The union has given some details of the deals, including a detailed explanation of the agreement it reached with Ford. The agreement is expected to become the model for later settlements with GM and Stellantis. Rank-and-file UAW members must ratify each contract before it takes effect.
“We won things no one thought possible,” UAW President Shawn Fain said when he announced the tentative agreement last week.
The union represents 57,000 workers at the company, and about 16,600 of them were on strike. Here are the key terms of the agreements, as detailed by the union:PAY
The tentative agreements call for 25% increases in pay by April 2028, raising top pay to about $42 an hour, according to the union. That starts with an 11% boost upon ratification, three annual raises of 3% each, and a final increase of 5%. The UAW said restoration of cost-of-living increases, which were suspended in 2009, could boost the total increases to more than 30%.
The union initially asked for 40% increases, but scaled that back to 36% before the strike started Sept. 15. Ford’s last offer before the strike was 9% more pay over four years. More recently, Ford, GM and Stellantis were all offering 23% total pay increases.
For historical comparison, the union said its workers saw pay increases of 23% for all the years from 2001 through 2022.
BONUSES
The deals include $5,000 ratification bonuses.
TEMPORARY WORKERS
The union said Ford’s temporary workers will get pay raises totaling 150% over the life of the deal, and workers at certain facilities will also get outsized raises. The temporary workers will also get the ratification bonuses and will get profit-sharing starting next year, officials said.
BENEFITS
The companies did not agree to bring back traditional defined-benefit pension plans or retiree health care for workers hired since 2007. But they agreed to increase 401(k) contributions to about 9.5%.
SHORTER WORK WEEK
The UAW asked for a shorter work week — 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work. It did not get that concession.
WORKER TIERS
The union said Ford and GM agreed to end most divisive wage tiers, a system under which new hires were put on a less attractive pay scale. Fain and union members had highlighted the issue, saying it was unfair for people doing the same work to be paid less than co-workers.
CLIMBING THE LADDER
The agreement shortens the time it will take workers to reach top scale, to three years. It took eight years under the contract that expired in September.
RIGHT TO STRIKE
The union said it won the right to strike against any of the three companies over plant closures. The automakers had rejected the proposal at the start of talks.
UNION ORGANIZING
The agreements with Ford, GM and Stellantis could give the UAW a boost as it seeks to represent workers at nonunion plants in the U.S. that are operated by foreign carmakers and Tesla, as well as future plants that will make batteries for electric vehicles.
The union said Ford agreed to put workers at a future battery plant in Michigan under the UAW’s master contract, and GM agreed to do so with work at Ultium Cells, a joint venture between the company and LG Energy Solution of South Korea.
Fain vowed Sunday that the union will “organize like we’ve never organized before” at nonunion plants.
“When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three but with the Big Five or the Big Six,” he said in an online message to union members.
The United Auto Workers union announced Saturday evening that it had come to a tentative labor agreement with Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, on a new contract following a six-week strike.
The agreement, which covers nearly 15,000 workers, follows closely on the heels of a similar deal reached between the union and fellow “Big Three” automaker Ford—a significant victory for President Joe Biden, who threw his full-throated support behind striking auto workers.
“We have won a record-breaking contract,” UAW President Shawn Fainsaid in a video posted on social media Saturday evening. “We truly believe we got every penny possible out of the company.”
Fain added that the overall value of the Stellantis agreement, which includes a 25 percent wage increase for UAW members, was double what the company initially offered when the strike began in September.
The UAW also secured the right to strike if Stellantis closes any plant or fails to fulfill promised investments. “If the company goes back on their words on any plant, we can strike the hell out of them,” Fain said.
In a statement released by the White House, Biden congratulated the union and Stellantis on “a historic agreement that will guarantee workers the pay, benefits, dignity and respect they deserve.” The tentative contract, he said, “is a testament to the power of unions and collective bargaining to build strong middle-class jobs while helping our most iconic American companies thrive.”
Early in the strike, top Republicans gleefully embraced the opportunity to tie the president to an expanding work stoppage that threatened to reignite inflation or plunge the country into a recession. Those comments grew louder when Biden made history in late September by visiting striking workers at the picket line in Detroit, encouraging the union to “stick with it.”
But the president’s gamble paid off. On Thursday, Biden took the Ford agreement as an opportunity to tout the country’s third-quarter GDP report, which showed 4.9% growth and subsiding inflation, defying warnings of a recession, and to call out the chaos roiling the GOP.
“I hope Republicans in Congress will join me in working to build on this progress, rather than putting our economy at risk with reckless threats of a shutdown or proposals to cut taxes for the wealthy and large corporations while slashing programs that are essential for hard-working families and seniors.”
Now, the only Big Three company still waiting to come to a tentative agreement is General Motors. On Saturday evening, a local UAW chapter in Tennessee announced that a GM manufacturing facility that employs 4,000 union and non-union workers would be joining the strike, an escalation meant to ratchet up pressure on the company.
A GM spokesman said the company was “disappointed by the UAW’s action in light of the progress we have made.”
Teachers in Fresno, California, have authorized a strike, and to fill the temporary vacancies, the school district is sending out a state-wide call for substitute teachers with a lucrative offer– $500 per day to cross the picket line. That’s more than the average daily pay for a full-time teacher in Fresno Unified School District and more than double the normal daily rate for substitute teachers.
If someone accepts a job in the classroom while the teachers are on strike, it will be regarded as crossing the picket line, according to Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla. Guest teachers are not a part of the association, and if they teach during the strike they won’t be blacklisted, but Bonilla said it will undoubtedly damage personal relationships with teachers fighting for a fair contract.
“It’s hard to see one group of people fighting and advocating for positive change and another person that is getting in the way of that progress,” said Bonilla.
The union has been negotiating with the school district for a new contract, but both sides have yet to come to an agreement about class size, special education caseloads, health care policies and salary. Similar to the striking United Auto Workers, the Fresno Teachers Association said members want the salary increases in line with inflation and the cost of living index. Chief Communications Officer for Fresno Unified School District Nikki Henry referred to that request as a “straw man argument.”
