MUST READ
First woman AFL-CIO president to discuss workers’ rights
Around the O
Oct. 17, 2022
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, will be on campus Friday, Oct. 21, to talk about the state of labor unions and employee rights in an evolving economic landscape. A 1992 graduate of the UO School of Journalism and Communication, Shuler made history in August 2021 when she was elected the first woman president of the AFL-CIO, a national federation of 57 unions representing 12.5 million people across all sectors of the U.S. economy. She also will be formally inducted into the school’s Hall of Achievement on Oct. 20. “I look forward to a conversation with the University of Oregon community on how America's unions can build on this organizing momentum and use it to bring voice and power to working people everywhere,” Shuler said. “All over the country people are recognizing the power of unions,” she added. “They’re seeing how we fight for a better workplace, a better life, for union members and for everyone. And the momentum around union organizing is contagious, spreading everywhere from nurses in Austin, Texas to sheet metal workers in Alaska, from architects to athletes. At the AFL-CIO we’re working to capture that momentum and use it to build the labor movement of the future.”
JOINING TOGETHER
Apple Store in Oklahoma City Becomes Second to Unionize
The New York Times
By Noam Scheiber
Oct. 14, 2022
Apple employees at a store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize, becoming the second of the company’s roughly 270 U.S. retail stores to do so. The result, announced by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday night, suggests that an initial victory by a union at a store in Towson, Md., in June was not an isolated development in an organizing campaign that dates back to last year. According to the labor board, 56 employees voted in favor of the union and 32 voted against. The workers will be represented by the Communications Workers of America, which has members at AT&T Mobility, Verizon and media companies like The New York Times, and has sought to represent tech-industry workers in recent years.
Contract ratified, union workers return to Philadelphia Museum of Art
CBS Philadelphia
By Jasmine Payoute
October 17, 2022
It's "back to work"-day for union employees at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The workers approved their first contract after walking off the job nearly three weeks ago. After 19 days of walking the picket line and two years of negotiations, union members say they're proud of what they're calling their hard-won first contract. With fists raised, members of Local 397 PMA walked into the museum for the first time in weeks.
Philadelphia Museum of Art and Union Agree To Three-Year Contract After 19-Day Strike
ARTNews
By Harrison Jacobs
October 17, 2022
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the PMA Union, an affiliate of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, District Council 47, reached a three-year agreement, union leaders and PMA museum director Sasha Suda announced Friday. The PMA’s board of trustees and the union’s executive committee approved the deal’s terms on Friday. The union’s 180-worker membership voted overwhelmingly in favor of the contract on Sunday. The vote was 99 percent in favor.
Tacoma Art Museum workers push to unionize
The Seattle Times
By Grace Gorenflo
Oct. 17, 2022
Workers at the Tacoma Art Museum are moving to join the Washington Federation of State Employees and become the state’s first museum with unionized workers across departments. About a dozen workers announced the effort Monday, gathering outdoors across the street from the museum in an event also attended by local and state labor leaders. If they obtain union representation, TAM’s workers would bargain for increased wages and benefits, more transparency from higher ups and more say in institutional decisions that affect them, according to the three-worker committee elected by the workers to organize for them. Redmond said they chose AFSCME Council 28/WFSE as the union to join because a broader union gives them a network and is better to address the “systemic dysfunction of cultural institutions.”
Members of UC student employee union demand higher pay, discuss strike at rally
Daily Bruin
By Catherine Hamilton
Oct. 17, 2022
Members and supporters of the United Auto Workers Local 2865 gathered at Janss Steps on Wednesday to call for better graduate student working conditions. UAW 2865 represents University of California academic student employees – such as teaching assistants and graduate student researchers – in bargaining for better wages and support from the University, according to its website. The rally included discussion of a motion for graduate students across the UC system to go on strike, which will be voted on later this year. Union members at the rally also discussed the need for the UC to pay its student workers living wages.
NLRB
The lawyer who could deliver on Biden’s wish to be the most pro-union president
The Washington Post
By Lauren Kaori Gurley
Oct. 15, 2022
The lawyer who helped these workers get their jobs back this past year is Jennifer Abruzzo, 58, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, the agency tasked with protecting workers’ rights to organize in the United States. Abruzzo has worked at the NLRB for nearly a quarter-century. But now, as the agency’s leader and chief enforcer of federal labor laws, she wants to make it far easier for workers to unionize than it has been in decades. Her tenure comes at a pivotal moment for unions. Union membership has fallen over the past four decades, but pandemic-era pressures that prompted millions of workers to retire or leave the workforce have also afforded workers new leverage to demand more from their employers. Union elections increased by 53 percent in fiscal year 2022 over 2021.