Here are the highlights of what you missed if you weren’t at our May Labor Community Briefing call. Want the full analysis, the data behind these headlines, and the chance to ask questions in real time? Join us on the next call.

The Q1 data tells a clear story: the Teamsters dominated the organizing landscape, filing more petitions than any other union, and hospitals remain the single most targeted industry. Election timelines continue to compress, with elections happening faster than at any point in recent memory, a dynamic that continues to favor unions. ULP charge patterns in Q1 also reflect a new reality: disappointed union members filing charges against their own unions is now a measurable trend.

This month’s call featured a deep dive on the Southern Workers Assembly, the fastest-growing organizing infrastructure most employers have never heard of. SWA is not a union and cannot organize workers directly, but it is funded by every major union and operates as a feeder system for traditional organizers. Their “blitz” model deploys volunteer teams to factory gates during shift changes across multiple employers and industries simultaneously, creating concentrated pressure in single cities for several consecutive days. Blitz activity is spreading from the Carolinas to Texas and Virginia.

REI workers launched a boycott on May 15 timed to the company’s Anniversary Sale, their highest-revenue period, with 11 unionized stores still lacking a contract four years after the first election. A 12th store (San Diego) has an election scheduled for May 27–28. Meanwhile, Starbucks Workers United is planning a “Community Day of Action” on May 23, asking customers to delete the Starbucks app. But the data from SWU’s four-month, 65-store strike last fall is instructive: Starbucks Q1 comparable sales rose 4%, and Red Cup Day, the biggest revenue day of the year, saw zero sales impact from the boycott call.

Also notable: workers at the original Pike Place Starbucks filed a petition on April 3 and withdrew it on May 5 after baristas publicly described SWU’s deceptive organizing tactics, including disguising an organizing meeting as a “casual meetup.” 

The constitutional challenge to the NLRB’s structure is gaining real traction. In Findhelp d.b.a. Aunt Bertha v. NLRB, a Fifth Circuit judge issued a permanent injunction blocking the Board from prosecuting a ULP case, finding that member removal protections are unconstitutional because the Board’s executive functions (investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating ULP charges) take it outside the Humphrey’s Executor exemption. The D.C. Circuit reached a similar conclusion in Wilcox v. Trump, though on narrower grounds. The Third and Ninth Circuits have taken the opposite view, refusing injunctive relief to employers raising the same challenge, setting up what looks like an inevitable Supreme Court showdown.

Shawn Fain is facing a crowded field of challengers heading into the UAW election, with at least four announced opponents and UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock widely expected to enter the race. Fain ousted Mock after she refused to approve questionable financial expenditures, and the federal monitor ordered her reinstatement. Thirteen federal monitor reports have detailed a culture of retaliation and financial irregularities under Fain’s leadership. On Cemex: the Board’s en banc petition argues the Sixth Circuit’s ruling improperly constrains its adjudicative authority, while the Ninth Circuit separately punted, affirming a bargaining order under the older Gissel standard rather than engaging with Cemex at all.