We are kicking off this week with a pair of examples that show unions feeling the effects of their actions and inactions:
- The ACLU has been ordered to reinstate a worker who criticized working conditions, thereby engaging in protected activity through social media posts. In the process, a judge held that the worker was also falsely accused by the union of making racist statements. The civil-rights organization chose to spend two years litigating the case, which has amounted to nothing more than a bad look for them.
- Adjunct university faculty members in Florida are seeing their unions decertified through a new law that puts unions on notice if less than 60% of bargaining unit members pay dues. In these cases, another election must be held to maintain union representation, and thus far, the law has reportedly led to decertifying unions at 20 higher-ed institutions. An important detail: the law disallows public sector employers from deducting dues from paychecks, and clearly, many union members were not seeing enough value to pay their dues and meet the 60% threshold voluntarily.
Now, we will return to regularly scheduled union programming, strike watch:
- UAW-represented workers went on strike last week at Dakkota Integrated Systems auto parts’ Chicago-based plant, which supplies a nearby Ford plant, after overwhelmingly rejecting the tentative agreement between the company and the union. A progressive publication called out the union for being “utterly indifferent to workers’ interests” by agreeing to keep new hire wages close to minimum wage and ignoring the strike on the UAW’s social accounts.
- International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) members are gearing up for a possible Oct. 1 coastwide strike by scheduling a September meeting to clarify contract demands. ILA President Harold Daggett called a strike more likely than not after the union called off June negotiations with companies represented by United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) over a dispute about the current Master Contract. Daggett also asked the Biden administration to refrain from stepping in if negotiations fail, leading to a strike.
- The IATSE-affiliated Animation Guild members rallied ahead of this week’s contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. A union representative claimed that this year’s event had twice the RSVPs of a similar 2022 event, perhaps due to the industry’s recent sweeping layoffs – the union claims that a third of its 5,000 members had been laid off during the current contract – as well as member concerns including AI and outsourcing. However, as we recently discussed regarding last year’s WGA strike, unions have no idea what they are doing while negotiating for “meaningful AI projections,” so prepare to see some disappointed union members.
And this final item isn’t technically a strike but is still newsworthy:
Following a federal judge’s ruling, the Teamsters will be allowed to picket near the Amazon Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. This news follows the international union’s choice to affiliate with the flailing Amazon Labor Union, which has only managed a lone warehouse victory in over two years. Teamsters Local 89 out of Louisville have been assigned to organize the Amazon Air Hub workers at the facility.
