The Weekly Download

“On Tuesday, August 27, President Liz Shuler delivered her second State of the Unions address to a packed house of enthusiastic trade unionists and friends at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was obvious to us that this was a speech Power At Work's audience would want to hear. We are proud and pleased to be able to present it to you in its entirety. We expect you will enjoy it.”

“It may come as little surprise to most Power At Work readers that, over the last two and a half years, workers have petitioned for and secured more union representation elections administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) than they did during 2020 and 2021 – years in which much of the country was focused on surviving the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic downturn.”

“Brooke Shields has taken over America’s stage actors’ union at a moment of crisis. While show-goers have flocked back to concerts and sporting events, live theater attendance still lags pre-pandemic times, sidelining the industry longer than others shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic.”

“When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations. The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign…But labor’s divide over Gaza also reflects a deeper, more existential debate: Is the future of organized labor with its left-leaning activists, who have become increasingly outspoken on various issues inside and outside the workplace? Or is it with establishment leaders whose politics are more pragmatic?”

“"The new jobs of the South will be union jobs," said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective bargaining unit.”

“Approx. 200 hotel workers walked off the job in Baltimore this morning. After months of unresolved negotiations, over 10,000 hotel workers with the UNITE HERE union were on strike at 25 hotels in nine cities: Baltimore, Boston, Greenwich, Honolulu, Kauai, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. Each city’s strike will last one to three days. Strikes have also been authorized and could begin at any time in New Haven, Oakland, and Providence.”

“When a dockworkers’ union broke off contract talks with management in June, raising the likelihood of a strike at more than a dozen ports on the East and Gulf Coasts that could severely disrupt the supply chain this fall, it was not over wages, pensions or working conditions. It was about a gate through which trucks enter a small port in Mobile, Ala. The International Longshoremen’s Association, which has more than 47,000 members, said it had discovered that the gate was using technology to check and let in trucks without union workers, which it said violated its labor contract. ‘We will never allow automation to come into our union and try to put us out of work as long as I’m alive,’ said Harold J. Daggett, the union’s president and chief negotiator in talks with the United States Maritime Alliance, a group of companies that move cargo at ports.”

“Summer is winding down, but the Tennessee Drivers Union is just getting started. Following a vote to unionize in late August, a coalition of rideshare drivers kicked off Labor Day weekend by staging a strike at the Nashville International Airport. Around 100 Uber and Lyft drivers filled up the airport rideshare lot but refused to accept rides, aiming to deal a blow to Nashville’s $30 billion tourism industry on a holiday weekend. The Tennessee Drivers Union, which represents drivers from more than 14 countries, says it’s the largest strike of its kind to occur in the Deep South and has vowed to continue staging periodic strikes until its demands are met.”

“As the AT&T Southeast unfair labor practices strike continues, CWA members are staying strong on the picket lines with the support of other CWA members and retirees, members of other unions, community organizations, and customers. Supporters from across the country are posting solidarity photos on social media (you can view them here and here).”

“Most of the 10,000 hotel workers who went on strike during the busy Labor Day weekend have returned to work Wednesday, but one group of 700 union members in San Diego will stay on strike for the foreseeable future.Those workers, employed at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, will remain on strike until there is a contract agreement, their union, Unite Here, says…. The union and members say that in many cases workers are now being paid less than before the pandemic due to reduced hours and tips, even as travel demand returns and profits in the hotel sector soar.”

“When Stan Upshaw got a job at Eos Energy Enterprises Inc. in 2020, he hoped for good pay and benefits, like the ones that went to union workers who decades ago built American manufacturing. After all, Eos’ zinc battery plant in the Pittsburgh suburb of Turtle Creek had already received a nearly $400 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, as well as millions in subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act. At Eos, Upshaw said he didn’t see the ‘good clean jobs’ the act was meant to create. Instead, he saw management ignore seniority — and force workers to train new supervisors rather than promote from within, he said. The work felt dangerous, too. ‘We’re having people getting their fingers pinched [under batteries and] working under very hot, humid conditions [where] we’re almost tripping over each other,’ he said. So earlier this year, Upshaw and some of his coworkers began to push for representation by the United Steelworkers union. In early August, they filed a petition to hold a union election; on Sept. 5, they’ll cast their votes and test whether reality in Turtle Creek matches the talk about the Inflation Reduction Act’s good jobs.”

“Portland, OR — After the third day of the Federal Trade Commission v. Kroger-Albertsons hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following summary—from Research Manager Laurel Kilgour, reporting from Portland—of the key arguments made and points discussed.”

“With public support for labor on the rise, unions are taking more prominent roles in politics, including key speaking slots at last month's Democratic National Convention.”

“The rise of Uber and Lyft to ubiquity over the last decade has been astonishing — over 3 billion trips were taken using the platforms in 2023. Throughout that meteoric expansion to nearly every inch of the globe, the companies have waved away concerns that the drivers keeping the platforms going are being underpaid for their labor.  Anecdotal cases of drivers working grueling hours for a pittance abound, but Uber and Lyft have been able to shrug them off through a combination of industry-funded studies and wage secrecy. However, a few independent analyses have managed to puncture the narrative that the gig economy pays well. A new study from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center is one of the strongest examples of that so far. Researchers analyzed 52,370 trips by 1,088 drivers on six rideshare and delivery apps across five major metro areas and found that they earned well below the minimum wage in all five.”

