MASTERS ON LABORNEWS@WORK
MASTERS ON LABORNEWS@WORK
By Marick F. Masters*
Professor and Consultant
Email: [email protected]
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Masters on LaborNews@Work
Vol. 1, Issue 1, June 25, 2023
Tense Labor Times in June in Selected Industries
The summer of 2023 includes several major labor-management negotiations which have varying implications for not only the parties directly involved but also the broader economic picture.?This bi-weekly news brief highlights several sets of ongoing negotiations in selected industries.?It provides updates and descriptions of the main parties and key issues, plus more in certain cases.?Links to relevant news reports and websites are provided.?
The Writers’ 50+ Day Strike
The Writers Guild of America has been on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for more than 50 days since the beginning of May 2023.?The WGA is an amalgam of two unions representing different regions (the Writers Guild East and Writers Guild West).?The WGA represents 11,600 writers in this negotiation. Concurrent negotiations in this industry have been occurring between the Alliance and the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
The key issues revolve around minimum staffing, compensation (wage rates, residuals from television and streaming), job security (duration of employment), pensions and healthcare, and the restricted use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to prevent this technology from replacing writers.?
Tentative Agreement in Maritime with the Longshore Workers
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After more than a year of tense negotiations, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents 22,000 workers at 29 west coast ports, announced it had reached a tentative agreement with the Pacific Maritime Association on June 15, 2023.?Secretary of Labor Julie Su brokered the deal, which included a reported 32 percent wage hike over five years plus a significant bonus for workers.?On June 2, ILWU workers in Long Beach and Los Angeles effectively shut down operations of the port terminals in protest.?During the contract talks, shipping lines have selected to move some business from the west to east coast, where longshore workers are represented by the International Longshoremen Association.?
UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
The Parties: UPS and IBT
United Parcel Service (UPS) is a multinational package delivery and supply chain management firm, founded in 1907.?It employs about 536,000 people corporate-wide.?In 2022, it delivered an average of 24.3 million packages a day to destinations in 220 countries and territories.?UPS generated slightly more than $100 billion in revenue in that year, which yielded a net income of $11.55 billion, compared to $12.89 billion in 2021.?
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a union representing more than 1.2 million workers in a variety of industries, from transportation and government to healthcare and airlines.?It represents approximately 340,000 package delivery and warehouse workers employed by UPS.?In 2022, it had net assets of about $461.3 million and generated slightly more than $192 million in revenue from its per capita tax.
The Contract
IBT and UPS are renegotiating a five-year contract reached in 2018 that expires on July 31, 2023.?Negotiations proceed between the parties with various local/regional IBT union affiliates and corporate counterparts and at the national level.?The national talks center on the Teamsters National Master Agreement. Negotiations started on April 17, 2023.??Following its constitutional procedures, the IBT conducted a strike authorization vote, electronically, between the dates of May 15th and June 3rd.?On June 6, the IBT announced that rank-and-file had voted by 97 percent in support of authorizing a strike against UPS should the parties fail to reach a satisfactory agreement (from the workers’ perspective).
On June 23, 2023, the IBT rejected UPS’s economic counterproposal on wages, though it has agreed with the company on 55 non-economic items:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/teamsters-reject-ups-first-economic-192811812.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Major Bargaining Issues
Several major issues are at stake in the negotiations:
·??????The two-tier wage system;
·??????Higher wages for full-time and part-time workers;
·??????Creating relatively more full-time jobs;
·??????The status of forced overtime;
·??????The 6th day work week;
·??????Protections from heat and other workplace hazards (tentative agreement reached).
Auto Negotiations: The Detroit 3 and the UAW
The UAW and the Detroit 3 (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis) will kick off bargaining to renew their respective contracts which expire simultaneously on September 14, 2023.?At some point between the initial highly publicized meeting of their bargaining teams in July 2023 and this expiration date, the UAW will reveal its “target” for this round of talks.?The target is the company which will take the lead in negotiations which the UAW hopes will set a pattern in the industry.?Observers watching these developments anticipate that the chances of a strike may be high given the recent historic direct elections the UAW has held for its leadership.?These elections, concluded in March 2023, resulted in the first competitive campaigns that have been waged for the union’s president and other officers on its International Executive Board (IEB) since the rise of Walter Reuther in the late 1940s.?The direct elections represented a major constitutional reform of the UAW instigated by the government’s monitoring of the union’s administration and governance in response to the prosecution of several former high-ranking officials for financial misconduct in pursuit of personal gain and political ambition.
The UAW had approximately 383,000 members in 2022.?At its peak in the late 1970s, it had 1.5 million.?Its most recent low point occurred during the Great Recession when its membership fell to 355,000.?It currently represents about 146,000 hourly workers across the Detroit 3 (Ford has the largest number at 57,000).
