Colorado's Worst Governor

Jared Polis, once again showing how he is a Republican in drag.

This time, he vetoed the repeal of Colorado's anti-union right-to-work law.

This is in addition to his commuting Tina Peters sentence for election fraud.

For the second time, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a bill that would have eliminated a unique second election requirement in the state’s union formation law, after business and labor groups failed to reach a compromise on how to tweak the measure.

“In the wake of (last year’s) veto and the substantial negotiations that preceded it, I would have hoped that both business and labor leaders could have worked to craft a long-term and durable agreement on this matter that would have served Colorado workers and businesses alike,” Polis wrote in his veto letter on Friday. “Unfortunately, because that did not happen, this issue will likely come up again next year and every subsequent year until it is addressed, which creates uncertainty for both workers and businesses.”

House Bill 25-1005 would have repealed the Labor Peace Act in Colorado. Unions can form with a simple majority, per federal law, but in Colorado they must win a second election with 75% of the vote to negotiate so-called union security — whether all workers need to pay into collective bargaining negotiations.

His political career needs to be ended. 

You Mess With the Bull, You Get the Horns

2 Years ago, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast laid off about 20% of their staff.

Now they are begging their employees not to unionize.

Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, has a problem—no, not its cancelled video games. Its workers would like to unionise, and I'm just starting to get the sense that it really doesn't want that to happen. Just a smidge. A tiny inkling.

Late last month, WoTC employees from the Magic: The Gathering Arena team announced their intention to form a union, giving the company until May 1 to recognise it voluntarily. Neither Hasbro nor Wizards of the Coast did so.

The motion to form a union now proceeds to a vote via the National Labor Relations Board, which would allow the union to form whether Hasbro/WoTC like it or not. In order to dissuade the union from forming, Wizards of the Coast has, workers claim, resorted to daily emails and scare tactics.

They have hired union busters as well, Fisher Phillips, and are almost certainly targeting labor organizers among their employees.

As an FYI, it doesn't help that the layoffs were largely indiscriminate, hitting some of WOTC's most successful projects. 

Today in Centrist Democrats

I give you Virginia Governor Abagail Spanburger, who just vetoed a bill expanding labor rights, particularly for civil servants because she finds treating employees with dignity and respect is a bridge too far.

The motto of the centrists in general, and the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in general is, "A bit less evil than the Republicans."

This is horrible policy and worse politics.

She sh%$ on the people who went to the wall for her in the last election. 

These people are far less likely to do anything in the next election now.

To quote someone who wasn't Talleyrand,* "This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed a statewide collective bargaining bill Thursday to the chagrin of workers and her own party.

“I remain committed to continuing to work with the General Assembly, unions, localities, and public servants across the Commonwealth to develop a public sector collective bargaining system that works for Virginia,” the Democrat said in her veto explanation. “However, I believe additional amendments are needed to the enrolled bill currently before me."

The Democratic-controlled General Assembly passed legislation that would remove the prohibition on collective bargaining for state employees and mandate a collective bargaining right for local employees. Local employees currently have to wait for their local government or school board to opt in to collective bargaining.

“Governor Abigail Spanberger today betrayed half a million of Virginia’s public service workers by going back on her campaign promise to support collective bargaining rights for the people who keep our Commonwealth and communities running every day,” the Virginia Public Sector Labor Coalition, a lobbying group that represents large unions like the Virginia Education Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. “Instead of aligning herself with General Assembly Democrats who unanimously supported this bill, Spanberger instead vetoed the bill just as her predecessor Glenn Youngkin did, sending Virginia workers the crystal clear message that they are no better off than they were under a Republican governor.”

The legislature rejected Spanberger’s sweeping amendments that labor unions claim weakened the bill. The original version removed a requirement that would have forced local governments or schools to hold votes to allow employees to unionize. The bill also creates a Public Employee Relations Board and codifies employees’ right to negotiate on certain issues, including staffing, working conditions and benefits.

Unfortunately, there are not enough Democrats in either the State Senate or House of Delegates to override the veto.

^*This quote is often attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, but likely comes from either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe or Joseph Fouché.

While on the Topic of Charities Betraying Their Missions

We have to talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center, which aggressively retaliated against union employees and gutted its investigations of white supremacists following Donald Trump's election.

