Posts tagged industrial action
Port Strike Halts: Now What? Commentary
October 9, 2024 // Even a new contract agreement, if it does not fundamentally address American port uncompetitiveness, would prove to be only a six-year punt. Legislation has been introduced to move port workers from the main National Labor Relations Act governance structure that applies to most private-sector workers to the Railway Labor Act, which governs the railroad and airline industries. This change would give Congress and the administration more power to impose a negotiated settlement and prevent strikes, but the idea has been batted around for nearly a decade.
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
August 11, 2024 // The effect of sectoral bargaining on union corruption would be unclear. Scholars of union corruption have blamed enterprise bargaining combined with union monopoly representation for America’s unusually high levels of labor racketeering. There is truth to this, but it is also not the case that American unions involved in industries with more-sectoral-style approaches are “cleaner.” The New York City garment industry, which was exempted from various Taft-Hartley regulations on union conduct, was believed by the federal government to have been Mob influenced as recently as the 1990s. More recently, the United Auto Workers, which conducts a sort of pseudo-sectoral bargaining with the unionized Detroit Three automakers by “patterning” its contracts, was forced into a regime change after the largest union corruption scandal of the 21st century. Putting more power in the hands of America’s long-standing class of union officials, who are known for having their hands in the cookie jar, certainly is not an obvious approach to reducing or surveilling corruption in organized labor.
Elon Musk’s Tesla is facing more union problems
November 21, 2023 // Swedish dockworkers joined the strike Nov. 7. As of Friday, the dockworker strike expanded to all ports in the country, preventing the off-loading of new Teslas in Sweden. Swedish postal workers have stopped delivering mail to Tesla's offices, and cleaners have refused to clean the company's buildings.
Summer of discontent: will US strikes spell trouble for ‘union guy’ Biden?
July 24, 2023 // On Thursday he was at the Philadelphia Shipyard in Pennsylvania to promote “Bidenomics”, a recently adopted slogan. The president said: “We have a plan that’s turning things around pretty quickly. ‘Bidenomics’ is just another way of saying ‘Restore the American Dream’.” But that message is still struggling to break through with voters. In a CNBC All-America Economic Survey released this week, 37% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and 58% disapprove. In a Monmouth University poll, only three in 10 Americans feel the country is doing a better job recovering economically than the rest of the world since the pandemic. There is a baffling disconnect between these opinions and data that shows America defying predictions of recession and curbing price rises faster than other major economies. Inflation has fallen from 9% to 3% and is now at its lowest point in more than two years.
Already strained supply chain at risk in ongoing port labor talks
June 22, 2022 // Both Tirschwell and Larian point out that it wouldn't take a strike or a management lockout to slow or stop the flow of cargo. In the past, union members have slowed cargo simply by following strictly the terms of their existing contact, rather than trying to work most effectively. "Maybe they won't go on strike, but they can slow down everything," said Larian, the toymaker CEO. "A strike is very unlikely. A lockout is very unlikely," said Tirschwell. "But there's a definite possibility of an industrial action that disrupts the flow of cargo. That's what happened for six months in 2014 and 2015." Jim McKenna, Isaac Larian, Peter Tirschwell,
‘Unions benefit all of us’: new Biden plan encourages federal workers to unionize
February 9, 2022 // Biden said the taskforce’s charge was to identify executive branch policies, practices and programs that could be used “to promote my administration’s policy of support for worker power, worker organizing, and collective bargaining”.
U.S. Refining Output At Stake As Union Prepares To Strike
February 3, 2022 // A refinery strike right now would have an even graver impact on the industry than it would at any other time, with prices at the pump already too high for many. The last time refinery workers striked, in 2015, refineries had to slash production capacity by half, and one refinery shut down completely.