The Weekly Download

Issue #77
The Weekly Download is the place for ideas, features, research, and news coverage about workers, worker power, and unions — delivered to your inbox and the Power at Work Blog, every week. The Weekly Download hopes to promote the writing, research, and analysis that advances a discourse putting workers and their unions at the center of the national conversation. If you have an item that we should include in The Weekly Download, or a source we should review for future items, please email us at [email protected].

Power At Work Blogcast #55: Inside the Movement: Jaz Brisack on Starbucks Unionizing and the Future of Organizing

By 

Zeno Minotti (@ZenoMinotti)

Published in: Power At Work

"In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Jaz Brisack, one of the original Starbucks union organizers, and the co-founder of the Inside Organizer School. Listen now to hear an inside perspective on union organizing, Jaz's origins in organizing, the successes in unionizing at Starbucks, and how those successes can lead to further improvements with other companies and in other industries."

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Labor Unions Say Tim Walz 'Walks the Walk' on Working-Class Agenda

By 

Jake Johnson (@johnsonjakep)

Published in: Common Dreams

Leading U.S. labor unions on Tuesday joined environmentalists, reproductive rights campaigners, progressive lawmakers, and others in applauding Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' selection of Tim Walz as her running mate for the November election, citing his pro-worker record as a congressman and Minnesota's governor. The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of unions, noted in a statement that Walz "delivered on a comprehensive, pro-union legislative package and created the gold standard for state governments aiming to do right by workers." The Guardian's Steven Greenhouse described the measure, which Walz signed into law last year, as ‘one of the most pro-worker packages of legislation that any U.S. state has passed in decades.’”

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The Minnesota Model Is Transforming Organizing as We Know It

By 

Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe)

Published in: In These Times

“...It’s a process that has built up over years, as a small group stacked up wins and more and more groups joined them; as new organizations were seeded and grew in immigrant communities and disparate neighborhoods; when in 2020, after George Floyd was killed, residents rebelled at ongoing police violence and kicked off a wave of protest that shook the world. The Minnesota Model has yielded gain after gain: free school meals and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants; getting Amazon to negotiate with workers for the first time; a $15 minimum wage (with proposals to bring it up to $20); so many union contracts it’s hard to count, for janitors and tenants and teachers. Minneapolis sent Ilhan Omar to Congress, Keith Ellison became state attorney general, and Minnesota residents voted in a Democratic trifecta to run state government. But the real power of the Minnesota Model is the solidarity it fosters in the streets.”

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Snow White and Luke Skywalker Ride the Union Wave at Disneyland

By 

Bryce Covert (@brycecovert)

Published in: Capital & Main

“Adam Hefner has worked at Disneyland for seven years, mostly in the character department, embodying the world-famous and deeply beloved characters that Disney is known for. Hefner, who uses ‘they/he’ pronouns, was hired to play ‘Star Wars’ characters and loved it, finding ‘magic for myself,’ they said. The character actors pride themselves on being one of the biggest-selling points of the resort. ‘You have the same exact attractions year over year,’ Hefner said. ‘We’re the reason people come back.’ But the job has left its mark on Hefner. Thanks to a repetitive strain injury Hefner said they experienced while performing, they ended up needing shoulder surgery and now have a permanent range of motion disability. They’re not alone, Hefner said: Plenty of other character actors have been permanently injured by ill-fitting costumes or other physical demands of the job. (Disneyland officials did not comment on the specific allegation.) It was these safety concerns, among others, that pushed the character actors to begin organizing a union.”

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Café Ceres Baristas Win Union Election

By 

Allysa Pollard

Published in: UNITE HERE

“Minneapolis – Today a majority of Café Ceres baristas voted ‘yes’ in their union election, winning representation with UNITE HERE Local 17, Minnesota’s hospitality and craft beverage workers union. Café Ceres is part of Daniel del Prado’s prolific DDP Restaurant Group.”

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Lack of Worker Input Creates Bumps in the Road for EV Buses

By 

Audrey Elberger

Published in: Labor Notes

“Drivers and mechanics say bosses picked buses without regard for the requirements of the routes. Safety is also an issue. School bus drivers in San Francisco say their new EV buses have a fiberglass frame that puts a blinding glare in the rear view mirror. They also worry the bus frame, widened to fit large batteries, now barely fits in the road lane, which might cause accidents. “The technology is just not there yet. It’s not good enough for the situations we’re in, but I hope that it will be soon,” said Meghann Adams, a bus driver in San Francisco, and president of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 1741.”

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The Supreme Court is Demolishing Decades of Precedent on Workers' Rights

By 

Michael Arria (@michaelarria)

Published in: Power At Work

“The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ended its 2023-2024 term with a flurry of massive decisions, and several stand to damage the agencies designed to protect workers. The right-wing rulings are understandably causing anxiety among progressives, including labor activists.”