For five years, I wrote about far-right extremism for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and served as one of its spokespeople. Then, one day, I wasn’t there anymore. I never publicly explained why I was no longer with the SPLC, and I took a year off from social media after I left. On Posting Through It, the podcast I co-host with Jared Holt, I’ve occasionally hinted that something went wrong at the SPLC without getting into specifics. With my book Strange People on the Hill publishing on Tuesday, I’m going to explain what happened here—clearly and in full. 

Some of what follows reflects poorly on the SPLC as an institution. It should be said, though, that many union members there are people I respect and care about. They’re still fighting for a better organization and doing important work in a difficult, often repressive environment. After the right-wing authoritarian shift the SPLC had warned about for years arrived, the organization chose to reduce its public profile. That isn’t on these workers. They deserve better, and so does the broader civil rights community.

………

Donors to the SPLC may not realize that the organization purposefully discarded not only me but also the entire editorial team operating within the Intelligence Project—the division focused on far-right extremism—before Trump took power again in January 2025. That’s why you’ve seen fewer investigative pieces from them, even as open displays of hate have become increasingly common in American life. 

………

That’s why I agreed to become a union steward at the end of 2022. I had seen enough of that type of dysfunction. There were other, related issues. Extremists threatened my friend Hannah Gais’s physical safety during a reporting trip, and the Huang-picked Intelligence Project director didn’t even seem to know what was happening. But my primary goal in becoming a steward was to help us do our jobs without interference from leadership. We wanted to publish the investigative work on the radical right that we believed our donors expected of us.

The SPLC’s unionization effort began before I arrived—a response to underpaid staff working in palpably toxic conditions. (When you’re done reading here, check out the comments on the SPLC’s Glassdoor page for some dark comedy.) Before I became a steward, I had a spotless employment record, and leadership treated me as one of their own. I was once pulled into a Zoom call Huang held with CBS News to feed her talking points in real time. I also participated in ongoing chats with leadership and communications teams, advising them on how best to respond to breaking news. All that changed overnight when I became a steward. 

For those who have never experienced actual union-busting tactics firsthand, consider yourselves lucky. It really, really sucks. Throughout 2023, the SPLC’s leadership team called me into Kafkaesque disciplinary meetings, issuing verbal warnings over incidents that never occurred. In one case, leadership put in writing quotes of mine that they had fabricated wholesale. 

……… 

You hear a lot of liberal and Democratic rhetoric about how dire this moment is. I agree. The only thing I have ever wanted, for the SPLC and for everyone living through this extraordinarily challenging moment, is for us to act like it.

Cowardice and union busting.  Now there is a toxic mix.

Headline of the Day

The Democrats’ One and Only Union-Busting Governor

—The American Prospect

Colorado Governor Jared Polis never fails to disappoint.

He just vetoed a bill that would have repealed the requirement that unions in Colorado have a 2nd election, and get ¾ of the vote in that election, in order to effectively collect union dues.

His reason is bullsh%$, and Jared Polis is bullsh%$. 

On Friday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, vetoed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature that repealed the state’s sui generis right-to-work law. Colorado legislators had voted to pass the Worker Protection Act (SB25-005) by a 22-to-12 margin in the Senate and by 43-to-22 in the House, in both cases along party lines.

Existing Colorado labor law—the Labor Peace Act—was enacted in 1943 before the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act enabled states to pass right-to-work laws that curtailed unions’ ability to collect dues from all the workers they represented in collective bargaining. Colorado’s Labor Peace Act prefigured those right-to-work laws in several ways. Under its terms, once a majority of workers vote to form or join a union, it requires that union to win 75 percent of the workers’ votes in a second election to be able to collect dues from all the workers it represents once it has successfully bargained a contract with the employer.

The difficulty unions have in clearing that second bar—a hurdle unique to Colorado—explains in large part why the percentage of unionized Colorado workers is so low. Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that Colorado’s union density (7.7 percent in 2024) much more closely resembles that of right-to-work states (with an average of 6.2 percent in 2024) than non-right-to-work states (15.8 percent in 2024). Colorado is the only state with Democratic trifecta control of government to have such a law.

This man is pond scum.

