We have quite a few important items to highlight today:
* Please check out and support the following in Portland if you can:
Postal Protest - No Cuts, No Closures (APWU 128, NALC 82)Save the Service, Save our Jobs
Mon. Jan. 8, Noon-1pm
East Portland Post Office, 1020 SE 7th Ave.
RSVP https://actionnetwork.org/events/rally-to-preserve-and-protect-the-peoples-postal-service/
Rally for School Workers (PFSP & SEIU 503-140)
Fair Contracts for Custodians, Food Service, and Classified Staff
Tues. Jan. 9, 5:30pm (pack the school board meeting)
Portland Public Schools HQ, 501 N. Dixon
And this:
Race and Labor Labor Notes workshop in 2 parts
Tuesdays, Jan. 16th & 23rd, 4:30-6:30pm
How does racism show up in our workplaces and our unions? What are some strategies to confront it and build solidarity for a stronger, multiracial labor movement? And what can you say to union siblings who aren’t convinced racial justice has anything to do with union politics?
RSVP: https://labornotes.org/events/2024/race-and-labor-january-2024
Tuesdays, Jan. 16th & 23rd, 4:30-6:30pm
How does racism show up in our workplaces and our unions? What are some strategies to confront it and build solidarity for a stronger, multiracial labor movement? And what can you say to union siblings who aren’t convinced racial justice has anything to do with union politics?
RSVP: https://labornotes.org/events/2024/race-and-labor-january-2024
* We have these calls for much-needed solidarity:
The GTFF, a union representing more than 1,400 Graduate Employees at the University of Oregon, has been in contentious contract negotiations with the UO since March 2023. The UO’s refusal to provide a contract that enables GEs to live with dignity has pushed GTFF members to prepare for a potential strike. In order to prepare to hold the line for a fair contract, GTFF is asking for community members, GTFF alumni, fellow labor unions, and other allies to contribute to their Strike Fund.
Click here to donate today.
---Tell the University of Oregon Board of Trustees: Don’t Cut Off Employee Healthcare!
Take action to stand with the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon who are fighting hard for a fair contract and may face cuts to their healthcare by the Board of Trustees.
Click here to write a letter to the Board in support of GTFF, it only takes a few minutes and will help make a tremendous difference in their campaign!
------Respect for Oregon Public University Staff
Calling all current and prospective university, college, technical and trade school students from union families—the Union Plus Scholarship Program application is due Jan. 31. Current and retired union members and their spouses and dependent children are eligible to apply. Scholarship awards range from $500 to $4,000.
The 2023 Union Plus Scholarship winners were: Adin Williams, whose mother is an Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America (AFA-CWA) member in Oregon; Cheryl Ann Pope, a California School Employees Association (CSEA) member; and Francisca Alivia, whose mother is an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) member in Illinois. Williams is an organizational communications major who plans to work in the disability advocacy field. He has been a member of the U.S. Paralympics Swimming national team for the past four years and is a record holder. Pope is getting her bachelor’s degree in education with the goal of becoming a teacher. She is a certified life coach. Alivia plans to major in education and pursue a career in special education.
Start your Union Plus Scholarship Program application online anytime and save your progress. The deadline to apply is Jan. 31. Visit unionplus.org/scholarship.
Since the Stand-Up Strike, hundreds of workers at non-union auto plants have been contacting the UAW to organize. At the Chattanooga, Tenn., Volkswagen plant, workers signed 1,000 cards in a week.
Workers across the economy have been clamoring to organize. The United Electrical Workers (UE) have scored a series of blowout votes to unionize among graduate workers — adding 14,000 members. At Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago, they won by more than 90%. At the University of Minnesota, they won by 97%, in a unit that had voted down union efforts in 2005 and 2012; wages and health care were the top issues. Five thousand National Institutes of Health research fellows voted UAW yes by 97.8% in December.
