Organized Labor

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    Farm Workers Union Battles With California Grower, Wonderful Nurseries

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    Wonderful Nurseries, owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, has sued the state to overturn a labor organizing law championed by the United Farm Workers.The allegations ricocheted through the agricultural fields and into a Central Valley courthouse, where one of California’s most powerful companies and an iconic union were trading charges of deception and coercion in a fight over worker representation.Some farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries — part of the Wonderful Company, the conglomerate behind famous brands of pomegranate juice and pistachios, as well as Fiji Water — said they had been duped into signing cards to join a union. On the other side, the United Farm Workers, the union formed in the 1960s by labor figures including Cesar Chavez, contends that the influential company, owned by the Los Angeles billionaires and powerhouse Democratic donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick, is trying to thwart the will of workers through intimidation and coercion.For months, the back and forth has played out before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which arbitrates labor fights between workers and growers, and in a courthouse not far from Wonderful’s sprawling fields.In May, the company filed a legal challenge against the state that could overturn a 2022 law that made it easier for farmworkers to take part in unionization votes.After vetoing a previous version over procedural concerns, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure following public pressure from President Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker. The U.F.W. heralded the bill’s enactment as a critical victory, but several big growers said that it would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process.The law paved the way for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, a process known simply as card check. Its passage coincided with an era of greater mobilization to unionize workers during the pandemic and a willingness to press demands for better working conditions and respect from employers, said Victor Narro, project director and labor studies professor at the U.C.L.A. Labor Center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What a Prolonged Rail Shutdown in Canada Would Mean for Trade

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    Rail labor disruptions in Canada tend to be brief, but a prolonged stoppage could have hurt farmers, automakers and other businesses.Late Thursday, the Canadian government ordered arbitration between the railroads and the rail workers’ union, a move that will end the shutdown. Read the latest coverage here.Canada’s two main railroads shut down for several hours on Thursday after contract talks with a labor union failed to reach a deal, forcing businesses in North America to grapple with another big supply chain challenge after several years of disruptions.The sprawling networks of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City are crucial to Canada’s economy and an important conduit for exports to the United States, Mexico and other countries. Had it lasted, the stoppage would have forced companies to find other modes of transport, but for some types of cargo, like grains, there are no practical alternatives to railroads.Canadian National’s network extends into the United States, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City has operations in the United States and Mexico. The companies’ networks outside Canada are still operating because their American and Mexican workers are covered by different labor agreements.What would a shutdown mean?Canada has recent experience with rail labor disruptions. Strikes in 2015 and 2019 ended in days. The country’s federal government has the power to press the rail workers union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, and management to accept an arbitrated settlement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Stellantis to Lay Off Up to 2,450 at Ram Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan

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    The move is the latest sign of trouble for the trans-Atlantic automaker, which has had sluggish North American sales and has said it needs to cut costs.Stellantis announced plans on Friday to lay off as many as 2,450 workers later this year at a pickup truck plant near Detroit, the latest sign of trouble for the trans-Atlantic automaker.The layoffs are expected to begin as early as Oct. 8 at the Ram truck plant in Warren, Mich., where production will be reduced to one shift from two, the company said on Friday.Stellantis’s chief executive, Carlos Tavares, has said the company needs to cut costs, and he has noted that at least one North American factory was operating at an unsatisfactory level.The company has been hit by sluggish sales in North America, where it generates most of its profits, as well as bloated costs and manufacturing inefficiencies. It reported last month that profits in the first six months of 2024 fell by nearly half to 5.6 billion euros (about $6 billion).“It is an understatement to say that the first-half 2024 results were disappointing and humbling,” Mr. Tavares said on a call with analysts after the earnings report. “This is a bump on the road that we are now fixing and that we are going to fight against to make sure that we can rebound from here, and that we fix the operational issues that we face.”The layoffs are related to a planned transition to a new version of the Ram pickup that is just going into production at a plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. The Warren plant will continue making an older version of the truck on one shift, the company said on Friday, adding that the actual number of workers affected will probably be lower than the 2,450 noted in a report to the state of Michigan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Apple Store Workers Get First U.S. Contract

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    The agreement at a Maryland store, the first to unionize, raises wages roughly 10 percent over three years and guarantees benefits and severance pay.Workers at the first unionized Apple Store in the country ratified a labor contract with the tech giant on Tuesday, after a year and a half in which bargaining appeared to stall for long stretches and union campaigns at other stores fell short.After the union announced the outcome, Apple said it did not dispute the result and was pleased to have an agreement.The contract, covering about 85 workers at a Towson, Md., store who voted to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in June 2022, will provide a typical worker with a raise of roughly 10 percent over the next three years.The workers will also effectively receive the same benefits as those in nonunion stores — a point of contention since the company introduced new benefits that excluded union stores in the fall of 2022 — as well as guaranteed severance pay.“We are giving our members a voice in their futures and a strong first step toward further gains,” the store’s bargaining committee said in a statement after reaching a deal with the company. “Together, we can build on this success in store after store.”The contract talks had appeared to bog down over equal access to the benefits that other stores receive, and over a nationwide change in Apple’s scheduling and availability policy for part-time workers. The union said the policy change would have forced roughly half a dozen Towson workers to quit because of conflicts with other commitments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Amazon Union Dissident Wins Election as President

