The Oregon Labor Dispatch is a weekly email and blog series designed to keep Oregon’s workers informed of the latest news about unions, worker power, and much more. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of news stories, graphics, and information about upcoming events and actions. When Oregon’s Labor Movement is connected, updated and informed we are able to be stronger advocates for all working Oregonians.
If you have a news story, event or action you’d like to see featured in the Oregon Labor Dispatch please email us at communications@oraflcio.org.
🪧 TAKE ACTION: SUPPORT STRIKING WORKERS
Two unions are on strike in five cities across Oregon right now: Graduate workers at OSU and Teamsters at Bigfoot Beverages are still walking the line and fighting for fair contracts. The Oregon AFL-CIO Strike Map is updated with the latest information about where active picket lines are in Oregon.
If you can’t walk a line this week, please consider taking action online as soon as possible. Here are some ways to support the strikes:
Sign this pledge to withhold support and donations to OSU until CGE has a fair contract.
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
AFSCME Local 189 Action Alert | December 14, 2024 | Noon - 2pm
SW Main Street between 3rd & 4th Avenues
The City of Portland has pledged $1.8 Million for the Thompson Elk statue, but hasn’t put a serious economic offer on the table for the hardworking employees who provide direct public services. Santa thinks the City of Portland needs to reconsider their priorities! Join Santa and AFSCME 189 in a family friendly event with union carols, pictures and letter writing - to the North Pole for the kids, or City Hall for grown ups!
📖 MUST READ
December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
At its biennial gathering in August, the SEIU Local 503’s leadership body, known as its general council, approved affiliation with the Oregon AFL-CIO. Local 503 will officially rejoin in December, just in time to weigh in on the federation’s 2025 legislative priorities.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
December 5, 2024 | The Oregonian
Roughly 5,000 nurses, hospitalists and other health workers have authorized strikes at Providence Health & Services facilities across Oregon.
December 4, 2024 | KVAL
Multiple bargaining units at seven Providence hospitals and six clinics have voted to allow the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) to declare a strike, if necessary, to reach satisfactory contract agreements with one of Oregon's largest healthcare networks.
December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
More than 1,000 graduate student workers at Oregon State University (OSU) went on strike on Nov. 12 after more than a year of negotiations over a new contract, and remained on strike three weeks later as this issue went to press. It’s the first strike in the 25-year history of the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE), also known as American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 6069. The strike led to cancellation of many classes, labs, and discussion sections taught by graduate students.
December 3, 2024 | Yachats News
Bigfoot Beverages, the Oregon-based drinks distributor, has stopped recognizing its workers union amid an ongoing strike — a move that union representatives say is illegal.
December 3, 2024 | Portland Mercury
Staff members at Street Roots, the Portland nonprofit that publishes a weekly newspaper focused on homelessness and social justice issues, announced their plan to unionize with Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901. According to a union press release, 15 eligible staff members voted unanimously in favor of unionization.
December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
After a week-long strike — the first in the union’s history — Benton County workers represented by AFSCME Local 2064 ratified a new contract. Nearly 95% of the members supported the proposed contract in a Nov. 20 vote. AFSCME represents more than 300 Benton County employees, making up more than half of the county’s personnel.
December 2, 2024 | OPB
After three weeks, the Albany teachers strike is officially over. Members of the Greater Albany Education Association Monday night voted to ratify their new 2024-27 collective bargaining agreement. The Greater Albany school board followed by approving it in an emergency meeting.
December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
One week after Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer conceded the loss of her seat in Congress, president-elect Donald Trump asked her to take an even bigger job: cabinet member in his second presidential administration. Trump announced he’s nominating her for Secretary of Labor in a Nov. 22 post on his social media platform Truth Social.
December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
Bigfoot Beverages has withdrawn recognition of Teamsters Local 324 and Local 206, even as members continue striking. Eric Forrest and Andy Moore, co-presidents of the beverage distribution company, notified workers Nov. 26 that they no longer recognize either Teamsters local. In a letter to employees, Forrest and Moore said they received a petition from a majority of the bargaining unit showing that they no longer wish to be represented by the union.
🫱🏼🫲🏽 ORGANIZING & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
December 4, 2024 | WBUR
On Wednesday, Roxana Rivera, assistant to the president of the Local 32BJ, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, said the organization believes it has the necessary signatures to start the process… Rivera said once formed, the collective bargaining unit will be called App Drivers Union. She said the union is a “joint collaboration” between her group and a local chapter of The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, also known as The Machinists.
