Alabama

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, February 1, 2024

Auto workers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, have signed up more than 30 percent of their nearly 4,000 co-workers in an ambitious drive to unionize.

The Auto Workers (UAW) announced the organizing breakthrough with a new video, “Montgomery Can’t Wait,” where workers link the labor and civil rights movements: “Montgomery, the city where Rosa Parks sat down, and where thousands of Hyundai workers are ready to Stand Up.”

“There’s something about our fight to unionize being homegrown that makes it just that much sweeter,” said Quichelle Liggins, a 12-year quality inspector at Hyundai.

“All I can tell my people to do is be bold and intentional. Just like the leaders of the civil rights movement, we’re linking together one by one. One person had to say, ‘Hey, it's time for us to make a difference!’ And then several other people had to agree, and now we have a group of workers that feel the same way.”

Workers in this plant assemble the Santa Fe and Tucson SUVs, the Santa Cruz pickup truck, the Genesis GV70 luxury SUV, and the Electrified GV70.

They’re the third plant to reach the 30 percent milestone in the UAW’s new organizing push, just weeks after workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and on the heels of those at Tennessee’s Chattanooga Volkswagen plant in December.

The UAW announced Monday that more than 10,000 workers across 13 non-union plants have signed union cards since last November, when the union announced an ambitious goal to organize 150,000 autoworkers. That’s roughly the same number as are covered now under the Big Three contracts.

Once workers reach the threshold of 30 percent on signed union authorization cards, under the UAW’s rubric, they take their organizing public. At the 50 percent mark, they rally with their co-workers, families, neighbors, and community and union leaders, including UAW President Shawn Fain.

As soon as 70 percent of workers at a given plant sign cards, and their organizing committee has grown to include workers from every shift and job classification, they will demand voluntary recognition of their union. If the company refuses, the workers file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.

By Dev Wakely. Union Jake and Adam Keller - The Valley Labor Report, January 26, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, January 16, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 28, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 18, 2023

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, November 30, 2023

“The company knows that Toyota workers are watching,” said Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on November 3. “And when the time comes, Toyota workers and all non-union auto workers are going to be ready to stand up.”

That time has come—yesterday the UAW announced its plan, already in motion, to organize the whole auto sector. “Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the UAW,” said Fain in a new video.

The union says thousands of workers have reached out asking for support in unionizing their auto plants. They’ve scoured the old websites from previous union drives and filled out forms to be put in touch with an organizer.

“To all the auto workers out there working without the benefits of a union: Now it’s your turn,” he said, inviting auto workers to join the organizing push and telling them where they can electronically sign union cards, at UAW.org/join.

Thousands of non-union auto workers are already organizing across the 10 foreign-owned transplants, including Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes, as well as in the electric vehicle sector at Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid. Overall, the organizing drive will cover 150,000 workers—roughly the same number of workers covered under the Big 3 contracts—across 13 automakers.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, Summer 2023

Almost by definition Green New Deal projects simultaneously address climate protection, worker empowerment, and justice. This Commentary will look at Green New Deal projects and networks that emerged from discriminated-against communities and put issues of justice front and center.

While the Green New Deal is often thought of as a program for climate and jobs, justice has been a central element from its very beginning. The initial Green New Deal resolution proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez included as a core aim to “promote justice and equity by preventing current and repairing historic oppression to frontline communities.” That included:

• providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all members of our society, with a focus on frontline communities, so they may be full and equal participants in Green New Deal projects;
• directing investments to spur economic development, as well as deepen and diversify industry in local and regional economies and build wealth and community ownership, prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits in frontline communities and deindustrialized communities that may otherwise struggle with the transition;
• ensuring democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline communities and workers to plan, implement and administer Green New Deal projects at the local level;
• obtaining the voluntary, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect them, honoring all treaties with Indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of all Indigenous peoples.[1]

While much of the Green New Deal program has been stymied at the national level, communities, cities, and states have been going ahead to develop their own Green New Deals – what I have called in this series of Commentaries the “Green New Deal from Below.” Typically they involve a strong emphasis on the justice objectives of the Green New Deal. For example:

• The Boston Green New Deal launched PowerCorps BOS, a green jobs program designed to serve “the dual purpose of creating job opportunities for our young adults” while “protecting our city from the ravages of climate change and enhancing quality of life for all residents.”
• The Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance requiring new buildings to be all-electric. Gloria Medina, executive director of SCOPE LA, said this ordinance is “about Black, Brown and Indigenous community members at the forefront. This is their win.” Chelsea Kirk, policy analyst at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, said, “We think this is a super important, logical first step that allows us to make progress in our net-zero carbon goals as outlined in the Green New Deal.”
• The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition designed a participatory process called “Listen, Lead, Share” to write a climate, jobs and justice law “written by communities for communities.” The Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, described by one journalist as a “Green New Deal for Illinois,” includes a wide range of programs embodying Green New Deal justice programs. For example, it provided that the first fossil fuel plants to be shut down will be those nearest to low-income and marginalized communities; $80 million allocated for Clean Jobs Workforce Network Hubs run by local organizations in 13 of the state’s low-income communities to deliver outreach, recruitment, training, and placement for climate jobs; travel stipends, work clothes, tools, and/or childcare for training and incubator program participants; program to train people currently in prison and place them in clean energy jobs; and a Clean Energy Jobs and Justice Fund to pay for projects in low-income and marginalized communities.

While virtually all Green New Deal from Below-style programs include a strong social justice component, some of them have emerged from and primarily represent the demands of people of color and frontline communities. They are the subject of this Commentary.

By Ronnie Smith, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 26, 2023

By press associates - People's World, August 2, 2023

A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge has strongly blasted the Warrior Met coal company in its long-running dispute over a new contract with the United Mine Workers—a dispute which led bosses to lock out the firm’s 1,100 miners for more than a year and a half. The judge formally ruled the firm’s unfair labor practices provoked the conflict.

In an 88-page ruling, ALJ Melissa Olivero came down particularly hard on company officials for claiming they couldn’t afford the union’s demands for raises in each year of a new contract, and the union’s tries at reclaiming the givebacks the workers had to yield to keep the firm going when it was the old, and bankrupt, Jim Walter mine.

Even as the firm gave out big bonuses to its corporate honchos, in a poor area of rural Alabama, and shoveled out millions of dollars in stock options and dividends to its Wall Street investors, it was claiming poverty and saying paying the miners would force it to close, Olivero said. It denied making the closure threat, but Olivero found its denials were not credible.

Such claims, Olivero noted, entitled the Mine Workers (UMWA) to review the mine’s books, but the mine bosses refused to turn them over, and that broke labor law, too, Olivero said. That led UMWA to declare the strike was about Warrior Met labor law-breaking, formally called unfair labor practices.

That made the strike, and Warrior Met’s lockout of the workers, an unfair labor practices strike, Olivero ruled. Warrior Met appealed her decision to the full board, which has called for briefs from both sides by late August.

Warrior Met also was hiring subcontractors to work alongside the miners, Olivero noted—another bone of contention in the bargaining between the two sides.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, July 14, 2023

Shades of Fortunado Reyes and Louisiana-Pacific.