Henry says more than 95% of the district’s substitute teachers have agreed to continue teaching during the strike. But even with many willing to overlook the strike for a higher wage – substitutes in the district typically make $200 a day – the substitute teacher shortage plaguing schools nationwide leads Borillo to believe the district won’t be able to adequately fill the spots left temporarily open by striking teachers in California’s third-largest school district.
Substitute teachers will see higher pay for work done while teachers are on strike.
CBS News
“We hear of the number of vacancies that take place on any given day. And so we do not believe that they have the ability to fill those spaces, and definitely not to fill them with qualified folks,” said Borillo.
The district has more than 2,100 credentialed substitute teachers who previously agreed to continue working even in the case of a strike, Henry said. She said outreach about the higher pay has been successful, and about 200 additional substitute teachers joined the district this past weekend.
“At this point, we have more than enough folks to make sure that our kids are taken care of and the learning continues,” Henry said.
Josiah Mariano, who began substitute teaching in Fresno Unified School District last spring, plans to continue to do so during the strike. He told CBS News his friends who are full-time teachers in the district already expected he would keep teaching, and he might even cover their classes. Mariano said while he received very few details about the strike and contract negotiations, the district sent several messages highlighting the $500 daily pay if substitute teachers committed to teach during the strike.
“That’s awesome to get paid that, but I can’t imagine that we’ll be able to sustain that for super long,” said Mariano. “That’s kind of nuts, you know, for a daily rate.”
The school district explained the incentive funding comes directly from wages withheld from teachers on strike. Henry said that means they’re able to continue the additional pay as long as the teachers are striking.
Teachers in Fresno, California.
Courtesy: California Teachers Association
“Our average teacher makes about $490 a day, so we’re just diverting those funds over to the substitute teacher that would be in the classroom that day,” said Henry. “It’s not a big additional cost to the district.”
Executive Director of the National Education Association Kim Anderson said Fresno is the first district she has seen offer this for substitute teachers filling in for striking teachers. She hopes it doesn’t become a common practice.
“This move to pay substitutes, frankly, even more than the daily rate of a teacher sends a horrible message to what we think about the profession of teaching, and all the educators who provide support services to students,” said Anderson. “Instead of looking to our band-aid solutions, we need everybody to recognize that students need high quality, well trained, committed and well compensated professionals every day of the year.”
While the amount being offered by Fresno Unified School District is unprecedented, other school districts have opted to provide substitute teachers with bonus pay if they cross the picket line of a striking teachers union in the past. In 2017, Fresno Unified School District presented the same $500 proposal for substitute teachers in the case of a strike. It was never implemented as a contract agreement was reached before a walkout took place, but the idea laid the groundwork for the strategy being used now.
“It was very successful in recruiting the substitutes that we needed,” said Henry about the 2017 offer. “Based on that success, we wanted to be prepared this time around.”
About 5,000 factory workers for General Motors walked off the job in Texas on Tuesday to join the United Auto Workers strike, impacting a factory that produces some of GM’s most profitable vehicles, including the Chevrolet Tahoe and Chevrolet Suburban.
The employees at Arlington Assembly left their posts just hours after GM reported third-quarter earnings of more than $3 billion in profit. Revenue during the most recent quarter, which ran from July through September, rose 5.4% to $44.1 billion.
The Arlington Assembly plant also produces the GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade.
“Despite having made $10 billion in profits in the past nine months, breaking revenue records for another consecutive quarter, and beating Wall Street expectations, GM’s latest offer fails to reward UAW members for the profits they’ve generated,” the union said in a statement.
GM on Tuesday said it was disappointed that Arlington workers decided to leave, labeling the UAW’s action an “unnecessary and irresponsible strike.”
“It is harming our team members who are sacrificing their livelihoods and having negative ripple effects on our dealers, suppliers, and the communities that rely on us,” the company said.
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.
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The political fight over whether workers on strike should be allowed to collect unemployment benefits is reigniting in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is running for Senate, is planning to introduce legislation on Tuesday that would provide unemployment benefits nationwide to workers on strike. Most states don’t allow striking workers to collect unemployment with the exception of New York and New Jersey. Eligibility requirements and the amount of weekly unemployment pay also varies by state.
Under the Empowering Striking Workers Act of 2023, workers would be able to collect unemployment pay after two weeks on strike, according to a draft of the bill viewed by The Times. Workers would also be eligible for unemployment benefits starting on the date a lockout begins, when the employer hired permanent replacement workers or if the worker becomes unemployed after a strike or lock-out ends, whichever is earlier.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Donald Norcross of New Jersey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also are sponsoring the bill. Labor unions SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO are supporting the legislation as well, according to Schiff’s office.
But with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the odds that the bill will pass are slim. Businesses have strongly opposed the idea because they said it would lead to higher employer taxes. Employers pay state and federal payroll taxes to fund the unemployment insurance program.
The expected introduction of a federal bill comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed state legislation in September to provide unemployment for striking workers. Newsom said he did so because of financial concerns, a move highly criticized by labor leaders.
California borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to cover unemployment benefits, and the state’s unemployment fund debt was projected to be nearly $20 billion by the end of the year. California’s unemployment pay is $450 a week for a maximum of 26 weeks. Business fought the bill because they said they would pay additional taxes annually to repay California’s loan from the federal government.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA lobbied for the expanded benefits, saying that they would help workers pay their bills. While members rely on side jobs and strike funds to stay afloat, that income dwindles the longer a strike goes on. The 148-day Hollywood writers strike ended after WGA members ratified a new contract. Actors and crew members represented by SAG-AFTRA have been on strike for more than 100 days.
Democrats have expressed support for labor unions ahead of the 2024 elections. Labor unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Communication Workers of America and the Amalgamated Transit Union have endorsed Schiff for Senate, while other unions have endorsed his main Democratic rivals in the race.
