Today's AFL-CIO Press Clips
POLITICS
Trump’s unusual labor secretary pick — Oregon’s Chavez-DeRemer — could have an impact at home
Oregon Capital Chronicle
By Randy Stapilus
Dec. 3, 2024
Shortly after the Chavez-DeRemer announcement, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler commented that she “has built a pro-labor record in Congress.” Shuler added, however: “But Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States — not Rep. Chavez-DeRemer — and it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as secretary of labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda.”
US Seeks to End Subminimum Wage for Workers With Disabilities
Bloomberg
By Josh Eidelson
Dec. 3, 2024
President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor is proposing to abolish below-minimum-wage pay for people with disabilities, targeting a long-controversial program whose fate will now rest with the incoming Trump administration. Since the New Deal, federal law has authorized the department to permit paying particular employees a lower “special minimum wage” on the grounds that their disabilities impair their productivity. That law, passed half a century before the Americans With Disabilities Act, was meant to shield people with disabilities from being deemed too expensive to employ. But it’s been denounced by advocates as a form of legalized discrimination that rips off and marginalizes those it purports to protect.
Trump says he would block US Steel acquisition by Nippon Steel
The Hill
By Juliann Ventura
Dec. 3, 2024
The deal also faced pushback from the United Steelworkers union. “Our concerns are rooted in a wealth of evidence. Nippon Steel has a long history of strategically importing both substrate and finished products into the United States and countries as it offloads its 16 million tons of over-capacity in Japan and China, all to the detriment of American steelmaking and American steelworkers,” David McCall, international president for United Steelworkers, wrote earlier this year.
U.S. Moves to End a Minimum Wage Waiver for Disabled Workers
The New York Times
By Danielle Kaye
Dec. 3, 2024
The Biden administration on Tuesday moved to end a program that has for decades allowed companies to pay workers with disabilities less than the minimum wage. The statute, enacted as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, has let employers obtain certificates from the Labor Department that authorize them to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25. The department began a “comprehensive review” of the program last year, and on Tuesday it proposed a rule that would bar new certificates and phase out current ones over three years.
Trump vows to block U.S. Steel's takeover by Japan's Nippon Steel
CBS News
By Aimee Picchi
Dec. 3, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is pledging to block Japan's Nippon Steel from buying U.S. Steel, a $14.9 billion deal announced a year ago that is now under review for its potential impact on U.S. national security. "I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan," Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday. "Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!"
US Labor Department proposes nixing sub-minimum wage for disabled workers
Reuters
By Daniel Wiessner
Dec. 3, 2024
The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a last-minute proposal to eliminate employers' ability to pay less than the minimum wage to certain workers with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Labor said the decades-old exemption from the standard minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, was no longer needed to meet its original goal of expanding job opportunities for people with disabilities. Since its adoption in 1938, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act has allowed employers to apply for exemptions known as 14(c) certificates to pay less than the minimum wage to disabled workers, but only when "necessary to prevent the curtailment of opportunities for employment."
Republicans Are Already Coming for Medicare and Social Security
The New Republic
By Hafiz Rashid
Dec. 3, 2024
Donald Trump’s election has Republicans chomping at the bit at some of their favorite targets: government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “We’re gonna have to have some hard decisions. We’re gotta bring the Democrats in and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare,” McCormick said. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on.”
Biden moves to end subminimum wages for people with disabilities
The Washington Post
By Jacqueline Alemany
Dec. 3, 2024
The Biden administration is moving to phase out a Depression-era program that allows some employers to pay disabled workers far less than minimum wage, fulfilling one of President Joe Biden’s campaign promises and triggering what will probably become a fierce legal and political battle.
Thousands of Federal Employees Land Work From Home Deal Ahead of Trump
Bloomberg
By Josh Eidelson
Dec. 3, 2024
A Biden administration appointee has agreed to lock in hybrid work protections for tens of thousands of Social Security staff, part of a slew of organized labor efforts that complicate President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to reshape the federal workforce.
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 42,000 Social Security Administration workers, reached an agreement with the agency last week that will protect telework until 2029 in an updated contract, according to a message to its members viewed by Bloomberg.
ORGANIZING
Higher Ed Unionization Boomed Under Biden. Will That Change Under Trump?
