MUST READ
Democratic Party weighs banning its consultants from anti-union activity
Politico
By Eleanor Mueller
April 19, 2022
“We appreciate the Democratic Party committees’ decision to amend their contract and RFP processes in light of reporting that GSG had been working for Amazon as they sought to defeat the recent organizing drive,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “By amending their contracts and RFP processes to exclude firms actively working with clients who seek to prevent or limit working people’s basic rights to act collectively or otherwise act against their interests as union members, the committees demonstrate their commitment to democracy and shared prosperity.”
JOINING TOGETHER
Adjunct faculty begin negotiations for new union contract
Washington Square News
By Gillian Blum
April 19, 2022
ACT-UAW Local 7902, the union representing members of NYU’s adjunct faculty, began negotiations with the university for their next collective bargaining agreement. Faculty and students marched in a rally between Washington Square Park and Union Square in support of the union on Thursday, April 14, the first day of negotiations. The union’s current agreement with the university came into effect five years ago and is set to expire at the end of August. The previous contract covered compensation, insurance coverage, course assignments, and other terms of employment for adjunct faculty — who are not normally eligible for tenure and must have their employment contracts regularly renewed by the university.
Wolf Creek union members to picket to notify Evergy customers of unfair labor negotiations
WIBW
By Sarah Motter
April 19, 2022
Members of Wolf Creek Nuclear plant’s union will picket the station to notify customers of Evergy about their ongoing unfair labor negotiations. Members of Wolf Creek’s IBEW Local 304 say they will picket at the Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station on Wednesday, April 20, to inform Evergy customers while they have met to negotiate with the company in good faith, negotiations have been slow and unproductive. The union workers at Kansas’ largest electricity generation plant and only nuclear facility cite that despite a climate of record-breaking profits and unprecedented inflation, Evergy has been unwilling to give workers a wage and benefits package that reflects the environment. The members said the negotiation team that represents the union has made reasonable proposals and concessions while at the same time, Evergy has shown very little movement and has denied the proposals outright.
Michigan Cannabis Retail Workers Vote to Unionize; Owner Offers Support
Cannabis Business Times
By Tony Lange
April 19, 2022
Workers at a cannabis retail facility in Battle Creek, Mich., haven’t even opened their doors to the public yet, but they already voted to form a union with support from their store owner. Heritage Provisioning employees will host a grand opening April 20 for their new facility in the southwest part of the state—about 20 miles east of Kalamazoo—but they decided to celebrate early with a unionization announcement on April 18. Heritage has two other provisioning center locations, in East Tawas and Manistee, but the Battle Creek workers agreed to authorize the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 951 for union representation, according to a UFCW press release. “I’m really excited to be a part of something bigger than just myself,” Riley Boles, a worker at Heritage Provisioning, said in the release. “My dad is a union member and I’m proud to not only become one also, but to make history as the first UFCW 951 organized cannabis facility.”
St. Paul school board approves contract with teachers union, granting raises, pandemic bonuses
Star Tribune
By Eder Campuzano
April 19, 2022
The St. Paul school board on Tuesday approved the contract district leaders negotiated with the teachers union, which is projected to cost an additional $8 million over two years. District and union negotiators reached a last-minute deal in early March, narrowly avoiding a strike for St. Paul's 32,000 students. In Minneapolis, educators picketed for three weeks. The board approved the contract on a 6-0 vote. Board Member Uriah Ward, whose wife is a teacher in the district, abstained. René Myers, a member of the union's bargaining team, thanked Superintendent Joe Gothard for the questions he asked during negotiations and the demeanor he displayed as the two parties hammered out the contract specifics.
Santa Clara city workers ready to go on strike
San Jose Spotlight
By Natalie Hanson
April 19, 2022
Some Santa Clara city employees plan to strike if negotiations toward a new labor contract continue to stall. Gary Ferraris, president of the union United EMS Workers-AFSCME Local 4911, said the city’s Unit 6 field operations and maintenance workers will announce the intended strike to the City Council during Tuesday’s meeting. There are about 125 workers in Unit 6. Labor negotiations have been ongoing since Unit 6’s contract expired Dec. 31, Ferraris said, noting the South Bay Labor Council, which represents 101 unions and more than 100,000 workers, has sanctioned the strike. “We brought what our complaints were to them, and they agreed it is a worthy strike,” Ferraris told San José Spotlight.
IN THE STATES
Madison County Fed. will host Workers Memorial Day program April 28
Labor Tribune
April 19, 2022
The Greater Madison County Federation of Labor will hold its annual Workers Memorial Day ceremony on Thursday, April 28, at Gordon Moore Park in Alton. The event will begin at 7 p.m. April 28 is recognized nationally by the AFL-CIO to honor workers killed or injured on the job. As in past years, weather will determine if the event will be at the landscaped, outdoor memorial site along the park road or at the indoor pavilion just up the road. “Hopefully we’ll have some good weather and we can actually do it at the memorial site, where the wall and the statue are,” Federation President B. Dean Webb said.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
WSU Libraries’ Irwin Nash Images of Migrant Labor Digital Collection wins national library award
WSU Insider
By Nella Letizia
April 19, 2022
The collection “depicts the rich social, cultural, political, and economic life of the Yakima Valley migrant labor community,” the award announcement states. Of special relevance, the collection also depicts farmworker union meetings, rallies, and protests, including visits by United Farm Workers union co-founder Cesar Chavez, and Washington community organizers Guadalupe Gamboa and Tomás Villanueva. Project manager Lipi Turner-Rahman’s creation of a Facebook group for the collection “as a way to both promote it and crowdsource identification and create richer metadata is particularly impressive.” The John Sessions Memorial Award, sponsored by the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, recognizes a library or library system that has made a significant effort to work with the labor community and by doing so has brought recognition to the history and contribution of the labor movement to the development of the United States.