“State and local governments are facing acute and growing staffing shortages as public-sector pay lags farther behind the pay of private-sector workers. Moreover, the public-sector pay gap disproportionately affects women and Black workers, who are more likely to be employed in public-sector jobs and who are disadvantaged in the broader labor market. Strengthening collective bargaining rights for government workers would narrow the pay gap and reduce racial and gender inequality.”

“In the labor movement, we honor and learn from our past and fight for our future. Today, 17,000 CWA members who work at AT&T Southeast are in a fight. They are on strike because AT&T is not bargaining in good faith. When CWA’s Executive Board authorized this strike, we knew that our members would remain strong, and they have. They are standing strong on the picket line because they know that prior generations of CWA members fought for what we have today. They have our union’s full support, including financial support from our Members’ Relief Fund.”

“Policymakers in most states across the South uphold the Southern economic development model, which is characterized by low wages for workers; few regulations on businesses; low or no corporate taxes; and strong opposition to unions (Childers 2023; 2024a). Political leaders across the region advertise these exploitative, low-road policies as “business friendly,” and offer corporations massive subsidies to lure them into the South (AFL-CIO 2019; Erickson and Herbert 2023; Wakely, Anderson, and Freyer 2023; Whiton and LeRoy 2023).”

“...Today, CLJE:Lab is thrilled to share the culmination of our exploration with the launch of Building Worker Power in Cities and States: A Toolkit for State and Local Labor Policy Innovation. This toolkit is intended to serve as an accessible resource for policymakers, advocates, and others interested in exploring the possibilities for protecting workers’ rights at the state and local levels. In compiling and analyzing pro-worker policies that states and cities have enacted – or attempted to enact – we sought to map the contours of labor law preemption and identify promising areas for further innovation.”

“Donald Trump’s running mate didn’t receive the warmest of welcomes at a firefighters union conference in Boston on Thursday. Ohio Sen. JD Vance could clearly hear the boos when he took the stage in front of the International Association of Fire Fighters, a union both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are courting for an endorsement…Vance has been described as a new breed of ostensibly pro-labor Republican, but it was clear many of the firefighters in attendance weren’t buying it. Trump was vehemently anti-union throughout his first term, stacking agencies with appointees hostile to labor and trying to break federal employee unions. That record has left Vance with a difficult rebranding assignment.”

“As the last Chevrolet Cruze rolled off the line at the General Motors (GM) plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in March 2019, the workers there had no idea what would be next for them. Their plant was “unallocated,” a new term to just about everyone I spoke with at the time.”

“More than 4,000 hotel and casino workers on the Las Vegas Strip reached a tentative contract with the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, the latest in a string of recent union victories for over 40,000 hospitality workers on the Strip.”

“NATIONWIDE—Over 8,000 union workers employed by airline catering subcontractor Gate Gourmet at 30 U.S. Airports have officially ratified a new five-year union contract that will bring significant raises and better, affordable health care, among other benefits. Voting to ratify the new contract concluded on Wednesday, capping a negotiating process that began in 2017.”

“In the coming school year, the UFT plans to keep up the fight to secure appropriate pay and health benefits for long-term substitute teachers. A substitute teacher who begins a term teaching in a vacant position, or who begins in the middle of the term and performs the role of a regular classroom teacher for two months or more, should be recoded as Q-status, the payroll category that pays a sub at the rate of a first-year teacher and confers health benefits. Yet, prior to December 2023, substitutes who were hired to fill a vacancy — for example, who took over for a teacher who resigned or went on long-term leave — had to wait until the end of the school year and then file a grievance to be retroactively awarded the pay of a Q-status sub. They would lose out on the medical insurance they should have received for that period.”

“The Communications Workers of America (CWA) have informed AT&T (T.N), and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service that it would no longer be a part of the mediation, it said in a statement on Monday. ‘The company was using the mediation process as another delaying tactic,’ said CWA District 3 Vice President Richard Honeycutt. More than 17,000 Workers represented by the CWA union, which include technicians, customer service representatives, and others who install, maintain, and support AT&T's residential and business wireline telecommunications network, remain on strike which began last month.”

“Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su on Wednesday encouraged Boeing and more than 30,000 of the planemaker’s factory workers to bridge a divide in negotiations and reach a fair contract, as a vote on a new deal looms on Sept. 12. Boeing’s Seattle-area workers, who produce the planemaker’s strongest-selling 737 commercial jet, are voting next week on their first new contract in 16 years, with the two sides still tackling demands such as job security. The workers can strike as early as Sept. 13 if they reject the contract and overwhelmingly support a work stoppage.”

“Members of the United Auto Workers Local 2300 approved a new contract with Cornell University that will deliver major wage increases to workers and officially end a strike that heavily disrupted the Ivy League school’s building maintenance and dining services for over two weeks. The tentative agreement won the backing of 77% of the members that voted, according to a statement from the union on Monday. Some workers will begin to return to work Monday night, and all workers are scheduled to return to work on Tuesday. The negotiations were a stark departure from bargaining between the union and Cornell in terms of what the UAW won in this new contract, and its approach. The UAW had signed agreements to not discuss what was happening at the bargaining table with its membership or the public.” 

“I became NPR’s labor and workplace correspondent in the spring of 2021, shortly after labor organizers lost their bid to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. The tally was not even close. Workers voted more than 2 to 1 against forming a union. Little did I know then that the labor movement was about to surge. By the end of the year, the first Starbucks stores in Buffalo, N.Y., voted to unionize, setting off a years-long confrontation that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. The following spring Amazon workers on Staten Island voted to unionize. It’s been nonstop for me ever since, trying to keep up with new organizing efforts and the many labor disputes that have arisen, a number of them leading to strikes.”