We almost immediately began organizing the entire private hospital industry in Nevada. When we started winning one National Labour Relations Board election after another, there were a lot of initial contract negotiations on my plate. But there have also been succession negotiations for public and private sector employees. Overall, from 2004 to 2008, I conducted incessant negotiations with employers, large and small, most of whom were strongly anti-worker and employed the country`s major anti-union companies. (For a full version of the story, please read my book Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell), published by Verso Press in 2012.) Framework Agreement (also city-wide agreement/contract): A standardized contract agreed to by unionized employers in a specific industry in a given city. A citywide contract can be reached through negotiations between a union and an industry association on behalf of a group of employers, or indirectly through “me-too” agreements or individual negotiations in which workers insist on reaching an established union standard. Case Studies: UNITE HERE The examples of high-participation negotiations led and won by workers discussed in this report show the way forward to achieve the kind of gains that workers in general desperately need, but especially when the country emerges from a catastrophic pandemic. Over the past year of COVID, corporate elites around the world — and most certainly in the U.S. — have shown how little they care about people who make profits. Structural test A mass participation action that demonstrates support for the union and/or specific collective bargaining proposals or demands. Deliberate conduct of structural tests, which are becoming increasingly public and increasingly at stake, allows the union to measure workers` participation and willingness to strike. In Watchung Hills, Larsen used a pre-negotiation session with management to let them know they needed more room to negotiate. “They didn`t like it at all.

They didn`t understand why there were so many people,” said local President Karnas. The board refused to move the venue, and when the first bargaining session took place, the WHREA bargaining team filled the school`s boardroom to exactly capacity – 25 members – while more than 50 members waited outside the room. When the school board chair and county bargaining team arrived, they refused to enter, saying it would violate the Fire Act. “It was clear that the board knew this was going to happen and that they had looked at the capacity of the space,” Karnas said. The association asked just enough members to join the larger group outside so that county negotiators could at least enter the room, but the board was still unwilling to enter into negotiations. They expressed all possible objections to the opening of negotiations: “that it will take forever, that you will not be able to pass effectively, that it will be disruptive”. They refused to submit proposals. The county`s chief negotiator called the NJEA office and complained about Larsen`s representation. But Karnas and the rest of the negotiating team stuck to their plan. With clear expectations from the association party communicated through the MET, they were confident that their expanded bargaining board would be disciplined and able to move things forward.

Eventually, they got the district to submit its proposals. And they got a bigger room. For Ms. Stern, the contract negotiation was intended to improve her working conditions, but also to ensure that she and her colleagues were able to provide for their patients. “I always see the contract as two parts. There is the panacea, what health insurance is, the increases, these things are important. But there`s also this whole other, I call it the soul contract with patients,” she said. So you have a soul contract, and then you have the contract with management, and it`s like, how do you negotiate these two contracts? And they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are closely linked.

Another issue that came to mind was Marriott`s “Green Choice” program, which gave hotel guests a financial incentive to opt out of daily cleaning. While the company led the way with the environmental benefits of washing fewer sheets daily, the program was also an excuse to schedule fewer housekeepers and save significant labor costs. The program reduced the number of household shifts overall, but also meant that management could no longer predict in advance what the demand for housekeeping would be. As a result, many more low-service maids were de facto placed on call, with no regular hours or guarantee that they could work enough hours in a given month to qualify for health insurance benefits. When her children were younger, Wei remembers feeling like she could never say no to a shift, even if it was on one of her birthdays. “It took me hours. I didn`t know the next day if I would be scheduled or not,” she said. “It really affected my life, my schedule. It was out of control. Tronc refused to accept voluntary recognition and made it clear through prisoner meetings and emails from all employees that management was vehemently opposed to the campaign.

But it was too late to slow down the organizational efforts already underway. Convinced that they needed new owners to achieve one of their bargaining goals, the organizing committee focused on eliminating Tronc. They used their reporting skills to write and publish a report detailing the exorbitant compensation of Tronc`s executives. Against the backdrop of the company`s financial difficulties and editorial cuts, the report was a strong indictment of the newspaper`s focus on short-term profits over actual investment in quality journalism. Shortly thereafter, the editorial board submitted an NLRB election. In the week before the vote, the paper`s top editors wrote to the editorial board to form the union trio, calling a vote for union representation a loss of employee representation: “The question for you is whether you want to preserve your independence and the independence of L.A. Or do you want someone else to negotiate on your behalf? In a 2015 interview with CNN, New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie told a national audience what New Jersey educators had known for years — that he thought the teachers` union deserved a slap in the face. [1] Since Christie first ran for national office in 2009, he had turned outright contempt for New Jersey`s public sector employees and their unions into a political brand aimed at particular hostility to the nearly 200,000 members of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA). Christie`s relentless efforts to cut benefits for K-12 employees, cut education funding, and expand charter schools in a largely union-friendly blue state had spurred his rapid rise in the Republican Party. Some of the issues negotiated today have been raised during the pandemic. For example, employers and unions are now discussing the length of paid leave for workers due to COVID-19 quarantine, shifting workload when employees are on sick leave due to COVID-19, and how teleworkers fit into traditional work structures and staffing policies.

While NJEA locals have conducted a survey on bargaining in the past, Larsen and DeVicaris insisted that, as part of the transition to open bargaining, member input should be solicited through so-called “targeted interviews” – structured one-on-one interviews – rather than a written questionnaire. “We`ve had people who have been members for 20 years and have gone through four or five contract cycles and done the paper survey every time, and yet when we have [focused conversations], they come back and say, `No one ever asked me for my opinion,`” Larsen said. They have never equated filling out a collective bargaining survey with asking what is important at the bargaining table. Collecting survey responses, engaging members throughout negotiations, and organizing workplace actions would be the job of grassroots leaders who formed the member engagement team, nicknamed “TETs.” Unions cannot demand that employers become a closed shop (meaning they can only hire unionized workers) or introduce a strict freight clause that prevents the employer from doing business with certain companies.