Labor news in Washington State as of Nov 13, 2021- from Who Gets The Bird

Jonah Furman is a labor movement organizer and writer.  One of his many writing projects is his Newsletter, Who Gets The Bird.  Jonah has graciously allowed PPOW to publish excerpts from his newsletter.  Update on Labor news. All the Washington state Labor news is highlighted and bolded below.

This week, I spoke with Nausicaa Renner (who I speak to every week!) about the Deere strike, the labor market, and union democracy, for Intercepted. You can check that out here. Also, big news! The 2022 Labor Notes Conference is now open for registration: see you in June.

STRIKES & NEGOTIATIONS

A lot of news about strikes & negotiations across the nation below, including news of the first union contract for 5 Burgerville fast food chain locations in the Pacific Northwest.

My latest on the Deere strike dropped Thursday afternoon, and by Friday night, everything had changed. It’s deja vu all over again — there is now a new contract offer from Deere to the 10,000 UAW strikers. I say contract offer and not “tentative agreement” because the union has emphasized that this is a final offer from the company (with the implicit threat to go to arbitration and risk it just being imposed) and not something the bargaining committee voted to approve. The previous claims from Deere about “last and best offer” have proven to not be technically true, though the new offer basically only changes CIPP (and some slight vacation policy tweaks, I believe), the departmental performance pay plan that is so convoluted that most members couldn’t precisely explain it and I certainly don’t have it down. The change means that members who are covered by CIPP — which I don’t have figures on, but seems to be something between half and two-thirds of the workforce — will make a bit more money, and get that money sooner. It’s not the maximalist demand of post-retirement healthcare and pre-97 real wages, but it could certainly be enough to sway the roughly 500 votes needed to ratify, along with the additional two weeks of being on strike, and the increasingly-real-seeming threat of impasse/final offer. We’ll know on Wednesday, when the locals will vote on whether or not to ratify the deal.

An even bigger tentative agreement was announced on Saturday morning, when the Alliance of Health Care Unions, the group of 20 unions currently negotiating a national agreement with healthcare giant Kaiser for something like 50,000 workers, around 40,000 of whom had authorized strikes and some 32-35,000 of whom were set to strike starting on Monday. The roll-out of the tentative agreement announcement was clunky, with Kaiser apparently jumping the gun, and then UNAC/UHCP also kind of jumping the gun, but eventually all the relevant unions announcing they do, indeed, have a national TA. Ratification processes TBD, but these particular unions will not be striking on Monday as planned. The word I’m hearing from union sources is that they killed the two-tier wage proposal and got something in the ballpark of 10% raises over four years (up from 3% over three years). Notably, when we say there’s a national TA and “the strike” is off, that does not mean that the Operating Engineers Local 39 strike is settled (it’s still on, nearing its 2-month mark), and the independent Guild of Professional Pharmacists is still planning to strike for a week starting Monday, which will mean around 2,000 Kaiser pharmacists in Northern California will be on strike. SEIU UHW and the California Nurses (NNU) still plan to strike this week in sympathy with the Operating Engineers, which will mean something like 50,000 Kaiser workers will strike, but only for one day and not over their national master agreement.

Elsewhere in hospital unions: Around 1,000 hospital workers at Cabell Hospital in Huntington, WV remain on strike with 1199 WV/KY/OH, with “no end in sight”; the boss has cut the strikers’ healthcare and a judge has granted a temporary restraining order against the picketers. 350 SEIU UHW hospital workers at Sutter in Antioch, CA held a five-day strike this week, after having struck last month; as at so many hospitals, the biggest issues are staffing ratios and working conditions. 2200 members of the Michigan Nurses Association at Sparrow Health System in Lansing, MI will take a strike authorization vote this week. The reports of an end to the St. Vincent Hospital strike in Worcester, MA are greatly exaggerated, says management; not only is the strike not over, but the CEO blamed the Massachusetts Nurses Association for apparently spreading rumors that there’s a deal at hand. Clearly lots of good will here. The CWA Local 1133 strike at Catholic Health’s Mercy Hospital in Buffalo is officially totally over, with a 96% contract ratification. Other healthcare & social assistance: Elsewhere in Buffalo, 1199 SEIU members at the Weinberg Campus nursing home are rallying for their own safe staffing contract. The 1199 New England group home strikers against Sunrise Group in Connecticut marked a month on strike with a rally in Hartford. 25 nursing home workers at Blue Circle in St. Louis are on strike with SEIU Healthcare Missouri, after having struck for one day in September, over a $15 minimum wage among other issues.

The IATSE ratification vote closes on Monday, and Sarah Hughes spoke to one of the members voting “no” for Labor Notes. Unscientific member polls on social media seem pretty heavily unfavorable, but that’s obviously a self-selecting group. Presumably we’ll know the results by Tuesday or sooner, and in the seemingly less-likely (but certainly possible!) scenario that it is voted down, that doesn’t mean a strike is necessarily happening.

Kellogg’s is suing some of its striking BCTGM workers in Omaha for the sin of picketing. The company wants them to be able to “communicate” their position without having any influence on production, which is just not what a picket line is. The law is unfortunately stacked against picketers, but as in so much of our society and in particular as it concerns unions, the law is deeply broken, and is just one tool Kellogg’s is using in its attempts to break the strike.

