Posts tagged SEIU
Caregivers protest union effort to skim home helpers’ pay
April 30, 2025 // The SEIU quietly swept 60,000 home-based caregivers into its ranks in 2005, assisted by a mechanism established under Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Caregivers who did not consent to withdrawals saw the union take money from their paychecks in a practice the Mackinac Center for Public Policy dubbed a dues skim. Home caregivers enjoyed protection from the dues skim for 11 years after the state ended the practice. Last fall, lawmakers reestablished the legal mechanism by which the union could enroll caregivers as members and collect dues. It's not as easy for unions to take that money, however, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2016 Janus v. AFSCME ruling, which protects public sector employees from being required to join a union as a condition of employment.
LA County prepares libraries for strike this week
April 29, 2025 // The SEIU has 55,000 members across all public sectors of L.A. County, according to its website. The union claims the county has repeatedly violated labor laws and failed to bargain in good faith on issues including a cost-of-living increase and health insurance.
U Rochester Ph.D. Student Workers Strike for an Election Without the NLRB
April 27, 2025 // University of Rochester Ph.D. student workers began striking this week to pressure the institution to agree to what they call a “fair union election.” And for the process to be fair, they say, it can’t be handled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board. “We don’t see any kind of path through the NLRB at present,” said George Elkind, a Ph.D. student on the proposed UR Graduate Labor Union’s organizing committee.
Commentary: VA is selectively enforcing Trump’s order stripping workers of union rights
April 22, 2025 // But the same notice, without explanation, exempts eight small labor groups within the VA from Trump’s edict, effectively allowing them to retain their collective bargaining rights. Those unions include the Laborers International Union of North America, the Western Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the Veterans Affairs Staff Nurse Council Local 5032 in Wisconsin, the International Association of Firefighters in Arkansas, the Teamsters Union Local 115 in Pennsylvania and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Hawaii. While Trump’s order exempts law enforcement and firefighter unions from losing their collective bargaining rights, that exception would apply only to the IAFF local.
Chicago Teachers Union secures clean energy wins in new contract
April 22, 2025 // If approved, the contract will result in new programs that prepare students for clean energy jobs, developed in collaboration with local labor unions. It mandates that district officials work with the teachers union to seek funding for clean energy investments and update a climate action plan by 2026. And it calls for installing heat pumps and outfitting 30 schools with solar panels — if funding can be secured. The Southeast Environmental Task Force led the successful fight to ban new petcoke storage in Chicago, and the group’s co-executive director Olga Bautista is also vice president of the 21-member school board. People for Community Recovery was founded by Hazel Johnson, who is often known as “the mother of the environmental justice movement.” And ONE Northside emphasizes the link between clean energy and affordable housing.
Michael Watson: Big ESG’s Big Partner: Big Labor
April 20, 2025 // Unions’ principal interest in the ESG activism movement is on the “S” or “social” prong of the acronym. Both unions themselves, like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and critics of unions, like the Institute for the American Worker, will argue that Big Labor views ESG as a category for advancing union organizing and other core union priorities. Proxy Preview shows unions and union-aligned groups (like city and state pension funds and the largely union-owned and union-controlled Amalgamated Bank) pushing shareholder resolutions demanding that companies “adopt a noninterference policy respecting freedom of association” or “respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining”—euphemisms for neutrality in union organizing. Under a neutrality agreement, the employer agrees not to present its views on the potential consequences of union organizing to employees, and it may agree not to confirm union majority support by a government-supervised secret-ballot election, instead using public union-card signatures (known as “card check”).
The Teamsters’ Trojan Horse
April 16, 2025 // Hawley may believe that Sean O’Brien and his Teamsters Union speak for a new faction of a political coalition he hopes to one day lead. But in an era when fewer than 6 percent of private-industry workers are unionized, O’Brien does not. For that reason, organized labor comfortably lives in the house of the political left — no matter what rhetorical blandishments union bosses like O’Brien contribute in Republican Party meetings, no matter what chump change union PACs give Republicans like Hawley who abandon the party’s traditional labor policies, and no matter what union members like the majority-pro-Trump Teamsters might want their dues to do.
Service union members vote for right to strike in Mayo Clinic negotiations
April 15, 2025 // On Thursday, SEIU members at Mayo-Methodist Campus voted to end a voluntary “no strike” agreement that has been in place for decades. According to a press conference April 10, 87 percent of Service Employees International Union members voted in favor of regaining the right to strike during future negotiations with Mayo Clinic. The SEIU is made up of healthcare workers who do jobs such as sterile processing technicians, certified surgical technologists, linen workers, EVS techs, escorts, maintenance, and patient care assistants.
1199 SEIU boss George Gresham accused of corruption — but no Democrat will investigate
April 14, 2025 // His rivals accuse the chronically ill Gresham (who draws a $300,000 salary) of numerous misappropriations, including: $60,000 to cover his daughter’s room, board and transportation to accompany him on business trips as his caregiver. Over $300,000 on a “get out the vote” concert series that coincided with Gresham family reunions. $17,000 on a hotel next to Montefiore Medical Center when he was receiving dialysis treatment. $86,000 for flights to South Africa in 2014 and 2018. A no-show union job that’s paid a Gresham ally over $1 million since 2009.
Geisinger, nurses union reach contract agreement after months of negotiating
April 14, 2025 // After months of negotiating — and a five-day strike in February that caught national attention — over 800 unionized Geisinger Wyoming Valley nurses have reached a contract agreement with Geisinger executives. According to a release from SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, the contract covers nurses at Geisinger Wyoming Valley, Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre and Geisinger Healthplex CenterPoint in Pittston.