During an October debate in Los Angeles, Schiff, along with California Democratic Senate candidates Barbara Lee and Katie Porter, disagreed with Newsom’s decision to veto the bill to provide striking workers unemployment benefits. He mentioned during that event he was working on federal legislation.
“When they go and strike for better work and better wages for themselves and others, they need to have unemployment compensation, because they’re striking for all workers,” Schiff said at the debate.
When Norelis Vargas heard about housekeeping work at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, she did not hesitate to sign up.
Vargas, 39, who migrated from Venezuela and entered the U.S. about three months ago seeking asylum, had been living with her husband and four children for months at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter on Skid Row, and needed the income. But when she arrived at Four Points by Sheraton on Oct. 6, Vargas said she was surprised to find a group of hotel employees picketing.
“I thought, it’s good they are fighting for their rights,” Vargas said. But she said she felt uncomfortable. “The people outside, it was their job, and I was the one replacing them.”
Vargas is among those from Skid Row’s migrant population who have been recruited in recent weeks to work at unionized hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport where workers have gone on strike. In addition to the Four Points by Sheraton hotel, migrants were hired at the Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica and the Holiday Inn LAX, according to interviews with migrants employed as temporary workers and organizers with Unite Here Local 11.
Now Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels based on information brought to him by Unite Here Local 11, which represents workers involved in the largest U.S. hotel strike. Gascón said he is concerned about potential wage theft and violations of child labor law.
“We are going to make sure this is investigated thoroughly. It will be a fair and impartial investigation,” Gascón said at a news conference Monday in front of Le Meridien Delfina.
“If there are violations of the law, there will be severe consequences for this. We want to make sure that our community understands there will be no tolerance for the exploitation of refugees,” Gascón said, citing reporting by The Times on the issue.
Gascón recently claimed the endorsement of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in announcing his reelection campaign.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced at a Monday news conference that he is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At Monday’s news conference, state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) expressed outrage over the allegations against the hotels and staffing agencies.
“It makes me furious,” said Durazo, who represents Central and East L.A., and once served as president of Unite Here Local 11.
The hotel’s actions are “indefensible,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the advocacy organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles. “Staffing agencies, companies taking advantage of the desperation of the individual to try to begin their life, and then not pay them their proper earnings, not give them a full accounting of their hours worked — we see this every day here in L.A.”
Since more than 15,000 workers began intermittent strikes at about 60 Southern California hotels in early July, employers have been replacing those union members with managers and temporary workers recruited through apps, such as Instawork, staffing agencies and by other means.
For the record:
4:33 p.m. Oct. 23, 2023An earlier verison of this story misspelled Hannah Petersen’s last name as Peterson.
Unite Here organizer Hannah Petersen, who has been working with the migrants, said some hired at Le Meridien Delfina were among hundreds of migrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shipped on buses to L.A. this year as a political stunt meant to harness anti-immigrant sentiment and deride “sanctuary” cities across the country. Frank Wolf, a pastor at Echo Park United Methodist Church, is among those who have greeted migrants arriving on buses from Texas.
“They were exhausted and they were tired and they were scared when they came to Los Angeles,” he said at the news conference. “It’s heart-wrenching to find out that some of these very workers that we welcomed on those buses are being exploited.”
Refugees and asylum seekers are legally allowed to seek work in the U.S. Federal labor law allows employers to hirereplacement workers during unfair labor practice strikes and economic strikes, but unions typically condemn the use of so-called scab labor.
Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said employers who hired migrants “had stooped to a new low” by tapping a vulnerable group of workers to undermine employees striking for a living wage.
“I can’t believe they are forcing these people, who are so desperate, to cross the picket line,” Petersen said. “Instead of addressing L.A.’s housing crisis, the hotel industry prefers to exploit the unhoused as strikebreakers to avoid paying their own workers enough to afford housing themselves.”
Owners and operators of the three hotels did not respond to requests for comment. Real estate investment group Pebblebrook Hotel Trust owns Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, and Capital Insight owns Four Points LAX. Highgate Hotels operates both hotels. The Holiday Inn LAX is owned by a subsidiary of Chinese firm Esong Group and is operated by Aimbridge Hospitality.
Eleven people living at the Skid Row shelter confirmed they had been hired at hotels where employees were protesting outside. Most had migrated from Venezuela or Colombia. Many did not provide their names, fearing repercussions.
They described heavy cleaning loads and long hours. Some said they were given no prior information on how much they would be paid hourly, although others said they were told on their first day that they would be paid $19 an hour. Migrant workers said they were not told and did not know the name of the agency that recruited them.
Venezuelan migrant Sebastian Atencio, 34, showed up at Le Méridien Delfina Santa Monica on Sept. 26 during a recent wave of strikes. Atencio said he was given a heavy workload and forced to work without breaks. He was hired to wash dishes at another hotel — but they also asked him to clean bathrooms during the same shift, which he said he felt was unsanitary.
One migrant worker, a 17-year-old student at Belmont High School who requested anonymity, said he skipped two days of school to clean rooms at the Holiday InnLAX.
He and his mother, who secured work as a housekeeper at the Holiday Inn, received payment via banking app Zelle from an agency called Arya Staffing Services Inc. Aimbridge Hospitality did not respond to questions about whether staffing agencies it used had secured appropriate permits to employ minors.
A review of an Oct. 13 pay stub for a worker hired at the Four Points by Sheraton shows that person obtained hotel work through staffing agency AV Professional Services.
Alinne Espinoza, who is listed as the registered agent for both staffing agencies, said her business is properly licensed and operates legally.
“Our company works with many different types of people that come from our local community,” she said in an email. “We work hard on a daily basis to incorporate as many people as possible into the labor market under competent, dignified and just conditions.”
Unite Here Local 11 organizer Hannah Petersen speaks with workers outside the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.
(Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times)
Outside the Skid Row shelter on a recent evening, Petersen introduced herself in Spanish to a group of migrants who had been hired at striking hotels. Several pushed strollers. Young children crowded around their parents, one sucking a green lollipop.
