Organized Labor

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      Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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      The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      University of California Workers Vote to Authorize Strike in Rebuke Over Protest Crackdowns

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      A union representing about 48,000 academic workers said that campus leaders mishandled pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The vote gives the union’s executive board the ability to call a strike at any time.Unions are known for fighting for higher pay and workplace conditions. But academic workers in the University of California system authorized their union on Wednesday to call for a strike over something else entirely: free speech.The union, U.A.W. 4811, represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers at 10 University of California system campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its members, incensed over the university system’s handling of campus protests, pushed their union to address grievances extending beyond the bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining to concerns over protesting and speaking out in their workplace.The strike authorization vote, which passed with 79 percent support, comes two weeks after dozens of counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, for several hours without police intervention, and without arrests. Officers in riot gear tore down the encampment the next day and arrested more than 200 people.The vote does not guarantee a strike but rather gives the executive board of the local union, which is part of the United Auto Workers, the ability to call a strike at any time. Eight of the 10 University of California campuses still have a month of instruction left before breaking for summer.The union said it had called the vote because the University of California unilaterally and unlawfully changed policies regarding free speech, discriminated against pro-Palestinian speech and created an unsafe work environment by allowing attacks on protesters, among other grievances.“People on the ground are extremely agitated because of the university’s unlawful behavior around the protests on campus,” said Rafael Jaime, the president of U.A.W. 4811. “We’re asking the university to de-escalate the situation and to do so by engaging in good faith with protesters on campus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      University of California Workers May Strike After UCLA Raid

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      The largest employee union in the University of California system said on Thursday that it was preparing to ask some or all of its members to authorize a strike over the treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles.The announcement by United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents some 48,000 graduate student teaching assistants, researchers and other student workers across the state, came hours after police officers arrested about 200 demonstrators at U.C.L.A. for failing to leave.U.A.W. 4811 intends to file unfair labor practices charges that, in essence, accuse U.C.L.A. of discriminating against pro-Palestinian speech and unilaterally changing policies protecting employees’ free speech without bargaining, said Rafael Jaime, the union’s co-president and a Ph.D. candidate in the university’s English department.The group said the university failed to protect union members who were among the pro-Palestinian student protesters when counterprotesters attacked an encampment that had stood since April 25.Mr. Jaime said he was at the encampment Tuesday night as counterprotesters tore down barricades and shot fireworks at pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and that he was hit by pepper spray. Campus police on site did not intervene, and reinforcements from the Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol did not arrive for hours. No arrests were made.The lack of response was quickly denounced by local leaders and Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as by students and faculty members.“The university was nowhere to be seen for hours and hours,” Mr. Jaime said. “They just stood there and allowed our co-workers to be brutalized.”On Wednesday night, dozens of police officers in riot gear arrived to disperse protesters who remained at the pro-Palestinian encampment. Mr. Jaime said officers shot projectiles into the crowd of protesters and forcefully arrested students. He said he did not know how many union members had been arrested.and forcefully arrested students, including union members.Arresting some 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators while not arresting any counterprotesters who assaulted them, he said, amounted to prioritizing anti-Palestinian speech over pro-Palestinian speech, which violated the rights of university employees to free speech.Mr. Jaime said that the union could call a strike authorization vote as early as next week, but he emphasized that it was too early to say whether a strike would include union members across the University of California system or just at U.C.L.A.Officials at the University of California Office of the President said in a statement that the union could not legally engage in a work stoppage and expressed frustration that the union would “exploit” the situation.The statement said that “the University of California is deeply alarmed, concerned and disappointed that our UAW-represented academic employees would choose this moment of crisis to take a vote to engage in an unlawful work stoppage.” Officials added that the university “values these employees and asks them to join it in supporting our communities at this time.”The union’s members do much of the day-to-day work across the vast University of California system, which serves nearly 300,000 students, has some of the nation’s top researchers and is often referred to as the “crown jewel” of the state. The academic workers grade papers, lead discussion sessions and conduct research.But the university employees often struggle with the cost of living in some of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. In 2022, the union’s members — then split into two locals — walked off the job for six weeks in one of the largest strikes by university-based workers in national history. The union called for a cease-fire in Gaza in October, making it part of an early wave of unions declaring support for Palestinians. More

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      Supreme Court to Hear Starbucks Challenge to Labor Ruling

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      The case, which stems from the firing of seven Starbucks workers in Memphis, seeks to limit the National Labor Relations Board’s ability to obtain a court intervention in labor cases.The Supreme Court is set to hear Starbucks’s challenge on Tuesday to a federal judge’s order to reinstate workers who were attempting to unionize a store in Memphis.Starbucks is asking the court to make it harder for the National Labor Relations Board to obtain intervention by judges in cases where a company is accused of violating labor law. The case stems from the February 2022 firing of seven workers who let local journalists into a closed store to conduct interviews about their unionization efforts.Starbucks, which has faced hundreds of accusations of labor law violations across the country, argues that there is a patchwork of standards under which the N.L.R.B. can seek a court injunction. The appellate court in this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, applies a lower standard, and Starbucks is pushing the Supreme Court to apply a more strict, uniform standard that is in line with other circuits.Starbucks said the workers were fired because admitting the journalists into the store violated several company policies. Starbucks Workers United, the union representing the company’s workers, filed an unfair labor practice charge over the firings, arguing that the company selectively enforced the rules against organized workers. The labor board issued a complaint against Starbucks two months later.A federal judge granted the labor board’s request to reinstate the workers while proceedings over the firings played out, which could take years. An appellate judge upheld the reinstatements last year, and the company requested the Supreme Court review. The high court agreed to hear the case in January.Lisa Blatt, a partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly, is representing Starbucks and is a veteran of the Supreme Court bar. In the past two years, she won rulings in favor of Google — a closely watched case seeking to make tech companies liable for content posted by its users — and for Jack Daniel’s in an intellectual property case against the seller of a dog toy.Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general, is representing the labor board. She has represented the government in several high-profile cases, including Dobbs v. Jackson in June 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutionally protected right to an abortion. More

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      Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?

