Category Archives: US unions

Thousands of nurses in New York City to strike in pursuit of fair contract

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Strike date at seven hospitals set for 9 January after 98.8% vote in favor, with wages, staff ratios and health insurance key issues

At least 12,000 nurses at seven hospitals in New York City are threatening to strike after their union contract expired at the end of last year. A strike date is set for 9 January.

The nurses are pushing for the hospitals to implement and enforce safe staffing ratios, improve wages in line with inflation, and maintain health insurance coverage as opposed to proposed cuts by the hospitals.

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How will the NHS strikes affect you?

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Ambulance workers and nurses are taking action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Here’s what to expect

• Nurses pledge tougher strikes

Nurses will hold their second day of strike action on Tuesday in more than 70 trusts and health organisations in England, Wales and northern Ireland. On Wednesday, three unions, the GMB, Unison and Unite, will take strike action at ambulance trusts across the country. More than 10,000 ambulance workers in the GMB have voted to strike at nine trusts in England and Wales.

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US Starbucks workers to begin three-day strike in push for unionizing

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More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out to show support for unionizing, an effort that Starbucks opposes

Starbucks workers around the US are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain’s stores.

More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old unionization campaign.

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Railroad workers pressure Congress and Biden to address working conditions

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Workers and labor activists criticize Congress after it blocked a strike by voting to impose a contract agreement

Railroad workers and unions are ramping up pressure on the US Congress and Joe Biden to address poor working conditions in the wake of the recent move to block a strike when Congress voted to impose a contract agreement.

Workers and labor activists in America have criticized that action for undermining the collective bargaining process in the US and workers’ right to strike.

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‘We’re really worried’: US supermarket mega-merger raises mass layoff fears

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Kroger and Albertsons seek deal through FTC but employees say previous merger experience has them deeply concerned

Thousands of workers at two of America’s biggest supermarkets are warning of potential mass layoffs as the giant firms push for a merger.

Kroger, the second largest grocery chain in the US, and Albertsons, the fourth largest, are pushing for a merger through the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the proposal.

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University of California workers continue strike amid threat of arrests

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Strike of 48,000 is largest in history of US higher education as some workers protest at offices of high-level university administrators

Tens of thousands of academic workers throughout the University of California are currently on their fourth week of striking for a new union contract and the situation is intensifying amid the threat of arrests after direct actions by some strikers.

The strike of 48,000 academic workers, including graduate workers, academic researchers, postdoctoral scholars and teaching assistants, began on 14 November and is the largest in the history of higher education in the US.

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Largest queer health center in the US midwest to lay off 15% of staff

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Staff cuts at Chicago’s Howard Brown Health could squeeze care as attacks on LGBTQ+ and trans healthcare have escalated

Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit community health center in Chicago that is the largest provider of health and wellness care for the LGBTQ+ community and people living with HIV in the US midwest, has announced it wants to lay off at least 100 employees, or about 15% of staff.

The layoffs were proposed as voluntary in the first instance, but the company says “a reduction in workforce is required”, suggesting that if 100 volunteers are not found then layoffs will be compulsory.

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US rail unions decry Biden’s proposal to impose settlement through Congress

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Workers could be prevented by congressional decree from striking over paid sick leave and quality-of-life issues

Railroad workers have expressed dismay at Joe Biden’s proposed solution to a looming strike that threatens to derail the US economy, which they say belies his image as the most pro-union president in generations.

As a 9 December deadline looms for the long-running labor dispute between the US’s largest railway companies and their unions, Biden has called on Congress to intervene and block a strike that could cost the US economy around $2bn a day by some estimates.

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Congress to take up bill to avert rail strike as Biden and unions clash – live

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Progressives in Georgia are leaving nothing to chance with just one week to go before polls close in the state’s Senate runoff election.

A coalition of progressive groups has launched a massive canvassing effort for the Democratic party since election day, when neither Democrat Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker were able to win enough support to avoid a runoff.

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Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strike

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Citing ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations

The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.

Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.

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Biden asks US Congress to block railroad strike that could ‘devastate economy’

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With 9 December deadline fast approaching, business groups also push US government to intervene in labor dispute before holidays

Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, saying a strike would “devastate our economy”.

Biden’s move comes as business groups have warned that the looming strike would hit just before the holiday season and worsen the US’s inflation problems.

