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University of Pennsylvania graduate student workers and the school reached a tentative contract agreement Tuesday morning to avoid a strike. The deal, which awaits ratification, includes raises and additional worker protections.
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Michaela Althouse
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Thousands of San Francisco teachers went on strike on Monday, citing an impasse with the school district over wages and health care benefits.
The action marks the first teachers’ walkout in the San Francisco Unified School District in almost 50 years.
Teachers stressed that the strike, which has shuttered schools for roughly 48,000 students, was launched after long-stalled negotiations over issues such as raises and insurance coverage. At the same time, the cost of living in the region remains one of the highest in the country.
“It has taken over 10 months of sounding this alarm, negotiating, asking nicely and hearing unfulfilled promises to get to this point,” Cassondra Curiel, president of the United Educators of San Francisco union (UESF), said at a press conference on Monday. “The proposals the district came with to address special education, health care and salary just didn’t go far enough.”
The union represents roughly 6,000 school staff, including teachers, social workers, nurses and librarians. It’s pressing for 4.5% annual raises for two years, and for dependents’ health care benefits to be fully covered.
The district has countered with 3% annual raises for two years and 75% coverage for dependents or a $24,000 health benefit allowance.
On Monday, teachers said that they were making these demands because of the financial pressures they face to live and work in the Bay Area. As The 19th reported, the salary for a new credentialed teacher is about $80,000 in San Francisco. The annual salary that a single adult needs to live “comfortably” in the city is roughly $122,000, according to a CNBC report.
Per a report by the district, the city’s high cost of housing is a factor in the 10% attrition rate it sees among teachers each year.
“Our students lose out when their teachers can’t afford to stay,” UESF wrote in a social media post.
Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
Teachers also sounded the alarm about a dearth of resources for special education programs and the ramifications for students.
The district has countered by suggesting that it faces financial constraints that prevent it from meeting certain demands.
“Unified School District does not have unlimited funds,” superintendent Maria Su said during a Monday press briefing. “We are managing a structural deficit, and we are currently still under state oversight.”
UESF argued that the district had millions of dollars in its reserves, while school officials claimed that those funds face their own restrictions.
UESF also heralded agreements that had already been reached over sanctuary school policies and restrictions on artificial intelligence and staffing.
In recent months, workers in an array of industries have been calling for better conditions and fair pay as they’ve grappled with understaffing and challenging workloads. Other major labor actions have taken place as well, including a walkout by thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers in California and Hawaii, and a strike by thousands of nurses in New York City.
District officials said Monday that school would be out of session again on Tuesday as the two parties continued their negotiations. The district has provided families with independent study packets and set up locations where staff are distributing free meals to students throughout the city.
“You can expect to see strong picket lines until that agreement is achieved,” Curiel said during a Monday press conference.
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Jade Kelly, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7799, speaks as Denver Public Library workers meet at the City and County Building to celebrate the next step in their effort to unionize. Jan. 2, 2025.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Workers at the Denver Public Library took a big step toward forming a union, potentially making them the first city employees to take advantage of new labor organizing rights.
An organizing group, Denver Public Library Workers United, filed a formal request on Jan. 2 to become a city-recognized union. The group hopes to collectively bargain on behalf of library workers.
The action came just a day after a new law took effect, allowing thousands of city employees to join unions and engage in collective bargaining.
“Now more than ever we need to, as workers, whether you’re a public-sector worker, private-sector worker, now is the time to unionize,” said Juan Manuel Ramirez Anzures, administrative assistant for the children’s library. “Now is the time for solidarity and all power to the workers.”
They say they are seeking formal recognition now because of the change in the law, as well as recent city layoffs and budget cuts. In 2024, Denver voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to grant the new labor rights, which took effect Jan. 1.
Hundreds of library staff members have been working together under the guidance of the Communications Workers of America Local 7799, according to DPLWU.
“We are all uniquely screwed by Colorado labor law. For the past 90 years, the Colorado Labor Peace Act has forced us as the public-sector workers to sit in silence as our health, as our civil rights, as our workplace protections are dismissed in boardrooms without us,” said Jade Kelly, president of CWA Local 7799.
DPLWU says it filed a supermajority of worker authorization cards, with 65 percent of eligible employees signing. A worker authorization card is a document signed by an employee to officially designate a union as their representative for collective bargaining.
If they don’t, then a union election would be held with the library staff.
“We support our staff’s right to unionize and we respect the city’s process,” wrote a spokesperson for the Denver Public Library in an email.
The affected staff includes shelvers, clerks, facilities, security, librarians, library assistants, custodians, delivery drivers and other positions.
“I’m feeling hopeful. I’m feeling supported by the public, by my coworkers, and by all these wonderful CWA organizers who have been there holding our hand every step of the way,” Manuel Ramirez Anzures said. “Once we get to that final contract, that will be a really great day.”
DPLWU says it wants to work with library management to increase transparency around library decisions, address staff concerns about safety and ensure fair wages.
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The School District of Philadelphia and its principals union, Teamsters Local 502 Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, reached a four-year contract late Monday night that include wage increases.
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Michaela Althouse
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A union representing about 3,000 security guards in the Philadelphia area ratified a four-year contract with some of the region’s largest employers, securing higher wages and better benefits for officers who have been working on an expired contract for over a month.
The 32BJ division of the Service Employees International Union announced the new contract’s terms Monday.
MORE: Norristown police find body in trash can along Schuylkill River Trail
The security guards, who mostly work on the Temple, Drexel and Penn campuses and in high-rise buildings in Center City, joined another 4,600 employees in New Jersey, Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia to negotiate with Allied Universal, Colonial Security Services, GardaWorld, Harvard Protection Services and Securitas, according to Julie Karant, a media contact with the union chapter.
