General Organizing Discussion • Page 2

Rail Workers Oust Union President Who Backed Labor Deal

Get ‘em out!

 

President of our local gave us Starbucks gift cards today. Lol we told him he fucked up. Old guard needs to be thrown out across the Labor movement.

 

The grad students at my university are voting on whether to unionize today and tomorrow! Very much expected that there will be no issues with the election and there wasn't even that much of a propaganda campaign by the admin. Although it will apparently take a while for the official results to come out because of the mail-in votes from people off-campus.

I'm super excited about this, although slightly annoyed that I wasn't allowed to vote because I'm new at the school and haven't held an "academic position" (teaching or research) on-campus yet

 

question. my union is in negotiations with our company. we called a strike vote and in response the president is calling a "state of emergency" rescinding vacation and shit like he's the president of a fuckin country.

my questions is, is this retaliation?

 

It definitely can/should be viewed that way, and you all might want to look at filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge. The average arbitrator, for instance, would definitely view it as suspect. Especially if nothing changed operationally in a meaningful way before and after calling for the vote. BUT as you likely know, Labor Board charges take a long time to get resolved, sometimes a year or more (it’s fucked!). I’d be looking to call him out in newsletters, petitions, and any community outreach you all might be doing. It’s good in these situations to have both a short-term (job actions and public outreach) and long-term (ULP) plan to respond.

 

thanks! Much appreciated