Posts tagged unionized
Journalists are hyping up a supposed golden age for unions while ignoring their corruption and declining popularity.
September 12, 2024 // The mainstream media’s coverage of Big Labor clearly misses the mark. Beyond recent labor reporting centering on hot-button events such as organization efforts at Starbucks and Amazon amid 2023’s “hot labor summer,” coverage of unions creates a false sense of reality. Headlines such as “Unions targeting Big Business: Disney, Mercedes-Benz, CVS face organizing campaigns,” for example, suggest sweeping unionization efforts across the private sector. But in the pharmacy industry, just 30 CVS pharmacists in Rhode Island and Las Vegas voted to join the Pharmacy Guild, a fraction of the 30,000 employed by the drugstore giant.
Connecticut has most unionized public sector in the country
September 3, 2024 // Between 2018 and 2023, the number of public sector union members in Connecticut surged, making Connecticut the state with the highest percentage of unionized public sector workers in the country, and the fifth-highest rate of overall union membership, according to the latest numbers from Unionstats.com The figures, derived from Census data, show 15.8 percent of the state’s entire workforce is a union member, and 16.9 percent of workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Those percentages have stayed relatively steady, but the actual numbers of union members have increased, even as Connecticut’s workforce has decreased.
So, A Union’s Own Unionized Workers Go On Strike…
June 21, 2024 // In a May 30 news release, the Guild pointed to its one-day unfair labor practice strike held on May 23, 2024 to “protest the anti-union hypocrisy and unlawful practices from UFCW executives at the bargaining table,” apparently to signal that Guild members are prepared to dig in their heels. In another post six days later, the Guild stated that the UFCW’s “last, best, and final proposal” lacked “substantive changes” from UFCW’s previous proposal, which had been voted down. The UFCW refused to schedule bargaining sessions until the Guild voted again. In response, the Guild “thr[e]w a voting party complete with party hats, candy cigarettes, and a copy of the proposal to annotate suggestions for improvement [to the proposal].” And unsurprisingly, Guild members rejected the proposal once again. Often, unions attack employers (many of whom are truly trying to do their best to be fair and reasonable) as unfair, unreasonable, uncaring, bullying, greedy, amoral…. Well, you get the picture. So, it’s fascinating, in a car-crash kind of way, when an organization with the specific mission of promoting worker rights is accused by its own employees of violating those same rights!
OPINION Unionized academic workers go on strike, for what?
June 4, 2024 // The union, which states on its website that it “will not negotiate on behalf of encampment organizers,” has filed multiple complaints against the University of California with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) since the beginning of May, when the university called in law enforcement to break down the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” at UCLA. By then the initial 30 tents had grown into a massive, self-barricaded site that attracted angry counter-protesters in a violent overnight clash. The union’s complaint listed “workplace demands” that included the “right to opt out of participation in military-funded research,” and the “disclosure and divestment of University funds from Israel’s war effort.” The UAW local also complained that a new discipline policy of an “applicable review process” for employees who are arrested or cited was imposed without “notice or opportunity to bargain.” Further, the union wants the university to “make whole” any employees who were reported for criminal activity by paying their civil fines, attorney fees, bail and damage expenses.
Planned Parenthood Northern California Workers Unionize With SEIU Local 1021
April 17, 2024 // “It’s been really something that has been a long time coming; we’ve been waiting for it with bated breath,” said Debbie Nguyen, a Planned Parenthood Northern California clinician in Oakland. “We’ve been going back and forth with them to work on getting recognized for months now.” A federal mediator confirmed that a supermajority of Planned Parenthood Northern California workers — 77% — had voted to join SEIU Local 1021 during Friday’s “card check,” in which employees who are part of a bargaining unit sign “cards” that state and authorize their wish for union representation.
Unionized Science Museum workers await contract as cultural nonprofits face changing labor market
April 1, 2024 // Inspired in part by pandemic-era lay-offs, as well as record inflation, Twin Cities labor movements have seen an uptick in mobilization. Janitors, school teachers, university graduate students, plow truck operators, firefighters, nurses, rideshare drivers and coffeeshop baristas have all recently taken their arguments for better pay and working conditions to the public picket line, or threatened to. Museums have had a lower-profile in those labor efforts, but workers at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and Science Museum all have unionized in the past four years with the goal of collective bargaining for employee-friendly contracts. Most of the Science Museum’s workers were laid off and sent home when the pandemic forced closures in March 2020, only to be gradually called back months later into a climate marked by social distancing and general uncertainty. Hazard pay for frontline staff in visitor services disappeared after a few months. Workers rallied and got it back.
After unionized strippers accused club owner of violating deal, federal labor board intervenes
April 1, 2024 // Star Garden reopened in August, after a 15-month tussle during which club management fired more than a dozen dancers, contested the results of a union election held by strippers, filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors. Soon after Star Garden reopened, dancers told The Times that drink prices had ratcheted up, the bar had gone cashless and removed its ATM and management was discouraging customers from tipping with cash. Dancers accused Star Garden management of introducing arbitrary rules and implementing high drink prices and cover fees in bad faith in an effort to deter customers, demoralize dancers and weaken resolve in contract negotiations. Union attorneys filed multiple unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB alleging club owners were engaging in bad faith bargaining and arbitrarily disciplining employees, among other claims.
Commentary: Biden’s FTC Seeks To Protect Union Workers Through M&A Challenge
March 25, 2024 // For Kroger and Albertsons, the FTC claims that the companies aggressively compete with one another to hire and retain grocery workers, principally through collective bargaining negotiations with unions. The FTC claims that this competition results in higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for employees. The proposed acquisition would eliminate or greatly curtail this competition, threatening the ability of hundreds of thousands of grocery store workers to secure stronger contracts with improved wages and benefits.
Unions using ESG to control workers — and drain Americans’ retirement savings
March 21, 2024 // They’re pushing board nominees and shareholder proposals that aim to force more workers into union membership, even when workers don’t want it. The Biden administration has smoothed the path for this underhanded strategy, and not only does it threaten workers, it endangers millions of Americans’ retirement savings. A new Institute for the American Worker report shines a light on labor unions’ reliance on ESG.
Snow day puts Lamont, CT employee unions at odds over telework
February 16, 2024 // Hybrid employees who were scheduled to work remotely during Tuesday’s storm were required to do so, the coalition says. But SEBAC also said hybrid employees who were scheduled to work on-site Tuesday should not have been compelled to work remotely or otherwise expend accrued time off. Those employees, the coalition says, must be treated like all staff who normally work on-site all the time. Those on-site workers effectively received Tuesday as a paid day off.