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Local and National Union News
Apply now for a JRHMSF academic or vocational scholarship
Dec. 4, 2023 | The application process is now open for James R. Hoffa Memorial scholarships. Scholarships range from $1,000 to $10,000 for Academic and $500 to $2,000 for Vocational. Eligible students must be high school seniors who are the sons, daughters, or financial dependents of Teamster members. The deadline for completing the application process is March 1, 2024. Apply here.Teamsters authorize strike at DHL’s largest hub
Dec. 4, 2023 | DHL Teamsters at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. The vote allows the DHL Teamsters Negotiating Committee to call a work stoppage at any time should DHL fail to remedy its illegal behavior and come to terms on a fair contract covering 1,100 ramp and tug workers. The members of Teamsters Local 100 load and unload airplanes at DHL’s largest and busiest logistics hub in North America. Learn more here.O’Brien, other labor leaders speak to AI threats at Harvard workers panel
Dec. 1, 2023 | General President Sean M. O’Brien joined other labor representatives for a deep discussion into artificial intelligence, automation, and the current state of democracy during a workers panel at the Harvard Kennedy School of Business in Cambridge, Mass. “The Teamsters and all of labor face a seismic shift with the expansion of AI and the rise of autonomous vehicles. For the Teamsters especially, the issue is not about rejecting technology. Change of this nature and on this scale must come down to the future and preservation of jobs in this country,” O’Brien said. Learn more here.A bidder’s plan to put Yellow back on the road
Nov. 28, 2023 | When Yellow abruptly shuttered its operations in the summer and filed for bankruptcy protection, few thought that a buyer would emerge and try to revive the long-troubled trucking giant. Now, a prominent trucking executive has assembled a last-minute plan to acquire Yellow out of bankruptcy — a proposal that seeks not only to rehire many of the company’s employees but also to work with their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to create a healthy business. The plan rests on getting the Treasury Department to allow Yellow to postpone repayment of a $700 million rescue loan that it made to the company in 2020. Learn more at The New York Times PHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Elsewhere in the News
Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt
Dec. 5, 2023 | ORGANIZING | Long after he took a position at Allina Health, a large nonprofit healthcare system based in Minnesota, in 2009, Dr. John Wust, a longtime obstetrician-gynecologist from Louisiana, did not see himself as the kind of employee who might benefit from collective bargaining. But that changed in the months leading up to March when his group of more than 100 doctors at an Allina hospital near Minneapolis voted to unionize. Dr. Wust, who has spoken with colleagues about the potential benefits of a union, said doctors were at a loss on how to ease their unsustainable workload because they had less input at the hospital than ever before. And doctors are not the only health professionals who are unionizing or protesting in greater numbers. The New York Times
Week Ending 12/1/2023
• US Labor is having a movement moment
• Teamsters, CSU locked in negotiations amid impasse
• 5 UPS workers share the toughest part of their jobs
• Workers at Rivers Casino in Virginia join Teamsters
• Amazon Teamsters strike expands to Chicago warehouse
• Detroit Casino Council reaches TA with Detroit casinos
• Teamsters form coalition to unionize Delta Air Lines workers
• Amazon workers rally, practice picket on Cyber Monday
• UAW launches ‘largest union organizing drive in US history’
• Unsafe conditions: Amazon fined only $7K over Indiana worker’s death
• ‘We can’t trust them’: Workers decry alleged union busting at Amazon air hub
• Unions in Wisconsin sue to reverse collective bargaining restrictions
• Biden sends 813,000 student loan borrowers emails forgiving their debt
Expanding Our View of Bargaining for the Common Good
Dec. 1, 2023 | LABOR UNION HISTORY | Bargaining for the common good sprang up in the vernacular of labor organizing in the wake of the Great Recession. Common good bargaining is a practice by which a bargaining unit uses its negotiating power to make demands that benefit parties not formally at the negotiating table, often the community that the bargaining unit serves. … For an example of how the efforts of organized workers to improve their own working conditions can produce widespread benefit, one need look no further than the history of the eight-hour workday in America. In the wake of the American revolution and again in 1835, Philadelphia carpenters went on strike for a shorter, ten hour work day. Unions began demanding an eight-hour workday… On Labor
The UAW Strike May Have Finally Set Us Up for a General Strike
Nov. 27, 2023 | COLLECTIVE ACTION | [… The UAW] announced plans to ramp up its organizing efforts in the auto industry and bring workers at nonunion companies, like Tesla and Toyota, into the fold. The move serves as both an invitation to nonunion auto workers in need of representation and a warning to the CEOs profiting off their labor: Expect us. The UAW won’t be fighting its next battle alone, either. One of the most interesting aspects of the new UAW tentative agreements at Ford, GM, and Stellantis is that they are all timed to expire on April 30, 2028. Fain has called on other unions to time their contracts to expire during the same period and “flex [their] collective muscles.” No, you’re not imagining things — the head of a major US labor union is calling on the rest of the movement to come together and start planning a general strike… If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. Yahoo
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