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
There are five unions on strike in six cities across Oregon right now. 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 a petition to support Benton County Workers, and RSVP for your shift on the picket line.
Sign this pledge to withhold support and donations to OSU until CGE has a fair contract.
Take action right now to support Greater Albany Educators, click here to sign onto a letter to the Greater Albany Public Schools Superintendent.
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
Solidarity Rally for Nurses of Providence Medford
Monday, November 18| 3:30pm-5:00pm | Providence Medford, 111 Crater Lake Ave, Medford
Nurses are standing together to raise standards for nurses, patients and communities within Providence--Oregon’s largest health care system and one of the state’s largest corporations. The contract for nurses at Medford expired in March and they have been in bargaining since January 2024. Nurses are asking for improved health benefits, competitive wages and differentials, and contract language to improve staffing.RSVP on Facebook
ONA Picket in Roseburg
Wednesday, November 20 | 8:00am-1:00pm 2700 NW Stewart Pkwy, Roseburg
ONA RNs at Mercy are picketing to win a fair contract that allows them to recruit & retain nurses to better care for their community! Show up to support local nurses Nov. 20! Click here to RSVP
🫱🏼🫲🏽SEIU 503 REJOINS OREGON AFL-CIO
November 13, 2024 | SEIU 503
“In a powerful move to protect and amplify the voices of working Oregonians, SEIU 503, Oregon’s largest labor Union, will re-affiliate with the Oregon AFL-CIO, the statewide federation of labor Unions. This partnership comes at a critical time when 80% of SEIU 503’s members are preparing to bargain new contracts for 2025 and will fortify the strength of the state’s labor movement against an incoming anti-worker presidential administration that prioritizes profits over people.”
November 13, 2024 | Oregon Capital Chronicle
After nearly 20 years apart, two of Oregon’s largest labor groups will officially join forces again. Service Employees International Union Local 503, which represents about 72,000 caregivers, announced Wednesday that it will rejoin the Oregon AFL-CIO, a federation with more than 300,000 unionized Oregonians in industries including construction, education, health care and manufacturing.
November 14, 2024 | OregonLive
Graham Trainor, president of Oregon AFL-CIO, said his federation and SEIU 503 are “powerful, sophisticated organizations” that will become stronger by joining together.
🌊 STRIKE WAVE HITS OREGON
November 13, 2024 | KEZI
Benton County employees hit the picket lines on November 13 against what they said are unfair wages and labor practices, after working without a contract since July 2024.
November 12, 2024 | OPB
Hundreds of CGE members participated in a walkout and picket at OSU’s Memorial Union Quad on Tuesday. The graduate workers, many wearing pink shirts with the word “solidarity” on the front, marched along the quad and chanted sayings such as, “We won’t work, we won’t teach, until we can afford to eat.”
November 13, 2024 | OPB
Hundreds of teachers, families and children marched and chanted on sidewalks throughout Albany Tuesday morning, many with red and white signs in hand. It was the first day of the Greater Albany school district’s first strike in nearly 40 years.
November 12, 2024 | The Register-Guard
We are here to deliver a message to Bigfoot Beverages and the Franz bosses," Graham Trainor, President of the Oregon ALF-CIO, said as a crowd of Eugene food workers gathered for a rally at Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza on Monday. "You have picked a fight with the wrong people and we will not back down.
November 12, 2024 | Eugene Weekly
“We’re here to recognize and appreciate the resilience, the sacrifice and the bravery that you and your co-workers of the fighting Teamsters and the fighting bakers union have shown by building a strong campaign and taking this brave stance,” Oregon AFL-CIO President Graham Trainor said.
November 12, 2024 | Daily Emerald
On Monday, roughly 80 union members and supporters gathered at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza in Eugene. They rallied in support of the ongoing strikes being carried out by the Teamsters Local 206 and 324 against Bigfoot Beverages in Eugene, Bend, Coos Bay, Newport and the Bakers Union 144 strike being carried out against Franz Bakery in Eugene-Springfield.
November 11, 2024 | KVAL
If you're not part of a union, reach out to a union and get representation and fight," said Teamsters Local 206 secretary-treasurer Geoff Stewart. "These corporations have everybody brainwashed thinking that you need them. No - they need you and you have the power and you have the right to fight for that power."
November 11, 2024 | Teamsters
Amid an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike at Bigfoot Beverages, Teamsters Locals 206 and 324 have charged the company with additional ULPs for unlawfully threatening workers for engaging in federally protected union activity. Bigfoot workers went on strike September 19 after Bigfoot attempted to unlawfully eliminate a core pension benefit and lied to the bargaining committee.
📣 OREGON LABOR
November 13, 2024 | Daily Emerald
At 12 p.m., approximately 150 United Academics members and community supporters rallied outside of Johnson Hall to deliver a letter of support to the University of Oregon administration.With over 650 signatures, UA’s main grievance at the “Oregon Falling” rally concerns faculty pay.