“My name is Hannah,” she said to the group. “The union is out there fighting for the rights of immigrant workers.”
Many migrants living at the shelter had told her they wanted permanent jobs, she explained, and so that day she and other organizers would be gathering information to help them create their resumes.
Some of the shelter’s residents approached the organizers, who were armed with clipboards, and fielded questions about the migrants’ work experience, scribbling their answers down. Other migrants, concerned that the organizers were working for immigration authorities, left.
Petersen, the daughter of the union’s co-president, said she first encountered homeless migrant workers Sept. 27 when she was protesting alongside Unite Here Local 11 members at Le Meridien Delfina.
Hotel housekeepers, front desk workers, cooks and other employees are seeking new contracts with higher wages and improved benefits and working conditions. The union members say they don’t earn enough to afford housing near their jobs.
But hotel operators say the union is overreaching in its demands for raises and employer support of housing initiatives unrelated to hotel operations, including a measure set for the 2024 ballot that would require hotels in Los Angeles to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. American Hotel & Lodging Assn. Chief Executive Chip Rogers called it a “dangerous demand,” citing a September poll the industry group commissioned in which 72% of respondents said they would be reluctant to book a hotel room in Los Angeles “if hotels there are forced to house homeless people next to paying guests.”
Petersen said it is hypocritical for hotels to oppose homelessness measures while employing unhoused people as replacement workers during the strike.
Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a group of more than 40 Southern California hotel owners and operators in negotiations with Unite Here Local 11, said in an email that hotels “did not knowingly use unhoused individuals, if they even did so.”
“I do wonder how a hotel is supposed to know whether a person is homeless if they list an address and show up bathed and clean and sober?” he said. “This appears to be another red herring generated by Local 11.”
Unite Here Local 11 has previously criticized hotels’ strike-time use of Instawork, an app that matches businesses with short-term, seasonal workers in hospitality.
In July, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Instawork and hotel management company Aimbridge. In one allegation, the union said the company violated federal labor law by disqualifying workers hired through the app from future work when they miss a single shift, even if they do so to participate in legally protected activity, such as respecting a strike.
Vargas, the worker hired at the Four Points hotel, was among a handful of people remaining that evening outside Union Rescue Mission. The rest had dispersed, distrustful and worried that union organizers were sent by immigration authorities. Vargas said she hoped the other residents would come around.
“I’m going to be the one who finds good work so they know it’s not a lie,” Vargas said.
Thousands of casino workers in Detroit walked off the job Tuesday, calling their first strike since the MGM Grand, MotorCity Casino Hotel and Hollywood Casino at Greektown opened their doors in the city about a quarter of a century ago.
The push for better wages by dealers, valets, housekeepers, and food and beverage workers came after negotiators for the three casinos and unions representing 3,700 workers failed to reach agreement by a noon deadline. The contract had been set to lapse 12 hours earlier, but was extended by half a day as talks continued.
Casino workers had been working under a three-year extension to a five-year contract from 2015, and in 2020 accepted small pay increases due to the pandemic’s impact on business, according to the Detroit Casino Council, which represents workers from five unions. But Since 2020, Detroit casino workers have received only 3% raises, while local inflation has risen 20%, the group said.
“After we helped Detroit’s gaming industry get back on its feet, business is booming, but the people who make the casinos run are still struggling,” Nia Winston, president of Unite Here Local 24, one of the unions representing the striking workers, in a statement emailed by the coalition.
MGM Grand Detroit and Hollywood Casino at Greektown said they would remain open during the strike; MotorCity did not respond to a request for comment.
“We will continue to offer employees work, and to the extent employees represented by the union choose to participate in the strike, we will take whatever lawful action is necessary to fill shifts and continue to provide our customers with entertainment and service,” Matt Buckley, president and chief operating officer of MGM Resorts’ Midwest Group, told employees in a letter on Tuesday.
In a statement, Hollywood Casino at Greektown expressed disappointment that what it called its “generous, progressive settlement offers” had been rejected, but said it would continue talks to resolve the labor dispute “as soon as possible,” according to CBS News Detroit.
Hollywood Casino’s self-parking garages and self-serve beverage stations are open, along with slot machines and table games, although “certain services may be limited,” the gambling venue stated on its website. Valet services and the casino’s restaurants may not be available, but dining vouchers can be redeemed at nearby eateries, including Dunkin Donuts and Detroit Taco, it added.
The casino workers’ strike comes amid a rash of other major strikes and labor unrest, including a walkout by 34,000 members of teh United Auto Workers at Ford, Motor, General Motors and Stellantis (which owns domestic auto brands Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram). Film and television actors also remain off the job after talks with the entertainment studios broke down last week.
Los Angeles — Talks bitterly broke off between Hollywood actors and studios late Wednesday, killing any hopes that the three-month strike by performers would come to an end anytime soon.
The studios announced that they’d suspended contract negotiations, saying the gap between the two sides was too great to make continuing worth it, despite an offer as good as the one that recently ended the writers strike. The actors union decried their opponents’ “bullying tactics” and said the studios were wildly mischaracterizing their offers.
On Oct. 2, for the first time since the strike began July 14, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists had resumed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, streaming services and production companies in strike talks.
When negotiations resumed with writers last month, their strike ended five days later, but similar progress wasn’t made with the actors union.
The studios walked away from talks after seeing the actors’ most recent proposal on Wednesday.
“It is clear that the gap between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA is too great and conversations are no longer moving us in a productive direction,” the AMPTP said in a statement.
The SAG-AFTRA proposal would cost companies an additional $800 million a year and create “an untenable economic burden,” the statement said.
In a letter to members sent early Thursday, SAG-AFTRA said that figure was overestimated by 60%. The union said its negotiators were “profoundly disappointed” the studios had broken off talks.
“We have negotiated with them in good faith,” the letter read, “despite the fact that last week they presented an offer that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.”