Allied Universal, the largest security employer in the country, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Contract terms include a $4.30 hourly wage increase to bring the hourly rate to $20.55, which the union chapter said represented the largest pay raise for security officers in its 91-year history.
Workers will also see fully employer-paid dental, vision and life insurance, three additional paid holidays and new short-term disability benefits. There are also protections from hairstyle discrimination, working mandatory overtime hours and unpaid disciplinary time if employees are found to be not liable for an incident.
Campus officers who typically don’t work during the summer will now be guaranteed to have their health benefits reinstated when they return in the fall. Employees with three years of seniority or more will receive an extra paid day off, and all job vacancies will be posted online.
“This was more than a union fighting for a contract,” Gabe Morgan, 32BJ SEIU executive vice president, said in a statement. “These jobs have the potential to be a path to the middle class that allows workers to live in the places they work so hard to protect.”
The union’s previous contract expired Sept. 30, and employees spent last month rallying for fair wages and more training. Legislation in Philadelphia City Council is pending that would enact minimum training standards for security officers.
“We are the people who protect this city from sunrise to sundown; the ones who stand in the cold, the rain, the dark,” Daquan Gardner, a Temple Hospital security officer, said in a statement. “We don’t wear capes, but every single day we carry courage on our shoulders. We didn’t just win a contract, we claimed dignity, respect and our rightful place in this city.”
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Molly McVety
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White collar and knowledge workers are facing a historic transformation that’s leaving many feeling vulnerable to layoffs and extended unemployment for the first time in their lives. So now, as various threats loom large to the desk job cohort, some professionals are considering whether to join the same labor unions that have historically addressed collective bargaining and job security issues for blue collar employees.
Though the specter of white collar employees picketing C-suites to defend their careers, some labor experts are openly wondering whether more professionals may do more serious organizing. The scenario was recently explored in a Washington Post article titled “The future of white-collar work may be unionized,” which noted “(l)aw firms, banks and tech companies are seeing an uptick in employees choosing to organize.” Interestingly, the paper didn’t mention that its own tech workers overwhelmingly voted to form a union earlier this year, despite management efforts to prevent them. Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has for years battled to stop the online marketplace’s employees from doing the same.
In any case, it was probably no coincidence that the Post’s IT workers led the push to organize.
Employees at Alphabet, Microsoft, Kickstarter, and other tech companies began organizing as far back as 2020 to gain better leverage against what they considered heavy-handed management decisions. Their unions help blunt some of the impact when the sector slashed nearly 670,000 positions in 2023 and 2024. Some estimates predict another 202,000 will be cut this year.
But layoffs and other pain points have continued multiplying, and have led tech professionals — as well as other sectors — to reconsider historical views of unionizing as being unnecessary and incompatible with their white collar status.
One factor influencing knowledge workers’ thinking is the rising trend among hiring managers to prioritize skills and experience over college degrees. Another threat comes from companies pursuing large scale layoffs of middle managers under their strategies to flatten internal hierarchies. And even businesses doing neither of those things are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) applications designed to take over many of professional-level work tasks — and perhaps even entire jobs over time.
Those changes are causing many professionals to step back and rethink the advantages they’ve historically enjoyed. Those often started with riding a college diploma into a white collar job that was relatively easy to land, then pursing an ascending career exposed to few external threats. The weakening value of degrees started some professionals reconsidering the potential benefits of joining a union, which management flattening and the spreading adoption of AI is now accelerating.
“The introduction of new technologies has eroded both pay and prestige of these jobs, and I think that’s making workers feel that the kind of career path that might have been available to the generation before them is starting to seem less accessible,” Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin told the Post.
Now, it appears those same factors are leading even many lawyers to update their views of unions.
Recently diplomaed attorneys are particularly exposed to AI supplanting many of the tasks habitually assigned to entry-level employees. But those starting positions in law firms have long been critical for young lawyers to make the transition from studying law to practicing it. With those positions now vanishing, some experts think turning to unions may be one way to address that disruption.
“Unionization is a really important part of the way that we need to address the implementation of AI into law firms,” Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard Law School, told the Post.
How likely is it that a new and broad unionization push by white collar workers may materialize? Probably not too great, evidence suggests.
Despite a recent Gallup poll that found nearly 70 percent of U.S. respondents voicing approval of unions — well up from the record 48 percent low in 2009 — only 9.9 percent the workforce were members of labor organizations in 2024, according to official statistics.
True, inquiries about unionizing, and even elections by workers seeking to organize, have been rising in the last few years. But the gap between that still limited interest and actually forming or joining a union is wide — and now faces energetic efforts by the Trump administration to thwart it.
That drive to oppose organized labor has been one of the administration’s objectives in laying off over 250,000 federal employees, whose union membership rates of 20 percent to 30 percent are far higher than private sector workers. That same hostility was behind the president’s legally questionable firing of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) members, and replacing them with political allies who’ve halted the agency’s work examining complaints against employers.
“Whew, good thing the NLRB has been gutted, anti-union leaders appointed there, and enforcement against union busting is now almost non-existent,” Amon7777 mused in response to the Post article on social media platform Reddit.
Redditor Strawbuddy was doubtful of the very notion of a large unionizing movement by white collar workers, despite their increased occupational vulnerability.
“Solidarity, but only because their individual careers are under threat,” they posted. “Safety in numbers won’t protect the professional managerial class though, because they’re still in the Liability column of a business’s cost analysis. It costs money to have managers and employees. Eliminating middlemen is just good business.”
Similar skepticism was voiced by Wade Rathke, founder of the progressive Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) advocacy group. He said the Post’s thesis merited exploration, but noted most available evidence — including some cited in the article — left him doubtful.
He also thought it would be even less likely for U.S. professionals to embrace organized labor at the very moment more unionized federal employees are suffering mass layoffs with little means to resist.
