Autoworkers reach first contract with Chattanooga VW. In what could encourage more unionizing in the South, the UAW reached a Tentative Agreement with Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn. If ratified, it would be a victory in the UAW’s 13-year effort to win a union contract there.
The deal would provide the 3,200 workers there a 20%, across-the-board wage increase, affordable health care, job security, and more.
“For years, Chattanooga workers were told to settle for less while Volkswagen made record profits. So the workers stood together and won,” said UAW President Shawn Fain.
VW workers voted 3-to-1 to join the UAW in 2024.
In an upset, Machinist elected to Texas Senate. Taylor Rehmet — president of Local 776B of the International Association of Machinists and a member of its State Council — won the special election race for Texas Senate District 9 last month, flipping the seat and defeating a candidate backed by President Trump.
“This is a huge win for Texas workers,” said Texas AFL-CIO President Leonard Aguilar. “Taylor embodies what it means to be a union leader — working together to address the struggles of real, everyday Texans.
“While state parties are trying to reconnect with the working class, we’re running union members up and down the ballot — and winning,” he continued. “Taylor’s historic win kicks off a slate of rank-and-file union members running for office to fight for all of us.”
Workers at more Chicago cultural venues are unionizing. This winter, workers at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry ratified their first contract, and workers at Adler Planetarium voted to unionize — parts of a wave of unionization at Chicago’s cultural institutions. Launched in 2020, AFSCME’s Cultural Workers United campaign now represents 50,000 cultural workers nationwide. In the last four years, it has helped 2,500 Illinois cultural workers form unions at such sites as the Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shedd Aquarium and Newberry Library. Separately, staffers at the Chicago Botanic Garden are organizing under SEIU’s Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Greenland defended by more than Denmark, NATO and the EU. Greenland labor leaders also are calling for solidarity from unions around the world to resist President Trump’s threat to take over the territory.
The majority of Greenlanders work in the public sector, and increased U.S. influence could erode their living conditions, unionists say.
“Greenland is an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and we have self-government, and we have agreements with the Danish government,” said Jess Berthelsen, chair of SIK, Greenland’s labor confederation. “That’s how things operate. If this is to change, we will take the initiative to change. It’s just hard to fathom the fact that that this is the climate among us at the moment.”
Major labor unrest in California. Major strikes or imminent work stoppages include the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP — an affiliate of AFSCME) on strike at Kaiser Permanente, where those 31,000 employees are joined by 4,000 other KP workers represented by UFCW; 35,000 educators in Los Angeles and another 4,200 teachers in San Francisco; and some 40,000 workers at the University of California system.
— News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper: “Like” us on Facebook/The-Labor-Paper