Scott Slawson, president of Local 506 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America at Wabtec's Erie plant, said the union has been aware of the agreement for some time.
What happened on Monday, he said, was "They got the ink dry on the paper."
Recently, he said, the company has called about 80 union members back to work.
As the spread of Covid-19 forced millions of workplaces to close in March 2020, Cesar Moreira continued to report to a bottling plant in Wharton, N.J., where he works as a batching technician. During 12-hour shifts, Moreira mixes vats of powdered concentrate and sugar to churn out brand-name beverages like Gatorade and Arizona Iced Tea.
On March 21, 2020, Moreira and his coworkers walked off the job to demand adequate protections and contact tracing, part of a wave of safety-related stoppages in the first months of the pandemic.
But workers at the Wharton plant didn’t stop there. Their spontaneous protest quickly blossomed into a full-fledged union drive. In June, 15 months after the walkout, Refresco workers voted 114 – 101 to join the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). Their 250-person bargaining unit is one of the biggest victories of blue-collar organizing during the pandemic.
When 250 Refresco workers at a bottling plant in Wharton, New Jersey, won a union election at the end of June, organizer Anthony Diaz thought he and his co-workers would soon start negotiating their contract.
But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Refresco, known as the world’s largest independent bottler, launched an aggressive legal operation, employing a former high-ranking official with the National Labor Relations Board to delay certification.
“Things are going to slow because of Refresco’s tricks,” referring to aggressive legal tactics used by the firm “to delay the process for us to get certification of the union and to start negotiating a contract,” said Diaz, who led the union campaign and has worked at the plant since 2006. “They lost the election and they’re playing games with appealing the decision to delay the process.”
Indiana University graduate students are taking the next steps to unionize, as the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition is organizing an attempt to join United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
Building on the impact of its past fee strikes, the IGWC members hope joining a union might bolster their fight for increased compensation, lower fees and improved communication with IU leadership.
"At this point we are seeking more than just a guarantee of dialogue," said Cole Nelson, an IU graduate worker and one of the IGWC organizers. "We're not looking for administrators to be advocates for graduate workers. Rather, we're looking for a permanent resolution to the fact that graduate workers, time and time again, are being charged increasingly by the university while receiving substandard compensation."
Graduate student workers at the University of New Mexico are now recognized as regular employees, under the Public Employee Bargaining Act, paving the way for them to form a union.
“We're asking UNM to respect and uphold the recommendation to see graduate workers as employees and sit at the bargaining table this semester,” said graduate worker, Natalia Toscano.
Hundreds of students marched directly to the UNM president's office Friday, delivering a petition with more than 1,600 signatures. It demands the university start negotiations on higher wages, adequate health insurance coverage, and better working conditions.
Union leadership at Local 506 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America in Erie has drafted legislation that would provide financial incentives to railroads that replace older, inefficient locomotives with newer, low-emissions models.
Scott Slawson, president of UE 506 at Wabtec, said Tier 4 emissions locomotives that the company makes now generate dramatically less pollution than previous generations. Yet only a fraction of the locomotives in use meet the most recent emissions standard. Of the roughly 30,000 freight locomotives in service today, more than 7,500 of what the Environmental Protection Agency would call Tier 0 are still in service.
If enacted, the bill also has the potential to create thousands of jobs, including many in Erie, Slawson said.
Hollis and Purvis helped drum up support from several groups, including UE Local 150, the union that represents many public employees across the state, and last May formed the Valley Proteins Blue Collar Workers Organizing Committee. For Hollis, who left his job at Valley Proteins last summer but remains active with the committee, the effort was a direct response to what he calls the company's "exploitation of workers."
“As [a research assistant]* and a [teaching assistant], you do work as a student, but you’re also an employee,” Boland said. “You want to make sure that your interests as an employee are looked after and not just your interests as a student, and so I think it’s important to have an union, to have a body that can represent your interests.”
Kenyon College student workers are on an unfair labor practice strike today. The strike comes during a campaign to organize the first US union representing all undergraduate workers on a campus. Jacobin spoke to several strikers and two campus maintenance workers supporting them about why they’re organizing — and how other students can follow their example.
"My coworkers and I are incredibly happy and I’m grateful for all of them and the work everyone put in," says Grabowski. "I’m excited to collaborate together on our shared goals of our workplace and affiliate being the best it can be for staff, patients, and the community."