Posts tagged unionize
OREGON: A Union Asks Lawmakers to Repeal a Ballot Measure the Same Union Passed at Great Expense
February 16, 2026 // UFCW wasn’t finished. In 2024, the union spent another nearly $2.9 million to put on the ballot and pass Measure 119, which achieved what Holvey denied UFCW one year earlier—a law making it easier to unionize cannabis workers. As Selvaggio acknowledged Feb. 10, that victory proved short-lived. He told lawmakers that subsequent conflicting federal court decisions in California and Oregon convinced UFCW that a challenge to Measure 119, now law, could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has generally been unfriendly to organized labor under Trump appointees. Selvaggio said the issue “could be weaponized against working people,” and so he asked the House Rules Committee on Feb. 10 to support repealing Measure 119 via House Bill 4162.
New Bill Would Allow Virginia Public Workers to Unionize
February 11, 2026 // The legislation was previously vetoed by former Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. He argued the bill would impede the government’s ability to provide critical services and cost taxpayers millions each year.
Andrew Tarlow’s Greenpoint Bar Achilles Heel Has Closed
February 10, 2026 // “The business has faced a protracted period of financial hardship, and we’ve reached a point where it is no longer viable to continue operating,” the post reads. The staff allegedly announced a desire to unionize; in the announcement for the closure, the comments are turned off. If it had unionized, it would not be the first Tarlow spot to do so; She Wolf had also unionized about two years ago, after a brutal battle, which included a staffer drawing an antisemitic caricature of the owner in a workers’ zine.
Dodger Stadium tour guides failed to unionize. Here’s why they’re getting raises anyway
February 5, 2026 // The Dodgers and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees reached an agreement in October, but ratification of the pact by the union failed by one vote. A second vote also narrowly failed. Then in January the tour guides voted to decertify the union, meaning the pay raise and increased stadium security on non-game days IATSE and the Dodgers had agreed upon were off the table. Not for long. The Dodgers bumped up the guides’ pay from $17.87 to $24 an hour — the same increase they would have gotten under the scrapped union contract.
Commentary: In the Glass Hive of Art News: Dark Clouds at the Met, Boston’s MFA
February 5, 2026 // Two weeks ago, unions grabbed the pot of gold at the end of the phony-baloney rainbow when the Metropolitan Museum of Art staff voted 542–172 to join the United Auto Workers. Counterintuitive, I know, but the UAW has a portfolio of bargaining units that includes boutique left-wing, white-collar culture workers such as the curators, conservators, librarians, archivists, designers, marketeers, visitor-services coordinators, and fundraisers at the Met. Along with bread-and-butter issues, these workers can be mobilized to wail over false values like open borders, which suppress working-class wages, the climate change hoax, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Your Abortion, Me Too, No Kings, From the River to the Sea, any or all while wearing “pussy hats,” which, ladies and real wannabe ladies, don’t flatter. So, a juicy, fresh plum is now added to the UAW stash.
Starbucks defends union organizer’s firing before Fifth Circuit
February 3, 2026 // The NLRB found that Starbucks illegally fired James Schenk, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks store in the Albany, New York, area who in 2021 and 2022 helped lead a campaign to unionize the store. Starbucks fired Schenk in August 2022 after he opened a letter from the NLRB addressed to the store. But the board found that his termination, as well as previous disciplinary actions for sending profane messages in an employee Snapchat group and failing to complete four assigned tasks by the end of a shift, were retaliation for his union activism.
CTU alleges rival union conspired with the boss in fight over low-wage CPS employees
February 3, 2026 // In an escalation of an ongoing turf war over low-wage school district employees, the Chicago Teachers Union has accused the Chicago Board of Education of conspiring with a rival union to undermine its bargaining unit. The allegation is the latest example of ongoing acrimony between the two once-allied progressive labor unions, a fracture with major implications for city politics and for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union called the accusation of conspiring with the boss “unfortunate, baseless, and unsupported by any evidence” and said its goal was only to improve the wages and working conditions of the workers.
Union workers launch initiative to research options for soon-to-be-shuttered Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 1, 2026 // The organization, called Pittsburgh Alliance for People Empowered Reporting, or PAPER for short, seeks to look into possible models to continue reporting after the Block family, which owns the Post-Gazette, ceases publication.
Will this be the year Illinois rideshare workers are able to unionize?
January 28, 2026 // Drivers currently lack the right to unionize under federal labor law because they are classified as independent contractors. The proposal would not change that classification but would give rideshare drivers the right to unionize in Illinois despite their contractor status.
Union Membership Stagnated in 2025 (report from Center for Economic and Policy Research)
January 28, 2026 // The share of US employees who are union members and the share who are covered by a union contract have both declined substantially over the past four decades (Figure 1). In 1983, 20.1 percent of workers were union members, and 23.3 percent were covered by a union contract. By 2010, union membership and coverage had fallen to 11.9 percent and 13.1 percent, respectively. In recent years, both measures reached historic lows. Membership declined to 9.9 percent in 2024 before ticking up to 10.0 percent in 2025, while coverage fell to 11.1 percent in 2024 and edged up to 11.2 percent in 2025. Throughout the entire period, the persistent gap between coverage and membership reflects the share of workers who benefit from union contracts without being union members.