Labor Relations INK September, 2022

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Subject: Labor Relations INK September, 2022

September 22, 2022

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Are unions REALLY that popular?

by Phil Wilson

Just before Labor Day, Gallup reported its latest opinion numbers on unions. The headline declared unions are as popular as they’ve been since 1965. Given the massive burst of pro-union media attention over the last year that wasn’t really a surprise. When asked the general question, “Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions,” 71% of those polled said they approve.

This is the highest support level since 1965, also at 71%. The last time union approval was higher than this was in the 1950s. The highest union approval ever recorded since Gallup started asking about unions in the 1936 was 75% in 1953 and again in 1957.

Last week at a Congressional hearing supporting the PRO Act these numbers were used to make the claim that, even though unions are as popular as ever, they still struggle to organize new members because of employer resistance. On its face the argument makes sense – if over 70% of Americans think unions are so great, why are so few people joining unions? If you dig just a little deeper into the Gallup numbers, the answers are all right there.

The Gallup research shows that unions are only popular in the most generic sense. The idea of a union, like the idea of an all you can eat buffet, sounds good in the abstract. But when it comes to what people want for themselves, the individuals polled by Gallup feel a lot different about unions.

The most glaring finding was that 65% of non-union respondents were not interested in joining a union (a whopping 58% of them were “not interested at all” in joining a union). This statistic explains more than any other why unions struggle so much to organize new workers.

Not only are most non-represented workers not interested in unions, but another 15% of them are neutral. Only 11% of non-represented workers are “extremely interested” in joining a union. While the average non-union worker may think the idea of a union is fine for others, when it comes to their own workplace, they see no need.

Does the poll suggest why non-union workers might be less interested in unions? Check out this critical finding. Non-union workers are more engaged at work than those represented by unions. Only 27% of union workers surveyed reported feeling engaged at work, another 24% of union members were actively disengaged at work. As Gallup says, “Actively disengaged employees are not just unhappy at work -- they tend to be resentful that their workplace needs aren't being met and often act out their unhappiness.”

To be fair, everything isn’t rosy for non-union workers, and the labor market remains a mess after the pandemic. But unions clearly kill the vibe at work. Represented workers were about 20% less engaged and 30% more actively disengaged than non-union peers.

This is the reality that Big Labor and their supporters both inside and outside the Administration don’t seem to understand. Even with the “most pro-union President” and a highly favorable organizing environment, unions aren’t highly valued by the average worker today. Sure, the idea of a union might be fine for some, but as an actual solution to day-to-day workplace problems? It’s like that second trip to the soft-serve ice cream station. It sounds good in theory, but in reality, not so much.

Blog Post

Pro-Union NLRB On A Roll

by Greg Kittinger

The National Labor Relations board has been busy recently. Among significant actions and rulings, the board:

released a notice of proposed rulemaking relative to the Joint-Employer standard. Public comments are being accepted until November 7th, and can be accepted electronically or by mail.
overruled a 2019 Walmart Stores, Inc. decision that provided an employer more leeway in restrictions upon employee wearing of union insignia. In Tesla, Inc., the board ruled that “any attempt to restrict the wearing of union clothing or insignia is presumptively unlawful and – consistent with Supreme Court precedent – an employer has a heightened burden to justify attempts to limit this important right.”
announced that strike replacement workers have a right to access to union stewards.
involved the Department of Homeland Security to extend protections to immigrant workers during an NLRB investigation.
overturned a Trump-era board ruling due to alleged conflict of interest due to former board member William Emanuel’s mutual fund composition. The board is considering other supposed conflict of interest cases involving Emanuel.

PRO Act supporters are ratcheting up efforts to highlight which candidates support the Act in the run-up to the November elections. The effort is hoping to bring a vote on the Act to the Senate floor, so that voters in key states like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida can see who does and does not support the bill. Meanwhile Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Representative Brad Sherman (D-California) reintroduced the Nationwide Right to Unionize act, designed to prohibit state right-to-work laws.