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    The Amazon Labor Union has been divided over strategy and governance issues after winning a representation vote at a Staten Island warehouse in 2022.A dissident group has won control of the Amazon Labor Union, the only union in the country that formally represents Amazon warehouse workers, election results on Tuesday showed.The union won a representation vote at a Staten Island warehouse in 2022 but has yet to negotiate a contract as Amazon contests the outcome. The group has been divided over governance and strategy, as well as personality conflicts, after falling short in efforts to organize other Amazon facilities.A leader of the dissident group, Connor Spence, will take over, succeeding the founding president, Christian Smalls, who chose not to run for re-election. Mr. Spence defeated the union’s current recording secretary and a third candidate in an election that attracted roughly 250 votes, out of thousands of workers at the warehouse.The result was announced by Mr. Spence’s group and confirmed by Mr. Smalls.Mr. Spence’s group brought a lawsuit last year to force leadership elections within the union. The two sides announced a settlement in January that set the stage for this month’s election, which was overseen by a court-approved monitor.The dissident group, the A.L.U. Democratic Reform Caucus, argued that Mr. Smalls and other union leaders had too much power and were unaccountable to rank-and-file members, a charge that Mr. Smalls rejected.The caucus also claimed victory for the union’s three other officer positions. It said in a statement that after a long fight to reform the union, “we are relieved to finally be able to turn our full attention toward bringing Amazon to the table.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Movie Editors and Animators Fear A.I. Will Kill Jobs

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    Actors and writers won strict limits on artificial intelligence in last year’s contract negotiations, but editors and artists face a growing challenge.For most of his four-plus decades in Hollywood, Thomas R. Moore has worked as a picture editor on network television shows.During a typical year, his work followed a pattern: He would spend about a week and a half distilling hours of footage into the first cut of an episode, then two to three weeks incorporating feedback from the director, producers and the network. When the episode was done, he would receive another episode’s worth of footage, and so on, until he and two other editors worked through the TV season.This model, which typically pays picture editors $125,000 to $200,000 a year, has mostly survived the shorter seasons of the streaming era, because editors can work on more than one show in a year. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, Mr. Moore fears that the job will soon be hollowed out.“If A.I. could put together a credible version of the show for a first cut, it could eliminate one-third of our workdays,” he said, citing technology like the video-making software Sora as evidence that the shift is imminent. “We’ll become electronic gig workers.”Mr. Moore is not alone. In a dozen interviews with editors and other Hollywood craftspeople, almost all worried that A.I. had either begun displacing them or could soon do so.As it happens, these workers belong to a labor union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which can negotiate A.I. protections on their behalf, as actors’ and writers’ unions did during last year’s strikes. Yet their union recently approved a contract, by a large margin, that clears the way for studios to require employees to use the technology, just as Mr. Moore and his colleagues have feared.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Caterpillar Factory in Mexico Draws Complaint of Labor Abuses

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    The Biden administration declined to pursue a union complaint of labor abuses in Mexico, raising new concerns about offshoring.Over the past few years, as major manufacturers have announced plans to ramp up production in Mexico, labor unions have raised concerns that American jobs will be sent abroad.Now, the concerns have prompted the United Automobile Workers union, a prominent backer of President Biden, to criticize an administration decision not to pursue accusations of labor abuses by a Mexican subsidiary of Caterpillar, the agriculture equipment maker.In late June, the administration informed a group of unions that it would not pursue a complaint that the subsidiary had retaliated against striking union members by making it difficult for them to find alternative employment, a form of blacklisting.The government’s ability to police such violations, under a provision of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement, is meant to reduce the incentive for American employers to move jobs to Mexico in search of weaker labor protections. The U.A.W. argues that, by declining to use its authority under the trade agreement in this case, the Biden administration may be encouraging companies to relocate work.Caterpillar workers in Mexico “face harassment and blacklisting for daring to stand up, with no help from the U.S.M.C.A.,” Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., said in a statement. The U.A.W. was among several labor groups that brought the complaint.The Biden administration would not comment on the complaint, but pointed to two dozen other cases it had pursued under the trade agreement. Caterpillar did not respond to requests for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.A.W. Monitor Reveals Details About Investigation Into Union Leader

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    A court-appointed monitor said he was looking into allegations that a union official was punished for resisting actions that would have benefited the union president’s partner and her sister.A court-appointed monitor disclosed on Monday that he was investigating accusations that the president of the United Automobile Workers union retaliated against a vice president for resisting actions that would have benefited the president’s domestic partner and her sister.The monitor made the disclosure in a court filing seeking access to internal union documents as part of an investigation that began in February into potential financial misconduct.Since then, the monitor and the union have clashed over how much access the monitor should have to union documents, and the pace at which the union has produced them. In Monday’s filing, the monitor, Neil Barofsky, sought an order granting him extensive access.The union declined to comment.The monitor was appointed as part of a 2021 consent decree that ended a federal corruption case against the union. It concerned 11 top officials who were convicted of felonies, including two former U.A.W. presidents.The U.A.W.’s current president, Shawn Fain, was an obscure union official before winning the top job in March 2023 on a platform of reforming the union, getting tough with large U.S. automakers and organizing nonunion companies.Under Mr. Fain, the union waged a set of six-week-long strikes last year that won members substantial wage and benefit increases. The union then capitalized on the momentum of the strike by unionizing a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., this April — the first foreign-owned plant in the South to be unionized — before losing another high-profile election in May at two Mercedes plants in Alabama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More