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      Some experts say the outcome at a plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., may be organized labor’s most significant advance in decades. But the road could get rockier.By voting to join the United Automobile Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factory-wide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South.The result, in an election that ended on Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference it will make beyond the Volkswagen plant.Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region of the country. Some argued that the win could help set off a rise in union membership at other companies that exceeds the uptick of the past few years, when unions won elections at Starbucks and Amazon locations.“It’s a big vote, symbolically and substantively,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.The next test for the U.A.W. will come in a vote in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.In addition, at least 30 percent of workers have signed cards authorizing the U.A.W. to represent them at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, according to the union. That is the minimum needed to force an election, though the union has yet to petition for one in either location.“People only take action when they believe there is an alternative to the status quo that has a plausible chance of winning,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      VW Workers in Tennessee Vote for Union

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      The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga is set to become the first unionized auto factory in the South not owned by one of Detroit’s Big Three.In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Automobile Workers union, becoming the first nonunion auto plant in a Southern state to do so.The company said in a statement late Friday that the union had won 2,628 votes, with 985 opposed, in a three-day election. Two earlier bids by the U.A.W. to organize the Chattanooga factory over the last 10 years were narrowly defeated.The outcome is a breakthrough for the labor movement in a region where anti-union sentiment has been strong for decades. And it comes six months after the U.A.W. won record wage gains and improved benefits in negotiations with the Detroit automakers.The U.A.W. has for more than 80 years represented workers employed by General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the producer of Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge vehicles, and has organized some heavy-truck and bus factories in the South.But the union had failed in previous attempts to organize any of the two dozen automobile factories owned by other companies across an area stretching from South Carolina to Texas and as far north as Ohio and Indiana.With the victory in Chattanooga, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to other Southern plants. A vote will take place in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa. The U.A.W. is hoping to organize a half-dozen or more plants over the next two years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mercedes-Benz Workers in Alabama Ask for Unionization Vote

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      The United Automobile Workers union is mounting its most ambitious effort to gain an industry foothold beyond Detroit’s Big Three.Workers at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama have petitioned federal officials to hold a vote on whether to join the United Automobile Workers, the union said on Friday, a step forward for its drive to organize workers at car factories in the South.The union is trying to build on the momentum from the contracts it won last year at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, which gave workers at the three Detroit carmakers their biggest raises in decades.The U.A.W. is also trying to organize workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee and a Hyundai factory in Alabama, establishing a bigger presence in states that have drawn much of the new investment in automobile manufacturing in recent decades. A vote at the Volkswagen plant is scheduled for April 17 to 19.The drive has taken on added importance as Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia attract billions of dollars in investment in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. The U.A.W. is trying to ensure that jobs created by electric vehicles do not pay less than jobs at traditional auto factories.A large majority of workers at the Mercedes plant, near Tuscaloosa, had earlier signed cards expressing support for a vote. On Friday they formally petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election on whether to be represented by the U.A.W., the union said.Mercedes, which makes luxury sport utility vehicles in Alabama, said in a statement that it “fully respects our team members’ choice whether to unionize” and that it would ensure that workers had “access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”Southern states have traditionally been difficult territory for unions, in some cases because of legislation unfavorable to organized labor or because elected officials openly campaigned against unions. The lack of a strong union presence is probably one reason the region has attracted a big share of auto industry investment.Attempts in 2014 and 2019 to organize Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, where the German company makes the Atlas sport utility vehicle and ID.4 electric S.U.V., failed in part because of opposition from Republican elected officials in Tennessee.Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers raised hourly wages after the union won pay increases for Ford, G.M. and Stellantis workers. Still, the nonunion workers tend to earn less. In many cases, pay is less of an issue than work schedules, health benefits and time off.In a video on Friday, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said workers were fighting for “work-life balance, good health care you can afford, a better life for your family.”The union has complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes has retaliated against organizers in Alabama. The carmaker denied the accusations, saying it “has not interfered with or retaliated against any team member in their right to pursue union representation.” More

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      A Look at Washington State’s ‘Strippers’ Bill of Rights’

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      Signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee, the legislation provides wide-ranging protections for adult dancers.Washington State recently enacted a law that includes wide-ranging workplace protections for adult dancers, who have long fought for such measures across the country.The law, known as the Strippers’ Bill of Rights, was signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on March 25. It includes anti-discrimination provisions and mandatory club employee training.Supporters of the law say that it includes incentives for establishments to comply, as it carves a path for them to obtain liquor licenses. The state traditionally has prohibited venues that allow sexual performances to sell alcohol.“It is crucial that we confront the stigma surrounding adult entertainment and recognize the humanity of those involved in the industry,” State Senator Rebecca Saldaña of Seattle, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said in a statement.“Strippers are workers,” she said, “and they should be given the same rights and protections as any other labor force.”Madison Zack-Wu, the campaign manager for Strippers Are Workers, a dancer-led organization that supported the bill, said in an interview that “the most important part of this policy is that it was created by dancers, for ourselves in our own working conditions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More