The respective parties are positioning themselves for the bargaining in the hope of achieving their objectives with minimal damage (i.e. a strike).?But under new leadership from the dissident faction of the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the UAW has boldly declared that it is unafraid to invoke this ultimate economic weapon to achieve its objectives, which are (1) ending the two-tier wage systems the union conceded to enable the companies to survive the Great Recession/bankruptcy years toward the end of the first decade of this century; (2) restoring the cost-of-living-allowances (COLAs) for workers; and (3) ensuring job security in the rapid transition to electrification of the industry.?The Detroit 3 have committed to spending a combined $120 billion by the end of 2026 toward this transition.?In a recent video to prepare workers for their “defining moment” in this imminent round of negotiations, the UAW has stated that:
In a new video, the UAW shows the Big Three car companies made nearly $250 billion in profits over the last decade and can easily afford the union’s demands in upcoming contract negotiations.
UAW President Shawn Fain said: “The Big Three have collectively amassed so much money in North American profits over the last ten years, they could have bought every NBA team, every MLB team, and every NHL team, and they would still have 50 billion dollars left over.”
The video also highlights the bloated salaries Big Three CEOs paid themselves in 2022:
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“Big Three executives have lavished themselves with fat salaries while auto workers continue to live paycheck-to-paycheck, and can’t even keep up with inflation,” UAW Vice President Rich Boyer said. “Remember that the next time you hear them say ‘we are family.’ We are not family.”
The UAW has a strike fund in excess of $835 million.?If 46,000 GM workers were to strike for four weeks, with strike benefits set at $500 per striker per week, the UAW would expend $92 million.?
As noted, the Detroit 3 contracts expire on September 14th.?A lot is obviously at stake for both sets of parties.?Between 2019 and 2022, the Detroit 3 paid out an average total of $111,498 in profit-sharing (based on their North American profits) per hourly worker.
There are two sets of challenges which will complicate this round of negotiations.?One is the challenges the UAW faces is reconciling differences that may exist among rank-and-file and members of the International Executive Board who represent the traditional Administrative Caucus, founded during the Reuther era, versus the Members United (UAWD) Caucus, connected with UAWD.?The other is the difference that may exist within the management and board-of-director ranks in each of the Detroit 3.?These intra-company negotiations can prove as problematic as the negotiations between the companies and the union.
There is a path to reaching an acceptable compromise if the parties consider exploring options on how to meet the differences in such matters as job security, compensation, and structuring wages.?It will also be necessary to explore the time horizons for contractual obligations given the transition period the companies are in toward electrification is over the next 10 years.?Listening to what is not said at this stage is as important as understanding what is being said.
Selected Unions’ Membership, 2022 (Source: Annual financial disclosure forms, LM-2s filed with US Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards, OLMS).
The UAW
An Iconic Union Falls into Scandal
By Frank Goeddeke, Jr. ,?Marick F. Masters ??
1st Edition
First Published2021
eBook Published17 March 2021
Pub. Location New York
Imprint Routledge
Pages172
eBook ISBN9781003111610
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Trade Union Finance
How Labor Organizations Raise and Spend Money
1st Edition
First Published2023
eBook Published21 March 2023
Pub. Location London
Imprint Routledge
Pages289
eBook ISBN9781003335474
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*Marick F. Masters
Bio
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Marick F. Masters is a Professor of Business in the Department of Management and Information Systems of the Mike Ilitch School of Business (MISB) at Wayne State University (WSU).?At WSU, he has served as Director of Labor@Wayne, which included the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues (2009-2019) and Chair of the Departments of Accounting (MISB 2020-2022) and Finance (MISB 2019-2022).?His research and teaching interests lie in Negotiations and Conflict Resolution, Unions, Business and Labor Political Action, Federal Sector Labor-Management Relations, Human Resource Management and Employee Relations, Workplace Privacy, and Workplace Violence.?Dr. Masters received his Ph.D. in Labor and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois. He has served on the faculties of the Department of Management at Texas A&M University and the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was Director of MBA Programs and Associate Dean (Interim).?Marick Masters has published four books (Unions at the Crossroads [1997], The Complete Guide to Conflict Resolution in the Workplace [2002], The UAW: An Iconic Union Falls in Scandal [2021], and Trade Union Finance: How Labor Organizations Raise and Spend Money, [2023]) and more than 100 articles, proceedings, and columns.?He has directed several Executive Education programs, served on the boards of several professional associations, co-hosted a radio program, and been a guest columnist for several publications.?He has commented widely in the media, engaged extensively in alumni relations and fundraising, and received teaching and service awards.?Marick Masters has produced videos on Labor Arbitration, Employment Mediation, and Employment Arbitration (the latter two through a grant from the National Academy of Arbitrators), and conducted extensive research on the role of labor-management partnerships in the federal sector through a grant from the US Office of Personnel Management.?He is a senior partner in Albright, Irr, and Masters (AIM), a consulting firm based in New London, CT.?Marick Masters has consulted extensively with organizations in business, government, and the nonprofit sectors.?He has taught extensively in Executive Education programs and at the doctoral, MBA, and undergraduate levels.?His research has been published in leading journals in management, industrial relations, public administration, and political science.
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State Conciliator at Oregon Employment Relations Board
1 年What a great resource, thank you, Marick! I look forward to following.