The labor movement on the move! Six posts to bring you up to speed.

HAW-UAW Large Unit Votes To Unionize, 93% in Favor

Non-tenure-track faculty at Harvard voted 1,094-81 to unionize under Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers, the group announced on Friday.

Around 40 percent of the 3,100 eligible voters — which includes academic workers from postdocs to lecturers from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard Divinity School — showed up to vote at one of three locations at the Harvard Science Center, the Science and Engineering Complex, and Tosteson Medical Education Center at the Longwood campus.

The HAW-UAW larger unit’s successful vote to unionize — with polls open from Wednesday through Thursday — followed the Harvard Law School Clinical unit’s own successful bid to unionize on Wednesday. The union will now be able to enter negotiations with Harvard. READ MORE HERE.

To Make Unions Resonate Again, Study the CIO’s History: Declining union density has diminished American workers’ awareness of labor organizing, pride in union status, and sense of belonging to a tradition of collective struggle. The history of the CIO can teach us how to embed unions in the working class

This interview was conducted for Organize the Unorganized, a podcast from the Center for Work & Democracy and Jacobin magazine about the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Subscribe to Jacobin Radio to listen to the series (and don’t forget to rate us five stars so we can reach more people).

BENJAMIN Y. FONG: What was the CIO, and what is its primary historical significance?

LISA PHILLIPS: The CIO was an outgrowth in the organized labor movement in the early ’30s of people who were frustrated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was the national-level labor movement for primarily skilled workers. The way it was organized was around craft. Some people within the AFL were frustrated by that structure, and so they organized an industrial offshoot within the AFL. They eventually decided to break away and become a rival voice at the national level for unskilled workers. So its historical significance is that it brought millions of people who wouldn’t have been brought under the AFL umbrella into the labor movement. At the time, early to mid-’30s, it was a wave. It was a significant social economic movement, a wave of class uprising. READ MORE HERE.

‘You Are an Inspiration,’ Sanders Tells Hotel Workers: "The message of today is we are sick and tired of the greed of corporate America," Sen. Bernie Sanders said at a union rally in downtown Los Angeles.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders joined hospitality workers in downtown Los Angeles on Friday as they picketed outside one of the dozens of hotels that have yet to reach a contract deal with UNITE HERE Local 11, whose membership is demanding better pay, benefits, and job protections in one of the nation's most expensive cities.

"You are an inspiration, because of your courage, to millions of working people throughout this country," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd of workers gathered outside Hotel Figueroa. "You are working hard, you are what keeps these hotels going. You deserve decent wages, you deserve decent benefits, you deserve decent healthcare, you deserve decent schedules, you deserve decent pensions."

Since last summer, thousands of workers at more than 50 hotels in southern California have taken part in rolling strikes that have yielded record contract agreements—including significant wage increases and other victories—at 34 hotels. READ MORE HERE.

The Right Has a New Playbook To Crush Unions and Enshrine Corporate Power: The American Legislative Exchange Council is pushing a spate of anti-worker bills in states across the country—the latest in the group’s onslaught on collective bargaining rights.

State lawmakers seeking to dismantle unions and implement anti-worker laws have just been handed a new state-by-state roadmap by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-funded bill mill popular with Republican legislators.

Although ALEC claims that its proffered labor reforms are designed to protect ​“worker freedom and flexibility,” its attacks on workers over the past 50 years have made it harder for them to organize, harder for local governments to support decent-paying jobs, and easier on big business.

Those attacks, bankrolled by Koch Industries and right-wing donors such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, are motivated as much by the desire to protect corporate bottom lines as by the determination to eviscerate a key supporter of the Democratic Party: labor unions. READ MORE HERE.

OSHA’s Rule on Worker Representation Will Make Workplaces Safer

April 1, 2024

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released the following statement on OSHA’s Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process final rule:

Every worker deserves the right to have a union representative, a workplace safety expert or another qualified advocate present during Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections. We applaud OSHA for finalizing its new Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process rule to level the playing field for America’s workers.

This rule clarifies and codifies an existing right that has been eroded in practice by employers and reaffirms the important role of worker representatives in addressing unsafe working conditions. It acknowledges the invaluable expertise that worker representatives bring to the OSHA inspection process—improving hazard identification and remediation efforts and empowering workers to raise concerns without fear of employer retaliation.

This rule is a significant step forward to regain worker trust in the investigation process and to ensure fair and equitable treatment for all workers.

Contact: Isabel Aldunate, 202-637-5018

Spring-time power building by Laurie Wimmer

Just as daffodils bloom in spring, candidates filing to run for office in Oregon have emerged, similarly on schedule. They seek to serve us, but also to wield a bit of the power that comes with the job. Because they make decisions that impact our lives, we should never ignore this rite of spring.

Power: the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. That is what a would-be elected official is authorized to harness. We in the labor movement understand power, because sharing and balancing that force is something the House of Labor has made its singular purpose on behalf of working people.

Because the political season is upon us, now is the time to think about how power impacts our lives. The power we in labor amass provides a counterweight to the power of capital, of the owner class, or of “management.” Power enables us to challenge the supremacy of the few.

But how do we build power? Is it just about numbers — how many rank-and-file workers join a local, or the percentage penetration of unions in a specific sector or region? Or is it about motivating that membership to volunteer on campaigns, to become activists for the greater good?

I would argue that it is a bit of both. We certainly know that as labor union membership waned after the heyday of the 1950s-60s, wages stagnated, work schedules became less humane, safety standards declined, and laws weakening union participation were enacted in 27 states — the so-called “right-to-work” states where worker wages and labor participation are the worst in the country. The decline in union power is responsible for at least 50% of the increase in income inequality in this country, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund.

The power of elites in corporate and political settings allows them to manipulate the system, not only to depress wages across the board, but also to win tax cuts for themselves and deregulation for their industries — further widening the divide. They do this by funding the campaigns of their favorite candidates, whose policies favor them. In places with campaign finance restrictions, they do this through independent expenditures.

Inspiring our working families to emulate this strategy, using our people power to help our favorite candidates achieve victory, is the best way to narrow the wealth and wage gaps.

So what does that look like? We select candidates for endorsement who share our values and have a winnable path to leadership. We help them reach voters with boots on the ground during the run-up to elections. We spread the word to our colleagues, allies, and a sympathetic public who support unions and want our communities to thrive.

There were 225,000 union members in Oregon’s workforce in 2023, making ours one of the top 10 states for union density. If every union household turned out for explicitly pro-labor candidates in 2024, we would sweep the elections from the top to the bottom of the ballot. If even 10% of us agreed to canvass, call, and otherwise engage with voters on behalf of labor candidates, we could move political mountains this year.

Now that’s power that money can’t buy.

Laurie Wimmer is executive secretary-treasurer of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council.

NOTE: The articles above are taken from Portside, the Oregon AFL-CIO, and the Northwest Labor Press. Links are provided to all sources. The opinions expressed may not represent those of the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter or the Oregon AFL-CIO.