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America’s Workers Joining AFL-CIO Unions |
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Workers holding a variety of jobs recently have joined AFL-CIO unions, including some 5,000 University of California (UC) postdoctoral researchers whose vote to join UAW was recently certified; shipyard workers in Mississippi who joined the Machinists (IAM); and workers at an Idaho Air Force base who chose the Electrical Workers (IBEW).
The new UAW members, known as “postdocs,” submitted their union authorization cards to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) in July, and last week, the board certified their choice of the Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/UAW (PRO/UAW).
The postdocs formed their union through majority sign-up, the centerpiece of the Employee Free Choice Act, and avoided the kind of anti-union campaign of intimidation and harassment that more and more employers use to thwart workers’ choice of joining a union. (Click here for the latest on the million-member signature drive to support the Employee Free Choice Act in the new Congress.)
Dilnawaz Kapadia, a postdoc researcher in immunology at UC San Francisco, says the certification is a “historic moment.”
The UC is a world-renowned institution and we look forward to working productively with the administration to address our concerns around wages, benefits, workload and our workplace rights. We are confident that this will prove to be a long and fruitful relationship with mutual benefits to the university and to the postdocs on all UC campuses.
The postdocs typically work for five years in a faculty supervisor’s lab after receiving a doctorate or equivalent degree. They perform basic research on cures for major diseases and developing new technologies. They also publish scholarly articles and write grant proposals, all of which have helped bring hundreds of millions in grants and contracts to the university last year, the union said.
Along with the postdocs, some 12,000 UC teaching assistants, tutors and other academic student workers also are UAW members.
In other organizing wins, 100 quality assurance employees at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems’ Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., overcame a strong anti-union campaign and voted to join IAM.
Says Tommy Mayfield from the IAM’s Southern Territory:
We had a great organizing team inside carrying the message. Despite multiple captive audience meetings held by the employer, these team members continued the push to hold their fellow employees strong.
In Phoenix, Ariz., 120 full- and part-time bus drivers and monitors at First Student Inc., voted to join IAM Local Lodge 933 in Tucson, which already represents the mechanics at the site.
The new union members say they sought out the IAM to help gain fairness and respect on the job and to be able to bargain for guaranteed hours, seniority provisions and improvements in pensions and health benefits.
Meanwhile, 22 maintenance and staff workers at Mountain Home Air Force base in Boise, Idaho, voted to join IBEW Local 291. The workers—employed by S.C. Jones Services Inc.—perform electrical, plumbing, carpentry jobs and other housing maintenance work on the base.
Many of the workers say they were misclassified into lower wage jobs and were being forced to work overtime at straight time rates. Plumber Jim Olds, a 13-year veteran at Mountain Home and one of the higher-paid employees, says the workers were solidly behind the union effort because
we’re all in this together and we are eager to work with our contractors to make solutions. I fell confident the IBEW will help make that happen.
In Lebanon, Pa., 13 workers at the AES Ironwood power plant voted to join IBEW Local 777. The workers got in touch with Local 777 when their workload at the small, privately owned independent power plant doubled and sometimes tripled because of the company’s lack of new hires. Also, management never gave them performance bonuses they had been promised and the workers were concerned about safety at the plant.
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