“The climate for more progress among public workers is now threatened, given the Trump administration’s anti-union obsessions and many red states adopting similar tactics,” Rathke wrote on his Chief Organizer blog.
“Despite high curiosity and support for unionization reported in polls over recent years, especially among younger workers, converting these sentiments into success and membership growth has been difficult,” he continued. “The spirit may be ripe for unionization, but the flesh might not be as strong as we need to turn these sentiments into unions and members.”
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Bruce Crumley
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DENVER — Labor Day is a chance to celebrate American workers and the contributions they make to society. For labor unions in Colorado, it’s also a chance to take stock of what they have been able to accomplish for workers and the challenges that still lie ahead.
“Colorado has a deep labor history,” said Nicole Speer, a Boulder City Council member and supporter of labor unions. “Unions have been under attack for many decades now, so we’re in a rebuilding phase.”
Denver7 caught up with Speer at a union rally following the Louisville Labor Day parade on Monday. She appeared there alongside union leaders and various political candidates for office.
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Speer said unions are needed now more than ever.
“So many of us are being laid off,” said Speer. “When our health care is being taken away, when our rights are being taken away, that’s exactly what we need to keep going and keep fighting.”
Speer was among those who lost their job earlier this year.
“I worked at the University of Colorado Boulder, running a research facility for over 13 years,” she told Denver7. “But because of all the funding cuts and delays at the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, there wasn’t enough money to keep supporting all of us who work there.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor, union members accounted for 7.7% of wage and salary workers in Colorado last year, a slight increase from 6.9 % in 2023. However, membership is down from 11% in 2018.
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When it comes to the percentage of wage and salary workers who belong to a union, Colorado ranks far below many Democratic-controlled states and alongside many Republican-controlled states.
“Colorado has one of the most stringent standards for forming a union, so unions basically have to vote twice,” said Speer.
Unions and their supporters pushed for a bill to get rid of the two-vote requirement during this year’s legislative session, but Governor Jared Polis vetoed the bill, saying mandatory dues should require a high threshold of worker participation and approval.
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“I was very disheartened at the situation with the Worker Protection Act,” said Sharron Pettiford, the president of the Colorado Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU).
Pettiford said she’s also watching things at the federal level very closely.
Thousands of federal workers have been laid off this year, and hundreds of thousands more have lost union protections due to executive orders by President Donald Trump. Black Americans, who make up 18% of the federal workforce compared to 12% of the country’s population, have been disproportionately impacted.
“We’re under attack,” said Pettiford. “I think the targeting, especially in terms of Black workers, are at an all-time high.”
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Despite their setbacks, unions and their supporters say there have been successes this year. Speer said one accomplishment was fighting against a state bill they described as “terrible” because it would have made changes to tipped workers’ wages.
The bill, House Bill 25-1208, still passed and was signed into law, but unions and their supporters say thanks to their efforts, it was a watered-down version.
“There was a corporate-backed force at the State Capitol that was working to lower tipped workers’ wages because they felt like it was getting too high,” said Speer. “We were able to fight back.”
They plan to continue fighting in the years ahead.
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Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Brandon Richard
Denver7 politics reporter Brandon Richard closely follows developments at the State Capitol and in Washington, and digs deeper to find how legislation affects Coloradans in every community. If you’d like to get in touch with Brandon, fill out the form below to send him an email.
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Brandon Richard
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Mo Eutazia
A “sip in” protest attracted a line around the block in support of the Rising Star Workers Union, on August 3. Organizers will be rallying supporters once again at a benefit show this Sunday at Kentucky Gardens in Ohio City.
Organizers at the Rising Star Workers Union will be leading a rally this weekend to back recently fired employees.
On Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m., nine artists will be performing in a benefit show at Ohio City’s Kentucky Gardens to aid a handful of baristas who were fired from Rising Star’s Lakewood location in midst of a union drive picking up steam in the past month.
And a timely one this week. Two more workers, Caleb Reese and Katelyn Bishop, were let go for apparently violating a company harassment policy, Reese confirmed with Scene. Five total have been let go since RSWU held a public “sip in” on August 3.
“I’m really upset about it. It sucks,” Reese said in a phone call on Friday. “It was two weeks before my five year anniversary with Rising Star. I’ve never been reprimanded otherwise. To be terminated just like that? It’s really disappointing.”
Earlier this summer, Rising Star baristas at the café’s spot off Detroit Avenue made public their plans to unionize following what they say were months of negligence by management.
In an interview in mid-August, baristas Allison Jeswald and Nia Gatewood told Scene that the root of their organizing efforts lied in the store’s carbon dioxide monitor that was, unbeknownst to them, faulty and in need of replacement.
Gatewood herself even went to the hospital, she said, because of it. Jeswald was fired shortly after, in late July.
Talks amongst baristas at other locations led to Gatewood, Jeswald, Reese and others organizing a “sip in” at the Lakewood spot on August 3, a response to Rising Star higher ups closing the store five hours early that weekend. (Baristas were still paid in full, the company said, save for tips that would’ve been doled out.)
Hundreds showed up throughout the day to support the union, to buy coffee in lines that snaked around the block. By 2 p.m. that day, Lakewood police were called after several attendees were accused of “entering restricted areas.”
“If our employees choose to join or not join a union, that is their choice,” Rising Star said in a statement at the time. “But that is not what happened today. There is no place for harassment in our cafe. There is no place for hate or intimidation.”
Rising Star did not respond to an email request for comment in time for publication.
Sunday’s benefit is co-hosted by the Cleveland Art Workers, a collective of local creatives, and will include performances by RA Washington, Sierra DeLaine and Wish Queen. A suggested donation of $15 will go to the fired workers.
Rising Star’s Lakewood location is not back to its normal hours, two employees told Scene. Reese hopes the benefit show will prove that camaraderie signals to ownership that—above sip ins, unions and protests—the fired baristas care about their jobs.
