-
Long-term care workers in Wyoming vote to join the USW Workers at a long-term care facility in Cheyenne, Wyo., are now USW members after voting to join the union earlier this month. The 40 new members work at Edgewood Healthcare Sierra Hills in a variety of positions, including Registered Nurses (RN), Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA), dietary aides, housekeepers, bus drivers, and more. Taylor Ewig, who has worked as a CNA at the facility for nine years, said the most important issues that she and her co-workers hope to address are staffing levels and wages. “During night shift, there are only two CNAs taking care of 80 patients,” Ewig said. “We also have a number of hospice patients who require a higher level of care.” This is one of the many reasons why the group reached out to the AFL-CIO last December and were connected to the USW. Within just three days, they were able to collect enough cards to file for a union election. District 11 Staff Representative William Wilkinson, who worked with Ewing during the drive, said this excitement reveals what he’s known for a while—that Wyoming is ripe for organizing. “These deeply red states pay sub-par wages and safety is not prioritized,” said Wilkinson. “They’re also changing expectations regularly. That alone is driving a lot of organizing there right now.” Ewig said she looks forward to getting to the table and being able to talk honestly with management about how to improve conditions. “I’m just so proud of all my co-workers for coming together and doing this,” Ewig said. “We’ve never been so close.” — Feb 26
-
Planned U.S. Steel Sale Meets Anger, Skepticism: USW Vows to Fight to Make Sure Company Lives Up to Obligations USW leaders and lawmakers across the political spectrum were united in voicing their disapproval when U.S. Steel announced in December that Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp. was planning to purchase the iconic American company for $15 billion. “To say we’re disappointed in the announced deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon is an understatement,” International President David McCall said when the bid was announced on Dec. 18. “It demonstrates the same greedy, shortsighted attitude that has guided U.S. Steel for far too long.” Fighting for Jobs, Benefits While the union voiced its strong objections to the planned acquisition, McCall assured members and retirees that the union would fight with every tool at its disposal to protect good jobs, benefits and retirement plans. “Our union intends to exercise the full measure of our contract to ensure that whatever happens next with U.S. Steel, we protect the good, family-sustaining jobs we bargained,” McCall said. “We also will urge government regulators to carefully scrutinize this acquisition.” Nippon Steel is Japan’s largest, and the world’s fourth-largest, steel company, with an annual output of more than 44 million metric tons. By comparison, U.S. Steel’s output in 2022 was about 14.5 million metric tons. Supporting Cliffs Bid McCall pointed out that U.S. Steel management failed to consult with USW members before moving ahead with its plans. “Neither U.S. Steel nor Nippon reached out to our union regarding the deal, which is in itself a violation of our partnership agreement that requires U.S. Steel to notify us of a change in control or business conditions,” McCall said. “We remained open throughout this process to working with U.S. Steel to keep this iconic American company domestically owned and operated, but instead, it chose to push aside the concerns of its dedicated work force and sell to a foreign-owned company.” In January, less than a month after U.S. Steel announced the planned sale, the USW filed grievances against the company, in part because of management’s failure to live up to its obligation to notify the union. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio agreed and said that if U.S. Steel must be sold, the winning bid should go to Ohio-based Cleveland Cliffs, which announced an effort, with the strong support of the USW, to purchase U.S. Steel after the 123-year-old company announced in August that it was on the market. “Nippon and U.S. Steel have insulted American steelworkers by refusing to give them a seat at the table and raised grave concerns about their commitment to the future of the American steel industry,” Brown said. In a letter to members at U.S. Steel, McCall and District 7 Director Mike Millsap noted that the company has a history of broken commitments, including shutting down steelmaking and other operations at Great Lakes and Granite City. U.S. Steel also broke a promise of more than $1 billion in new and updated technology in Western Pennsylvania, and instead purchased Big River Steel. USS has shut down the East Chicago Tin Mill, the UPI Tin Mill and idled tin operations at the Gary plant. In addition, the company shut down Lone Star Steel, the Lorain, Ohio, plant and coke batteries in Clairton, Pa. Rather than changing course, Nippon intends to follow the current U.S. Steel business plan, McCall said. National Security Concerns In addition to the issue of jobs, shifting ownership of U.S. Steel, once the world’s most valuable company, outside the United States raises national security concerns, given the need for steel in infrastructure, military and defense applications. For their part, many government officials reacted with similar skepticism when they learned of U.S. Steel’s plans, echoing the USW’s concerns about jobs as well as economic and national security. U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a longtime USW ally whose home sits across the street from the entrance to