March 8 Labor News Roundup
Written Up is rising from the dead. The working class has poured into the streets to celebrate.
Hi again, everyone, I’m back. I’ll be focusing on stories about workers in the Midwest for the most part. Read what you like, skim what you don’t.
Janitors walk out for $23/hr and a pension
Thousands of commercial janitors and hundreds of nursing home workers walked out of work this week as part of coordinated work stoppages across industries in the Twin Cities by workers seeking higher wages.
The commercial janitors, who are unionized with SEIU Local 26, say they want pensions and raises of more than 25%. That would bring starting wages to around $23 an hour by the end of a four-year labor contract.
“With rising costs and gasoline at over $3 a gallon … it’s not enough. They got to keep up so people can live,” said janitor Timothy Weum at a picket line outside the Ameriprise headquarters in downtown Minneapolis on Monday. “I can’t see working as hard as I do and not getting paid a wage increase.”
Weum said he left his job in the Prescott public schools to be a janitor at the Pine Bend oil refinery in Rosemount — part of the petrochemical giant Koch Industries — because it was a union job, with the promise of annual pay raises.
Renters also joined protesting workers as part of a campaign called “What Can We Win Together?” Some of the workers are also advocating for a cross-sector Labor Standards Advisory Board in Minneapolis.
Michael Rupke is an overnight building attendant at FirstService Residential who is on strike today. He handed Minneapolis City Council members a petition with 150 property workers’ signatures. “It’s difficult to talk to a company that doesn’t want to listen to you. … They dismiss us, they wave their hands at us and shoo us away,” he says. “A labor standards board would do so much, not just for the people in my company but the working class in general.”
On the final day of the janitor’s walkout, 15 in the pro-worker demonstration were arrested for civil disobedience. Thousands of teachers in St. Paul had threatened to join the walkouts on March 11, but reached an agreement with the district first.
Healthcare workers
Emergency room physicians at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit are threatening a strike vote while negotiating their first contract after voting to form a union last summer. Workers there complain of overwork and understaffing.
"We went into medicine to heal people and not to have to beg for resources and beg them to give us what we need to treat the community that we are a part of," said Casey Kolp, physician assistant.
"Our goal has been clear since Day 1: We will no longer accept 10-15 hour wait times and 50 people sitting in the emergency room waiting area looking for medical care," [Michelle] Wiener, [an emergency room physician] said in the release. "It's really sad that it has come to this."
A hospice worker in Iowa was told to let certain patients die rather than provide care by her managers at Compassus, a home healthcare company with locations in many states. An administrative law judge said the worker’s managers “told her to make certain patients a lower priority in the hopes that the patients would die before Ms. Ebert was able to provide service to the patients.”
Food workers
Hundreds of workers at a dairy farm in Minnesota had more than $3 million in wages stolen from them, according to a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general. Workers at Evergreen Acres in central Minnesota were also tenants of the company, living in poorly kept-up barns and garages.
The US Department of Labor said workers at a diner in Evansville, IN who are owed more than $450,000 in back wages were intimidated and threatened by the diner’s owner into making false statements to investigators.
Child workers
A bill to expand the working hours of children was passed by Indiana’s legislature and awaits a signature from the governor.
Public sector workers
Dozens of city workers in Virginia, MN walked off the job over disrespect during contract negotiations with the city. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “the city council blocked pro-union speakers during a recent public meeting and approved an ordinance against picketing in residential areas.” A union representative says the city took their final offer off the table before workers could vote on it.
440 graduate teaching assistants ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with Illinois State University after more than a year of negotiations. The contract gives them an immediate 10% raise and additional raises totaling 5.5% over the next two years as well as partial waivers of mandatory student fees.
Bosses fight back
County workers in Kalamazoo County, MI were recently robbed of their right to vape on the job.
Stellantis in Ohio fired 341 workers by robocall.
