UAW President Shawn Fain has four UAW election challengers, so far:
Will Shawn Fain be a one-term union president? His "big" plans for the union’s future pale in comparison to many federal watchdog reports that detail his culture of retaliation and love of throwing temper tantrums. At least four challengers hope to oust him:
Brian Keller, a Stellantis worker who has clearly been reading Barofsky’s reports and vows to “[e]nd retaliation and politics of fear” if elected.
Tricia Geiger, an international servicing representative serving Region 2B out of Ohio and Indiana. Her platform aims to "restore power, transparency, and results to the UAW membership."
Will Lehmen, a Mack Trucks worker who previously ran for president in 2022 and has remained an outspoken Fain critic.
Greg Mooney, a General Dynamics Land Systems multimedia specialist who is calling for union scrutiny of AI implementation in workplaces.
Industry watchers predict that UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock will also throw her hat in the ring. If that happens, we could see some real theatrics, given that Barofsky revealed how Fain plotted to oust Mock after she refused to approve questionable financial expenditures.
Officially, voting begins in August, so we won’t have to wait long for drama.
Meanwhile, the UAW’s focus on non-auto workers continues:
This week, Fain’s union bragged about an election win at Michigan Science Center. This was the third organizing drive for workers at the Smithsonian-affiliated museum after prior attempts by AFSCME.
The union also passed the three-week mark in a strike by around 4,000 Harvard University graduate student workers who are seeking higher compensation. Harvard currently pays Ph.D. students $50,000 annually on top of benefits including full tuition and subsidized health insurance, which the university has clarified, “add[s] up to $425,000 over a minimum of five years.” The UAW, meanwhile, is pushing for another $5,000 annually.
Over the past week, the union has relocated its picket lines to outside of Harvard President Alan M. Garber’s private home, where the Cambridge PD ordered protesters to cease violating a local noise ordinance. As it turns out, they were causing a ruckus at 6:30 a.m.
The UFCW’s REI boycott begins this weekend:
Two retailers, no contracts, same union strategy.
Last fall, Starbucks Workers United launched a 65-store strike on Red Cup Day, which is traditionally the coffeehouse giant’s highest sales day. That strike ebbed and flowed for four months, during which the union asked customers to boycott the company to little effect. In fact, Starbucks saw its comparable store sales go up 4%, and SWU still doesn’t have a contract despite more than four years of a nationwide organizing drive.
UFCW is hoping for different results, four years after their first “win” at REI in New York City. Following another failed round of first-contract bargaining, the union announced a May 15-25 strike in conjunction with the co-op’s Anniversary Sale event. UFCW is also asking customers to boycott while demanding a six-year contract term.
We’ll be watching to see if UFCW’s strike fares any better than SWU’s most recent attempts.
A healthcare system dialed back an off-script AI chatbot:
One too-chatty AI agent found itself on ice. That news comes from Tampa’s Moffitt Cancer Center, where a generative AI agent’s conversations were not going as planned during a pilot program.
In retrospect, Moffitt’s Senior VP and Chief Informatics and Technology Officer, Beth Lindsay-Wood, shared how the facility pulled the AI model for months to retool boundaries on appropriate subjects of conversation.
“Some AI agents try to build familiarity by referencing birthdays or previous conversations,” Lindsay-Wood revealed. “We decided some of that went too far for us, so we were very prescriptive about what we did and didn’t want the agent to do.” It truly is the wild, wild west, even for hospitals.
The NLRB isn’t rolling over on a Cemex-related matter:
The Brown-Forman Corp. saga isn't over yet. That’s the TL;DR version of this lengthy section of today’s roundup. Let’s back up a moment.
In March, the Sixth Circuit declined to enforce a Cemex bargaining order in Brown-Forman Corporation v. NLRB and remanded the case for review at the NLRB. In doing so, the court found that the Board “exceeded its adjudicatory authority,” thereby confirming that the Abruzzo Board was in overreach mode.
Aside from the facts of this case, which involved a whiskey maker’s conduct during a Teamsters election, the Sixth Circuit’s decision not to enforce a Cemex order seemed like a positive move for employers, since that was the Biden Board’s most aggressive standard and placed a chilling effect on employer speech. However, this isn’t a cut-and-dried matter.
The NLRB has now fired back with a petition for an en banc rehearing in Brown-Forman while arguing that the “majority’s errors create an issue of exceptional importance by improperly impinging on the Board’s adjudicative authority, the primary procedure it uses to announce policies under the National Labor Relations Act.”
In its petition, the Board says that the Sixth Circuit wrongly interpreted three Supreme Court cases–SEC v. Chenery Corp., NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., and Bell Aerospace–as placing strict limits on adjudicatory authority. The Board then argues that these cases affirm NLRB discretion to select either adjudication or rulemaking for making policy. Further, the Board quotes the Sixth Circuit dissent on how those Supreme Court cases “echo the same principle: the Board's policymaking playing field is massive."
Ultimately, the Board is concerned that the Sixth Circuit’s ruling could force it to engage in formal notice-and-comment rulemaking every time it wants to modify a standard. Granted, this formal process is a sounder form of rulemaking that stands up to scrutiny, but it’s also a longer process, and the Board is concerned that this places significant constraints on its power.
All of this is happening after the Abruzzo Board decided to create a punitive standard, Cemex, for issuing bargaining orders, when Gissel did the job just fine. Meanwhile, Cemex itself recently got punted by the Ninth Circuit, so lots of pieces are still moving here. Stay tuned!
