Posts tagged Maryland
Unionized Apple store workers want you to start tipping them
May 5, 2023 // Workers at Apple's first unionized store in suburban Baltimore are pushing for a tipping system. The proposal calls for customers to tip in increments of 3%, 5%, or a custom amount. It's part of a series of new proposals from the union ahead of contract negotiations.
Teachers, employees at MSD vote to unionize
February 16, 2023 // The MSD Faculty and Staff Association has technically existed as a union for decades, but until last week, it didn’t have collective bargaining rights, said Edna Johnston, its president. “It was like a dog without any teeth,” Johnston said in American Sign Language as an interpreter translated. Now that the association has negotiating rights, Johnston said, there are two main areas of focus. One is making sure all MSD employees become part of the state’s formal personnel management system. Currently, Johnston said, about a third of the teachers at the school are contractors, meaning they aren’t eligible for the benefits owed to state employees.
D.C. area farmers’ markets vote to unionize
February 14, 2023 //
Tech Layoffs Threaten Unions’ Plan to Draw White-Collar Workers
January 18, 2023 // Some 500 technology companies have axed nearly 100,000 workers since last October, according to Layoffs.fyi, a public database of tech layoffs. Amazon this month announced it would cut 18,000 jobs, and on the same day, cloud computing company Salesforce and the online video-sharing service Vimeo said they would slash 10% and 11% of their staffs, respectively. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said in November it would eliminate 11,000 jobs—about 13% of its staff. Those reductions in force don’t bode well for unions that have increasingly funneled resources into tech organizing, which was, until recently, seen as an ever-growing pool of potential members. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, last year raised membership fees for the first time in two decades, hoping to raise $10 million a year for new organizing. Union leaders this month flocked to Las Vegas for the CES technology conference, set on understanding how the latest innovations in artificial intelligence could disrupt their industries.
Maryland Gov. Hogan, largest state employee union reach deal on worker pay
January 2, 2023 // The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3 announced late Saturday that the two sides struck a deal affecting more than 30,000 state workers.
Big Tech faces unionization push as employee priorities shift
December 22, 2022 // Big tech firms are gearing up for more labor activism in 2023 after seeing an unprecedented rise in union organization this year. Now Apple and Amazon both felt the effects of these efforts as they tried to navigate the path ahead. Well, joining us now with more is Yahoo Finance's Allie Garfinkle. This really has been an incredible year for unions.
Maryland public defenders overwhelmingly vote to unionize
December 20, 2022 // Employees at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted to unionize, the culmination of a more than two-year organizing effort that required a change in state law. One unit consisting of administrative and support staff voted 45-1 to make the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3 its exclusive bargaining representative. Meanwhile, another unit covering assistant public defenders, intake staff, social workers and investigators voted 233-8 in favor of a union.
What happened to the Apple store union campaign?
August 5, 2022 // “This isn’t Starbucks, where you have 10 employees and can make the decision to organize quickly,” says Dave DiMaria, a representative for IAMAW. “Towson took tons of planning and education. We had all our dominos painstakingly set up before we took this thing public.” Now, Towson workers have elected a bargaining committee and are preparing to negotiate a contract. “We’re in that transition period now,” says Kevin Gallagher, a member of the bargaining committee. “But we’ve been getting a lot of reach outs from other stores. So the idea that it’s gone silent is incorrect; it’s just that stores are attempting to organize as quietly as possible to not bring the wrath that we got or that Atlanta got.” Deirdre O’Brien, John Logan, Beth Allen, communications director at CWA,
Offshore wind boosted as Biden, East Coast governors team up
June 24, 2022 // A national agreement signed with North America’s Building Trades Unions covers contractors working on those projects and future ones, with no termination date on the project labor agreement. It sets the terms and conditions for union workers to build offshore wind farms, with targets to ensure a diverse workforce. It contains provisions for training to ensure they can construct the complex infrastructure, which costs billions of dollars. Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind, David Hayes, Diane Hoskins, Heather Zichal, American Clean Power Association,
Maryland Apple store workers face hurdles after their vote to unionize
June 22, 2022 // Ruth Milkman, Michael Duff, Josh Lipton,