MUST READ
Tight U.S. job market triggers strikes for more pay
Reuters
By Ben Klayman
October 18, 2021
"Workers are on strike for a better deal and a better life," Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's biggest labor federation, said last week at a SABEW journalism conference. "The pandemic really did lay bare the inequities of our system and working people are refusing to return to crappy jobs that put their health at risk," she added, noting that the term #Striketober was trending on Twitter.
Pitt faculty vote to form union by wide margin
The Pitt News
By Rebecca Johnson, Martha Layne, Jon Moss, and Alexandra Ross
October 19, 2021
Researchers and professors from across all Pitt campuses have voted to form a faculty union, according to a copy of an election returns document obtained by The Pitt News, delivering a major win to union organizers and ending a unionization campaign that lasted more than five years. Out of a total of 2,203 faculty members who voted in the election, according to the document, 1,511 voted to form the union, while 612 voted against it. There are 80 challenged ballots, which isn’t enough to affect the outcome of the election. Roughly 3,000 faculty were eligible to vote in the election. The faculty union will be affiliated with the United Steelworkers’ Academic Workers Association, which has supported the unionization effort since 2016. The Steelworkers have helped faculty unionize at other local universities, including Robert Morris and Point Park.
LABOR AND ECONOMY
Black and Latino families are bearing the weight of the pandemic's economic toll
WWNO
By Laurel Wamsley
October 19, 2021
Thirty-eight percent of households across the country report facing serious financial problems over the last few months. That's according to a poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. But among Black and Latino households, more than 55% reported serious financial problems. That's compared with 29% of white households. William Spriggs is professor of economics at Howard University and chief economist to the AFL-CIO. The additional federal aid that expired last month gave people a sense of security, Spriggs says, so they could continue to consume. Spriggs: “That's all gone away. And so that is, I think, the No. 1 reason you saw special stress in Latino and Black households because without the boost to the unemployment check, without the stimulus checks still being there, these households simply don't have the savings to endure and be resilient during downturns.”
JOINING TOGETHER
US labor unions are having a moment
Bangor Daily News
By Bloomberg
October 19, 2021
“Essential workers are tired of being thanked one day and then treated as expendable the next day,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a speech Wednesday in Washington. “The headline isn’t that there’s a shortage of people willing to return to work. Instead, it’s a scarcity story. We have a shortage of safe, good-paying, sustainable jobs.” That’s the feeling at Deere, where assembly employees were categorized as front-line workers to continue operations, creating a sense that the company owes them. Kellogg workers, too, feel like they put themselves at risk in order to keep America’s pantries full during lockdowns.
‘Our Future Is Not for Sale’: America Is Witnessing the Biggest Strike Wave in a Generation
Vice
By By Lauren Kaori Gurley
October 19, 2021
Something extraordinary is happening in factories, universities, hospitals, and movie studios across America. Workers are authorizing strikes and shutting down production in numbers that many young people have never seen before in their lifetimes.
IATSE Deal Gives Lowest Paid Workers 62% Raise to $26 Per Hour, Union Says
Yahoo! Entertainment
By Jeremy Fuster
October 18, 2021
The new deal that the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees negotiated with film and TV producers includes a 62% pay increase for the lowest paid members of the below-the-line Hollywood workers’ union. The lowest hourly wages for writer assistants, script coordinators, assistant production coordinators and art department coordinators — many of them in IATSE Local 871 — will increase from $16 per hour to $26 per hour over the next three years, a rep for IATSE told TheWrap. That will push their pay above the $19.35 hourly wage that MIT’s living wage site calculates as the living wage for a single resident in Los Angeles without children.
WIVB
By Sarah Minkewicz
October 19, 2021
CWA members outside Mercy Hospital continue to receive support from state and local leaders, as week three of their strike approaches. The President of one of New York’s Largest union also stopped by, their message is to encourage CWA members to stand their ground and fight for what they believe is a fair contract. “When you’re out on strike, you don’t know what to expect, you’re doing it simply because you believe in the cause, better wages, better benefits, better conditions of employment, to see others in it with you makes it a little bit easier to get through the day and the weeks,” said Mario Cilento, who’s the president of New York State AFL-CIO.
Pitt faculty votes to join United Steelworkers union
WESA
By Julia Zenkevich
October 19, 2021
The University of Pittsburgh’s 3,300 faculty members will join the United Steelworkers union after they completed a successful unionization drive on Tuesday. Preliminary results show overwhelming support for the union. The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board held a mail ballot election over the last several weeks for faculty members at all five Pitt campuses. According to USW, more than 71% of faculty members who voted cast their ballots in favor of the union. Advocates say it will result in better job security for workers, more positive educational outcomes for students, and increased transparency across the university.
UMass Lowell graduate students rally for higher wages
Lowell Sun
By Trea Lavery
October 19, 2021
Graduate student workers at UMass Lowell rallied Tuesday on the university’s South Campus to ask the school’s administration to pay them a living wage. The Graduate Employee Organization (GEO), United Auto Workers Local 1596, the union that represents teaching and research assistants at UMass Lowell, has been in contract negotiations with the school since May, but so far they have failed to achieve a contract. “We’re trying to get people paid, because the semester is going by and no contract has been made,” said Razvan Stanescu, president of GEO. According to GEO, graduate student workers went without an updated contract from 2009 to last year, when they reached an agreement with the university to receive a raise of 8.5%, settling for a smaller amount than they wanted due to the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. However, part of that agreement was that negotiations would reopen in 2021.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
United Auto Workers on strike receive help from fellow Iowans
We are Iowa
By Carson J. S. Reichardt
October 19, 2021
Members of the United Auto Workers union are continuing their strike against John Deere, which began Thursday, Oct. 14. More than 10,000 workers are now on strike, and in Iowa, they are getting some support from the community. "Local 310 just jumped up, dropped off a whole bunch of supplies, and the AFL CIO, and the South Central Federation of Labor really helped us out as well as DMARC, the Des Moines Area Religious Council," said Syrus Miller, the community service chairman for UAW Local 450. All those donations are helping keep workers and their families well-supplied throughout the strike. So far, UAW Local 450 has collected everything from Easy Mac and canned goods to shampoo and toilet paper. The supplies are helping keep spirits high.