December 4, 2024 | NPR
From retail to fast food to nursing, one-day strikes have been a growing trend over the last decade. But what makes one-day strikes more or less effective than longer strikes? Do they achieve the same goals? On today's show, what do short strikes say about union power in the US and what can you accomplish with only 24 hours on the picket line.
December 3, 2024 | Inside Higher Ed
Higher education unionization surged under the Biden administration. Roughly 38 percent of graduate student workers are now unionized, as are more than a quarter of faculty, according to an August report from an organization that studies higher education labor trends. That National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions study noted that the ranks of union-represented grad workers especially grew in the past few years, increasing by 64,000 between 2021 and 2023. That was nearly triple the uptick over the previous eight years.
🖥️ LABOR & TECHNOLOGY
December 4, 2024 | Hotel Dive
…the delegation from the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 — Nevada affiliates of national hospitality union Unite Here known collectively as the Culinary Union — was there to see which robots were doing their service jobs. “Everything I saw [at CES], I asked myself, ‘How is this going to impact workers and their jobs?’ No one is talking about that over at the convention center,” said Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, of which Unite Here is a part.
🏛️POLITICS
December 4, 2024 | The New York Times
The social media excoriation of public sector employees is just one way that President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA loyalists are using to destroy what they see as strongholds of the left in government and academia.
December 4, 2024 | The Nation
Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale announced, ”Nearly 14 years after Scott Walker, in his own words, ‘dropped the bomb’ on Wisconsin public employees, Wisconsin workers can celebrate as the judicial branch restores collective bargaining rights to public employees in Wisconsin. Declaring Wisconsin’s union-busting Act 10 unconstitutional and void, over 60 sections of the 2011 anti-union law have now been struck down.”
December 3, 2024 | The Hill
The deal also faced pushback from the United Steelworkers union. “Our concerns are rooted in a wealth of evidence. Nippon Steel has a long history of strategically importing both substrate and finished products into the United States and countries as it offloads its 16 million tons of over-capacity in Japan and China, all to the detriment of American steelmaking and American steelworkers,” David McCall, international president for United Steelworkers, wrote earlier this year.
December 3, 2024 | Plant Services
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler added, “President Biden has made the creation of good union jobs a cornerstone of his climate strategy. We applaud DOE for being proactive in pulling labor and management together as the domestic battery industry is being established, and we look forward to working with DOE and DOL to develop high-road training standards for the entire battery supply chain.”
December 4, 2024 | LA Progressive
Nonetheless, some labor leaders, including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, have praised Trump’s pick. In a statement, Shuler said "Chavez-DeRemer, has built a pro-labor record in Congress, including as one of only three Republicans to cosponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.” Shuler also said the congresswoman “is one of eight Republicans to cosponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act.” But Shuler warned that “it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as Secretary of Labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda.”
🌳THE ENVIRONMENT
December 4, 2024 | People’s World
Recent actions at the 2024 International Association of Machinists (IAM) Grand Lodge National Convention in New York City point the way to increased labor movement leadership in combating climate change and creating a more just society. The IAM passed a resolution to include “Just Transition” in any actions oriented toward fighting climate change, creating new sustainable energy-related jobs, and fighting for environmental justice. The notion of a just transition aims to address provision of jobs and assistance to workers and communities hurt by climate change and those workers and communities impacted by the move to sustainable energy production and conservation.
⚖️A FAIR & JUST ECONOMY
December 4, 2024 | CBS News
Federal law currently allows the agency to issue certificates that let employers pay certain workers less than the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour based on the notion that their disabilities hinder productivity. Intended to help those with disabilities gain employment, the law currently has about 40,000 American workers laboring for half the minimum wage or less, according to the Labor Department.
🛒 BUY UNION-MADE PRODUCTS
How to fly union December 5, 2024 | NW Labor Press
Over the past decade, America’s largest airlines have become steadily more unionized. When the Labor Press started tracking airline unionization in 2012, the top airlines ranged from 70% to 85% union; today they’re 80% to 87% union. Delta — the largest airline by passenger miles traveled — remains the one big exception, with just 20% of its employees represented by a union.
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