Posts tagged Service Employees International Union
Commentary: The Big Fear? A Real Rematch
July 6, 2024 // Just a few hours after the court’s ruling dropped late last week, allowing both ballot measures to proceed, the Massachusetts attorney general made an announcement of her own. She agreed to a deal that will let Uber and Lyft drivers in Massachusetts remain independent contractors, with a minimum hourly wage of $32.50 and some benefits. Interestingly, the attorney general’s announcement noted that the deal averts giving the people of Massachusetts a chance to vote on the matter:
Michigan Senate bills would revive dues skim for home health workers
March 19, 2024 // Senate Bill 790, which was submitted Thursday by Sen. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores. Officially, the 15-page bill says it would create the Home Health Caregiver Council, a seven-member board that would oversee issues involving those workers. The council would set compensation rates and issue checks for home health workers. It would also be authorized to deduct union fees. Under the previous iteration of dues skim, the Service Employees International Union pulled in about $34 million between November 2006 and February 2013.
Chair Foxx Investigates 12 Unions for Recent Fraud, Corruption Seeks answers on protecting workers from further union malfeasance
March 18, 2024 // “The Committee on Education and the Workforce (Committee) is concerned about fraud, embezzlement, and corruption perpetrated by union officials. To ensure workers represented by labor organizations are shielded from malfeasance by union officials, the Committee requests documents and information relating to…efforts to protect employees and deter fraud, corruption, and improper accounting.”
The Year of the Union…Corruption?
February 1, 2024 // According to an annual report by the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), over 155 criminal investigations into union-related activity were completed over the past year. As a result, the OLMS distributed 39 indictments and collected 57 convictions for numerous offenses ranging from petty theft to labor racketeering. While these findings are certainly disturbing, they likely only represent a drop in the bucket of national union corruption. This is because, according to the Department of Labor, it is simply “not feasible” to audit every union. Instead, forced to optimize limited resources against widespread corruption, the OLMS has developed an auditing methodology for unions whose “metrics suggest the possibility that there may have been criminal activity.” In 2023, the OLMS conducted 222 of these targeted audits, ultimately finding that 18.3% of these cases warranted criminal action. With nearly 1/5 of audits uncovering some form of wrongdoing, even in the limited sampling size permitted by OLMS resources, it is fair to say that corruption is entrenched within the American labor movement.
Despite more ‘salting,’ labor unions are getting pushback in their drive to organize restaurants
January 24, 2024 // While unions "salt" more restaurants with organizers posing as employees, a countermovement is building among the already-unionized to end their representation by groups like Workers United, as this week’s episode of the Working Lunch podcast attests. The broadcast features a guest appearance by Mark Mix, president of the Right to Work Committee. The group helps organized employees across all industries to vote on whether to remain in their unions, a process known as decertification. He spoke a day after Workers United, the parent of the union that’s organized 375 Starbucks units, decided to end its representation of an Ultimo Coffee café. All but one employee of the store had signed a petition asking federal regulators to permit a vote on whether to oust the labor group.
Philadelphia Ultimo Coffee Workers Win Bid to Remove So-Called “Workers United” Union
January 9, 2024 // Ultimo employees are third recent group of coffee shop workers in Philly to kick out an unwanted union, as Center City Starbucks workers await vote to remove SBWU Tarasenko and his colleagues join Starbucks workers and other coffee employees across the country in banding together to vote out WU union officials, who have targeted coffee shops nationwide for unionization. This year, Starbucks employees in Manhattan, NY; two Buffalo, NY locations; Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; Greenville, SC; Oklahoma City, OK; and San Antonio, TX, have all sought free Foundation legal aid in filing or defending decertification petitions at the NLRB.
Opinion: Radical Unions Elected Biden, Chaos Ensues on International Front, but Others Bank on Same Formula
October 26, 2023 // Additionally, Biden unveiled a $400 billion American Jobs Plan designed to force thousands of Medicaid home healthcare providers back into the union membership they declined following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Harris v. Quinn. Unofficially, Biden waited weeks to survey the damage in fire-ravaged Hawaii and still hasn’t visited East Palestine, Ohio, where a 38-car train wreck last February created a huge hazardous waste disaster. But he saw fit to wade into a private-sector labor dispute by siding with the striking United Auto Workers and became the first sitting president in history to join a picket line.
The year of the strike: what’s causing this labor movement and the potential impact
October 16, 2023 // Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows the number of workers striking fell sharply in 2020 and 2021 but then jumped 50 percent last year alone. Labor historians said another factor is the victory after some of these strikes. “As workers do engage in these actions, they encourage each other, to emulate the demands and to emulate the tactics in some ways,” said Joseph McCartin, labor historian at Georgetown University.
‘I don’t think it’s too much’: Waffle House workers push for $25 an hour
October 16, 2023 // John Schuessler, a Waffle House worker in South Carolina, explained that due to the low wages, he struggles to afford groceries, clothes for his child, are behind on mortgage payments Pauletta Dillard, a Waffle House server in South Carolina, said the $3 an hour pay plus tips has been roughly the same pay for the past two decades, while more work is put on workers. Workers also explained the security issues they face working the third shift, where customers are often intoxicated and violence in the restaurant between customers or directed at workers has occurred and fights at the chain have often gone viral.
Three California State University unions reach labor agreements. What raises did they win?
October 13, 2023 // Starting Oct. 1, 2025, the union would move to a new 20-step merit system where salaries are determined based on the years of service an employee has completed. Each step up comes with a 2% raise. CSUEU staff indicated that each employee’s raise in the third year would vary greatly depending on how far behind their salary step they currently are. “This tentative agreement establishes an equitable salary structure with steps, which will help address the University’s recruitment and retention crisis,” wrote Catherine Hutchinson, CSUEU president, in a statement Thursday afternoon. “Pending ratification, we believe this agreement raises the bar and paves the way for our other union siblings across the system.”