POLITICS
Protecting the Right to Organize Act will help unions win their first contracts (Opinion)
The Seattle Times
By Marty Walsh
Nov. 24, 2022
We are witnessing more worker organizing than many of us have seen in our lifetimes. Workers at colleges and universities, retail stores, newsrooms, nonprofits, museums, and more are forming unions with their co-workers. It has been nearly a year since the first group of Starbucks workers voted to unionize, and since then workers at more than 250 other Starbucks stores have joined them in unionizing. Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island have also voted to unionize, as have workers in diverse industries across the country. Petitions for union elections are up 58% at the National Labor Relations Board compared to last year.
JOINING TOGETHER
Central Florida food service workers could strike next month, amid ongoing contract negotiations
WMNF
By McKenna Schueler
Nov. 23, 2022
Last week, over 200 food service workers at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida voted unanimously to authorize a strike, which could occur as soon as December 1. This vote comes amid ongoing contract negotiations between UNITE HERE Local 737, the labor union representing dishwashers, cooks, concessions workers, and other food service workers at Orange County Convention Center, and Sodexo, a global company that contracts with the convention facility. “The results were unmistakable,” said Jeremy Haicken, President of UNITE HERE Local 737 during a Monday press conference with union leaders from across the country. “Two-hundred and thirty-five voted to authorize a strike. Zero voted against authorizing a strike.” Voter turnout was 84% among full-time workers represented by the union, with additional input from over 130 on-call workers.
Culinary, LVCVA’s food services firm hold key talks this week
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By Richard N. Velotta
Nov. 26, 2022
Important collective bargaining sessions are on tap this week when negotiators with Sodexo Centerplate, the Las Vegas Convention Center’s exclusive provider of hospitality, food and beverage services, meet with representatives of Culinary Local 226. The outcome of those negotiations will determine whether union members take a strike vote Dec. 8 and 9 that could put food service in jeopardy for CES, which opens Jan. 5. The strike vote is scheduled a couple of days before the National Finals Rodeo and its Cowboy Christmas retail event at the convention center clear out.
IN THE STATES
Hero Hazard Pay Languishes under the Self-Dealing Gold Dome
Insider NJ
By Bob Hennelly
Nov. 25, 2022
“Throughout the pandemic, workers who because of their jobs were at greater risk of infection from COVID-19 were exalted as essential workers and heroes,” the union leaders wrote. “Such praise, however welcome, has done nothing to improve the material conditions of these workers’ lives or to compensate them for the additional risks they endured.” The state AFL-CIO’s modest proposal requires the hazard pay be limited to workers who were in the 1a or 1b vaccine eligibility groups, have performed at least 500 hours of work from March 16, 2020 to May 7,2021 when vaccines finally became widely available. Full time workers would get $1,000 and part time workers $500. Only workers whose annual income is 100 percent of the state’s average annual wage for all occupations which is $67,120 would be eligible. The American Rescue Plan expressly approved of state and local government using their federal COVID aid funds for hazard pay. “We had within New Jersey Transit ATU, which represents 5,000 bus drivers—they had a lot of fatalities and a lot of sicknesses—the United Food & Commercial Workers who were on the frontline—just as the nurses and everybody else,” said Wowkaneck during an interview in his Trenton office back in June. “They were in the Shop Rites and the ACMES keeping food on the shelves in the very beginning before vaccination, before PPE, there was a lot of sickness, a lot of loss of life across all of these unions.”
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
IAMAW Lodge 2003 donates stuffed animals to Daleville DPS
Dothan Eagle
Nov. 26, 2022
The Daleville Department of Public Safety was the recent recipient of the generosity of the members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local Lodge 2003. Members of the local lodge, based in Daleville, collected stuffed animals to give to the first responders for children in the community. Daleville DPS Chief John Crawford thanked IAMAW Representative Daniel McCormick for the organization’s generosity and spirit of community service.
INTERNATIONAL
AFL-CIO’s Feingold: Unions demand ‘just transition,’ but are G20 leaders listening?
People’s World
By Mark Gruenberg
Nov. 23, 2022
World leaders meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia, and the COP27 clean energy conference in Egypt have apparently heard world trade unionists’ calls for “a just transition” for workers as the globe makes the difficult move away from depending on fossil fuels, says AFL-CIO International Affairs Department Director Cathy Feingold. But did they heed it? “We’re moving in the direction of a new social contract” around the world, Feingold replies. In a telephone interview from the Melbourne, Australia, airport, Feingold, re-elected as a deputy general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), stated unionists are pushing for “a new social contract” around the globe. She was awaiting her plane back to the U.S. from the Nov. 17-22 ITUC meeting there. The U.S. delegation to the ITUC included AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond, Feingold, Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union President Stuart Appelbaum.