Actors have been on strike over issues including increases in pay for streaming programming and control of the use of their images generated by artificial intelligence.
The AMPTP insisted its offers had been as generous as the deals that brought an end to the writers strike and brought a new contract to the directors guild earlier this year.
But the union letter to actors said the companies “refuse to protect performers from being replaced by AI, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them.”
From the start, the actors talks had nothing like the momentum that spurred marathon night-and-weekend sessions in the writers strike and brought that work stoppage to an end. Actors and studios had taken several days off after resuming, and there were no reports of meaningful progress despite direct involvement from the heads of studios including Disney and Netflix as there had been in the writers strike.
The writers did have their own false start in negotiations, however. A month before the successful talks, the initial attempt to restart ended after just a few days.
Members of the Writers Guild of America voted almost unanimously to ratify their new contract on Monday.
Their leaders touted their deal as achieving most of what they had sought when they went on strike nearly five months earlier.
They declared their strike over and sent writers back to work on Sept. 26.
Late night talk shows returned to the air within a week, and other shows including “Saturday Night Live” will soon follow.
But with no actors, production on scripted shows and movies will stay on pause indefinitely.
The Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood studios resumed bargaining talks on Wednesday. It’s a sign of progress as the strike nears the three-month mark. CBS News correspondent Elise Preston reports.
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About 75,000 union health care workers with Kaiser Permanente began a three-day strike Tuesday across five states. The union is calling for better working conditions and a $25 minimum wage. Kaiser said it its hospitals and medical centers will remain open during the strike, but it may need to reschedule non-urgent appointments or procedures. Jo Ling Kent has more.
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More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers launched a strike on Wednesday at hospitals and medical centers across five states and Washington, D.C., the largest walkout by health care workers in U.S. history.
The work stoppage involving nurses, lab technicians, pharmacists and other workers started at 6 a.m. local time at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Washington, D.C., according to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
Workers at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center cheered as the strike deadline came. Brittany Everidge was among those on the picket line. A ward clerk transcriber in the medical center’s maternal child health department, she said staffing shortages mean pregnant women who are in labor can be kept waiting for hours to get checked in.
The strike, which is scheduled to last three days, threatens to disrupt medical services for almost 13 million people, curtailing nonessential care like routine checkups. Hospitals and emergency departments will continue to operate, staffed by doctors, managers and “contingent workers,” said Oakland-based Kaiser, among the nation’s biggest providers of managed care services.
Kaiser management and union representatives are still at the bargaining table after working through the night in an effort to break the impasse, a spokesperson for Kaiser said by email. “There has been a lot of progress, with agreements reached on several specific proposals late Tuesday,” the spokesperson said.
The strike by Kaiser workers drew words of solidarity from UAW President Shawn Fain.
“Whether you work in a hospital, or behind a desk, or on an assembly line, your fight is our fight,” Fain said Wednesday in a statement. “We all deserve our fair share of the economy we, as working people, create and run. To our union family on strike at Kaiser, the UAW has your back.”
“Breakdown” in patient care
Kaiser workers contend that chronic understaffing is boosting the company’s bottom line but harming patients and staff. Kaiser maintains it’s doing the best it can in an industry with a shortage of workers. Employees who spoke to CBS MoneyWatch expressed frustration at having to rush to care for too many patients with too little time and not enough backup.
Ultrasound technician Michael Ramey, who has worked at Kaiser for 27 years, said the job he once loved is “heartbreaking” and “stressful” due to a staffing crisis that he and his colleagues argue harms both employee morale and patient treatment.
“You don’t have the ability to care for patients in the manner they deserve,” said Ramey, 57, who works at a Kaiser clinic in San Diego and is president of his local union. “We are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure we have a contract in place that allows us to be staffed at the levels where we need to be.”
Kaiser Permanente employees rally on the first day of a three-day strike at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, in Los Angeles, California.
Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
In his interactions with patients, Ramey said he often hears customer complaints about not being able to schedule medical procedures in a timely fashion. “They are telling you how long it took to get the appointment, and then you have to tell them how long it will be to get results,” he said. “There’s a breakdown in the quality of care. These are people in our communities.”
Kaiser workers are burning themselves out “trying to do the jobs of two or three people, and our patients suffer when they can’t get the care they need due to Kaiser’s short-staffing,” Jessica Cruz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center, said in an emailed statement.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions is also asking for a $25 hourly minimum wage, as well as increases of 7% each year in the first two years and 6.25% each year in the two years afterward.
Kaiser has proposed minimum hourly wages of between $21 and $23 in 2023, depending on the location.
“Hospital strikes are complicated. Unlike striking at an auto plant for example, you don’t want to close down the facility,” Gabriel Winant, a labor expert and assistant professor of U.S. history at the University of Chicago, told CBS MoneyWatch. “If you strike at a hospital, people can die. That’s not your goal.”
On Wednesday, more than 75,000 unionized employees of nonprofit health provider Kaiser Permanente initiated the largest healthcare worker strike in the country’s history, CNN reported. The strike is scheduled to continue until Saturday.
The 75,000 employees are represented by eight unions across five states (Washington, Virginia, Colorado, California, Oregon, and the District of Columbia) and account for 40% of Kaiser Permanente’s workforce.
The employees on the picket line include nurses, dietary workers, receptionists, optometrists, and pharmacists. The strike was prompted by the expiration of union contracts on September 30. Negotiations with Kaiser continued up until the strike’s commencement, but didn’t reach a resolution, James Santos, a field coordinator for the coalition of Kaiser unions in Virginia, told CNN.
The workers are fighting for better pay and benefits, as well as looking to resolve disputes over staffing levels.
Striking Kaiser Permanente workers march in front of the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center on Wednesday in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images.
The issue of understaffing has led to safety concerns and burnout, Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, told CNBC.
“We continue to have front-line health-care workers who are burnt out and stretched to the max and leaving the industry,” Lucas told the outlet. “We have folks getting injured on the job because they’re trying to do too much and see too many people and work too quickly. It’s not a sustainable situation.”
