March 17 Labor News Roundup
Every single worker quits at a Wisconsin dollar store, Uber goes on strike in Minneapolis, and Illinois explores making microchipping workers illegal
Shift in electric car battery production means new union opportunities in a strategic industry
A major supplier of General Motors is getting more than $2 billion from the federal government to build a lithium mine, as more of the supply chain for electric vehicles continues to shift to the United States. Workers at supply chain choke points — like the new lithium mine or GM’s battery plants in Lordstown, OH and Lansing, MI — tend to have the most leverage to make demands, especially in nationally important industries. GM is the largest shareholder in the lithium mine company.
Last year, GM autoworkers won the right for workers at the company’s electric battery plants to join their union by threatening to go on strike at one of GM’s most profitable plants. At other car companies, union membership of electric vehicle production workers is inconsistent.
Bloomberg Law detailed the gains electric battery workers at GM have made, while those at Ford lagged behind:
Employees at the first GM-backed battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, initially started at $16.50 an hour—less than half the proposed top pay rate under Ford—before unionizing and winning a 25% raise.
And yet the Ford agreement made little headway on representing battery workers, who will be critical to replacing union jobs lost as traditional powertrains are phased out. EVs are simpler, requiring fewer parts and therefore fewer people to build them.
GM is currently building their electric battery plant in Lansing, MI and partnering with Samsung on a $3 billion plant in New Carlisle, IN. Stellantis is also partnering with Samsung on another $3 billion electric battery plant in Kokomo, IN.
Retail workers
Every single worker quit at a Dollar General store in Mineral Point, WI. One sign workers left in the window said
The store is CLOSED. The whole team has walked away due to a lack of appreciation, being overworked and underpaid.
Some large retail companies are moving away from self-checkout lanes toward staffed checkouts. Target says they will increase the number of staffed lanes while limiting some self-checkouts to 10 items, and Dollar General says it will convert self-checkouts to regular checkouts in 9,000 stores.
Workers voted 14-0 to form a union at a Starbucks location in Overland Park, KS. Those workers have been organizing for more than two years.
“We want to be able to make decisions in our store that directly impact our team and our customers,” [Starbucks worker Alydia Claypool] continued….
“It feels really powerful to me that even with a brand new team over the course of two years, we’ve been able to keep support for the union,” Claypool said.
Workers’ rights
Some Illinois politicians want to make it illegal for bosses to force workers to have a microchip implanted under their skin.
A proposal in Minnesota would make striking workers eligible for unemployment insurance. Loss of income is a major reason workers hesitate to go on strike.
Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to reduce the workweek for federal workers to 32 hours with no loss in pay.
Michigan’s Senate passed a bill that would cap payday loan interest rates at 36% if it becomes law.
Farm workers
A migrant worker advocacy group called United Migrant Opportunity Services and the Wisconsin Department of Justice are investigating labor trafficking in the state, including on dairy farms, in restaurants, and in meat packing plants.
Three Minnesota farmworkers sued Boehnke Waste Handling for wage theft, uninhabitable housing, and retaliation:
The employees worked up to 100 hours per week with no overtime or hazard pay, the workers’ lawyers said.…
The former Boehnke Waste Handling employees say they lived in windowless rooms inside a machine shop, where the smell of manure, exhaust, oil and other chemicals filled the space. They were frequently required to travel offsite, sometimes overnight. The workers were not paid for time spent traveling, and were made to pay for their own motels, according to the complaint.
Missouri Vegetable Farm in Park Hills, MO shorted about 200 workers nearly $500,000 by not paying overtime. The US Department of Labor ordered the money repaid and fined the company.
Child workers
Indiana governor Eric Holcomb signed a bill eliminating restrictions on night time work for children.
Rideshare workers
Uber and Lyft say they will stop operating in Minneapolis because of new minimum wage requirements. This is called a “capital strike,” an inversion of the more commonly known labor strike.
Public sector workers
2,000 non-teacher school district workers in Olathe, KS announced their desire to form a union.
“We are not getting enough to bring food to our families,” Mario Ibarra, who said he has worked in school grounds maintenance for 16 years, told the school board through a Spanish translator. He said many employees are working two or three jobs, or have left the district to seek out higher pay elsewhere.
After Virginia, MN revoked its “last, best, final offer” to city workers, they went on strike and this week forced the city to retreat and restore their offer.
Workers that staff Michigan’s legislature are signing cards to form a union.
Chemical workers
20 workers at Detrex in Ashatabula, OH who lost a union election by one vote in 2020 tried again last month. This time the vote was unanimous in favor of the union.
Tyson is back at it once again
1,300 workers are being laid off at a Tyson plant in Perry, IA as the company says it wants to hire 52,000 migrant and refugee workers nationwide because “they’re very, very loyal.”
At another Tyson plant in Logansport, IN, 900 workers came down with coronavirus. The company recently settled a lawsuit over the wrongful deaths of three workers at its Storm Lake, IA plant due to the coronavirus after the plant continued to operate in the early days of the pandemic.