This Ain't Good

We now have reports that Elon Musk's merry band of vandals have download sensitive information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

By "Sensitive Information" I mean confidential legal discussions, the names of whistle blowers, and list of labor organizers.

Any guess as to what the famously union averse Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is going to do with this information?

In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the Southeast Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board.

The small, independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It stores reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information.

………

But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.

Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.

(Emphasis mine)

Criminals acting like criminals.  It should be noted here that this shows that Elon Musk's Evil Minions™ had specific criminal intent, which makes prosecution under statutes like the CFPA much easier. (I offer the caveat that I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit! ⃰)

The employees grew concerned that the NLRB's confidential data could be exposed, particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia, according to the disclosure. Eventually, the disclosure continued, the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information. The whistleblower believes that the suspicious activity warrants further investigation by agencies with more resources, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or the FBI.

The labor law experts interviewed by NPR fear that if the data gets out, it could be abused, including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors — Musk's SpaceX among them. It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices, and it could sow distrust in the NLRB's independence, they said.  

The new revelations about DOGE's activities at the labor agency come from a whistleblower in the IT department of the NLRB, who disclosed his concerns to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in a detailed report that was then provided to NPR. Meanwhile, his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone "physically taping a threatening note" to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.

Elon's thugs are not just criminals, they are terrorists.

They need to be treated as such.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Funny That

You may recall that the Senate failed to appoint a new chair for the National Labor Relations Board.

They could have, but Kamala Harris did not make it to the Senate in time to cast the tie breaking vote.

So...Kamala Harris coulda broken the tie on the NLRB vote, but she wasn't there to cast the vote, and her brother-in-law is the chief counsel of Uber, which has tangled with the NLRB. https://t.co/CwYJlnedeo

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 8, 2025

Time for me to don a tinfoil hat, but her brother in law, Tony West, took an outsized role in her campaign and fought tooth and nail against anything that might inconvenience the. "Great malefactors of wealth."

When Rep. Khanna suggests that Harris was somehow just out of pocket and unavailable, he is likely being far too charitable.

This is Going to Get Interesting

Talks between International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) and the East Coast port operators have broken down, and the current contract ends, and a strike could commence, on January 15.

The ILA walked away from negotiations with USMX scheduled to last for four days after just two days.

In a statement issued on 13 November ILA said, that the first day and half of talks had been productive. “However, late yesterday, talks broke down when management introduce their intent to implement semi-automation – a direct contradiction to their opening statement where they assured us that neither full nor semi-automation would be on the table. They claimed their focus was on modernisation, not automation."

The USMX similarly said initial talks had been positive but were unable to make progress on a range of technology. “Unfortunately, the ILA is insisting on an agreement that would move our industry backward by restricting future use of technology that has existed in some of our ports for nearly two decades – making it impossible to evolve to meet the nation’s future supply chain demands,” USMX said.

I think that a strike is likely, though I also think that Trump will go full Reagan/PATCO on the strikers.

Labor unions have experience some success lately and Donald Trump and Evil Minions™ will be determined to roll that back.

Missed in the Run Up to the Election

Boeing machinists have voted to end their strike.

It's a decent contract, though I would have liked to see them get their defined benefit retirement package back:

The Boeing strike is over after 53 days.

Machinists union members voted Monday to approve the company’s most recent contract offer, enabling Boeing to restart work at assembly plants in Everett and Renton and at parts plants throughout the region.

Results announced late Monday showed the offer was approved with 59% of ballots cast in favor. 

………

The 33,000 Machinists in Boeing’s Puget Sound factories walked out Sept. 13, kicking off a strike that has left the company’s factories sitting idle and its financial position increasingly precarious.

Before Monday’s vote, Machinists had rejected two offers from Boeing as they pushed for greater concessions on wages, which have failed to keep up as living costs skyrocketed in the Seattle area over the past decade. The latest contract offer, put forward by Boeing on Thursday, included a 38% general wage increase over the next four years, which compounds to roughly 43% over the life of the agreement.

And still only 59% of union members voted to support this.

………

Under the latest proposal, wages increase 13% in the first year, then 9%, 9% and 7% in subsequent years.

