It’s Friday, and we have five labor-related stories that you might not have heard yet:
🏛️ Josh Hawley Was No HELP To A Trump NLRB Nom:
Amid the government shutdown, two Board nominees had their hearing with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Both James Murphy, who’s the former chief counsel to ex-Chair Marvin Kaplan, and Scott Mayer asserted that their judgment would remain independent of the president’s views, despite Gwynne Wilcox’s booting.
If you guessed that Josh Hawley, BFF to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, tried to throw up a roadblock in proceedings, you’d be correct.
The conservative senator from Missouri previously got combative with General Counsel nominee Crystal Carey. This week, he grilled Scott Mayer, who’s currently Boeing Co’s chief labor counsel, about the ongoing St. Louis strike. Hawley also took a moment to throw darts over 2024’s IAM strike against Boeing in Washington.
And speaking of Boeing…
✈️ Machinist Maneuvers Backfire Upon Workers
The aerospace industry’s labor tensions are still at peak level with IAM’s St. Louis strike reaching its ninth week with no signs of a resolution in sight. Members recently rejected a 5-year deal with a 24% wage increase and a $4,000 signing bonus. Then IAM threw a curveball by announcing their own proposed contract and claiming that members would vote on it.
Air Dominance VP Dan Gillian called that union-proposed contract a non-starter, and this week, Gillian announced that Boeing held a hiring event for permanent replacement workers and “received hundreds of qualified applicants” for the fighter-jet focused St. Louis plant.
This sounds like another case of a company doing what it must do to meet business demands while a union hurts the members whose interests they claim to represent.
🌴 ⚖️ California Takes The NLRB Plunge:
States are continuing to try and fill the void left by a quorum-less Board.
After NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation aiming to expand jurisdiction over labor disputes involving private employers, California has gone the same route. To that end, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a Teamsters-lobbied bill claiming to grant the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) authority to certify union elections, handle collective bargaining disputes, and adjudicate ULP charges.
Additionally, AB 288 would launch a PERB Enforcement Fund that would be funded through collecting civil penalties against private employers found to violate the state’s labor laws.
Although this “solution” will not stand long term—Garmon preemption ensures that states do not have jurisdiction over matters covered by the NLRA—states will likely still try to create more chaos.
🚗 UAW Revving Toward A Tennessee Strike:
The UAW refuses to agree on a first-ever contract at a Southern, foreign-owned auto plant. After unionizing Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant in April 2024, almost a year of bargaining hasn’t closed the deal. The company’s “best, final offer”–including a 20% pay bump over four years along with more PTO and reduced healthcare premiums–arrived a few weeks ago.
In response, the UAW went silent before distributing strike cards among members. The union now insists that it’s not done bargaining but moved into strike-training mode, so we’ll see if an authorization happens.
🤖 🎬 The AI story you might not expect:
We’ll finish this Friday Five with AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood, who is all the rage with talent agents, according to Tilly’s creator, actor-comedian Eline Van der Velden. Whether that last detail is true, actors’ union SAG-AFTRA isn’t waiting to find out.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor,” the union declared. “It’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.” For what it’s worth, Justine Bateman previously warned SAG-AFTRA about this kind of scenario during 2023 contract negotiations that didn’t result in the “meaningful protections” promised by the union.
