Labor News — 2/10/2022
The Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation Weekly Report comes out (nearly) every Thursday with news and updates relevant to the Gulf Coast labor movement. To subscribe, click here.
USW workers rally in Texas City and Deer Park after contract expires
30,000 Steelworkers in Texas are teetering on the edge of a massive strike after their contract expired on January 31. Houston-area workers rallied at locations across the Gulf Coast this week in “practice pickets”.
Pemex, Shell, Marathon, and Exxon raked in tens of billions in profits last year — it’s time to come to the table and give the workers their fair share.
Texas AFT raises alarm at crisis in the classroom
A whopping 66% of educators throughout Texas said they have recently considered leaving their jobs, according to a Texas AFT survey released today.
Texas AFT President Zeph Capo said that teachers’ extraordinary discontent has been festering for a long time but has increased over the past couple of years over concerns about COVID-19 safety and health. The survey of 3,800 Texas AFT members was conducted in November.
“The fact that two-thirds of educators are thinking about quitting is really frightening. In addition to long-neglected low wages and the stress of increasing workloads, the Omicron surge has created unbelievable chaos,” Capo said. “Educators witness every day the devastating effects on our students when schools have staffing shortages. It’s only going to get worse unless teachers’ concerns are addressed.”
Building Trades Council opens applications for pre-apprenticeship program
Paul Puente, Executive Secretary of HGCBCTC, and Violeta Nunez, ARP/MC3 Cohort 7 graduate and current Pipefitters 211 first-year apprentice, had a chance to talk about the ARP/MC3 pre-apprenticeship program on the Isiah Factor Uncensored last week.
The ARP/MC3 program provides three free weeks of training to help students enter one of the 17 union building trades apprenticeships in the Gulf Coast. They are currently accepting applications.
Workers at San Antonio Starbucks store seek to unionize, becoming first in Texas to do so
Employees at a Starbucks on San Antonio’s North Side are the first in Texas to join a growing campaign among the coffee chain’s workforce to unionize.
Baristas at Starbucks’ Loop 410 and Vance Jackson Road location filed Tuesday with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election.
“Howdy, partners! Texas is joining the party,” the union tweeted along with a copy of a letter addressed to Starbucks president and CEO Kevin Johnson and signed by nine employees.
After successful stand for patient safety and respect on the job, nurses face union fight to remove union
Striking nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, ratified their new contract last month, winning added patient and staff protections after 301 days on the picket line. The four-year agreement, which represents roughly 700 nurses, promises pay increases, added workplace safety measures, and reduced staffing ratios, limiting the number of patients that can be assigned to a nurse at a given time.
But while the union and management prepared to ratify, a new proposal appeared before the nurses: a decertification petition, which asked them to cast off the union that led them through the strike. Over the course of the strike, the hospital hired “permanent replacement” nurses, scaled back services, and launched a public relations campaign to shame the striking nurses, leaning on the increased stakes brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now the dark-money anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is representing the replacement nurses leading the fight for decertification. Taken together, observers point to an obvious and deliberate goal: break the union…”
Congressional staffers join together in attempt to form new union
After a survey found that 91% of staffers wanted more protections and a stronger voice at work, a volunteer group of workers announced the creation of the Congressional Staffers Union.
“We need labor rights now,” the group said, and pointed to the House’s passage last year of the labor rights-strengthening PRO Act when lawmakers promised “to protect millions of people’s voices at work. Now is the time for Congress to live up to that promise in our own offices.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler spoke out in support this week, stating clearly that America’s labor movement stands with the brave Congressional staffers sharing their stories and speaking out for change.
$100,000 donation ‘casts a pall’ over Texas regulator’s approval of fracking fluid disposal site
Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian voted to approve an East Texas holding company’s nine-story-tall oilfield waste repository 20 miles north of Midland despite warnings from agency experts that it posed a danger to the massive Ogallala Aquifer and would probably end up polluting the water.
$100,000 was given to Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Wayne Christian just after the commission voted 2–1 to approve the project on Dec. 8, 2020. The campaign contribution from HR Environmental of Center, Texas, was recorded on Dec. 11, 2020, by the Texas Ethics Commission in Austin.
Christian is being challenged by COPE-endorsed Democrat Luke Warford in the general election.
