Posts tagged United Auto Workers
Stellantis, auto union come to agreement on options for Belvidere Assembly Plant employees
February 28, 2023 // According to the union, employees can choose from: IPR. A retirement incentive of $50,000 for employees who are retirement eligible. Grow In – Employees with less than two years until they are retirement eligible will be offered a grow in. Enhanced VTEP – Enhanced VTEP will be offered to all eligible employees. Stellantis announced back in December that it would idle production, laying off more than 1,300 employees. It is not only Stellantis workers who are affected by this decision, however, as several suppliers in the area are also shutting down. Belvidere Assembly
YouTube Music Workers Strike in Austin Over ‘Anti-Union’ Return-to-Office Mandate
February 24, 2023 // Gossell and Marschner are upset that Google, whom they see as their employer, has deferred to Cognizant. “I’ve gone through Google training. I go through their security training. I go through their ethics training…. [But] if we want to negotiate over pay, they say, ‘Pay is based on the contract we have with Google, so we can’t bargain over that.'” Marschner says. The employees, affiliated with the Alphabet Workers Union, which has never held a strike, are awaiting National Labor Relations Board decisions on their election petition and the two Unfair Labor Practice complaints. “It’s going to be a long labor movement, because we’re not stopping until we have a union,” Gossell says. Referring to recent union activity at Amazon, Disney and Tesla, he adds: “I’m not saying we’re the tip of the spear, but we’re part of something bigger that’s going on in America. All you have to do is pick up a history book to see how this ends.”
Union membership grows the fastest of any state in Tennessee over the past two years
January 24, 2023 // The number of Tennessee workers belonging to labor unions has grown over the past two years at the fastest rate of any state in the country. Fueled by a growth in unionized government employees, building trades and autoworkers, union membership in Tennessee jumped by more than 39% from the pandemic low in 2020 to reach 163,000 members last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For all its gains, however, organized labor still represents only a fraction of workers in Tennessee, especially in the private sector. Last year, 5.5% of all workers across Tennessee were union members, or only about half of the 10.1% share of workers nationwide who belong to a labor union, according to the statistics bureau.
Many Rank-and-File UC Grad Student Workers Are Unhappy With Tentative Agreement
December 26, 2022 // More than two-thirds (68%) of Student Researchers United (SRU)-UAW members approved the tentative agreement, while about 62% of UAW-2865 members backed the proposal. Support among SRU-UAW voters ranged from 19% at U.C. Santa Cruz to 86% at U.C. Berkeley Lab. For UAW-2865, U.C. San Diego (73%) showed the strongest support for the agreement, while just one in five U.C. Santa Cruz voters approved the deal.
Dissension brews among striking UC union members over tentative agreement
December 19, 2022 // Freund said graduate students have leverage to fight for more gains by withholding their work grading final exams and assignments. Whatever dissent has surfaced among members of the bargaining team, leaders say the democratic process will be on full display this week. “We have a very large and diverse union with 36,000 people,” Jaime said. “It’ll be up to each individual member to decide how to vote on this contract.”
The Standoff Between Workers and Their Bosses Is Set To Heat Up in 2023
December 15, 2022 // Now, the strong labor market that emboldened workers is softening. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7% in November—it had gone as low as 3.5%—–and high-profile tech and media companies have recently cut their payrolls through steep layoffs. But that doesn’t mean workers are losing the upper hand, says Thomas Kochan, a professor of employment research at the MIT Sloan School for Management. If anything, the current economic conditions mean labor strife may accelerate next year. “I expect what we’ll see is more conflict, more strikes, and more contract rejections,” Kochan says. Workers are still focused on companies’ profits during boom years, he notes, while companies are starting to trim costs to prepare for an economic downturn. “It’s that difference in expectations,” he says, “that creates a higher probability of conflicts and strikes.”
Stellantis has blamed rising EV costs for idling an Illinois plant that makes Jeep Cherokee
December 14, 2022 // Stellantis said it issued WARN notices to both hourly and salaried employees. This refers to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act), which requires employers with more than 100 employees to provide 60 days’ advance written notice prior to a mass layoff that is expected to affect at least 50 employees at any single site.
Reform candidates lead in UAW races with 73% of vote counted
December 2, 2022 // Members of the United Auto Workers union appeared on Thursday to favor replacing many of their current leaders in an election that stemmed from a federal bribery and embezzlement scandal involving former union officials. Reform-minded candidates, many part of the UAW Members United slate, are leading or close in multiple key races with about 73% of the vote in. Many challengers campaigned on rescinding concessions made to companies in previous contract talks, including cost-of-living pay raises, elimination of a two-tier wage and benefit system, and other items.
Fears rise that UC strike could have long-lasting consequences on vaunted research, teaching
November 30, 2022 // “As long as this strike lasts, faculty across the system will be exercising their right to honor the picket line by refusing to conduct university labor up to and including submission of grades — labor that would not be possible without the labor of all other academic workers as well as university staff,” the faculty said in a statement. “We do this toward bettering the working and learning conditions of all students present and future.” The union is demanding significant pay increases to ease the burden of high rents in the pricey areas where UC campuses are located, along with more support for child care, parental leave, transportation, healthcare and international students. UC’s offers of wage increases don’t come close to meeting union demands but would make academic workers some of the highest paid among comparable public and private institutions, university officials say.
Widespread strikes descend on California
November 18, 2022 // It’s strike season in California, again.