The Machinists also get a $12,000 cash bonus. That sum is a combination of the previous offer’s $7,000 ratification bonus and one-time $5,000 contribution to 401(k) retirement accounts.

The offer did not restore the defined benefit pension plan. Compared with the prior contract that expired this year, the latest proposal would bump up the Boeing matching contribution to the 401(k) to a maximum of 12% of annual income. That’s unchanged from the previous offer. 

Unfortunately, they still have management that will f%$# the workers, the customers and safety

And the Strike is Over Suspended

Following an improved offer on wages, the International Longshoremen’s Association has agreed to suspend its strike until January while further negotiations continue.

Basically, I think that the United States Maritime Alliance expected Biden to invoke Taft-Hartley to force the longshoremen back to work, and Bidens strident refusal to do so, basically f%$# no, forced them back to the bargaining table:

The International Longshoremen’s Association agreed on Thursday to suspend a strike that closed down major ports on the East and Gulf Coasts. The move followed an improved wage offer from port employers.

The strike, which the dockworkers’ union began on Tuesday, threatened to weigh on the economy five weeks before national elections. Employers, represented by the United States Maritime Alliance, have offered to increase wages by 62 percent over the course of a new six-year contract, according to a person familiar with negotiations who did not want to be identified because the talks were continuing. That increase is lower than what the union had initially asked for, but much higher than the alliance’s earlier offer.

As an FYI, that's about a 10.1% a year increase per year when you figure in compounding.

In a statement, the union said that it had reached “a tentative agreement on wages” and that its 45,000 members would go back to work, with the current contract extended until Jan. 15. The union said it was returning to the bargaining table “to negotiate all other outstanding issues.” The alliance issued a similar statement.

The agreement came after the White House pressed both sides to reach a deal to end the strike, the union’s first full-scale walkout since 1977. The wage increase is a clear victory for the I.L.A. and its combative president, Harold J. Daggett, a 78-year-old, third-generation dockworker who has led the union since 2011.

 ………

 A 62 percent increase would raise the top longshoremen’s wage to just over $63 per hour at the end of a new six-year contract, from today’s $39 per hour. And at $63 an hour, the wages of East and Gulf Coast longshoremen would slightly exceed those that will be earned by West Coast longshoremen, who belong to a different union, at the end of their contract in 2027.

In the resumed talks, the issue of how much automation can occur at the ports could divide the sides. The union has also been pressing for improved retirement benefits.

Another potential sticking point is the pay of longshoremen who are just starting out and don’t earn the top wage rate. Mr. Daggett’s son, Dennis A. Daggett, a senior official at the I.L.A., said in an interview on Tuesday on a picket line in Bayonne, N.J., that the union wanted to get higher wages for less experienced members.

This is a good thing, though I would have preferred that the union suspend the strike for a shorter period. If Trump wins, they will have to conclude negotiations with the certainty of a Taft-Hartley back to work order on January 21.

In Related News, Water is Wet

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Amazon has illegally refused to bargain with its drivers’ union.

We really need to start prosecuting these rat-f%$#s criminally. 

If Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy spent a few years cooling their heels in Club Fed, or even a few days waiting for bail to be adjudicated, there would be a lot less law breaking.

Whink of it as "Broken Windows Policing" for white people:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed charges against Amazon, alleging that the e-commerce giant has illegally refused to bargain with a union representing drivers who are frustrated by what they claim are low wages and dangerous working conditions.

Back in August, drivers celebrated what they considered a major win when the NLRB found that Amazon was a joint employer of sub-contracted drivers, cheering "We are Amazon workers!" At that time, Amazon seemed to be downplaying the designation, telling Ars that the union was trying to "misrepresent" a merit determination that the NLRB confirmed was only "the first step in the NLRB’s General Counsel litigating the allegations after investigating an unfair labor practice charge."

But this week, the NLRB took the next step, signing charges soon after Amazon began facing intensifying worker backlash, not just from drivers but also from disgruntled office and fulfillment workers. According to Reuters, the NLRB accused Amazon of "a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities" organized by drivers in a Palmdale, California, facility.

Amazon has found itself in increasingly hot water ever since the Palmdale drivers joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union in 2021. The NLRB's complaint called out Amazon for terminating its contract with the unionized drivers without ever engaging in bargaining.