The steelworkers won an important southern manufacturing victory in May at Blue Bird Bus, where 1,400 workers build buses near Macon, Georgia. And at Kumho Tire in Macon, 300 steelworkers who build tires signed a first contract, after a bruising three-year campaign for union recognition and a two-year contract fight. It is the first tire company to unionize in the United States in 40 years.
A thousand workers at DHL Express at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport joined Teamsters Local 100 after a year-long fight. They went on strike Dec. 7. Cincinnati is the company’s largest North American hub.
As the Auto Workers embark on their massive campaign to organize the 150,000 non-union autoworkers in the U.S., 33 senators—one of every three—demand workers’ bosses, several of them intensely anti-worker, pledge company neutrality during its drive.
Whether the owners of the 13 firms which UAW targets, particularly notoriously anti-union Tesla owner Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest people, who has vowed never to let unions in, will listen is open to question.
UAW’s organizing drive at the non-union auto companies is important to workers and the union movement as a whole. The bosses deliberately located most of the non-union plants, and their parts plants, in the worker-hostile South, which is also the fastest-growing region of the U.S.
Please take a moment to sign a pledge in support of the 4,500 classified workers at Oregon’s public universities in their campaign to win working conditions that help students succeed, and wages that allow them to support themselves and their families. Click here to sign on.
UNION SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE
The 2023 Union Plus Scholarship winners were: Adin Williams, whose mother is an Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America (AFA-CWA) member in Oregon; Cheryl Ann Pope, a California School Employees Association (CSEA) member; and Francisca Alivia, whose mother is an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) member in Illinois. Williams is an organizational communications major who plans to work in the disability advocacy field. He has been a member of the U.S. Paralympics Swimming national team for the past four years and is a record holder. Pope is getting her bachelor’s degree in education with the goal of becoming a teacher. She is a certified life coach. Alivia plans to major in education and pursue a career in special education.
Start your Union Plus Scholarship Program application online anytime and save your progress. The deadline to apply is Jan. 31. Visit unionplus.org/scholarship.
* If you can make it to Montgomery, Alabama:
The 2024 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference
January, 12 - 14, 2024 | Montgomery, Alabama
The conference in 2024 will occur at a crucial moment for the labor and civil rights movements, as workers across the country are organizing at historic rates for dignity, respect and justice, both on the job and in our communities. Click here to learn more & register.
January, 12 - 14, 2024 | Montgomery, Alabama
The conference in 2024 will occur at a crucial moment for the labor and civil rights movements, as workers across the country are organizing at historic rates for dignity, respect and justice, both on the job and in our communities. Click here to learn more & register.
* Jenny Brown's article "2023 Was the Year of the Strike. What Can We Expect in 2024?" published on December 31 in Working In These Times, continues to raise issues for discussion. Brown notes the following in her article:
Often, union organizers are told that striking is scary — a topic to downplay. But the opposite is proving to be the case: A powerful strike is a great recruiting tool.Since the Stand-Up Strike, hundreds of workers at non-union auto plants have been contacting the UAW to organize. At the Chattanooga, Tenn., Volkswagen plant, workers signed 1,000 cards in a week.
Workers across the economy have been clamoring to organize. The United Electrical Workers (UE) have scored a series of blowout votes to unionize among graduate workers — adding 14,000 members. At Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago, they won by more than 90%. At the University of Minnesota, they won by 97%, in a unit that had voted down union efforts in 2005 and 2012; wages and health care were the top issues. Five thousand National Institutes of Health research fellows voted UAW yes by 97.8% in December.
The steelworkers won an important southern manufacturing victory in May at Blue Bird Bus, where 1,400 workers build buses near Macon, Georgia. And at Kumho Tire in Macon, 300 steelworkers who build tires signed a first contract, after a bruising three-year campaign for union recognition and a two-year contract fight. It is the first tire company to unionize in the United States in 40 years.