Blog Post

Starbucks Doubles Back To Address Worker Morale

by Kimberly Ricci

In December 2021, the first Starbucks cafe to organize swiftly prompted a hole in the dike, and nine months later, over 230 locations (out of 9000+) have followed suit. Returning – and then outgoing – CEO Howard Schultz attempted to tamp down the flames, but he couldn’t outrun the momentum of the initial organizing wave, which caught the coffeehouse giant off guard.

Current CEO Laxman Narasimhan took the reins this spring, and he’s obviously got his work cut out for him, but the company began to announce special benefits for non-union workers. Most recently, that includes tools to help workers repay student loans and other financial planning resources. This follows boosted pay for these same workers, which rose to $17 per hour (on average) in cities across the U.S. In addition, COO John Culver came forward with a plan to build morale: a $450M investment to retool cafes and make workers’ jobs quicker and (hopefully) easier.

About that cleanup effort: former Starbucks workers who claim that they were fired for organizing are moving through the NLRB process. An appeals court rejected a company appeal surrounding seven fired Memphis workers, who will be reinstated. An organizer in Buffalo, New York resigned while accusing her manager of purposefully declining to work with her scheduling requests. And New York City filed suit against Starbucks for terminating a barista a month after he organized a location, despite his long-standing history as a Starbucks worker.

Blog Post

Score Board

Who are the winners (and losers) of the labor movement? Don't guess, just check the LRI Scoreboard

View this month's scoreboard (archives also located here).

Download a PDF of this month's scoreboard

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Organizing Roundup: Chipotle, Liquor Stores, And Academia

by Kimberly Ricci

The influential effect of Starbucks inspired workers in the most obvious places (recently, a Heine Brothers’ Coffee location in Louisville) to vote for unions. Yet as we’ve already seen, the contagion keeps spreading to other industries while workers take notice of organizing baristas. Let’s run down the latest grab bag of stories:

Workers at the first (and only) unionized Chipotle opened up about their decision to join the Teamsters. These Generation Z workers used the new toolbox of strategies to organize, and although none of them previously held direct experience with a union, they described how they organized fellow workers on Snapchat and studied up on the procedures of the NLRB.
The organizing efforts at Apple retail stores appeared to take off in June but fizzled out with only one store (in Maryland) voting in a union after organizing as AppleCORE (Coalition of Organized Retail Employees) and also joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. In Oklahoma City, however, workers recently filed an NLRB petition for a vote to join the CWA. In addition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other union groups completed a shareholder proposal to ask for a review of employees’ rights.
Another private liquor store (Berezan Hospitality Group in Vancouver) saw workers vote to unionize on the heels of two other stores joining the SEIU.
The first private-sector architects (at Bernheimer Architecture) to unionize did so in NYC, where a 22-person workforce joined the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Academia continues to attract a variety of unions. This month, graduate students at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute formed the WPI Graduate Workers Union with assistance from the United Auto Workers (UAW). Across the D.C. area, adjunct professors received similar treatment (and organizing interest) from the SEIU.
More Teamsters action led the Hollywood local’s leader, Lindsay Dougherty, to declare that the international union plans for more “militant” strategies (new international union chief Sean O’Brien uses that word to describe himself) and is already planning ahead for a contract expiration in two years.
The Teamsters continued their aggressive maneuvers by launching a devoted division to “help” (i.e., recruit) Amazon workers. The online retailer recently lost their bid to overturn the Amazon Labor Union victory at JFK8 warehouse, which remains the company’s only unionized warehouse. Efforts at other Amazon locations fizzled out, but another Amazon Labor Union vote will take place in October at the ALB1 warehouse in Albany, New York.

Blog Post

The News Guild-CWA's Targets Run Far and Wide

by Kimberly Ricci

The News Guild of New York doesn’t stop at traditional newsrooms. The union continues to organize workers from the furthest corners of the media and entertainment realms, including tech workers and writers at the fluffiest of magazines:

Condé Nast voluntarily recognized the News Guild of New York after 500 staffers (and 100 subcontractors) organized at numerous publications, including GQ, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Vogue, Bon Appétit, and more. The union now represents workers from all of Condé Nast’s brands.
The Atlantic’s tech and business workers organized with (and acquired voluntary recognition of) the News Guild of New York, which already represents editorial staffers at the publication. These workers followed on the heels of their New York Times counterparts joining the union earlier this year.