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Unions as Guardians of Democracy: The Urgent Need to Pass the PRO Act Ahead of 2024 Election

By 

Wes McEnany (@WesMcEnany)

Published in: Power At Work

“On July 27th, 2022, Vail Kohnert-Young stood up at the 38th United Auto Workers (UAW) Convention and nominated Shawn Fain for President of the UAW. Vail hadn’t planned to be the nominator, but the assigned delegate got cold feet in the tension-filled room. Vail came into the union as a Harvard Law student who helped unionize graduate student workers at the storied Ivy League institution with UAW, an industrial-based union that in recent years has seen militant graduate students join in droves. Unhappy with decades of decline, could this once powerful union regain the fighting spirit and channel their legacy, which includes the Flint Sit Down strike in 1938 and having unionized some of the largest firms in the world?”

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Florida's historic adjunct union movement collapses in the advent of new anti-union law

By 

McKenna Schueler (@SheCarriesOn)

Published in: Orlando Weekly

Less than one year after Florida’s sweeping anti-union law fully took effect, all eight adjunct faculty unions at public colleges and universities in Florida have officially been decertified, according to state records, affecting roughly 8,400 adjunct professors altogether. The new law, described by critics as “union busting,” was over a decade in the making, and has already caused tens of thousands of public employees to lose their union representation and union contracts. The adjunct faculty unions, all represented by the faculty arm of the Service Employees International Union, were formally decertified in late July.”

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Manufacturing Jobs: Unions Made Them Good, Not the Factories

By 

Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13)

Published in: Beat The Press

“The effort to bring back manufacturing jobs has been a major theme in the 2024 election. Both parties say they consider this a high priority for the next administration. However, there is a notable difference in that the Biden-Harris administration has actively supported an increase in unionization, while the Republicans have indicated, at best, neutrality if not outright hostility towards unions. This distinction is important in the context of manufacturing jobs. Many people seem to assume that manufacturing jobs are automatically good jobs, paying more than non manufacturing jobs.”

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13,500 US hotel workers hold strike votes over pay and conditions

By 

Michael Sainato (@msainat1)

Published in: The Guardian

“About 13,500 hotel workers across Boston, Honolulu, Providence and San Francisco will vote on whether to strike this week as they push for significant wage increases and protections against job cuts. Employees at leading chains including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni will decide in the coming days whether to approve the walkouts. The hotel industry stands accused of having used the Covid-19 crisis to reduce staffing and increase workloads.”

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Apple Store Workers Get First U.S. Contract

By 

Noam Scheiber (@noamscheiber)

Published in: New York Times

“Workers at the first unionized Apple Store in the country ratified a labor contract with the tech giant on Tuesday, after a year and a half in which bargaining appeared to stall for long stretches and union campaigns at other stores fell short. After the union announced the outcome, Apple said it did not dispute the result and was pleased to have an agreement. The contract, covering about 85 workers at a Towson, Md., store who voted to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in June 2022, will provide a typical worker with a raise of roughly 10 percent over the next three years.”

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Hollywood Teamsters and other crew unions ratify new contracts

By 

Christi Carras

Published in: Los Angeles Times

“A coalition of labor unions representing drivers, location managers, animal trainers, electricians, plumbers and other Hollywood crew members have ratified new three-year agreements with the major studios. Six different groups of craftspeople each approved their respective agreements on Thursday, all by ratification votes of more than 92%. The below-the-line workers are represented by the Hollywood Basic Crafts, a team of unions led by Teamsters Local 399.”

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University System of Maryland signs union contract for nearly 6,000 workers

By 

Lilly Price (@lillyptweets)

Published in: The Baltimore Sun

“The University System of Maryland and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3 signed a system-wide union contract Friday that covers nearly 6,000 university employees. Jay Perman, chancellor of the university system, joined AFSCME members in a signing ceremony Friday after the school’s Board of Regents ratified the agreement Wednesday. The three-year contract closes disparities in pay and working conditions between schools….The contract establishes health and safety protocols around heat and air quality, along with a ‘right to know’ policy in which the university has to notify workers of hazards, safety equipment and safety training.”

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United Airlines begins labor contract negotiations with union

By 

Reuters (@Reuters)

Published in: Reuters

“United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab has begun negotiations with the Teamsters union, which is pushing for a new contract covering 10,000 aviation maintenance and related workers in the United States, the labor union said on Tuesday. The Teamsters National Negotiating Committee is seeking industry-leading wages, a faster timeline for reaching the top pay rate, improved healthcare benefits and higher safety standards. The negotiations — which have begun four months before the current contract is set to become amendable — come at a time when thousands of maintenance staff members and flight attendants across airlines are demanding higher wages and more benefits after carriers posted record profits helped by a rebound in travel demand post-pandemic.”

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