APPRENTICESHIPS
Local data center boom drives demand for electrical engineers
WTOP
Jan. 11, 2023
Expanding and diversifying. These are both goals of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26. “The most diverse local union in the country” is how Joe Dabbs, the union’s business manager, describes IBEW Local 26. And one of the union’s paths to diversity and expansion? Through the information technology industry, specifically supporting the build out of new data centers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region. To ensure that there are enough electricians locally to handle the work, the union spends millions of dollars each year on training through its joint apprenticeship program with the National Electrical Contractors Association. The five-year program involves 8,000 hours of on-the-job training and another 800 hours of book and lab work. And it’s all free to the trainees. At the end of the program, apprentices typically land well-paying jobs in the data center industry, Dabbs said.
JOINING TOGETHER
Yale Grad Workers Unionize at Last
Inside Higher Ed
By Colleen Flaherty
Jan. 11, 2023
Graduate student instructors and researchers at Yale University voted to unionize, 1,860 to 179, they announced this week. Some 3,214 workers total were eligible to vote. The National Labor Relations Board certified the election, which was years in the making. Yale’s is one of academe’s longest-running graduate student organizing campaigns, dating back to the 1990s. The campaign gained new traction after the NLRB, which has historically flip-flopped on graduate students’ union rights, said in 2016 that teaching assistants and student researchers at Columbia University were entitled to collective bargaining.
Blank Street Coffee Is Popping Up Everywhere. Workers Hope A Union Will Follow.
HuffPost
By Dave Jamieson
Jan. 11, 2023
Those workers are left to figure out many things independently, one reason many seem to be signing union cards. Blank Street employees in New York have already filed for three elections to determine whether they will join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1500. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has scheduled the first vote to start next week by mail and a second to begin in early February. The results of both elections are expected next month.
Apple’s first US labor union reaches new milestone for tech industry
CNN
By Catherine Thorbecke
Jan. 11, 2023
Workers at Apple’s first unionized retail store began collectively bargaining with management on Wednesday, in a milestone moment not only for the iPhone company but for all of Big Tech. Apple store workers in Towson, Maryland, who made history in June by voting to form the first union at one of the tech giant’s US stores, started contract negotiations with Apple management on Wednesday morning. The worker group, based out of a mall near Baltimore, is organized with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) union.
The REI Union Effort Spreads To Another City
Yahoo! News
By Dave Jamieson
Jan. 11, 2023
REI workers in Northeast Ohio are aiming to make their store the third to unionize in less than a year, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The labor group said in a statement Wednesday that a “majority” of employees at the REI store in the Cleveland suburb of Orange Village had signed union cards and submitted a petition for a union election to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The board must ensure sufficient interest in unionizing before scheduling a vote.
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND HEALTH
NYC nurses are on strike, but the problems they face are seen nationwide
NPR
By Rachel Treisman
Jan. 11, 2023
Nurses at two of New York City's biggest hospitals are on the third day of their strike over contract negotiations. More than 7,000 nurses from Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx have participated in the walkout this week. They're demanding not just salary increases, but improved staffing levels.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
United Way gearing up for another MLK Day of Service
Localsyr.com
By Erik Columbia
Jan. 11, 2023
This Monday is the national holiday set aside to honor the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While some view it as a day-off, the United Way is hoping you will make it a day-on with their 21st MLK Day of Service. Helen Hudson, the United Way’s AFL/CIO Liaison and Syracuse Common Council President, joined the show Wednesday along with the president of the Great Syracuse Labor Council’s Mark Spadafore. The MLK Day of Service is Monday, January 16. They need warm coats, gloves, mittens, formula, diapers and non-perishable foods. You can drop them off Monday from 8 a.m. to noon at the Southwest Community Center on South Ave. in Syracuse.