Posts tagged North Carolina
Labor union wants more SC auto workers, manufacturers split on response
January 18, 2023 // The UAW has about 55,000 members working in the southern states — about 15 percent of union active members nationwide — building Daimler trucks in North Carolina, SUVs in Tennessee, and automotive and airplane parts in Alabama. About 2,500 members live in South Carolina, but most are retirees or surviving spouses. The number of working UAW members in South Carolina statewide is 364. Palmetto state’s lack of members is consistent with the state’s overall ranking of having the lowest percentage of unionized workers nationwide — just 2 percent, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Opinion: Liberate markets to help workers succeed
January 10, 2023 // From educational services and child care to transportation, housing, and health care, the Cato team offers sensible reforms that either eliminate barriers to opportunity or make it easier for individuals to spend public dollars in the way most likely to meet their particular needs. As Lincicome observes in the book’s conclusion, our political debate is filled with supposedly “pro-worker” proposals that are based on faulty assumptions about the past, present, and future of the American workplace. Far too many politicians think of workers as “helpless and in need of government protection from cradle to grave, despite the long‐term harms that such policies inflict on these very same workers and the economy more broadly,” he writes. “By contrast, pro‐market policies that respect the individual agency and ability of all workers would allow them to pursue their unique hopes and dreams in a more dynamic, diverse, and high‐wage economy—and to adjust to whatever comes next.”
Right-to-Work battle looms in Michigan: Businesses fear repeal by Democrats
December 5, 2022 // Michigan business groups are wary of Democrats’ calls to repeal Right-to-Work laws when they take charge in Lansing early next year, saying the state instead should focus on economic policies that attract jobs. Business Leaders for Michigan, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and chamber leaders from the state’s two largest cities — Detroit and Grand Rapids — all urge caution. But Democrats — who are backed heavily by unions including the Michigan Education Association and United Auto Workers — say the move prioritizes workers and labor rights.
A new union is born in the South
December 1, 2022 // USSW workers and staff are bullish on their new union, believing that its fusion of labor and human rights organizing will help them secure livable wages, stronger safety protections, control over their work schedules, and new respect for the African Americans and Latinos who make up the majority of their members. They are encouraged by the growing public approval for labor unions and the increase in worker protest during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among essential or frontline workers. They are also building off of nine years of organizing through Raise Up — the Southern expression of the Fight for $15 and a Union and an affiliate of the sprawling Service Employees International Union. Raise Up veterans like Gas and Smalls, and the Durham, North Carolina-based Ieisha Franceis and Jamila Allen, will be critical to the USSW's success. Beginning in September 2020 and continuing over the next year, Franceis and Allen led three walkouts that forced their employer, Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, to agree to their demands for raises, paid leave for employees in quarantine, and new sanitation procedures. Franceis was initially hesitant about striking, but she trusted the much younger and more soft-spoken Allen, who had been meeting with Raise Up organizers for a year and gently prodding her coworkers to take collective action.
WFAE journalists want to become the first public radio station in the Carolinas to unionize. Will they succeed?
November 28, 2022 // WFAE may become the first public radio station in the Carolinas to form a union. On Tuesday, a group of content staff members — hosts, reporters, producers and other journalists — announced their intention to unionize in tweets issued under the handle @wemakewfae. More than 70% of WFAE’s content staff signed on to a petition to form a union, the organizing committee said in the tweet thread and accompanying press release. The petition does not include newsroom managers.
Amazon workers strike amid allegations of crackdown on unionization activities
October 27, 2022 // But Amazon workers plan to fight another union election at Amazon ONT8 warehouse in Moreno Valley, California. They plan to resubmit an election petition in the next few weeks, after an initial one was challenged. In the meantime workers across the US allege that the giant company is conducting a harsh crackdown on unionization activities and they have responded with protests and strikes.
Why Teachers Are Going on Strike This Fall—and What Could Come Next
September 21, 2022 //
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,
Vincent Vernuccio: Time to celebrate and protect worker freedom
March 17, 2022 // A right-to-work law simply means that a union cannot get a worker fired for not paying them. In states without right-to-work laws unions can require private-sector workers to pay union fees just to keep their jobs.