The strike is temporary, and employees plan to return to work on October 7, unless a further strike is called in November if no agreement is reached, per CNN.
Entrepreneur has reached out to Kaiser Permanente for comment.
Kaiser Permanente operates under a different model from traditional fee-for-service healthcare providers — where members pay dues to access Kaiser’s services, whereas for-profit providers charge a fee per each visit or service. While the strike may affect some patient care, the organization has taken precautions to minimize disruptions.
“Our hospitals and emergency departments will remain open. Our facilities will continue to be staffed by our physicians, trained and experienced managers, and staff, and in some cases we will augment with contingent workers,” Kaiser Permanente told CNN in a statement.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Picketing began Wednesday morning at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as some 75,000 health care workers go on strike in Virginia, California and three other states over wages and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, with 39 hospitals nationwide. The non-profit company, based in Oakland, California, provides health coverage for nearly 13 million people, sending customers to clinics and hospitals it runs or contracts with to provide care.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments.
Doctors are not participating, and Kaiser says its hospitals, including emergency rooms, will remain open during the picketing. The company said it was bringing in thousands of temporary workers to fill gaps during the strike. But the strike could lead to delays in getting appointments and non-urgent procedures being rescheduled.
It comes amid unprecedented worker organizing — from strike authorizations to work stoppages — within multiple industries this year, including, transportation, entertainment and hospitality.
Wednesday’s strike is the latest one for the health care industry this year as it continues to confront burnout with the heavy workloads — problems that were exacerbated greatly by the pandemic.
Unions representing Kaiser workers in August asked for a $25 hourly minimum wage, as well as increases of 7% each year in the first two years and 6.25% each year in the two years afterward.
They say understaffing is boosting the hospital system’s profits but hurting patients, and executives have been bargaining in bad faith during negotiations.
“They’re not listening to the frontline health care workers,” said Mikki Fletchall, a licensed vocational nurse based in a Kaiser medical office in Camarillo, California. “We’re striking because of our patients. We don’t want to have to do it, but we will do it.”
Kaiser has proposed minimum hourly wages of between $21 and $23 next year depending on the location.
Since 2022, the hospital system has hired 51,000 workers and has plans to add 10,000 more people by the end of the month.
Kaiser Permanente reported $2.1 billion in net income for this year’s second quarter on more than $25 billion in operating revenue. But the company said it still was dealing with cost headwinds and challenges from inflation and labor shortages.
Kaiser executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames defended the company and said its practices, compensation and retention are better than its competitors, even as the entire sector faces the same challenges.
“Our focus, for the dollars that we bring in, are to keep them invested in value-based care,” said Gaskill-Hames, president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals of Southern California and Hawaii.
She added that Kaiser only faces 7% turnover compared to the industry standard of 21%, despite the effects of the pandemic.
“I think coming out of the pandemic, health care workers have been completely burned out,” she said. “The trauma that was felt caring for so many COVID patients, and patients that died, was just difficult.”
The workers’ last contract was negotiated in 2019, before the pandemic.
Hospitals generally have struggled in recent years with high labor costs, staffing shortages and rising levels of uncompensated care, according to Rick Gundling, a senior vice president with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a nonprofit that works with health care finance executives.
Most of their revenue is fixed, coming from government-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Gundling noted. He said that means revenue growth is “only possible by increasing volumes, which is difficult even under the best of circumstances.”
Workers calling for higher wages, better working conditions and job security, especially since the end of the pandemic, have been increasingly willing to walk out on the job as employers face a greater need for workers.
The California legislature has sent Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill that would increase the minimum wage for the state’s 455,000 health care workers to $25 per hour over the next decade. The governor has until Oct. 14 to decide whether to sign or veto it.
Associated Press Writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
Late night talk shows are coming back after Hollywood writers agreed to a new contract and ended their strike, but actors are still on the picket lines and several more strikes appear imminent this week. Culinary workers in Las Vegas appear set to walk off the job and some 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers are planning to strike on Wednesday. Elise Preston takes a look at the rise in labor actions.
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From President Joe Biden joining auto workers on the picket line to 75,000 health care workers girding to strike in multiple states, organized labor in the U.S. is enjoying a resurgence this year, while finding its most receptive audience in more than half a century.
“There is a feeling that the system is fundamentally unfair to the workforce that is doing all the hard work,” said Harry Katz, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University.
In an era of escalating income disparity, Americans are more open to the idea of collective bargaining and workers advocating for better pay and benefits. Public approval of labor unions registered at 67% in August, down from 71% a year ago when was at its highest reading since 1965, according to Gallup.
“Right now, unions are very popular. It’s more of a recognition of wealth inequality, the gap between the top one-tenth of 1% and everybody else,” Jeffrey Schuhrke, a labor activist and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State College, told CBS MoneyWatch.
What is driving the protests?
Declining real wages, a tight labor market and robust corporate profits only bolsters the case for workers, many of whom had to show up during the pandemic even as many Americans worked remotely.
“It helps that union organizers, some of them regular workers themselves, or actual professional or staff, recognize that it is an advantageous moment,” Schuhrke said.
That advantage includes having a labor-friendly president and favorable rulings from a Democratic-led National Labor Relations Board, he noted. “The labor movement knows that window is not going to be open forever,” he added.
Mr. Biden’s unprecedented trip to Michigan to stand with striking members of the United Auto Workers highlights organized labor’s current sway, according to Schuhrke, a labor historian.
“It is the first time a sitting U.S. president has joined striking workers on a picket line — they’ve joined before as candidates, but not as president,” Schuhrke said. “What matters is the strike is so popular, and the union has so much support, that the president thought it advantageous and maybe even critical to his political future that he be seen standing with workers.”
Many industries rallying for change
An important feature of the current labor landscape is that the trend in activism isn’t isolated within a cluster of businesses, but is visible across a range of major sectors of the American economy, including transportation, health care and media.