U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thompson Works in Braddock, Pa., said he would work vigorously to prevent the sale. “It’s absolutely outrageous that U.S. Steel has agreed to sell themselves to a foreign company. Steel is always about security — both our national security and the economic security of our steel communities,” Fetterman said. “I am committed to doing anything I can do, using my platform and my position, to block this foreign sale.” Fetterman’s fellow Pennsylvanian, Sen. Bob Casey, also voiced strong objections to the sale, as did a group of Republican lawmakers who wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking her to actively oppose the acquisition. The government “can and should block the acquisition of U.S. Steel by NSC, a company whose allegiances clearly lie with a foreign state and whose record in the United States is deeply flawed,” a group of three conservative Republican senators wrote to Yellen. Dan Simmons, president of Local 1899 at U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works in Illinois, said he initially hoped the potential sale would bring a “fresh vision” to the company, but the Nippon acquisition did not present that opportunity. “This entire process was not conducted as it should have been, but rather in typical USS fashion of keeping the union in the dark,” Simmons said. “We now find ourselves facing a new owner with the same USS leadership and business plan that, frankly, got us here in the first place.” In addition, McCall said, trusting an iconic U.S. company to overseas control raises concerns about fair trade. The United States currently imposes 12 different anti-dumping tariffs on Japanese steel, McCall said. U.S. Steel, he said, “has been an active participant in these anti-dumping cases. We should question if Nippon Steel gets control of U.S. Steel, it could use its status as a ‘domestic producer’ to work against the trade cases from the inside,” he said. “Nippon Steel could order U.S. Steel to change its longstanding position.” Regulatory Review Still, the agreement between U.S. Steel and Nippon is not yet a done deal. Federal regulators, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which includes leaders from the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security and Justice, will review the bid, as will President Joe Biden. Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, said the president “believes the purchase of this iconic American-owned company by a foreign entity — even one from a close ally — appears to deserve serious scrutiny in terms of its potential impact on national security and supply chain reliability.” Regardless of what the future holds for the company, McCall vowed that the USW will continue to fight to make sure that its owners live up to their obligations to workers and retirees. “This includes not just the day-to-day commitments of our labor agreement but also significant obligations to fund pension and retiree insurance benefits that are the most extensive in the domestic steel industry,” he said. “No union has actively engaged in more acquisitions in its core industries than the USW, and rest assured, our union will hold management at U.S. Steel accountable to every letter of our collective bargaining and other existing agreements.” — Feb 13
-
Members Ratify WestRock Contract: New Master Agreement Covers 5,500 Paperworkers in 24 States Members at more than four dozen WestRock locations across 24 states voted in December to ratify a new four-year master agreement covering more than 5,500 USW members. The agreement, which members ratified by a more than 3-to-1 margin through mail-in ballots, covers paperworkers at 15 mills and 36 converter plants. Aggressive Agenda International Vice President Luis Mendoza, who leads bargaining in the union’s paper sector, credited members for setting an aggressive bargaining agenda and demonstrating unwavering solidarity despite challenging circumstances. “This bargaining team was determined to win a contract that would create stability and security for members now and into the future,” Mendoza said. “And they achieved that goal by working together.” The new master agreement went into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, and covers contracts with scheduled expirations through the end of 2027. The first year of the agreement includes a 3.25percent wage increase, with a 3 percent wage increase in each subsequent year. The master agreement covers workers at WestRock mills and converter plants in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Best Deal in Years Member Tim Cooks, chief steward for Local 819 in Fresno, Calif., has worked for WestRock for 17 years and said it was the best agreement he’s seen during his tenure with the company. “All in all, we are moving in the right direction,” said Cooks. In addition to raising wages, the contract held the line on health care costs and provided members with significant improvements to retirement contributions and vacation. “In this environment, this was as good a deal as we could have gotten,” said Billy Smith, president of Local 9-0425 in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. In addition to the across-the-board financial gains, the contract contained no concessions and eliminated a two-tier wage system that members had made it a priority to abolish. The agreement also improved life insurance and short-term disability benefits, while accelerating benefits for new hires. Smith said that eliminating two-tier wages and improving benefits – particularly for newer workers – would improve members’ lives while also strengthening the union. “That’s a big deal,” Smith said. “We brought a lot of people up, and that’s what we’re