November 5, 2024 | OregonLive
Measure 119, which would ease the way for cannabis workers to form unions, passed on Tuesday, leading 55%-45%. The measure will require cannabis businesses to enter “labor peace agreements,” promising to stay neutral when union organizers communicate with their workers.
✊🏽 WORKERS’ RIGHTS
November 13, 2024 | The New York Times
The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Wednesday that companies may not compel workers to attend meetings on the downsides of unionization, a tactic that unions say stifles worker organizing. The decision, the latest in a slew of labor board rulings under the Biden administration aimed at supporting workers’ right to unionize, stems from a complaint over Amazon’s conduct before a successful union election in 2022 at a Staten Island warehouse, the first Amazon warehouse in the nation to unionize.
November 13, 2024 | Reuters
Amazon.com (AMZN.O) made unlawful promises and threats during mandatory meetings to discourage unionizing at a New York City warehouse, a U.S. labor board said on Wednesday while banning employers from holding such meetings moving forward.
🚆TRANSPORTATION
November 13, 2024 | Orlando Weekly
The National Mediation Board, a federal agency overseeing labor relations in the airline and rail industries, has rejected an attempt by Brightline to delay a union election for their onboard service attendants in Florida, who recently announced their intent in to unionize with the Transport Workers Union.
November 13, 2024 | Associated Press
The flurry of contract agreements announced early this fall — including two more Wednesday — offer evidence that major railroads and their unions are working to avoid the standoffs that led them to a brink of a national strike two years ago. Both sides are also now keenly aware that President-elect Donald Trump — who has a track record of supporting big businesses — would be the one ultimately appointing the people who would help resolve the contract dispute this time if they can’t work something out themselves.
November 13, 2024 | Colorado Newsline
Pilots from Frontier Airlines and other members of the Air Line Pilots Association, International picketed outside Frontier’s Denver headquarters Tuesday as they continue to negotiate a contract for compensation that’s more in line with that of competitors. Fred Jenkins, an ALPA spokesperson who has been a Frontier pilot for about 10 years, said the picket intended to show unity to management in support of a contract that “we believe we have earned and represents our outsized role that we play for the success of Frontier Airlines.”
🏛️POLITICS
November 12, 2024 | Forward Kentucky
“The union vote has always been the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and obviously they weren’t swayed in the way that people expected to vote for Donald Trump,” said Bill Londrigan, past president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO. “It’s a good sign that union members are still a more reliable voting bloc and really do care about this country.” Niedzwiadek quoted Steve Smith, the AFL-CIO’s deputy director for public affairs: “There were much bigger issues afoot for Democrats in this election, but if you’re looking for bright spots, labor was one of them.”
November 12, 2024 | People’s World
Post-election exit polls for the AFL-CIO showed 57% of union members and their households voted for Trump’s Democratic foe, Vice President Kamala Harris. That included 58% in Pennsylvania and 67% in Minnesota. And Black women, such as Pringle and Verrett, mobilized and voted for Harris, who is African-American and Asian-American. She won them 87%-9%.
November 12, 2024 | ABC News
In recent years, the labor movement received a makeover. A surge in organizing and a swell of popularity coincided with the tenure of President Joe Biden, who some labor leaders have praised as the most pro-union president in the nation’s history. The impending arrival of President-elect Donald Trump has thrust some of those gains into question, experts told ABC News.
November 11, 2024 | The Nation
Endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers; the International Association of Machinists; the Service Employees International Union; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; and dozens of other national and international labor organizations, Harris benefited from internal education campaigns that contrasted her pro-union agenda with that of the historically anti-union Donald Trump.
November 11, 2024 | The New York Times
Besides the Harris campaign and its affiliated political action committees, few economic or political sectors placed larger bets than organized labor on Vice President Kamala Harris’s winning the presidency. And few might reap more consequences from the incoming Trump administration.
⚖️COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
November 12, 2024 | Fox 55
The local UAW and Fort Wayne General Motors plant have come to an agreement to avoid a strike. According to a Local 2209 bargaining committee report, the two sides agreed on several conditions that will allow senior members to return to their original jobs. The conflict started in September when the plant looked to lay off 250 temporary employees.
November 12, 2024 | Hawaii News Now
Over 2,500 workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 5 voted to ratify a new contract at five Marriott-operated hotels in Waikiki. Employees approved the deal Monday for the Royal Hawaiian, Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, Sheraton Waikiki, Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort, and the Westin Moana Surfrider. Their union says the contract comes with raises and a management commitment to address workload and staffing concerns. The Sheratons on Maui and Kauai will take ratification votes later this week.
November 12, 2024 | The Hollywood Reporter
Animation workers marched to the DreamWorks Animation offices on Tuesday to deliver a petition demanding a “fair deal” less than a week before their union contract negotiations restart. Workers and supporters walked to the company’s location in Glendale to deliver a petition that the union previously presented to Netflix during a similar demonstration on Oct. 24.
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