“I just wish they would meet us halfway, and have a normal conversation about this,” he said. “Instead just reaching out to retaliate.”
Kentucky Gardens is located at 1753 West 38th St.
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Mark Oprea
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Reporters at Signal Ohio’s three newsrooms today announced their union drive.
The three-year old nonprofit journalism outfit, funded by millions of dollars from local and national foundations and organizations, operates locally in Cleveland and Akron with a statehouse bureau in Columbus. Plans have already been announced to open a fourth newsroom in Cincinnati.
All 14 full-time reporters at the organization are backing a union drive, according to a release, in an effort to keep reporting strong. Signal’s newsrooms in Cleveland and Akron cover community-driven topics, write explainers on civic life, and report on local government, health and labor. Signal’s statewide coverage includes reporting on the Statehouse and higher education. It also operates local Documenter programs, where residents are paid to cover regular governmental meetings.
Officially dubbed the Signal Ohio News Workers Guild, the group is joining the Northeast Ohio NewsGuild, Local 34001 of Communications Workers of America. If solidified, the union will also join four other Northeast Ohio newsrooms at Local 1, which includes the Canton Repository.
In a statement to press, the union-eligible—about 80 percent of the company—framed the push as a natural part of growing up as a new media outlet. Signal Ohio has roughly 35 employees as of this month, with plans to expand to 50.
“We care deeply about the communities we serve and the journalism we produce,” those employees said in a statement. “Many of us are founding members of our newsrooms, the first of which launched nearly three years ago, and all of us are committed to seeing them succeed.”
The members are asking for Signal Ohio to voluntarily recognize the union and begin negotiating on a contract.
“My role has led me to telling the stories of the working class citizens who are the heartbeat of the city,” Najee Hall, Signal Cleveland’s Community Reporter, said in a release. “Supporting unions means supporting the rights of people to stand together, negotiate fairly and build a future rooted in mutual respect and shared success.”
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Mark Oprea
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Warren LeMay / flickrcc
A year and a half of “crisis” at CIM reached a head this week, after dozens of faculty voted to unionize.
Following a controversial past year and a half, faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music voted—overwhelmingly—this week to unionize.
Votes casted on the second floor of The Coffee House in University Circle Wednesday and Thursday showed 56 in favor and just 25 opposing it. Roughly 130 faculty at CIM will be joining the Local 4 branch of the American Federation of Musicians, the national union body that backs orchestras and academics.
Union backers, led by oboist Frank Rosenwein, are fighting to leverage higher salaries and semblance of job security, according to letters written by the faction.
That decision comes after what may be one of the most trying eras in CIM’s 124-year-old history as a legacy institution on the city’s east side. A hurricane of complaints, staff departures, lawsuits and ongoing unease amongst students and staff have dominated headlines.
Both sides suggested a bargaining contract will be drafted up before the end of the year.
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Mark Oprea
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Temple University’s faculty union has reached a tentative agreement on a five-year contract that gives members their largest negotiated raises since 1999 and stronger protections for job security.
The Temple Association of University Professionals, which represents 2,300 faculty members, librarians and academic professionals, announced the agreement Monday after more than a year of collective bargaining. Once the deal is ratified, all full-time employees will get $10,000 raises across the board and 3% raises in each year of the contract. The contract also includes higher pay for adjuncts and no increases in health care costs.
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“This is the most complex and transformative agreement for our union since our 1990 strike, and contained in this agreement are historic wins on pay equity, job security, and numerous working conditions, benefits, and union power,” the union said in a statement.
The tentative contract still needs to be presented to union members for ratification and the university’s Board of Trustees must vote to approve it.
“I would like to thank the entire Temple University community for its patience over the last year as we have worked with TAUP to negotiate this new contract,” Sharon Boyle, Temple’s vice president of human resources, said in a statement.
At the outset of negotiations last year, TAUP rejected an 18-month extension that would have included salary increases but no changes in benefits. The union then rallied and campaigned for contract terms that recognized the changing landscape of higher education since the COVID-19 pandemic, which put financial strain on many universities seeking ways to reposition their degree programs.
Under the new contract, adjunct professors at Temple will have their minimum pay rate increased to $2,250 per credit, with $50 increases in each subsequent year. The minimum pay for a three-credit course will rise from $4,800 to $6,750. The union said the agreement marks a 50% raise for adjunct faculty over the life of the contract.
Although TAUP was able to negotiate expanded bereavement leave and improved parental leave for librarians and academic professions, the pact does not include changes to the university’s sick leave policy – a union sticking point. Temple allows up to 10 days of sick leave, but the university can take disciplinary measures if employees use more than five of them instead of dipping into a separate bank of vacation days.
Union members argued that the sick leave policy has a “chilling effect” on employees and results in many of them coming to work sick or using vacation time, despite being entitled to 10 sick days.
The tentative contract also includes more protections for academic freedom and extended protections for discipline related to student feedback.
The deal comes after Temple’s graduate student union went on strike for six weeks last year before reaching a new deal with the administration.
Temple is in the midst of a leadership transition as incoming President John Fry — Drexel University’s president for 14 years — prepares to step into his new role on Nov. 1.
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Michael Tanenbaum
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Terms of the agreement include wage increases of 16 to 18 percent, which SEIU says makes Denver one of the highest-paying cities for janitors.
Teresa Noriega yells into a megaphone, rallying with Service Employees International Union members as local janitors vote to unionize at a picket line on California Street downtown. July 23, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Denver janitors have come to a tentative agreement with city cleaning companies, averting a strike.
On Tuesday, janitorial workers part of Service Employees International Union Local 105 voted to authorize a strike if a deal was not reached by Sunday. The union said janitors are underpaid and overworked, and face retaliation if workers do not finish unrealistic workloads.
