Posts tagged Unionization
LACMA Declines to Voluntarily Recognize Union Formed by Hundreds of Workers
November 8, 2025 // The AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36, a division of the national AFSCME Cultural Workers United, has helped workers unionize at other leading LA museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Foundation, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and La Brea Tar Pits. At the national level, AFSCME Cultural Workers United represents employees at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Earlier this week, employees at the Detroit Institute of Arts announced plans to join AFSCME Michigan. In its new statement, LACMA United said that the museum’s status as a county museum makes management’s position “particularly troubling,” noting that, unlike mutual-benefit nonprofits, LACMA was established by Los Angeles County as a public-benefit corporation and receives more than $30 million in public funding each year.
California Just Blew Past Last Year’s Record — And We’re Still Climbing
November 7, 2025 // California public employees are opting out of their unions in record numbers thanks to the work of the Freedom Foundation. Last year, 16,500 chose freedom over union control, while this year we’ve already eclipsed that mark by more than 20 percent with a few months of the year left – at over 20,000 opt outs! This has cost the unions an estimated $17,100,00 in one year alone and will only compound moving forward.
Declining union membership could be making working-class Americans less happy and more susceptible to drug overdoses
November 6, 2025 // We are continuing to research the connections between union membership and public health. The next question we are working on is whether a decline in union membership can have a multigenerational impact, going beyond the workers employed today and affecting the lives of their children and grandchildren.
‘Scabby the Rat’ mascot slashed outside reopening of iconic NYC eatery Babbo — sparking cops’ raid
November 3, 2025 // Then Haack said he turned to his rat and saw where the hissing sound was coming from: a fresh, 8-inch gaping hole on its right thigh. “The man who approached me is still outside and some others and they kind of chuckle, acknowledging what just happened,” Haack said. “I’m sure they at least found it funny.” Haack called 911. Within five minutes, up to 10 NYPD officer arrived at the restaurant’s Waverly Place address in squad cars with their lights and sirens blaring.
Commentary: Massachusetts Voters Support Unions for Uber Drivers
October 31, 2025 // The numbers needed to unionize the rideshare drivers are shockingly low. According to Axios, just 5% of all drivers need to sign on, and then 25% of so-called “active drivers” must support forming a bargaining unit, i.e., a group of employees who negotiate with management. After that threshold is met, the state recognizes a union that will represent all drivers—whether they supported it or not. In other words, if you’re an independent rideshare driver in Massachusetts, you don’t get a choice. The union chooses for you. Moreover, if 5% of workers want to form a union, every rideshare company must provide every driver’s contact information to union officials. Nationwide, the threshold for forming a bargaining unit is a majority vote. Massachusetts is now proposing to impose compulsory unionization with far less support—and with sectoral bargaining that extends far beyond one workplace and into the cars of rideshare drivers across the Bay State.
MICHIGAN: SEIU gains power over 32,000 workers with 4,200 votes
October 30, 2025 // This is the second time in recent decades that the SEIU has installed its dues skim, which takes money from people who receive state stipends to care for someone else, usually a family member. It did so after receiving a majority vote from a tiny fraction of those it purports to represent before state officials. There are 32,000 home health care providers in the Michigan. Only 5,527 valid ballots were cast on the matter of unionization, with 4,205 votes in favor. Another 1,502 providers voted against the effort, according to the Michigan Employment Relations Commission.
Commentary: Trumpworld thinks overturning this Biden labor rule gives GOP a double-digit midterm elections boost
October 29, 2025 // Only 22% of respondents in Fabrizio’s poll supported the NLRB’s 2023 rule “that allowed unions not to use secret ballots,” with 64% opposed. Fabrizio wrote that Republican Congressional candidates “would benefit significantly from supporting overturning this unpopular rule.” “The initial generic ballot is a statistical dead heat, 44% Democrat – 43% Republican (D+1), but if the Republican candidate supported overturning the NLRB rule so workers could once again rely on secret ballots when voting to unionize, the Republican pulls into a 47% – 36% (R+11) lead, a 12-point shift,” the memo reads. “Among Swing voters, the Republican goes from 1-point ahead to 17-points.”
Seven years after Janus, public employees still can’t quit their unions
October 24, 2025 // Seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision established that public employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues, a troubling pattern has emerged: unions nationwide are systematically obstructing workers’ rights to resign. Consider Chaquan May, a California in-home caregiver, who has spent more than two years trying to resign from SEIU Local 2015.
Workers at Major D.C. Concert Venues Launch Unionization Effort
October 22, 2025 // Production staff as well as employees in food services, box office and those staffing the door at D.C.’s 9:30 Club, a well-known venue that helped launched the careers of bands including Nirvana and R.E.M, as well as at The Anthem, one of the larger East Coast venues with a capacity of 6,000, The Atlantis and Lincoln Theatre, have asked management at I.M.P. to allow the process to move forward for voluntary recognition of the unionization efforts.
Caregivers sue state over ‘false’ public employee classification
October 20, 2025 // The practice drew widespread condemnation when the Mackinac Center brought it to light early in the previous decade. But the SEIU refused to accept defeat after the Legislature ended the practice. The union struck back with a 2012 ballot initiative that failed by a 56% to 44% vote. Following that failure, SEIU used various means to keep alive the idea that home care workers are employees of the government. The union got its second chance last year, when the Democratic trifecta under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer quietly enacted laws classifying home care workers as public employees and opening caregivers’ personal records to the union. As happened in 2005, the SEIU got its win, but with a very small vote.