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Healthcare Temperatures (And Wages) Rising

by Kimberly Ricci

This industry still can’t catch a break with workers heading to the picket lines for record-breaking strikes, both in terms of participating union members and duration. California happens to be ground central for a few key union-related developments:

As with the state’s fast food workers, a major minimum wage hike (pushed by the SEIU) is on the table, and it looks like voters will make the call on the issue of healthcare workers’ pay. This development arrives after the Los Angeles city council voted to boost the lowest paid workers (at privately-owned facilities) up to $25 per hour. Hospitals oppose this increase, citing financial strain.
Kaiser Permanente had 2000+ mental health workers pass the one-month mark for their ongoing strike over staffing shortages. The National Union of Healthcare Workers and Kaiser agreed to get back to bargaining, even as talks repeatedly break down between the two sides. Thus far, Kaiser has offered substantial raises (and a $6,300 retroactive payment for each worker) and to lessen workloads. Meanwhile, Kaiser therapists and nurses asked the state to intervene with facilities’ intent to hire temporary workers to fill the strike gap. In an interesting twist, the union reportedly asked nurses to cross the picket line while also failing to provide strike benefits and asking for donations to support workers.

Elsewhere, the healthcare-strike developments piled onto the table:

Minnesota nurses ended their three-day strike involving 15,000 members of National Nurses United.
In Pennsylvania, the state’s longest nurse strike subsided when facilities and the SEIU forged a contract that included raises that averaged a whopping 24% and four of the state’s nursing homes also reached a deal with striking workers.
In Wisconsin, nurses at UW Health University Hospital called off their planned three-day strike after an agreement with the hospital. These nurses also expressed their desire to resume their former union representation.
In Illinois, the University of Chicago’s Medical Center nurses protested the short-staffed environment that they’ve been enduring during the pandemic.

Blog Post

The Battery-Plant Battleground Of The UAW
by Kimberly Riccii

A pesky, long-running corruption streak (and a federal watchdog) won’t deter the UAW from attempting to refill their coffers with member dues. The UAW is doing everything possible to organize EV battery plants as gasoline continues to go increasingly out of vogue amid a time of high prices.

Already, workers at Ohio’s Ultium Cells LLC plant (jointly owned by GM and LG Energy Solution) voted to strike in order to force company recognition of their representation with the UAW. Ultium declared plans to hold out for an NLRB-certified vote; naturally, the union would rather leverage a possible strike at a plant that staffs 800+ workers.

That threat became reality at a non-battery-related automaker facility. At Indiana’s 1,200-worker Stellantis casting plant (in Kokomo), workers went on a weekend-long strike to protest hot working conditions. All the while, Stellantis continued to proceed with ongoing plans for a Kokomo battery plant (that will staff 1,400 workers). Perhaps in an effort to get in front of the issue, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares took a notable stance at the recent Detroit auto show. He declared his lack of opposition to unions, with which he has “zero problem” regarding battery plants.

Elsewhere in Detroit, Stellantis supplier Dakkota Integrated Systems voted to join the UAW and begin contract negotiations, proving that this union still wants to leave no manufacturing stone unturned.

Blog Post

Tricky Teamsters Draw The Lines In The Sand

by Kimberly Ricci

New Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien made no secret of his militant stance and eagerness to get strike-happy in an effort to intimidate companies at the bargaining table. Part of this bravado is down to O’Brien dealing with the international union’s plummeting membership (since 2019 and during the pandemic), but that doesn’t make anything easier for the industries that O’Brien targets.

A 10-month strike in the Seattle area saw concrete-pouring companies put business on hold as negotiations faltered with unions. To some degree, drivers flowed back into work beginning in April, although shorter walkouts still plagued the industry. Meanwhile, the Teamsters kept shutting down offers until, finally, both sides agreed, and workers ratified a new contract regarding wages and working conditions.

The Teamsters moved onto pressuring UPS, to the point where the union began to publicly make noises about a strike a full year before their current contract lapses in late July 2023. Given that UPS trucks move about 6% of the U.S. gross domestic product (and over 21.5 million daily packages), and online retail saw a pandemic boost that won’t stop, a lot (and that’s an understatement) rides on the outcome of negotiations.