There is a common ingredient, however: Much of the upsurge in labor protests is in blue-collar jobs where wages have long lagged productivity and corporate profits, with millions of Americans struggling simply to maintain their standard of living, let alone thrive at time that inflation has sapped households’ purchasing power.
Such grievances underlie the UAW’s strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, now into its third week. More than 25,000 unionized workers, or 17% of the labor group’s members, have walked off their jobs at Ford, GM and Stellantis (the owner of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, as well major foreign auto brands).
The public’s mostly warm embrace of striking autoworkers could lessen as its impact spreads to dealers, customers and third-party suppliers who don’t have a seat at the bargaining table, according to Patrick Anderson, principal and CEO of Anderson Economic Group, an East Lansing and Chicago-based analysis firm. “When the innocent bystanders begin to feel it, it will affect the generally supportive sentiment Americans have been expressing about the UAW’s demands thus far,” Anderson stated Monday in a release that estimates $3.95 billion in total losses to the U.S. economy from the union’s strike’s first two weeks.
Labor unrest in Motor City is not confined to autoworkers. The Detroit Casino Council, representing five unions at three city casinos, late Friday said workers overwhelmingly voted to authorize strikes as soon as mid-October when contracts expire.
“Just like autoworkers, Blue Cross Blue Shield staff, UPS workers, writers and hotel workers, Detroit casino workers are considering all options available to make sure one job in a Detroit casino is enough to raise a family on, Nia Winston, Unite Here Local 24 president, said in a statement.
Major casinos in Las Vegas are also facing potential walkouts by workers, with the city’s Culinary Workers Union recently announcing that its 60,000 hospitality workers had authorized a strike if a deal is not reached with companies including MGM International, Wynn and Caesars Entertainment.
Elsewhere around the country, more than 75,000 health care workers are threatening a three-day strike starting Wednesday at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical centers in five states and Washington, D.C. Staffing levels and wages are at the heart of the negotiations between the Oakland-based health care giant and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
Highlighting the rise in worker activism, even nonunion pharmacists recently walked off the job and closed multiple CVS Health locations in and around Kansas City. Now back at work, those involved in the work stoppage drew words of support from the Kansas Pharmacists Association, which said the pharmacists were laboring under a system that “values medication volume over safety and quality of health care.” The nation’s largest retail pharmacy chain said it would address the concerned raised by its pharmacists.
UPS “template”?
Last month’s contract ratification by more than 300,000 United Parcel Service workers is an example of how a credible strike threat can yield an agreement, Schuhrke said.
The shipping giant had a strong incentive to make a deal, Cornell’s Katz added. “You don’t replace 300,000 drivers very quickly.”
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said its most lucrative agreement ever with UPS would “improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers” and provide a roadmap for other organizing efforts, the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, said in a statement.
“This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” O’Brien stated.
Still, how much power workers actually have depends on the situation — and those employed at Starbucks and Amazon “don’t have a lot of bargaining leverage,” according to Katz.
With passage of stronger labor laws, there is lots of room for corporations to stall negotiations, as companies are only legally required to come to the table, not to reach an agreement.
“Forty percent of unions that have formed don’t get a first contract,” Katz said.
CBS’s ” The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” ABC’s ” Jimmy Kimmel Live! ” and NBC’s ” The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” were the first shows to leave the air when the writers strike began on May 2, and now will be among the first to return on Monday night.
Comedian John Oliver got his first take on the strike out, exuberantly returning Sunday night to his “Last Week Tonight” show on HBO and delivering full-throated support for the strike.
Oliver cheerily delivered a recap of stories from the last five months before turnings serious, calling the strike “an immensely difficult time” for all those in the industry.
“To be clear, this strike happened for good reasons. Our industry has seen its workers severely squeezed in recent years,” Oliver said. “So, the Writers Guild went to strike and thankfully won. But, it took a lot of sacrifices from a lot of people to achieve that.”
“I am also furious that it took the studios 148 days to achieve a deal they could have offered on day (expletive) one,” Oliver said. He added that he hopes the writers contract would give leverage to other entertainment industry guilds – as well as striking auto workers and employees in other industries – to negotiate better deals.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO, is among the studios on the other side of the table in the writers and actors strikes.
Network late-night hosts will have their returns later Monday.
Colbert will have Astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson on his first show back. Kimmel will host Arnold Schwarzenegger. Matthew McConaughey will be on Fallon’s couch.
All the hosts will surely address the strike in their monologues.
“I’ll see you Monday, and every day after that!” an ebullient Colbert said in an Instagram video last week from the Ed Sullivan Theater, which was full of his writers and other staffers for their first meeting since spring.
The hosts haven’t been entirely idle. They teamed up for a podcast, “Strike Force Five,” during the strike.
The writers were allowed to return to work last week after the Writers Guild of America reached an agreement on a three-year contract with an alliance of the industry’s biggest studios, streaming services and production companies.
Union leaders touted the deal as a clear win on issues including pay, size of staffs and the use of artificial intelligence that made the months off worth it. The writers themselves will vote on the contract in a week of balloting that begins Monday.
Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will begin negotiations with the same group, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, for the first time since they joined writers in a historic dual strike on July 14.
Actors walked off the job over many of the same issues as writers, and SAG-AFTRA leaders said they would look closely at the gains and compromises of the WGA’s deal, but emphasized that their demands would remain the same as they were when the strike began.
It was just five days after writers and studios resumed talks that a deal was reached and that strike ended, though an attempt to restart negotiations a month earlier broke off after a few meetings.
The late-night shows will have significant limits on their guest lists. Their bread and butter, actors appearing to promote projects, will not be allowed to appear if the movies and shows are for studios that are the subject of the strikes.
But exceptions abound. McConaughey, for example, is appearing with Fallon to promote his children’s book, “Just Because.”
And SAG-AFTRA has granted interim agreements allowing actors to work on many productions, and with that comes the right of actors to publicly promote them.