Amazon and its executives knew what they were doing, and they made extensive plans to do so.

That's a felony, and is also covered by the RICO statutes, and it's a felony.

Frog march them out of their offices in handcuffs.

It's On

For the first time in 47 years, Biden has flatly ruled out invoking Taft-Hartley to stop the strike, and is accusing the shipping companies, particularly foreign ones, as profiteering: 

Earlier today, over 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) went on strike against the United States Maritime  Alliance(USMX), an association of various shipping employers dominated by multinational shippers.

The strike was the first time that workers in East Coast ports went on strike since 1977.

Unlike previous decades, when the presidential administration would invoke Taft-Hartley to stop a strike, the Biden Administration has vowed not to do this.

"There's collective bargaining, and I don't believe in Taft-Hartley," Biden told reporters on Monday.

………

"We're gonna win this f%$#ing thing," said ILA President Harold Daggett at a rally of dockworkers earlier today. "Trust me, they can't survive too long and we're gonna get what the f*ck we deserve. Believe me."

(%$# mine)

………

As a Vice President of the ILA, who has been at the table with the port employers, Riley says he is impressed by the way the Biden Administration has handled things.

Biden has publicly called out the port employer association United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), whose board is dominated by foreign-flag carriers Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Maersk, CMA CGM, and Cosco Shipping.  

"Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits," Biden said in a public statement, "My Administration will be monitoring for any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board."

Even behind closed doors, Riley says that Biden has applied heavy pressure on the foreign owned carriers at the bargaining table.

Here's hoping that the ILA has the USMX's lunch.

BTW, the New York Times coverage is horrible, with the reporters (and their editors) attempting to portray the longshoremen as pampered princesses.

As Atrios says, that f%$#ing paper. 

No clue about the potential repercussions politically though.

And It Is On

So, following an overwhelming vote against the Boeing offer, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is on strike.

Heard a bit of coverage on NPR today, and once again, they were subtly anti-union in their slant, as they always are.  Remember that at pledge time. 

The numbers are kind of mind boggling, 94.6% voting to reject the contract, and 96% voting to strike.

The IAM members clearly have no f%$#s left to give.

While a lot of this is about the fact that the last deal was not a good one, there were a lot of concessions, I also think that a lot of this is that the rank and file want to make airliners, and they feel that management is an impediment to their doing so.

Boeing Machinists union members voted Thursday by an overwhelming majority to reject management’s contract offer and go on strike.

Boeing’s 33,000 blue-collar workers were instructed to walk out at 12:01 a.m. Friday and stay out indefinitely.

International Association of Machinists District 751 President Jon Holden, who on Sunday urged members to accept the deal, announced the result to raucous cheers and chants of “Strike! Strike! Strike!” to about 80 Machinists late Thursday at the union headquarters in South Park.

“This is about respect, this is about addressing the past and this is about fighting for our future,” Holden told the crowd. “We strike at midnight.”

He said 94.6% voted to reject the contract and 96% voted to strike, more than the two-thirds majority required by union rules to authorize a walkout.

At a news conference after the announcement, Holden said “I’m proud of our members, proud of them for standing up and fighting for more, for each other, for their families, for the community.”

………

Even before Holden delivered the result, a team of union officials outside was busily cutting holes in large metal barrels, carving the initials “IAM” into the side of each and adding a cylindrical chimney on top. They’ll be used as “burn barrels,” with fires lit inside to keep pickets warm in the nights and days ahead.

Inside the hall, buckets were filled with premade “On Strike” signs.

Votes were tallied from polling places across the Puget Sound region, as well as in Moses Lake; Portland, Ore.; Victorville, Calif.; and Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

………

They did not even accept that Boeing’s stated wage increase was really 25% over four years as the company presented it, since the Machinists at the same time lost their annual bonus, which might have been worth around 4% each of those years.

Do the math:  25% -(4%  x 4 years) = 9% over 4 years.  Given the Federal Reserve's target of 2% inflation, that is awfully close to running in place.

Brandon Phelps, 35, a former U.S. Air Force mechanic who installed weapons systems on Boeing F-15s in Afghanistan and is now a team lead in the Renton 737 assembly plant, said the increase is just over 10% over four years once that takeaway is considered.

