Posts tagged Georgetown
Mercedes workers in Alabama reject union, dealing setback to UAW
May 19, 2024 // VW workers twice voted against the UAW before last month's win, and Nissan workers at a plant in Mississippi rejected the UAW by a wide margin in 2017. In 2021, workers at an Amazon.com warehouse in Alabama voted against forming a union by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The loss complicates the story of how the UAW can market its influence, especially in the South, but it likely will not deal a significant blow to the rest of the UAW's organizing efforts, labor experts said.
Workers at Elysian Brewing Have Unionized, and Want to ‘Set a Trend’
September 7, 2023 // Elysian is one of many craft breweries in the U.S. that is owned by multinational beverage titan Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI), which is sometimes vilified by smaller breweries. One curious aspect of the beer industry is that many of the facilities that produce ABI’s best-selling beers, are unionized, but craft breweries are generally non-union. The large number of craft brewers, most of which don’t have many employees, hasn’t been fertile ground for union organizers. But craft brewery employees across the country may be looking at unionization. They’re spurred on (like most workers who consider joining unions) by low pay and poor working conditions, but also by the realization that though craft breweries are often small, the craft industry as a whole is now a big chunk of the overall beer market. As ABI has bought up brewers, “craft” is no longer really synonymous with “small” or “anti-corporate.” (ABI has reportedly laid off workers at breweries this year in response to an overall decline in the craft beer market.)
Union membership grows the fastest of any state in Tennessee over the past two years
January 24, 2023 // The number of Tennessee workers belonging to labor unions has grown over the past two years at the fastest rate of any state in the country. Fueled by a growth in unionized government employees, building trades and autoworkers, union membership in Tennessee jumped by more than 39% from the pandemic low in 2020 to reach 163,000 members last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For all its gains, however, organized labor still represents only a fraction of workers in Tennessee, especially in the private sector. Last year, 5.5% of all workers across Tennessee were union members, or only about half of the 10.1% share of workers nationwide who belong to a labor union, according to the statistics bureau.