Editor’s note: Paramount Pictures is one of the studios that was involved in the WGA negotiations and is involved in the SAG-AFTRA talks. Paramount Pictures and CBS News are both part of Paramount Global. Some CBS News staff are SAG-AFTRA members but their contracts are not affected by the that strike.
More than 75,000 health care workers could go on strike within days if negotiators fail to reach agreement on a contract that expires Saturday at midnight. If it occurs, the strike would impact Kaiser Permanente facilities in five states and Washington, D.C.
Without a deal, Kaiser Permanente workers including nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, pharmacists and therapists are ready to walk off the job for three days from October 4 to 7. The action would impact hospitals, clinics and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia and Washington as well as Washington, D.C., according to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
Such a walkout would represent the biggest health care strike in U.S. history, the coalition, which is negotiating on behalf of about 40% of Kaiser’s workforce, said in giving notice last week.
The health care workers are on the verge of striking after disagreements about pay and staffing, with some employees telling CBS MoneyWatch that more employees are needed at their facilities to provide adequate care to patients and avoid worker burnout. The disagreements have persisted after months of contract talks between the Oakland-based health care giant and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
The labor action could be followed by “another longer, stronger strike in November,” the coalition said.
The bargaining resumed on Friday and could continue through the weekend if necessary, both sides said.
“Heart-breaking” job
Employed by Kaiser for 27 years, ultrasound technician Michael Ramey said the job he once loved is “heart-breaking” and “stressful” due to a staffing crisis that he and his colleagues argue harms both employee morale and patient treatment.
“You don’t have the ability to care for patients in the manner they deserve,” said Ramey, 57, who works at a Kaiser clinic in San Diego and is president of his local union. “We are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure we have a contract in place that allows us to be staffed at the levels where we need to be.”
Worker fatigue also takes a toll. “People are working more hours than they want to be working, and even that creates a problem with patient care — if you know you’re going to miss your kid’s soccer game,” he gave as an example.
Interacting with patients, Ramey fields complaints of not being able to schedule medical procedures in a timely fashion. “They are telling you how long it took to get the appointment, and then you have to tell them how long it will be to get results,” Ramey said. “There’s a breakdown in the quality of care. These are people in our communities.”
Delays in scheduling care
For Stockton, California, resident and Kaiser pharmacy technician Savonnda Blaylock, the community includes her 70-year-old mother, who struggled to get an appointment for an emergency scan of a blockage in her colon. “This staffing crisis is coming into our living rooms right now,” Blaylock said.
“If we have to walk off, it impacts not just my mom but a lot of patients,” said Blaylock, 51, who has worked 22 years for Kaiser and, like Ramey, has a seat at the bargaining table. Still, her mom and others understand that “our patients are why we’re doing it,” she said of the potential strike.
“Every health care provider in the nation has been facing staffing shortages and fighting burnout,” and Kaiser Permanente “is not immune,” Kaiser Permanente said in an emailed statement.
Kaiser and the coalition agreed in prior bargaining to hire 10,000 people for coalition-represented jobs by the end of the year, a goal the company expects to reach by the end of October, if not sooner. “We are committed to addressing every area of staffing that is still challenging,” it said.
Las Vegas — Sin City is known for its extravagance. But behind the scenes are the tens of thousands who cook the meals, mix the drinks and clean the suites.
On Tuesday, they filled the Thomas & Mack Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where members of both the Culinary Workers Union and its sister union, the Bartenders Union, voted by a 95% margin in favor of authorizing a strike if a new five-year labor deal is not reached.
The strike authorization applies to about 40,000 of the 60,000 members who make up the Culinary Workers and Bartenders unions across Nevada, the organizations said in a news release.
Culinary Union members cast their ballots during a strike vote on Sept. 26, 2023, at Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus in Las Vegas.
K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
If a strike were to happen, it would impact 22 casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.
“They don’t care about us,” housekeeper Norma Quinones told CBS News. “All they care about is making their own money, making the companies rich.”
Among their demands are significant wage increases, reduced workloads and more on-the-job safety protections, including expanding the use of safety buttons for workers in the event of criminal behavior by customers. They also want protections against company tracking technology.
“Rents being jacked up through the roof,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union. “…The cost of gas, the cost of groceries, the cost of electricity. So folks need a raise.”
Three major hotel chains are negotiating with the unions. Talks are scheduled for next week.
MGM Resorts told CBS News in a statement Wednesday that it has a “decades-long history of bargaining successfully with the Las Vegas Culinary & Bartenders Unions. We continue to have productive meetings with the union and believe both parties are committed to negotiating a contract that is good for everyone.”
Wynn Resorts said in a statement that it “has historically had a positive and cordial working relationship with labor unions and has always reached satisfactory agreements with each,” calling its employees “the heart and soul of Wynn.”
Wynn added that it would “continue to work” with the two unions “to reach an agreement that provides our employees with competitive wages and benefits, in a work environment that matches our high standards.”
Caesars Entertainment did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It has been the summer of strikes for American labor, and as yet another possible walkout looms, one has officially ended. The Writers Guild of America reached a tentative deal with Hollywood studios on Sunday, ending a strike that began in early May. It authorized its members to report back to work Wednesday.
Comedian Bill Maher announced his HBO show “Real Time” will return on Friday, and late-night talk shows will likely begin to return next week.
The new WGA deal includes wage increases, minimum staffing requirements on television shows, more transparent protocols for determining streaming residuals, and protections against the use of artificial intelligence.
The Screen Actors Guild’s approximately 65,000 members have also been on strike since mid-July. On Wednesday evening, SAG-AFTRA announced that it would resume negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents the major studios, on Oct. 2.
United Auto Workers began a strike Sept. 15 against the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — with President Biden joining workers on the picket lines Tuesday in Detroit. So far, about 20,000 of the UAW’s 150,000 members have walked off the job across 20 states.
Approximately 40,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas could soon walk off the job after union members voted by a 95% margin Tuesday to authorize a strike if a new five-year labor deal is not reached. A strike would have a major impact on casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Elise Preston has more.
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