"To wake up on a Sunday morning to get that call after you've worked Saturday night for nine-and-a-half hours, and to wake up and get that call, it's a little devastating. It's very depressing," [Starla] Woods, [a Toledo Assembly Complex worker] said. "You're left stuck."
“Not even a human being ... It's a computer that's telling you you're terminated," she said.
"They left us with one paycheck," she said. "They left us with no help with job placements, they helped us with no severance pay. Just a 'thanks for your job.'"
Electric car company Rivian also laid off about 100 workers in Normal, IL.
300 cheese workers will be laid off in Lancaster, WI as Saputo closes its goat cheese factory there. 90 canning workers for Del Monte Foods in Markesan, WI will be laid off when their plant closes. 339 printing workers in Menasha, WI will also be laid off in June when Lakeside Book Company’s printing facility closes.
“We have generations of family working down there so it’s been hard not only for the people who work down there, their families, and everything else that comes with it,” said [Bobby] Neveu, [a Lakeside Book Company worker].
A Michigan battery startup said it is laying off dozens of workers “to attract additional strategic and financial investors.” Tubelite, an aluminum manufacturer in Walker, MI, will also lay off 106 workers to “better position the company for profitable growth.”
The Christian Employers Alliance won’t have to offer health insurance plans that cover gender transitions, according to a ruling by a federal judge in North Dakota.
Stadium workers
A coalition of low wage workers in Kansas City wants the Kansas City Royals to sign a community benefits agreement in exchange for support for a ballot referendum to fund the stadium. Community benefits agreements sometimes include minimum wages for workers or agreements by the employer not to fight a union drive.
Worker safety
Armed robberies of postal carriers tripled between 2020 and 2022, from 153 to 471.
Researchers evaluated a variety of state-level legislative responses to violence against healthcare workers, which has been rising in recent years. Healthcare workers are five times as likely as other workers to face workplace violence. One dystopian report from last year notes some hospitals are creating their own police forces.
CVS Health was fined more than $1.5 million by Ohio regulators for unsafe conditions caused in part by understaffing in their pharmacies.
OSHA found that Red Barn Truck Wash in Liberal, KS exposed workers to toxic hydrogen sulfide gas, killing one and hospitalizing two others.
International workers
Workers in Minnesota and other northern states who immigrated from Mexico without an official permit report paying $8,500 to $10,600 to cross the border, according to an analysis of the region’s Mexican immigrant workforce by the Minneapolis Fed. Those workers often need to borrow money from family and friends in order to cross.
Artificial intelligence & surveillance
A Governor’s Task Force in Wisconsin is studying artificial intelligence’s impact on work and the state’s labor force. What do labor leaders think of AI? Executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Technology Institute Amanda Ballantyne told WPR:
…labor leaders like technology that makes work safer and more efficient, but they are concerned AI could degrade work or automate jobs away. She said the government and private industries need to work with organized labor to ensure AI is a net positive for working people.
Ballantyne said including provisions related to artificial intelligence in collective bargaining contracts is one way to achieve that, pointing to AI provisions negotiated by the screen writers’ and actors’ unions.
She also said the AFL-CIO is advocating for more education and workforce development programs at the local level to help train workers on artificial intelligence, so they are not left behind in the transition.
Companies including Starbucks, Chevron, Walmart, and Delta have been using artificial intelligence to monitor employee communications with help from a company called Aware.
Hundreds of workers at EVO Transportation and Energy Services in Illinois say the company has been unlawfully collecting scans of workers’ faces.
A weird one
The UAW announced that 30% of workers had signed union cards at a plant that makes cylinder heads for Toyota vehicles in Troy, MO. It’s not clear why they announced that or why the media reported it, though turning in cards from 30% of workers to the National Labor Relations Board triggers a union election. But unions need 50% of workers plus one to vote for the union to win a traditional election, which — expecting support to erode during an anti-union campaign — usually means getting at least 70% of workers to sign on when organizers “drop cards” and go public with their campaign to feel confident in a win. It might be interesting to watch what happens here.