The United Auto Workers started negotiations with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) in mid-July, when GM announced it exceeded expectations in the 2nd quarter, increasing profits 39% to $3.2 billion on revenues of $44.75 billion. All three corporations reported hefty profits last year: operating incomes of $9.2 billion (Ford), $13 billion (GM), and $15.2 billion (Stellantis). So the union is demanding some share in the profits their members produce.
“These companies have been extraordinarily profitable, and our members have created incredible value for these companies during some really hard and dangerous years,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “They can afford our demands, and we expect them to pony up. This is our defining moment, as a union, as working people.”
Illinois nurses fight short-
staffing. Union nurses at Ascension Saint Joseph-Joliet hospital and at the state-run Elizabeth Ludeman Center for adults with developmental disabilities in Park Forest want to address short-staffing that endangers employees and patients. Ascension nurses represented by the Illinois Nurses Association are bargaining; their last pact expired July 19 and 87% of them authorized a strike if necessary.
In Park Forest, “Staffing ratios are deplorable,” said INA union steward Marika Loftman-Davis. “There are fewer nurses for more individuals, and (the nurses) are getting hurt.”
The Illinois Department of Human Services admitted Ludeman was one of two coronavirus “hot spots” among DHS facilities in the pandemic.
‘Back to school’ difference with grad-student unionizations. The latest university where grad students unionized was at Stanford, where students last July overwhelmingly voted for representation by the United Electrical Workers, which has also organized at the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and the University of Minnesota. Last year’s six-week strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California system resulted in representation by the United Auto Workers, which now represents more than 100,000 higher-ed academics across the country.
“These big actions in higher ed don’t just raise the bar for these institutions,” commented Caltech astrophysics grad student Sam Ponnada. “They raise the bar everywhere.”
Elsewhere grad students voted to unionize at Ford University, Clark University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New Mexico State, Washington State and Worcester Polytechnic.
DeSantis loses it with federal workers: gov’t union. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went beyond his track record trying to suppress voting, criticizing teachers, opposing unions, and rewriting history to say U.S. slaves benefited because they learned skills. According to public radio, DeSantis said if he’s elected, Mexicans in drug cartels “would be shot stone-cold dead” and to deal with government employees — local, state and federal — “we are going to start slitting throats on Day 1.”
Everett Kelley, president of the Government Employees (AFGE), responded, saying, “Gov. DeSantis’s threat to ‘start slitting throats’ of federal employees is dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful, and disqualifying,” said Kelley, a military veteran like a third of his members and fellow federal workers are. The federal government employs two million people, the same number as it did six decades ago.
Some federal workers found McDonald’s lawbreakers. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has fined three McDonald’s franchises $212.544 after a spring investigation found hundreds of children working there in violation of federal law. The worst uncovered was a Louisville, Ky., McDonald’s that had two 10-year-olds working unpaid as late as 2 a.m.
“Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” said Karen Garnett-Civils, director of Louisville’s DOL Wage and Hour Division. “Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers.”
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