Posts tagged equity
Opinion: Union wants a second helping of nutso, corrupt Cali fast-food law
August 6, 2024 // Higher wages mean a higher bar of entry for kids looking for summer jobs and low-education adults looking for stable work. And higher prices for consumers already rocked by inflation. Sure seems like progressives don’t really care much about the little guy they allegedly stand up for.
Teamsters social media rips union president in critical, now-deleted post
July 18, 2024 // “The message this sends to Teamsters of color, Teamsters women, and LGBTQ Teamsters is that they are not welcome in the union unless they surrender their identity to a new kind of anti-woke unionism,” the account wrote. “You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at this diversity.” The account also suggested that O’Brien was endorsing what it said was an attempt by Hawley to tie bigotry to a “cynical pro-labor message.” During his speech at the RNC, O’Brien suggested that the union could revert from its historic posture of endorsing Democrats. The Teamsters account later posted that the union wasn’t “beholden to anyone or any party.”
Actors’ Equity Association halts future development contracts in wake of stalled negotiations
June 21, 2024 // Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theater, has followed through on a notice it had given to cease issuing contracts for work on its Development Agreement, effective immediately.
Proposal giving most Denver employees collective bargaining rights moves forward
June 7, 2024 // Public safety officers, career service employees of the Denver Health and Hospital Authority, employees with managerial duties and hiring capacities, and certain political appointees would be excluded from collective bargaining under the proposal. What's next: If voters approve the measure, it would go into effect on May 1, 2025. Denver would join cities like Detroit, Seattle and Portland with similar rights for its municipal staff if successful
Baltimore Museum of Industry’s new exhibit looks at modern labor movement
June 7, 2024 // A new exhibit examines calls for changes in the workforce that drove workers in non-trade jobs to create collective bargaining agreements across the country. The "Collective Action: Labor Activism in 20th Century Baltimore" exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, is about workers rallying for unions, and it dives into who wants change and why. Advertisement Workers in several industries are banding together and calling for better pay and conditions. The exhibit reveals professions some may be surprised to learn were involved in the efforts.
Disneyland will work with union representing character performers
June 4, 2024 // While most of Disneyland's 35,000 employees are represented by 26 unions, the park's 1,100 character performers and 600 parade performers and support staff had not been unionized until now. California's minimum wage increased to $16 an hour in 2024 with the hourly rate set to rise to $18 in 2025. After a lengthy court fight, Anaheim's Measure L boosted Disneyland's minimum wage to nearly $20 an hour.
Wesleyan Grad Students Move to Unionize
April 25, 2024 // Graduate students at Yale had their union recognized in January 2023, and Harvard graduate students had their first contract with the administration in January 2021. UConn has had a graduate and postdoc union since 2013. Sagarian said one of the biggest drivers for the Wesleyan students to unionize was the issue of pay equity across departments. Sagarian said that the graduate students in music have historically tended to make less than graduate students in other departments.
Unionized Science Museum workers await contract as cultural nonprofits face changing labor market
April 1, 2024 // Inspired in part by pandemic-era lay-offs, as well as record inflation, Twin Cities labor movements have seen an uptick in mobilization. Janitors, school teachers, university graduate students, plow truck operators, firefighters, nurses, rideshare drivers and coffeeshop baristas have all recently taken their arguments for better pay and working conditions to the public picket line, or threatened to. Museums have had a lower-profile in those labor efforts, but workers at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and Science Museum all have unionized in the past four years with the goal of collective bargaining for employee-friendly contracts. Most of the Science Museum’s workers were laid off and sent home when the pandemic forced closures in March 2020, only to be gradually called back months later into a climate marked by social distancing and general uncertainty. Hazard pay for frontline staff in visitor services disappeared after a few months. Workers rallied and got it back.
Strike at MASS MoCA end after union members ratify a deal with museum management
March 29, 2024 // The union, created in March 2021 under Local 2110 United Auto Workers, had been negotiating with museum management since October. As part of these negotiations, MASS MoCA offered to raise its minimum hourly wage by a dollar to $17.25, according to a March 1 press release from the museum. The union had proposed $18.25. “Equity and wage increases for MASS MoCA’s staff have never been a matter of if, but a matter of how fast,” Director Kristy Edmunds wrote in a statement on Wednesday. The museum said new wages will go into effect within 30 days of the agreement.
Op-ed: Diversity, equity, and exclusion: How the NLRB’s double standard on job-related speech hurts workers
March 22, 2024 // The NLRB in 2020 required Amazon to reinstate a male worker who had used a bullhorn to call a female colleague a “gutter bitch” and “crack ho,” among other misogynistic insults. The bullhorn-wielding worker had been engaged in a one-man union protest when the female co-worker told him to quiet down. The union activist replied with a string of insults that would be clear proof of a hostile workplace under any other circumstances. The NLRB nevertheless sided with the union activist, as it usually has in such situations. The board has long believed that allowances must be made for heated rhetoric when workers are engaged union-related activities. So, you cannot question a workplace diversity policy publicly at work and you cannot criticize the policy outside of work in the private-yet-public world of social media. Either one can get you fired for creating a hostile work environment. But a male worker can be openly hostile and insulting to female co-workers if the man is affiliated with a union.