The union reached a tentative agreement with city cleaning companies on Saturday, which they say makes Denver one of the highest-paying cities for janitors in the country.
Terms of the agreement include wage increases of 16 to 18 percent, guaranteed paid sick leave and increased investment in a fund for employee education.
“This contract will put us on a path to livable wages and raises the bar for our industry across the country,” janitorial worker Verónica Escobedo said in a statement. “Through the power of our union, we stayed united and made our jobs better. This is a massive victory. We’re glad we avoided having to go on strike, and we’re ready to keep working every day to keep our communities clean and safe.”
The new contract covers 2,400 janitors working in over 1,500 buildings across the metro area. Janitors will vote to ratify the contract next week.
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The folks who keep Summit Music Hall and the Marquis Theater up and running want to be recognized for their hard work — and be adequately compensated.
Many employees at Live Nation’s small, local music venues have had it.
They’re tired of clubs that pay the lowest rates of any of the small venues in Denver.
They’re tired of staffing requests that ask them to come in and send them home after only a few hours of work – or fail to tell them that shows have been canceled until minutes before their shift.
As a result, a majority of stage crew and production workers employed at Summit Music Hall and the Marquis Theater have filed with the National Labor Relations Board to form a union with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 7.
“Rock music venues such as Summit and Marquis are traditionally non-union establishments, and the work in rock music is often much more precarious and transient,” said IATSE organizer Hilliard Probasco. “Labor conditions for production workers in the rock and roll industry are insecure, benefits are virtually nonexistent, and wages are low in comparison to union jobs within the entertainment industry.”
Summit Music Hall and the Marquis are two of three local Live Nation venues. Live Nation’s largest Denver venue, the Fillmore Auditorium, unionized in 2003, according to Max Peterson, business representative for the local IATSE union.
That was during “what I like to lovingly refer to as the dark ages of unionization,” Peterson said. “We weren’t as aggressive and outspoken as we are right now about organizing and getting people who are not represented to join into the party with us.”
Workers hope that organizing will help them secure an hourly minimum — meaning pay that is guaranteed for a minimum amount of hours, even if they’re sent home early. This practice is in place at the Fillmore Auditorium and is standard throughout the industry.
Once a union is recognized, Peterson said he “looks forward to sitting down with the employer to address the important issues and concerns [workers] face every day.”
According to Peterson, Summit Music Hall and Marquis Theater workers could earn up to two to three times their Live Nation wages at other clubs.
Employees at Summit Music Hall and the Marquis will formally decide whether or not to unionize in an election later this month.
Live Nation could not be reached for comment.
Until the publication of this data from the Institute for Policy Studies’ 29th “Executive Excess” report, Denver’s Live Nation workers weren’t widely aware of the immense discrepancy between their earnings and their CEO’s.
Once the news was out, according to a press release from IATSE Local #7, workers mobilized.
Crew members and supporters will be present at a joint union rally highlighting the importance of workers to downtown Denver on Monday, June 17 at 11 a.m. They plan to start at Union Station and march through downtown.
“It’s a multi-union rally,” said Peterson. “It’s about trying to, as we look at the much-needed revitalization of downtown Denver, really centering workers in that conversation and making sure that as the mayor is talking about investing $500 million into downtown Denver, how are workers going to benefit from that and how are workers going to be able to participate in all the cool stuff that downtown Denver has to offer.”
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Lauren Antonoff Hart
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Public school employees in one of the biggest school districts in the U.S. have voted overwhelmingly to form unions, capitalizing on a recent Virginia law that allows for collective bargaining in the public sector.
The two votes in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax County covered more than 27,000 workers, putting them among the largest union elections in recent years. The county’s teachers voted nearly 97% in favor of unionizing, while the operations staff, which includes custodians, food workers and bus drivers, voted nearly 81% in favor.
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools could not immediately be reached for comment Monday. The election results were released Monday by the two unions representing the workers, the Fairfax Education Association and the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers.
Leslie Houston, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the unions would focus on “securing fair compensation and living wages for all.”
Until not long ago, Virginia was one of a small handful of states that barred public-sector collective bargaining, forbidding workers from negotiating over wages and benefits since a state Supreme Court decision in 1977. But as Virginia has shifted from red to blue in recent years, it’s become more welcoming to organized labor, a pillar of the Democratic Party.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
In 2020, spurred on by pressure from labor groups, Virginia’s Democratic-led assembly passed a bill overturning the decadesold ban on public employee unionism. The legislation was signed into law by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, giving unions hope they could build membership in the right-to-work state.
The law allows for municipal employees across Virginia to form unions, so long as their local officials approve it. Several Democratic strongholds in the state have since passed resolutions or ordinances paving the way for collective bargaining, including the state capital of Richmond and the Washington suburb of Alexandria.
The Fairfax County School Board passed a resolution giving the green light for union elections last year. The organizing in the school system was a joint effort by affiliates of the country’s two major teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Jo Ann Madison, a Fairfax bus driver, said in a statement Monday through her union that the county’s public school employees would now have “a seat at the table” to bargain over their working conditions.
“We’re counting down the days until we have a legally binding contract,” Madison said.
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A strike by graduate student workers has spread to six campuses across the University of California system, as administrators now turn to the courts in an effort to force the strikers back to work.
The work stoppage appears to be the largest so far this year in the U.S, involving a majority of the 48,000 academic workers who are members of the United Auto Workers Local 4811. The union organized the strike last month in response to the university’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments stemming from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The latest school to take part in the strike was UC Irvine, where grad students walked off the job on Wednesday morning, according to Local 4811. They were preceded by grad students at UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego, who joined the strike on Monday, and UC Davis, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz, who walked off in May.