Boeing's, has been very conciliatory since the walkout, with its CFO saying that the aerospace giant is eager to return to negotiations.

Boeing's new CEO is actually in the process of moving to the Seattle area, where he bought a home in the tony Broadmoor gated community, a move likely intended  to mollify the palpable anger of Pacific Northwest employees.

The workers are in the drivers seat here.  Boeing has been hemorrhaging cash for some time, and its credit rating is currently Baa3 according to Moody's, one step above junk bond status, so it is NOT in a position to raise money easily or cheaply.

They need to get their assembly lines up and running quickly, particularly the lucrative 737 lines.

Speaking of the Positive Effects of Unions

Amazon is raising pay for its drivers by 7% year over year in an attempt to forestall unionization.

Even when unions don't win, the threat of unions produces a win: 

Amazon.com is putting billions of dollars toward the drivers that deliver its packages following union organizing activity among such workers.

The company said it is investing about $2 billion into its delivery services program this year, and that the money will result in average national pay for drivers delivering Amazon parcels to reach nearly $22 per hour, a 7% increase from last year.

Amazon has been delivering most of its own packages with the help of small businesses around the country since 2018. The average pay for drivers was $20.50 last year.

………

Amazon’s investment follows union organizing activity and changes to how labor officials view its drivers.

Officials with the National Labor Relations Board have recently designated Amazon a joint employer of drivers who are contracted to deliver packages for the company at facilities in Palmdale, Calif., and Atlanta. The rulings could change how the agency views Amazon’s relationship with drivers and could force Amazon to bargain with those workers if they unionize.

Of course Amazon is a joint employer:

• Amazon surveils the drivers with their own cameras.
• Amazon dictates the metrics that result in a driver being hired or fired. 
• Amazon dictates the specific root that these drivers take.
• Amazon dictates how often the drivers can pee.  (Hence the bottles)

Nice to see Amazon being forced against its will to do the right thing.

Now arrest Jeff Bezos for bad hair or something.

Nice to See a Win

The United Auto Workers Union has won the union election at the Ultium battery factory in Spring Hills, Tennessee.

This is the second victory at Ultium and the first in the historically union unfriendly South:

"The new jobs of the South will be union jobs," said Tim Smith, a regional director for the United Auto Workers, after the union announced Tuesday that 1,000 workers at Ultium Cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee had voted to form a collective bargaining unit.

The vote made the electric vehicle battery plant the second Ultium Cells workplace to join the UAW, and the second auto industry plant in the U.S. South to vote in favor of unionization following the launch of a major $40 million organizing effort in the region this year.

Anti-union companies such as EV automaker Tesla have eyed the South as a region to make a manufacturing push, due to its historical antagonism toward labor and low levels of unionization.

But Smith said the vote at Ultium Cells proves that "in the battery plants and EV factories springing up from Georgia to Kentucky to Texas, workers know they deserve the same strong pay and benefits our members have won. And we're going to make sure they have the support they need to win their unions and win their fair share."

The first Ultium Cells battery plant to join the UAW was the Lordstown, Ohio location, where employees ratified a contract in June that included a 30% raise over three years for production workers, an immediate $3,000 bonus, and health and safety protections.

The lesson to be learned from this is that success begets success. so the victory against the big 3 (2½) last year is responsible for much of this success.

For decades, unions have been trying to minimize their losses, and have come across as losers.

You lose every fight that you run away from.

This Is Not Taking the Time to Do It Right

You may recall that after a series of problems with Boeing aircraft, including a fuselage plug falling off mid-flight, Boeing has promised slow down production to focus on safety.

It appears that they are already reneging on this deal, pushing 777s through the factory as quickly as possible ahead of a threatened strike.

I think that their agreement with regulators, as well as their public statements, did not include a, "Backsies," clause:

For months, Boeing’s leadership has claimed repeatedly that slowing the pace of jet production and renewing the focus on inspections will ensure production quality. As a potential strike by 33,000 machinists looms next week, that’s not the reality mechanics see inside Boeing’s widebody jet plant in Everett.

Managers there are currently pushing partially assembled 777 jets through the assembly line, leaving tens of thousands of unfinished jobs due to defects and parts shortages to be completed out of sequence on each airplane, according to three people working directly on 777 assembly.

