Posts tagged walkouts
UAW strike: What the media won’t tell you about the strike
September 21, 2023 // The Wall Street Journal reported that some in the UAW, including President Shawn Fain, pushed for a full strike, but “there was a simple financial calculation to consider: Such an option would rapidly drain the UAW’s $825 million fund that it uses to pay striking workers, likely depleting it within about two months.” In other words, the union itself doesn’t think it could hold out for long if it tried to shut all three companies. Hence the spin surrounding the current limited strike: UAW is trying to make a virtue out of necessity. In past negotiations, UAW has tried to secure a deal with one of the three automakers ahead of the others and then use that agreement as a template for bargaining with the other two. That UAW didn’t try that this time suggests the union feared it could not wrestle even one company to the ground.
A FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND UNION RAMPS UP EFFORTS TO SWEEP THE SOUTH
August 30, 2023 // The Union of Southern Service Workers began making headlines last fall after formally christening themselves during a rally in Columbia, South Carolina. This union holds some familiar attributes, given that it began as an offshoot of Raise Up, the Southern leg of the SEIU’s Fight for $15 initiative. Yet this is no ordinary effort by the SEIU, for the USSW purports to not only be “built by and for low-wage workers” but also stretches across many industries. A key distinction: The union frames itself as a cross-sector organization, designed to retain members even if they job-hop between industries, i.e., fast food, retail, hotel, nursing home, warehouses, etc.
Federal worker complaints rise with union activity in Minnesota
August 22, 2023 // National Labor Relations Board complaints this year in Minnesota and nationally are already above full 2021 and 2022 levels. Organizers expect even more in 2024.
State axes SF rules outlawing public employee strikes
July 28, 2023 // The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) on July 24 returned a resounding decision against the city and in favor of the Service Employees International Union 1021 and International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers Local 21. This ruling affirms — and expands — a decision handed down last year by an administrative law judge, and appealed to the PERB panel. That state panel on Monday found that the charter provisions enacted following chaotic 1970s-era public employee walkouts, and subsequently modified by voters over the course of the ensuing decades, to be wholly incompatible with California law. While the state panel does not have the power to rescind portions of the San Francisco City Charter, it can — and, now has — declared significant swaths to be “void and unenforceable.”