In total, the union has called on 31,500 members in the system to stop working, although exactly how many have hit the picket lines is unclear. Seventy-nine percent of members were in favor of authorizing the strike when a vote was held in mid-May, the union said. (Earlier this year, up to 29,000 faculty members at California State University went on a one-day strike in a contract dispute.)
“It cuts to the core of what it means to be a worker at this university.”
– Tanzil Chowdhury, graduate student researcher and union executive board member
Tanzil Chowdhury, a graduate student instructor and executive board member of the union, said members across the UC system were “agitated” over the university’s handling of protests. Police made more than 200 arrests at UCLA after counterprotesters violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and dozens more later at UC Irvine. The university said it believed the encampments posed a public safety threat.
“A huge number of our workers are extremely unhappy with the way that the university has been conducting itself,” said Chowdhury, a Ph.D. student in the materials science and engineering program at UC Berkeley. “People really understand the grave threat that the university is posing to us.”
The university has twice sought to have a state labor relations board force the grad students back to work, arguing that the work stoppage was illegal and causing “irreparable harm.” Their requests that the board seek an injunction in court were denied both times.
On Tuesday, the university took their fight to state court, filing a lawsuit in Orange County seeking a temporary restraining order to end the strike. The suit claims the work stoppage violates the no-strike clause in the union’s contract, and alleges some picketers have blocked entrances at schools and hospitals and barricades themselves in campus buildings.
Brian van der Brug via Getty Images
Melissa Matella, the University of California’s associate vice president for labor relations, said in a statement that the strike “endangers life-saving research in hundreds of laboratories across the University and will also cause the University substantial monetary damages.”
The university argues the strike is about purely political and social issues, as opposed to workplace grievances, and therefore is against the law.
But when the union filed unfair labor practice charges last month, it said its demands were tied directly to the workplace — such as the right to opt out of military-funded research, and a request that the university “disclose and divest” any funds tied to Israel’s war effort.
Striking over alleged unfair labor practices — as opposed to pay and benefits — can bolster a union’s case that it isn’t violating a no-strike agreement.
Chowdhury argued that the university undermined the right to peaceful protest when it called in police on campuses, effectively changing work policy without bargaining with the union. The union said during the police response some protesters suffered burns, bone fractures and, in one case, a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
“It’s traumatic stuff. I was speaking to someone there [at UCLA] who was worried the next day she’d be writing an obituary for a colleague,” Chowdhury said. “It cuts to the core of what it means to be a worker at this university.”
“The university has twice sought to have a state labor relations board force the grad students back to work, arguing that the work stoppage was illegal and causing ‘irreparable harm.’”
Local 4811 has modeled its work stoppage on the UAW’s strike last year against Ford, General Motors and Jeep parent company Stellantis, which began small and gradually grew to encompass more worksites.
The graduate student workers are not doing any grading or instructional work while on strike, with undergraduate exams looming this month. The university said most campuses have their finals in early June to mid-June. Meanwhile, four campuses remain to be called to strike: UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC San Francisco and UC Riverside.
The two sides have met in mediation at the urging of the state labor board. But barring a court order to return to work, it appears unlikely the strike will end until the union and the university can hash out an agreement regarding protests and campus policies.
The university said in court filings that the strike had forced it to shut down an unknown number of seminars and laboratory sessions at several campuses — and that the unpredictable nature of the strike has made it difficult to plan around it.
“UAW members often do not inform campus administrators that they are striking and canceling classes,” Matella said in a declaration in Orange County Superior Court. “They just do it, again increasing the uncertainty and adding to the chaos.”
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Former union leader John Dougherty’s third federal trial ended Thursday with a deadlocked jury, according to multiple media reports.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict on the 19 counts against Dougherty and his nephew, Greg Fiocca. They were charged with conspiracy and extortion after they allegedly threatened a contractor amid a dispute about Fiocca’s job performance and pay during the construction of the Live! Casino and Hotel Philadelphia in August 2020.
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The six-day trial took place in Reading, with two dozen witnesses testifying in the case. Both Dougherty and his nephew pled not guilty.
Dougherty, also known as “Johnny Doc,” was the longtime business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 until he resigned in November 2021 following his conviction on conspiracy charges. Last year, he was convicted of embezzlement charges. Dougherty is scheduled to be sentenced for those convictions in July.
In this case, Dougherty and Fiocca faced 19 counts of conspiracy and extortion. While working as the Local 98 steward for the project, Fiocca allegedly threatened the contractor for paying him for less than 40 hours of work.
The contractor claimed Fiocca hadn’t been showing up for work and that the paycheck reflected the hours he was there. Fiocca allegedly grabbed the contractor by the throat and threw him onto the desk.
Dougherty later intervened. He allegedly threatened to pull all of the Local 98 workers from the job and said he would use his influence to prevent the contractor from getting future jobs in the area. Fiocca remained employed by the contractor until January 2021.
Dougherty and Fiocca have maintained their innocence. Following Dougherty’s arrest in 2021, his spokesperson Frank Keel said the federal government had targeted Dougherty since he became the business manager in 1993 for the union.
“This isn’t a prosecution, it’s a persecution,” Keel said at the time.
Dougherty was found guilty in December of stealing $600,000 from Local 98 between 2010 and 2016. In 2021, he and former Councilmember Bobby Henon were found guilty on bribery charges.
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Michaela Althouse
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Aramark workers at the Wells Fargo Center will strike Thursday, April 25, interrupting a 76ers playoff game, employees announced at a City Council meeting.
This is the second time workers declared a strike as they negotiate for a new contract with the food company.
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“We are fans of the team, but I must announce at this time, we will be starting another strike again on Thursday for the playoffs,” Carlton Epps, who works for Aramark at all three stadiums, said during the meeting.