Inside Higher Ed
By Ryan Quinn
Dec. 3, 2024
Higher education unionization surged under the Biden administration. Roughly 38 percent of graduate student workers are now unionized, as are more than a quarter of faculty, according to an August report from an organization that studies higher education labor trends. That National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions study noted that the ranks of union-represented grad workers especially grew in the past few years, increasing by 64,000 between 2021 and 2023. That was nearly triple the uptick over the previous eight years.
Yahoo! Finance
By Business Wire
Dec. 3, 2024
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 360 announced today that, even as 2024 winds down, its work organizing New Jersey’s cannabis industry continues to attract new members. The latest vote in favor of union membership with UFCW Local 360 came at the Fresh Elizabeth LLC dispensary in Elizabeth. The location is currently the only New Jersey outlet for multi-state cannabis operator, Fresh, which also does business in Colorado and Delaware.
Kokomo UAW chapter says Stellantis will unionize new battery plant
WRTV
By Taj Simmons
Dec. 3, 2024
The automaker formerly known as Chrysler has a big presence in Kokomo, which will grow even more when a plant for electric vehicle batteries opens. The local United Auto Workers chapter says some of those workers will be represented by their union. "I can't even begin to tell you how much work has been involved in this," said UAW Local 1166 president Dave Willis. "They have a major investment over there, and now they're investing in their people. The people that are out on layoff at Chrysler, or Stellantis, they have the possibility to continue working instead of being just out on layoff."
UNION NEGOTIATIONS
WGME workers walk picket line to protest salaries, pace of contract talks
Portland Press Herald
By Stephen Singer
Dec. 2, 2024
Workers at WGME-TV in Portland are going public with their protest about salaries, hoping to ramp up the pressure as they negotiate a new contract. Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1837, which represents about 50 workers, organized an informational picket Monday on Washington Avenue near the corner of Allen Avenue. Photographers, news producers, directors, news editors, assignment editors, operating technicians and others are seeking better pay and working conditions in collective bargaining with Sinclair Broadcast Group.
One-day strikes are in: Why unions are keeping it short on the picket line
WWNO
By Stephan Bisaha
Dec. 3, 2024
Strikes can be long, grueling wars of attrition to see who blinks first — the workers or the employer. They can also be a party. Nurses from LCMC Health System’s University Medical Center New Orleans went with the latter in October. Their picket line included a stage, live music and a DJ in front of the university hospital’s campus. “It’s multiple holidays rolled into one,” said Terry Mogilles, a nurse at the hospital’s trauma orthopedic clinic. “Mardi Gras. Christmas. Birthday.” Another way strikes can be different? Keeping them brief. This strike was scheduled to only last 24 hours. While long-running strikes have dominated the headlines in the Gulf South region in the past few years, short strikes have become the norm. Since at least 2021, most strikes have lasted less than five days, according to the labor action tracker run by Cornell University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The majority of those short strikes last no more than a day.
Culinary Union urges Clark County to pressure Virgin Hotel in contract dispute
News 3 LV
By Andrew Normura
Dec. 3, 2024
Culinary Union workers paused their picketing to attend a Clark County Commission meeting on Tuesday, seeking support in their ongoing contract negotiations with the Virgin Hotel. Union leaders urged commissioners to pressure the hotel by discouraging Formula 1 from conducting business with the property, which currently serves as a rideshare base for the racing organization.
Flight Attendant Crisis Reaching Boiling Point At Three Airlines Serving Hawaii
Beat of Hawaii
By Staff
Dec. 2, 2024
Hawaii travelers may not realize that two of the airlines carrying a huge share of passengers to the islands—United Airlines and Alaska Airlines—are in the midst of contentious labor disputes with their flight attendants. Both groups have been working without new contracts, leading to growing tensions that people report affecting the Hawaii travel experience.
WAFB
By Rylee Kramer
Dec. 2, 2024
The contract between the Capital Area Transit System (CATS) and the Amalgamated Transit Union 1546 (ATU) is set to end on December 31, 2024. President of the ATU, George DeCuir, says there will be no extensions of the current contracts, and it’s up to CATS to meet their requests. “We don’t wanna disrupt the agency. We don’t want to disrupt the traveling public, the transiting public. We don’t want to disrupt the taxpayers that pay into the system to provide equitable service for us,” DeCuir says. “However, if we are not met with our demands for our collective bargaining agreement, we will shut the system down, but it will be our last-case scenario.”