Though the production rate of 777 jets is at a crawl, with a total of just 11 deliveries so far this year, employees describe a chaotic workplace.

Mechanics are chasing airplanes through the Everett factory to install systems that should have gone in earlier and to complete rework of defects on 777 cargo planes that have traveled far down the assembly line and even outside onto the Paine Field flight line, said a veteran 777 mechanic who works on fuselages.

At the 737 MAX plant in Renton, Boeing has said it is severely limiting such “traveled work,” which requires installing parts out of the normal assembly sequence. The practice contributed to the Alaska Airlines door plug blowout in January.

“It’s not the way the hourly workers want to do business,” said the veteran mechanic, alarmed by the state of 777 production. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”

A longtime 777 quality inspector in Everett — who, like the other employees quoted here, requested anonymity because he feared retaliation — said Boeing has moved new inspectors onto the assembly line who are unfamiliar with the work.

If someone wants to save Boeing, they need to fire all senior executives, ban stock buy backs, and install an independent monitor to address crap like this.

Elections Have Consequences

Almost exactly a year ago, (link) I noted that the NLRB had issued a ruling that stated that when an employer breaks the law during a unionization election, the remedy is to declare the union to have won the election and direct that company to begin negotiating on a contract immediately.

We are now seeing the fruits of this ruling:

Five years ago, after a majority of workers at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas signed cards to join the Culinary Workers Union, supervisors marched them into a series of mandatory meetings. The company promised employees free health care and new retirement benefits if they voted down the union, and vowed to drag out negotiations if the union won.

Red Rock, which is owned by billionaire brothers and major Trump donors Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, also launched an anti-union website, plastered with the faces of employees without their permission. Then, two days before the vote, workers were greeted with hundreds of free steaks in the employee dining room, each branded with the same message: VOTE NO!

On election day, only 46% of the workers voted for the union.

“They never actually wanted to listen to the workers,” said Veronica Gomez, 57, who has worked as a housekeeper at Red Rock since 2006 and helped lead the union drive. “They never wanted to give up any power.”

In June, though, the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, offered Gomez and her co-workers a win. After a protracted legal fight, the NLRB’s five-person board, which issues final agency decisions on judicial rulings that have been appealed, concurred with an administrative judge’s earlier decision that Red Rock management had engaged in “pervasive and egregious misconduct.” The board also employed, for the first time, a new protection against union-busting that it had issued in a decision last year called Cemex. Citing Cemex, the board forced Red Rock to immediately recognize and bargain with the union. 

………

It’s been about a year since the Cemex decision overturned nearly five decades of precedent and limited an employer’s ability to illegally undermine union support without facing meaningful consequences. Since 1979, there has been little downside for an employer who breaks labor law during an election, and unfair labor practices — as such violations are known — are common. (As of late June, for example, Starbucks’ efforts to oppose unionization have generated 435 unfair labor practice charges from National Labor Relations Board regional offices.)

Except in the rarest of cases, violations simply triggered another election — until August 2023, when the NLRB created a new consequence for law-breaking employers in its ruling on a dispute between the Teamsters and Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, a cement-mixing company. Post-Cemex, if a majority of workers sign cards to join a union, an employer can either recognize the union or file a petition within two weeks for a union election. 

If the employer misses the deadline, and the cards are found to be valid, the National Labor Relations Board can order the employer to recognize the union. And if, during the election, the employer commits violations that require setting the election aside, the agency will order the employer to recognize the union and begin to bargain a first contract.

I thought that it was good news at the time, but I did not realize just how good the news was..

Not only does it offer real disincentives for employers breaking the law, but it also speeds up the unionization process.

Assuming that SCOTUS does not strike this rule down, and that is a big if, this is a major win for American workers.

Good News Everyone!

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Amazon cannot hide behind contractors, and that its drivers are employees.

This is pretty much indisputable.

Amazon specifies the schedules, specifies the routes, and watches its drivers on video cameras that it installs, which would not happen if they were not the drivers' employers:

In a loss for Amazon that could force it to meet the Teamsters union at the bargaining table, a regional National Labor Relations Board director said Thursday that the company is a joint employer of some of the thousands of contractor delivery drivers who deliver its packages.