Bartenders, concession workers, cooks, servers, dishwashers and warehouse employees represented by the Unite Here Local 274 union have been in negotiations for the past few months. Workers seek higher wages and full-time benefits, as they often work at all three sports complex venues – Wells Fargo Center, Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field – but their hours at each are counted separately. Thus, many work the equivalent hours of a full-time job without health care benefits.
Workers gained the support of City Council members earlier this month, and they spoke at Thursday’s meeting regarding Resolution 240295 for official council support. The union authorized a strike in March after 92% of workers voted in favor. The council adopted the resolution during the meeting.
Hundreds of workers held a strike April 9, picketing outside the stadiums. As a result, Unite Here said that workers and Aramark resumed negotiations. However, it said the latest proposal from Aramark offered only a $0.25 hourly raise.
“It shouldn’t be this way with a company as large as Aramark for workers to only be offered a $0.25 raise. It’s ridiculous,” worker Fred Motley said. “We shouldn’t have to struggle to afford basic health care necessities. We need family-sustaining wage increases.”
Aramark has separate contracts with each venue. Contracts with Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field also recently expired and will need to be renegotiated. Workers, though, are seeking a single contract for all three stadiums.
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Michaela Althouse
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BEVERLY — When Kellie Moulton gave birth two years ago, she used eight weeks of sick time to stay home with her newborn son. When that ran out, the McKeown Preschool special education teacher took another month off without pay.
Moulton wanted to stay home longer, but the lack of a paycheck made that option unrealistic.
“I definitely felt I had to come back sooner than I was ready,” she said, “because I wasn’t getting paid.”
The lack of paid parental leave has become a point of contention for teachers across the region. On Wednesday morning, Beverly was the latest public school district on the North Shore to hold a demonstration demanding paid parental leave as part of their contract negotiations.
More than 600 teachers and paraprofessionals stood outside all eight of the city’s public schools before they began the school day, holding signs, playing music and waving to people driving by.
“This is a huge issue for us,” McKeown School paraprofessional Judy Martin said during the rally in front of the school on Balch Street. “Everybody should have this as a benefit.”
The “walk in” event, as the teachers called it, was part of a coordinated series of demonstrations by more than 5,000 teachers and staff in 11 North Shore school districts this week, according to the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
The union says although teacher unions were among the strongest advocates for the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Act that was approved in 2018, the law excluded municipal workers, including public school employees, leaving unions to negotiate for the benefit independently.
Beverly Teachers Association President Julia Brotherton said the lack of paid parental leave forces teachers to use sick time, if they have it. The union has asked the Beverly School Committee for several years for paid parental benefits in contract negotiations, and is asking for 12 weeks paid leave in its current negotiations.
“As more and more education unions win paid parental leave benefits in their contracts, Beverly cannot be left behind. I hope the School Committee sees our commitment, does the right thing, and agrees to fair and just paid parental leave for our members at the bargaining table,” she said in a news release issued by the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
In an interview outside Beverly Middle School during Wednesday morning’s demonstration, Brotherton, who is a history teacher at Beverly High School, said she was “confident the School Committee will do the right thing about paid parental leave.
“We all care about kids, and this issue is obviously all about kids and giving kids the right start.”
Beverly School Committee President Rachael Abell said she could not comment directly, out of respect for the negotiating process.
“But we look forward to our continued work with the BTA on a fair, equitable, and affordable solution that benefits all Beverly students,” she said in a prepared statement.
At Beverly Middle School, where about 100 teachers took part in the rally, several teachers spoke about how the lack of paid leave has affected them.
Casey Fiore said he took two months of unpaid leave when his daughter was born last August.
“I would not trade a moment of it for the world,” he said. “But it would have been great if I would have been able to be with my daughter without being worried about bills.”
Taylor Cross, who is due to have her first baby in May, said she has not taken time off during a difficult pregnancy — even to the point of fainting in class one day — because she is saving up sick days for after the birth.
“I’m not giving my 100% because I’m not feeling well,” Cross said. “I’m a special education teacher and it’s a demanding job. It’s physically taxing. It’s mentally taxing.”
Allison Nichols, who is pregnant with her second child, said being pregnant or post-partum “should not be considered the same as being sick.
“I think it’s really insulting that in a profession where we go above and beyond to care for other children that we’re not afforded the same right to care for our own during the most vulnerable time of a child’s life.”
Other districts participating in the demonstrations this week include Salem, Danvers, Marblehead, Ipswich, Hamilton-Wenham, Masconomet Regional, Gloucester, Revere, Georgetown and Chelsea, according to the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Ann Berman, president of the Salem Teachers’ Union, echoed these sentiments, noting that if both parents of a newborn child are teachers in the same district that causes further complications.
“This all means that the child is going into daycare much earlier than is really healthy and beneficial. A lot of moms experience postpartum depression — there’s scientific evidence about that, and they’re being forced to come back to work too soon. They’re not ready, their bodies and minds are not healed,” she said.
“Pregnancy is really, really tough. and then you have this little bundle of joy and you’re handing them over to somebody to care for your child, while you come into work to care for other people’s children. There’s something wrong in the whole dichotomy.”
“I’m proud of the way that we, in the North Shore, have come together to work towards this goal as a coordinated effort,” Danvers Teachers’ Association President Kathleen Murphy said.
“It’s something that we all recognize needs to change. I think that the bottom line is that when teachers feel valued, their needs are met, and they can take the time they need, then they will be better employees and teachers.”
Staff Writer Michael McHugh contributed to this report.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@northofboston.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
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By Paul Leighton | Staff Writer
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BOSTON — The battle over unionizing Uber and Lyft drivers returns Tuesday to Beacon Hill with a legislative committee set to take up several proposed ballot questions.
A special legislative committee is scheduled to hear testimony on the proposals that reshape the employment status of ride-hailing drivers in Massachusetts during a hearing at the Statehouse, where supporters and opponents will make their cases to lawmakers to put the questions on the November ballot.
