Posts tagged picket lines
Portland Public Schools developing contingency plans before possible teacher strike
October 19, 2023 // With a teacher strike potentially coming, the Portland Public School District began to come up with contingency plans for kids on Wednesday night.
UAW strike update: Union changes approach to adding members to picket lines
October 16, 2023 // UAW President Shawn Fain will no longer wait until Friday to add more union members to the strike, he announced during an update. "We’re entering a new phase of this fight, and it demands a new approach," he said.
The Future of Electric Vehicles Looms Over Negotiations in the US Autoworkers Strike
October 12, 2023 // So far, neither Ford nor Stellantis has agreed to the change, which would pull employees at all 10 U.S. battery factories proposed by Detroit automakers into national contracts with the UAW, all but assuring they'll be unionized. Fain also wants workers at the plants to make top UAW assembly plant wages, which now are $32 per hour. With the UAW strike now in its fourth week, EVs and their potential impact on job security have become central to union negotiations with the automakers. Contract talks are likely to determine whether those plants — mostly joint ventures with South Korean battery companies — are union, which may have long-lasting consequences as the auto industry transforms itself.
As Predicted, UAW Strike Remains Limited, Spares Automakers From Full Walkout
October 11, 2023 // As CEI noted when the strike began, “The claim that this ‘stand up’ approach creates the maximum pressure is bogus. History clearly shows that if a union wants a serious confrontation with the manufacturers, it has all of its members on the picket lines. … The fact that [UAW President Shawn] Fain hasn’t ordered that suggests he doesn’t actually want that or doesn’t think the union could sustain it.” After two weeks, Fain tacitly conceded there had been no progress in the talks, so he upped the pressure to 25,000 workers on the picket lines, or about one-sixth of the UAW’s members. To be clear, this is causing problems for manufacturers. Fain has targeted the plants where work stoppages can cause the most economic damage. Losing $200 million is still real money even for a corporation like GM. But the UAW’s call for wage increases of up to 36 percent, well beyond the 20 percent the auto makers have offered, is something the manufacturer hasn’t budged on yet. And it isn’t likely to so long as only one-sixth of the UAW members are striking.
75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers are on strike
October 4, 2023 // The multi-state strike comes during a time of elevated labor activity in the United States. Several large-scale strikes have paralyzed companies and entire industries in recent months. The United Auto Workers are on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — the first time the union has struck all three simultaneously. The entertainment industry also contended with dual strikes this summer after Hollywood’s writers’ and actors’ unions went on strike at the same time for the first time since 1960. The leadership of the Writers Guild of America reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios last month, but the actors’ guild strike is ongoing. The health care industry has been particularly affected by rising strike activity. From the start of 2022 through August of this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked 42 work stoppages of 1,000 or more strikers. Its count shows a third of those strikes were in health care. That’s up from 24% of major strikes in 2019, the year before the pandemic. The increased number of health care strikes have happened despite health care workers making up only about 9% of private sector union members nationwide.
UAW’s Fain says new strike strategy has produced no ‘meaningful progress’
October 4, 2023 // Why not a full strike? That is what unions traditionally do, after all. The reality is that UAW fears it doesn’t have a deep enough strike fund for a prolonged confrontation. The union is instead making a virtue of necessity by striking in a limited manner and presenting that as a “new strategy.” The UAW strikes have thus far been targeting plants that make parts for dealership. Most car dealerships are independent business that make most of their revenue from servicing existing cars rather than selling new ones. A shortage of parts, UAW hopes, will cause dealerships to pressure the manufacturers to make concessions. The mood was mixed among the UAW members watching the livestream. “It’s not working,” commented Jesse Gonzales. “If it were, we would not have to continue striking more plants.”