Brazoria County district clerk who improperly sorted jurors by race for years walks free without charges
The now former Brazoria County District Clerk admitted that she sorted potential jurors by race and geography while selecting jury panels. A grand jury in December declined to charge her with a crime, because there’s no criminal penalty in the law.
Texas’ power grid held up during last week’s winter weather. Experts say it wasn’t seriously tested.
As the sun rose Friday morning — when the state’s demand for electricity was expected to peak — most Texans breathed sighs of relief as they woke to find the lights still on and the water still running.
The primary reason the grid didn’t fail this time, experts said, was merely that the weather wasn’t as bad.
“This is the sort of cold front that any grid needs to be prepared to handle and the Texas grid has handled many times before,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.
Deplorable conditions, unclear mission: Texas National Guard troops call Abbott’s rushed border operation a disaster
The governor has sent waves of troops to the border as Guard officials scramble to execute a massive mobilization that would normally take months to plan. Some Guard members say the operation has set back their income, education and well-being.
“Instead of solving [pay, lack of equipment, and family or employer hardships], more energy was spent on hiding or covering up problems rather than fixing them,” Featherston argued. “Families [have been] impacted forever.”
President Biden signs executive order requiring project labor agreements on federal projects over $35 million
President Biden on Friday signed an executive order aimed at strengthening union jobs in construction by expanding the federal government’s use of collective bargaining agreements between unions and contractors on construction sites.
“The executive order I’m going to sign today is going to help ensure that we build a better America, we build it right, and we build it on time, and we build it cheaper than it would have been otherwise,” Biden said in remarks at the Ironworkers Local 5 hall in Maryland.
The executive order will require the use of PLAs on federal construction projects above $35 million.
Biden Labor Task Force targets anti-union activity, access
A White House task force created to promote union organizing is recommending more transparency for employers’ anti-union spending, automating prevailing wage enforcement, and expanding access for organizers on federal property.
The 43-page report from the Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, released Monday, largely centers on expanding both federal and private-sector workers’ access to information about their protections under U.S. labor law and how to form unions, as well as strengthening disclosure requirements around businesses’ spending on anti-union consultants, or “persuaders.” President Joe Biden has vowed to be the most pro-union president in modern history.
Notable among more than 60 recommendations that it says will strengthen workers’ collective bargaining rights, the task force suggested that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards consider revisions to its union consulting reporting requirements so that businesses must disclose whether they are a federal contractor and whether the activity relates to their federally contracted work.
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo lays out her plan to end the union-busting tactics companies use to fight workers
One of Joe Biden’s first acts as president was firing Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed General Counsel of the NLRB most famous for trying to outlaw scabby and for helping Ronald Reagan bust the PATCO union in 1981.
She wants to restore the Joy Silk Doctrine, forcing employers to recognize a union when workers show majority support. It could broadly increase unionization.
GOP Senators introduce bill to legalize company unions
Late last week, Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced a new bill, the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act, which would permit employers and employees to create company unions (the bill calls them “Employee Involvement Organizations”, which federal law expressly bans.
Company unions were common in the United States during the early twentieth century, but were outlawed under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act §8(a)(2) so that trade unions could remain independent of management. All labor organizations would have to be freely elected by the workforce, without interference.
GOP declares Jan. 6 attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’
The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” formally rebuking two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.
It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years, in which a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The party passed the resolution without discussion and almost without dissent.
Bipartisan majority in US House advanced critical postal service reform
On February 8, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2021 (H.R. 3076) passed with overwhelming support in the House of Representatives by a vote of 342–92.
The Postal Reform bill will place the United States Postal Service on the path toward financial stability by repealing the onerous and financially debilitating pre-funding mandate, ensuring six-day delivery, adding much-needed transparency to postal operations, and maximizing participation in Medicare — a program which the Postal Service and its employees have contributed over $34 billion toward — by enacting prospective Medicare integration. Postal Reform is fair to active and retired postal workers and is a crucial development in the fight to preserve and strengthen our Postal Service.
“After 15 years of fighting for much-needed and long-overdue reforms, we are one step away from securing a critical victory for postal workers, the Postal Service and the public who rely on us,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “The strong bi-partisan support for this legislation is a testament to the unrivaled service postal workers provide to people and communities across this country, no matter who we are or where we live.”
Our USW brothers and sisters at local 13–243 in Beaumont have been locked out for nearly 11 months now. They’re coming together to support each other, but they still need our help.