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Workers at Amazon’s largest air hub in the world push to form a union

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Employees at the company’s hub outside Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport are now mobilizing

Amazon workers at the air hub outside the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport, Amazon’s largest air hub in the world, are pushing to organize a union in the latest effort to mobilize workers at the tech company.

Workers say they are dissatisfied with annual wage increases this year. About 400 of them have signed a petition to reinstate a premium hourly pay for Amazon’s peak season that hasn’t been enacted at the site yet. Their main demands also include a $30 an hour starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings.

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Graduate workers across University of California system to strike for better pay

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Students, researchers and scholars are negotiating contracts in what could be the largest strike in US’s higher education history

Graduate workers including teaching assistants and student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have voted to authorize a strike which could be the largest in higher education history in the US.

Their unions – UAW 5810, UAW 2865 and SRU-UAW – representing 48,000 workers are currently negotiating union contracts for four separate bargaining units. They are coordinating to push increased compensation, childcare reimbursements, job security protections, sustainable transit incentives, eliminating fees for international scholars and stronger disability accommodations.

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Pittsburgh newspaper workers go on strike over unfair labor practice

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Strike began after Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s management, Block Communications, cut off health insurance

More than 100 workers represented by five labor unions at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are currently on an unfair labor practice strike, including production, distribution, advertising and accounts receivable staff.

The strike initially began after the newspaper’s management, Block Communications owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on 1 October after refusing to pay an additional $19 a week per employee to maintain the existing coverage.

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Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

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GOP courts blue collar voters but most favor anti-union ‘right to work’ laws and reject laws that would protect right to organize

After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party seeks to rebrand itself as the party of the working class, its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.

With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers, museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.

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US railroad union rejects contract with employers, raising strike concerns

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The third-largest maintenance workers’ union opposed the deal, saying concerns over paid time off remained unaddressed

The US’s third-largest railroad union rejected a deal with employers Monday, renewing the possibility of a strike that could cripple the economy. Both sides will return to the bargaining table before that happens.

Over half of track maintenance workers represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division who voted opposed the five-year contract, which contained 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. Union President Tony Cardwell said the railroads didn’t do enough to address the lack of paid time off – particularly sick time – and working conditions after the major railroads eliminated nearly one-third of their jobs over the past six years.

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Starbucks employee was fired illegally, labor board judge rules

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The coffee giant will be required to reinstate Hannah Whitbeck’s job and to hold a meeting reasserting that the company broke the law

Starbucks illegally fired an employee at one of the coffee giant’s shops in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for engaging in union activism, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled Friday.

The decision requires Starbucks to offer the worker reinstatement with back pay and to hold a meeting with employees, management, government representatives and the union to clarify workers’ rights and reassert the board’s finding that the company broke the law.

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California’s fast-food industry calls for referendum on new labor legislation

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Law provides for councils to represent workers, but opponents claim menu prices will increase and restaurants will close

The fast-food industry is seeking to overturn one of the most significant labor wins in recent American history by trying to scrap a new law in California that will establish an industry council for the sector on wage standards and other regulations, including safety.

The Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, AB 257, was signed into law by the California governor, Gavin Newsom, on 5 September in what is seen as a huge fillip to a US labor movement seeking to capitalize on a wave of unionization drives.

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US railroad workers prepare for strike as rail companies see record profits

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As Biden’s recommendations fall flat, negotiations between management and unions are at an impasse – and workers are prepared to walk

US freight railroad workers are close to striking over claims that grueling schedules and poor working conditions have been driving employees out of the industry over the past several years.

Heated negotiations over a new union contract between railroad corporations and 150,000-member-strong labor unions have been ongoing for nearly three years. A “cooling off” period imposed by the Biden administration after it issued recommendations to settle the dispute ends on Friday. If no deal is reached, unions are threatening industrial action – the first since 1992 – and workers say they will quit an industry already facing staff shortages.

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‘Tired of trickle-down economics’: Biden calls for expansion of unions in Labor Day speech

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President again pledges to be ‘most pro-union president’ in history during speech in Milwaukee

Joe Biden used a Labor Day speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin to endorse the expansion of unions, reiterating his election promises to be the “most pro-union president” in American history.

The US president argued in Milwaukee that a skilled, unionised workforce would help the US regain its place as a world leader in infrastructure and manufacturing.

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