The e-commerce giant has previously argued that it should not be responsible for alleged union busting or required to bargain with driver unions, because the drivers who ferry packages to consumers’ doors in Amazon-branded vans work for third-party contractors called delivery service partners, or DSPs. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Thursday’s determination suggests that Amazon is wrong, finding that it failed to bargain in good faith after delivery drivers in Palmdale, Calif., voted to unionize in 2023, a first for the company’s delivery drivers. The regional NLRB director also found that Amazon had illegally targeted drivers in Palmdale with termination, threatened workers, and held unlawful captive audience meetings, according to labor board spokesperson Kayla Blado.

The Palmdale drivers worked for a DSP called Battle-Tested Strategies, which was terminated by Amazon as a contractor after its workers started organizing and where management voluntarily recognized the union. If Amazon, the DSP and the delivery drivers fail to reach a settlement agreement in California, the board said it will issue a complaint and schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge. Thursday’s determination by the NLRB applies only to the drivers in Palmdale in regard to their union campaign, and won’t have an immediate effect on the legal standing of Amazon drivers writ large.

It won't have an immediate effect?  Maybe, but I'd want to hear from a lawyer, and not just an assertion from a Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post reporter. 

Unfortunately, given the corrupt rat-f%$#s in the US Supreme Court, I am not sure where this will go when Amazon inevitably appeals this.

Good Riddance

According to the police officers' union, 56% of officers on the Phoenix PD are planning on leaving if the city signs a consent decree with the feds.

First, let me give you three rules for understanding the statements from police and police unions regarding common sense reforms and accountability measures:

1. Police lie.
2. Police unions lie even more.
3. Goto 1.

I would also add that any officer who wants to leave the force because they will not be allowed to operate above the law is in fact lawless, and so their exit should be celebrated:

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association is the largest union of rank and file police officers employed by the city.

The group is warning that more than half of its officers are thinking about quitting within six months unless city leaders fight oversight from the U.S. Justice Department.

The union known by the acronym PLEA represents roughly 2,200 officers and detectives. Just over half took part in an internal survey, and 56% said they’re considering leaving the Phoenix Police Department.

The survey also found that nearly 90% of those officers would be willing to stay if Phoenix leaders refuse to sign an oversight agreement.

If cops don't want to follow the law, they should not be cops.

It's the Same Old Story

UAW tries to unionize a Mercedes plant in Alabama, Daimler Benz engages in a scorched union busting campaign, which includes a promise for increased pay and benefits, and once the UAW loses the election, the carmaker reneges on its promises of increased remuneration.

I'm totally not shocked:

On Thursday, an email from United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain to the leadership of the Mercedes-Benz General Works Council and IG Metall was posted to X by Luis Feliz Leon of the labor news publication Labor Notes. The General Works Council represents over 100,000 German Mercedes workers and IG Metall is a German metalworkers’ union.

In the email, Fain wrote that Mercedes “management is telling workers that they are unable to follow through on promised increases to wages, benefits, and working conditions because the UAW filed objections to last month’s union election.”

He specifically stated that Rolf Wrona, a MBUSI vice president of human resources, “told several Group Leaders that MBUSI could not pay workers for an upcoming plant shutdown because they were still in ‘status quo.’”

“Status quo refers to a specific legal standard in U.S. labor law that requires unionized employers to notify the union prior to making any changes to wages, benefits, or working conditions and bargain with the union over any proposed changes prior to implementation,” Fain said. “However, MBUSI is not currently unionized, so no status quo condition exists” [emphasis in original].

………

Fain’s email follows the union filing several unfair labor practice charges against Mercedes during the months before the weeklong union election in May, which the UAW lost by a few hundred votes. At the end of May, the UAW also filed a petition asking the National Labor Relations Board to rerun the election.

If you believe your that employer is a bunch of contemptible greed-heads who think that their workers are worthless, lazy, and defensible, you need to unionize to protect yourselves from those bastards. 

If you believe that your employer is a benevolent group of people interested in your well being, you need to unionize to protect yourselves from the next group of managers who rotate in and are a bunch of contemptible greed-heads.

Any questions?