A thousand workers at DHL Express at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport joined Teamsters Local 100 after a year-long fight. They went on strike Dec. 7. Cincinnati is the company’s largest North American hub.
* A number of labor-related articles in the People's World demonstrate how complex the times we are living in are. Writer Mark Gruenberg makes the following observation in in an article headlined "33 Senators demand 13 non-union auto firms stop union-busting":
Whether the owners of the 13 firms which UAW targets, particularly notoriously anti-union Tesla owner Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest people, who has vowed never to let unions in, will listen is open to question.
UAW’s organizing drive at the non-union auto companies is important to workers and the union movement as a whole. The bosses deliberately located most of the non-union plants, and their parts plants, in the worker-hostile South, which is also the fastest-growing region of the U.S.
In another article running under the headline '“Fight for 15” obsolete as states pass higher minimum wage laws" Gruenberg seems to argue that the fight for the $15.00 minimum wage is being left behind because the movement for the $15.00 minimum and unions is making progress in state legislatures. Gruenberg isn't saying that the fight for higher wages and a union should be abandoned, and he cites hard data showing that we have a long way to go. The challenge for us is to carry the fight for higher wages and unionization into the south and into those areas where wages are lagging and inflation is offsetting gains, and wherever workers are employed under individual contracts that hold them responsible for paying employers for "training costs" if they don't complete their probationary or training periods.
Writer John Wojcik, also writing for the People's World, helpfully says that "2024 is an election year and a good time for labor to remind lawmakers that it’s not enough for Democratic, progressive, and “pro-labor” politicians to celebrate the victories of workers during 2023 or even to walk the picket lines with them. They must join and lead the movement for passage of the PRO Act until it becomes law" in an article unhelpfully headlined "Workers made history in 2023, but it’s make or break in 2024."
Wojcik goes on to say that "Short of changes in labor law that allow for fast and severe penalties for refusing to bargain in good faith, among many other things, many believe that strong mass action will have to be stepped up against Starbucks. There are growing calls for a Starbucks boycott...While many say the main task for labor in 2024 is to end the threat of Donald Trump and guarantee the re-election of President Joe Biden, most labor leaders and growing sections of the membership of unions see other major challenges that must be met for both short- and long-range success by labor. Unions see the need to reverse the decline in union membership and in the percentage of workers in unions. Just 10% of workers are in unions nationwide, down from more than 20% during the 1980s and 40% in the 1950s."
We do indeed need to win passage of the PRO Act and other changes in labor law, and who wins in the November elections is all-important to winning progressive changes in labor law and many other advancements. The public conversation about this is on-going. For workers seeking to organize or win a first contract, however, the conversation that they are a part of runs much differently. Union organizers have to work hard and skillfully to inform workers of their rights and prepare them for hostile employer pushback, and workers are often pushed to the ropes during organizing and first-contract campaigns. The truth is that we badly need positive changes in labor laws. The truth also is that many workers stepping up in their first union campaign will be overwhelmed if they hear a message that says that in addition to all of the barriers they will face and all that they have to take on as the organize they must also fight for changes in national labor law. We need to better develop how we communicate with people and how we actualize union organizing.
With or without changes in labor law, there will be a need for strong mass action. Union organizing and the conditions that make unions and organizing necessary will always be with us. 2024 should be a year of increasing union activism and strength, but let's take the long view and dig in for fights that will take decades.
Workers at a Wells Fargo branch in Albuquerque, New Mexico
voted to form a union and became the first-ever Wells Fargo bankers and
tellers to unionize. They joined the Communications Workers of America’s
(CWA’s) Wells Fargo Workers United (WFWU) in pursuit of solutions to
problems like rampant understaffing, low wages and
mismanagement. (Photo and text from the AFL-CIO.)
Note: The photos and much of the text above came from releases issued by the Oregon AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO and from the sources indicated. However, the opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter, the Oregon AFL-CIO, or the national AFL-CIO.
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