Although the above strike threat concerns most UPS employees (including drivers and warehouse workers), one subset of the company’s workers probably won’t be going on strike. UPS’ aircraft mechanics (represented by, you guessed it, the Teamsters) already worked out a multi-year contract extension, although workers must still ratify the deal.

Blog Post

Supply Chains Hanging In The Balance

by Kimberly Ricci

Freight railroads narrowly averted a strike that would have caused an already stressed supply chain to largely grind to a halt, contributing to even higher prices of goods. The current economy surely doesn’t need that additional headache, which is why slight alarm bells could be sounding until the strike threat is fully in the distance, and that could take (best case scenario) several weeks to happen.

The tentative deal (for which the Biden administration claims credit) between the engineers and conductors union and railroads must still be ratified by union members following over 20 hours of negotiations. Union leaders admit that the vote could hit a stumbling block, for they’re not entirely confident that their members will be satisfied with proposed tweaks to their rough working environment, despite more paid leave.

Blog Post

A Hard Bargain For Aviation

by Kimberly Ricci

This summer’s airline turbulence calmed down somewhat; or at least, the topic isn’t making as many headlines going into fall, but holiday travel could get messy. Unions remain keen to take advantage of airline woes while pushing pay proposals at the bargaining table, and Spirit Airlines is currently feeling that pain. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA shot down the airline’s offer of 21% raises for beginning flight attendants (and 5% increases for those higher paid workers who already hold a few years under their belts at Spirit).

At Delta Air Lines, pressure from a coalition of unions (representing pilots, flight attendants, and more workers) want the company’s stock buybacks to go on hold until staffing problems and resulting flight cancellations ease up. The issue appears to offer no easy solution, given continued struggles from the disastrous combination of worker shortages and increased demand for leisure and business travel.

Blog Post

California Fast-Food Dreaming And Inflationary Blues

by Kimberly Ricci

Minimum wage issues keep spiking across our nation with two key developments: (1) California’s new law for fast food workers; (2) seemingly out-of-control inflation:

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 257 – the Fast Food Accountability and Standards (FAST) Recovery Act – into law. This legislation (propelled by SEIU California and Fight for 15 campaign) creates a Fast Food Council, through which about 500,000 fast-food workers (those who work in chains with 30+ locations in the state) will have the power to bargain. The law will take effect in 2023 and also sets up a $22-per-hour minimum wage. In response, the president of McDonald’s US penned a letter that predicts how the law will eventually wreak havoc upon businesses and franchise owners.
Inflation across the country continues to push up the price of goods, which in turn creates a vicious cycle for everyone. States and cities responded to the crisis by legislating significant increases to their minimum wage, and along with California (which is jumping up to $15.50 per hour, aside from the fast-food bump), Colorado leads the way. Statewide, the lowest paid workers will get a dollar per hour raise (up to $13.64), and in Denver, those workers will reach the $17.29 mark. Expect Arizona, Ohio, and other states to follow suit in 2023.

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Save the date! Another virtual Approachable Leadership open workshop is on the way.

The three sessions for the workshop are October 11, 12, and 13, starting at 2:00pm CST each day.

If you’ve hosted the workshop over the last year or so and have new leaders who have not yet experienced the workshop, this is a great opportunity for them to catch up. The cost is $249 per leader.

If you are considering introducing this Workshop to your team for the first time and would like to give it a test run, please email Stephanie for a complimentary seat. We would love to see you there!

Here’s the link for new leaders to enroll: Click Here, and here’s Stephanie’s email: somalley@lrionline.com

About Labor Relations INK

Labor Relations INK is published weekly and is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up by visiting here.

If you use content from this newsletter please attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and include our website: http://www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger, and Kimberly Ricci

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About Labor Relations Institute

LRI exists to help our clients thrive and become extraordinary workplaces. We improve the lives of working people by strengthening relationships with their leaders and each other. For over 41 years LRI has led the labor and employee relations industry, driven by our core values and our proven process, the LRI Way.

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Subject: Labor Relations INK September, 2022