Several proposed ballot questions, filed in August by Flexibility and Benefits for Massachusetts Drivers 2024, a group whose contributors include Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, would ask voters to allow the companies to classify drivers as independent contractors rather than employees who are entitled to benefits.
The ride-hailing companies argue that their drivers prefer the flexibility of working as independent contractors, not employees. They cite surveys of drivers saying they prefer the flexibility of contractual work.
The plan, if approved, would set an earnings floor equal to 120% of the state’s minimum wage for the drivers — $18 an hour in 2023 before tips. Drivers would be eligible for health care stipends, injury insurance and paid sick time, the companies say.
But labor unions argue that the ballot question is a veiled attempt by the companies to skirt state taxes, labor laws, better wages and benefits.
Meanwhile, another referendum — which is also inching toward the November ballot — would authorize ride-hailing drivers to unionize, which supporters say will allow them to bargain collectively for better wages and benefits from the companies.
Gov. Maura Healey hasn’t said what she would do with the bills if any reach her desk for consideration. As attorney general, Healey filed a lawsuit in 2021 asking a judge to recognize ride-hailing drivers as employees under the state’s wage and hour laws.
The proposals face legal challenges that are being considered by the state Supreme Judicial Court. Labor unions have sued to block the industry-backed referendum, while the conservative pro-business group Fiscal Alliance has sued to block the unionization ballot question.
This isn’t the first time the state’s highest court has considered legal challenges over the state’s employment rights for ride-hailing drivers.
In 2022, a coalition backed by California-based tech giants Uber, Lyft and DoorDash filed a similar proposal for the November ballot asking voters to decide whether drivers for ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft should continue to be classified as independent contractors.
But the SJC rejected the move, siding with opponents of the proposal. They filed a lawsuit arguing that it would violate a requirement in the state Constitution that initiative petitions must contain only “related or mutually dependent” subjects.
Massachusetts has seen the number of ride-hailing trips soar from 39.7 million in 2021 to 60.6 million in 2022 — a more than 52% increase, according to state data.
There are more than 200,000 approved ride-hailing drivers in the state but it’s not clear if all of those authorized to drive are on the roadways.
The ride-hailing proposal is one of 10 proposed referenda inching toward the November ballot, a record number that includes competing versions of the same questions.
Under the state constitution, the Legislature is required to consider the initiative petitions before backers of the referendums must conduct another round of signature gathering. Lawmakers have until April 30 to vote on the proposals.
Other ballot questions would ask voters to authorize an audit of the state Legislature; update the state’s voter laws to require photo IDs to cast ballots in elections; and legalize psychedelic mushrooms for adults 21 and older for “therapeutic” purposes.
If lawmakers don’t take up the measures, backers of the referendums must gather another 12,429 signatures by a July 3 deadline to make the ballot.
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com
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By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter
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DANVERS — The union representing faculty and staff at North Shore Community College has taken a vote of no confidence in the school’s president and provost.
In a statement to the college community, the union said President William Heineman and Provost Jennifer Mezquita have created new “highly compensated” nonunion and executive roles in nonacademic areas while leaving academic areas “woefully understaffed” and “neglected.”
The statement also accused college leaders of passing over qualified internal candidates for newly created roles and creating a “culture of favoritism and fear” in which workers not protected by a union or tenure “are afraid to speak up for fear they will be terminated.”
“Faculty, staff, and union leadership have individually over the course of the last year, brought concerns to the president and provost only to have those concerns met with, at times, outright hostility or more often empty words of agreement and understanding only to be followed with inaction,” the statement said. “We now speak unified with one voice.”
The vote by the union was 94-0, with three abstaining. The statement was signed by Torrey Dukes, the North Shore Community College chapter president of the Massachusetts Community College Council, the union that represents faculty and professional staff at the state’s 15 community colleges. Dukes is the coordinator of public services at the college’s Lynn campus library. She did return a message for this story.
In a statement, J.D. LaRock, chair of the college’s board of trustees, said trustees “remain steadfast in our support of Dr. Heineman and Dr. Mezquita and look forward to continuing to work with the (union) and all members of our community to foster an environment that fully supports our faculty, staff and students.”
North Shore Community College is a two-year school with campuses in Danvers and Lynn and about 10,000 students. The average age of a student is 26, and the majority of students are employed.
Heineman has been president of North Shore Community College since July 2021. He was previously provost at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill and Lawrence. Heineman created the provost position at North Shore Community College, and Mezquita, a former vice president of student affairs at Northern Essex, was selected for the position in June 2022.
The no-confidence vote follows a walkout by faculty and staff at North Shore Community in December over pay. In 2020, the union took a vote of no confidence in the college administration, which was then led by President Patricia Gentile.
In its statement, the union cited the recent termination of the college’s assistant provost as a “catalyst” for the no-confidence vote. The union said the assistant provost’s departure left the college without an academic officer who has “the depth and breadth of knowledge needed” to help write the college’s five-year accreditation report.
The union said it opposed the plan for Mezquita to assume the responsibilities of the assistant provost of academic affairs. On Monday, the college announced that Chris Bednar, the dean of liberal studies at the school, had assumed the role of interim assistant provost for academic affairs/chief academic officer.
The union said changes made to the president’s cabinet, including the removal of representatives for the academic divisions, sent a “clear signal that the academic life of the institution was not a priority of the executive leadership” and “have isolated the president and have further marginalized faculty and staff.” The union called for a union faculty member and professional staff member to be appointed to the cabinet.
The union also called for better communication and transparency in regard to decisions, “especially those made by the provost.”
“We have lost all confidence in the provost, and see very few paths forward,” the statement said. “The concentration of power and complete lack of transparency has created an atmosphere of distrust and fear. We can not emphasize this point enough.”
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
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By Paul Leighton | Staff Writer
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