At Jacobin, Nora de la Cour has a full account of the UMWA strike at Warrior Met, through contract rejection, mass pickets, injunctions, protests in New York City with arrests of top union leaders, and more.

Higher ed: Rachel Himes wrote about why she’s on strike, along with 3,000 other student workers, against Columbia University for Jacobin. Elsewhere in UAW Local 2110, around 200 museum workers at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts are planning a one-day strike this week. And elsewhere in Columbia… ok, that’s a stretch, but Columbia College faculty in Chicago are still threatening a strike, as contract negotiations continue. Around 6,000 lecturers across the University of California system will strike over unfair labor practices Wednesday and Thursday with UC-AFT; they’ve authorized a full strike, but for now are just doing the two-day, though I’d assume this is functionally a warning shot to the University, which probably doesn’t love that this is happening just as two other units of a combined 24,000 union members are voting on authorizing their own strikes across the UC. Labor Notes covered the broader fight here. Harvard’s Clerical and Technical Workers have ratified a one-year contract, after much debate.

K-12: 900 K-12 educators in Scranton, PA remain on strike, and are pressing their case in the state capital (Harrisburg, for you Zip Zap Map dropouts). In Pleasanton, CA, educators have a tentative agreement that reduces some class sizes and raises pay, after having threatened a strike. After similarly tense negotiations, educators in Anderson, IN have a TA as well. 20 newly-organized K-12 custodians in Chisago Lakes, MN are pushing for a first contract with SEIU Local 284.

School bus drivers: 40 school bus drivers in Cumberland County, NC have joined the school bus drivers mini strike wave, with particular outcry from special education bus drivers: “We call ourselves CNAs with CDLs,” said one special education driver. In Howard County, MD, school bus drivers did the same, with 80 drivers calling out sick. In Minneapolis, 100 unionized school bus drivers with Teamsters Local 320 unanimously authorized a strike; the complicated public sector law there means the earliest they could strike is January 15 or so, but the trend holds.

Other transit: Around 200 transit workers with Teamsters Local 533 are on their third strike since August as they battle French transit contracting giant Keolis in Reno, NV; Keolis took over the contract for Regional Transportation Commission from MV Transportation in 2019 and has been playing hardball in negotiations with the union, which has responded by filing unfair labor practices and striking over each one. TWU‘s national leadership has intervened to call off (or maybe just delay) a strike of 275 Local 1 transit workers in Akron, OH that was set to start on Monday, and has placed the local union in receivership. TWU says Local 1 didn’t provide proper notice of the strike, somehow mishandled the strike authorization vote, and the local president is no longer officially employed by the employer. Those issues all sound pretty process-oriented to me, so I’m curious to learn more, and why the national union would take this drastic step. If you’re a member or have more insight, I’d love to hear from you.

Grocery unions: Kroger workers with UFCW Local 455 in Houston are taking a strike authorization vote at their worksites and the company has repeatedly called the police on them (who for the most part seem to show up and shrug their shoulders and leave). As I mentioned last week, in Michigan, members of UFCW Local 876 have rejected a tentative agreement at the grocery giant, but I haven’t seen updates on what happens next. On the west coast, contract negotiations are beginning across several UFCW and Teamsters locals, covering 100,000 workers.

Members of the New York NewsGuild have authorized a strike at the New York Times’s Wirecutter on or around Black Friday.

Multiple rail unions (including at least BMWE-IBT and TCU (IAMAW) but I think like seven others) are threatening a strike at Chicago’s Metra commuter rail, after three years without a contract.

Three years after they first unionized, 100 IWW-represented workers at five Burgerville fast food chain locations in the Pacific Northwest have their first union contract.

NEW ORGANIZING

4 places in Washington state unionized this last week: 1) Social services agency, Communitas in Bremerton, 2) Concrete workers at Precision Concrete in Seattle, 3) Workers at WestRock in Tacoma, and 4) Cement masons with Hoffman Structures in Washington state.  Details below.

65 workers for social services agency Communitas in Bremerton, WA are unionizing with SEIU Local 775.

Smaller shops: 41 workers at a Dollar General warehouse in West Sacramento, CA are unionizing with Teamsters Local 150. 39 workers at what I believe is an “automated” Kroger grocery warehouse in Middletown, OH operated by Ocado are organizing with Teamsters Local 114. 35 steelworkers at Amerinox Processing in Camden, NJ are organizing with SMART Local 19, as are 17 workers for HVAC company Custom Aire in Bensalem, PA. OPCMIA Local 528 is organizing 29 concrete workers at Precision Concrete in Seattle.

NLRB election wins…: 17 workers who make packaging products for WestRock in Tacoma, WA voted 16-1 to join the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Six clerical workers at rec center/waterpark Albergue Olimpico in Salinas, PR voted 5-0 to join UTIER. Five cement masons for contractor Hoffman Structures in Washington state voted 4-0 to join OPCMIA Local 528.

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STRIKES & NEOGIATIONS
POLITICS & LEGISLATION
INTERNAL UNION POLITICS
NEW ORGANIZING

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Read Jonah Furman’s full newsletter here to read more labor news on all the following topics (Don’t forget to subscribe and support Who Gets The Bird!)