Phoenix CenturyLink Employee Wins Federal Case Charging CWA Union with Illegal Dues Seizures
April 6, 2023 // CenturyLink Communications employee Adrianna Delatorre has forced Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7019 union officials to back down in her federal case, in which she charged them with seizing dues money illegally from her wages. Delatorre, who filed charges against both the CWA union and her employer at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in May 2022, received free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys. Delatorre asserted in her charges that CWA union bosses violated her rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by rejecting her clear notice that she was resigning union membership and ending union dues deductions from her paycheck. The NLRA guarantees American private sector employees the right to “refrain from any or all” union activities, with some restrictions not applicable to Delatorre. Delatorre’s right to cut off financial support to the CWA union she opposes is fully protected by Arizona’s Right to Work law,
Graduate Unions: Why Student Workers at University of California, Temple, More Are Striking
March 27, 2023 // HELU was founded in 2021 in an effort to fill those shoes. At a digital summit that July, members of 75 unions and labor organizations convened to draft a “vision platform” laying out everything from their legislative commitments (like Sen. Bernie Sanders’s College for All Act) to their support of student debt cancelation. The endgame is a unified academic labor movement capable of securing public investment and reorienting higher ed to “prioritize people and the common good over profit and prestige.” To date, 130 unions and affiliated groups representing over half a million workers have endorsed the platform. The first step in realizing this vision, says Jaime, who attended the 2021 summit, is to build union density. “Transforming academia is not going to happen in one single contract campaign. We have to organize workers in every single university in order to achieve real change,” he says.
eBay Finally Has Its First Worker Union in 27 Years
March 16, 2023 // Workers at TCGPlayer, the trading card marketplace bought by eBay in 2022, voted to unionize on Friday.
Workers rally to shine spotlight on ‘union-busting’ efforts at Orchard Park animal hospital
March 7, 2023 // Workers at a local animal hospital are looking to shine a spotlight on what they are calling “union busting” efforts there. Workers at the Orchard Park Veterinary Medical Center voted to unionize last year, amid worker shortages. As of this time last year, the American Animal Hospital Association reported, there were about $118,000 veterinary technicians in the U.S., at the end of 2019. About two-thirds of those vet techs are not credentialed and by the year 2030.
PHILADELPHIA: Former City Councilmember Bobby Henon is facing sentencing for a bribery conviction. Here’s what you should know.
March 1, 2023 // A former electrician and the political director of the politically powerful union of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he was elected to Council in 2011 backed by union money and support. While in office, Henon remained on Local 98′s payroll — at a salary of more than $70,000 per year — in addition to collecting his $140,000 paycheck from the city. At Dougherty’s urging, the jury found, Henon drafted and, in some cases, introduced legislation — aimed at punishing a towing company that had attempted to tow the union leader’s car and at supporting his bid to become head of the Building Trades Council, an umbrella group of the city’s labor unions. He granted Dougherty outsized influence during negotiations over the city’s 15-year franchise agreement with Comcast, a potentially lucrative deal for Local 98′s members. Henon was also convicted of a separate bribery scheme in which he extorted a $5,000 bribe in the form of a campaign contribution from the Communication Workers of America, when the union in 2015 needed his help in an ongoing dispute with Verizon. Among those pledging their support: former Gov. Ed Rendell, AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding, Local 98 spokesperson Frank Keel, former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, City Commissioner Lisa Deeley, and City Councilmembers Mark Squilla and Michael Driscoll. Driscoll was elected to Henon’s Council seat in a special election following his conviction in 2021.
New York’s biggest labor actions of the past year
February 28, 2023 // Only one other state, Hawaii, has a unionization rate higher than New York’s 20.7%. In the public sector, just around two-thirds of New Yorkers are in a union. In 2022 alone, nearly 200 workplaces in the state filed for representation through the National Labor Relations Board. But, despite the hype and a 57-year high in Americans’ approval of labor unions, New York’s union participation (and the country’s as a whole) is still trending downward. In 2012, 23.2% of New York workers were union members, 2.5 points higher than it is today. CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies Labor Department Chair Ruth Milkman said that despite 2022’s historic union victories, many were with small firms. “So all this publicity and media attention to these iconic companies that have had some recent experience of successful unionization, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the whole labor market in New York,” she said.