here to do.” New Ownership An added challenge that members faced as negotiations got underway was the announcement of a proposed merger of WestRock with Smurfit Kappa, one of the largest producers of containerboard in Europe, with additional operations in Mexico, Central America and South America. Smurfit Kappa announced in September that it had reached an agreement to acquire WestRock, with a plan to close the transaction in mid-2024. Mendoza said that the union still has concerns about the planned merger, which would make the new company one of the largest, if not the largest paper and packaging company in the world by revenue. “This transaction raises questions for workers, including who will be leading the combined company into the future, how they will manage their work force, and how the results could affect USW members,” Mendoza said. The USW’s agreement with WestRock does include a successorship clause that requires any new owners to act in accordance with the terms of the union’s existing collective bargaining agreements. SAVE THE DATE: PAPER CONFERENCE The USW will hold the 2024 National Paper Bargaining Conference from Aug. 5 to Aug. 8 in Austin, Texas. The conference marks the first time in six years that USW paperworkers will gather in person to network, learn, build solidarity and, importantly, set the union’s National Paper Bargaining Policy. For more about the conference, including registration, hotel and travel information, visit usw.org/events. — Feb 13
-
Brewing Success: USW Members Turn Out High-Quality Beer at Historic Minnesota Company Customers who purchase beer from Minnesota’s August Schell Brewing are getting far more than just a high-quality, union-crafted beverage. In each case, buyers get a package of top-to-bottom USW-made products, including the beer, the boxes, the bottles – even the sand used to make the glass. Down the line, USW members ensure customers receive the highest quality merchandise on the market. “It all starts in the brew hall, and we follow it right on through to the package on the dock,” Eric Stade, president of Local 11-118, said of the brewery workers’ dedication to making top-of-the-line suds. Stade’s local, which represents the approximately 25 hourly workers at the Schell brewing site in New Ulm, is one of four USW units involved in producing the contents of those cases of Schell beer. The others include Local 1259, which makes boxes for PCA, Local 129M, which produces bottles for Anchor Glass, and Local 460G, which supplies the sand used in the glassmaking process. All four are located in Minnesota. Historic Location The Schell brewery, which sits along the Cottonwood River in the small, picturesque town of New Ulm, is the oldest brewery in the Midwest, and the second-oldest in the country. The company, founded by German immigrant August Schell in 1860, is still owned and operated by Schell’s descendants. The charming 22-acre worksite resembles a Victorian-era German village, giving visitors the feeling they’ve been transported back in time. The company regularly celebrates that heritage with annual Bock Fest and Oktoberfest events, while maintaining an on-site museum, open to the public, that tells the colorful story of the brewery’s history. Inside the production facility, the beer-making process is far from old-fashioned. USW members combine old-school recipes with new technologies to create an award-winning lineup of beers. The Schell brand is a legacy that workers hope to uphold for generations to come. Stade, who has worked at the brewery for more than 20 years, said he takes pride in knowing that he’s contributing a chapter to that story. “This is my little thumbprint on the continuation of something,” he said. “That’s kind of neat.” Dedicated to Quality Like Stade, the other two dozen or so USW members at the Schell site take similar pride in their work, whether their role is in brewing, maintenance, bottling, distribution or the warehouse. “The pride runs far deeper than just the family,” said company Vice President Kyle Marti, a sixth-generation descendant of founder August Schell. “We are very lucky to have the employees we have here.” The family puts their company's future directly in those dedicated workers’ hands, entrusting them with century-old recipes and encouraging them to develop new beer flavors of their own creation. Brewer Jordan Walls, who started working at Schell in September of 2022, created the company’s peanut butter porter, one of the brewery’s more popular limited-edition flavors. Extensive Lineup Walls and the other USW members at Schell put in five- or six-day weeks, producing between 6,500 and 7,500 cases per day, as well as kegs. During a recent USW@Work visit to the site, the brewery had 19 varieties of beer available in the public tap house, along with two non-alcoholic sodas. One of those, the 1919 draft root beer, is a throwback to when the company had to survive Prohibition by selling root beer and other non-alcoholic beverages. Schell’s offerings are available for purchase in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and North and South Dakota. Many of the workers at Schell are also regular customers, sometimes stopping in the tap house at the end of their shifts to socialize with co-workers before heading home. The large room, resembling an old German beer hall, is also where Local 11-118 members gather for their union meetings. On weekends, the taproom, and the adjacent outdoor beer garden, are packed with locals and tourists sampling Schell’s craft brews and soaking in the atmosphere, which includes peacocks, deer and other wildlife roaming the grounds. One of Schell’s products, its Nordeast amber lager, has become so popular locally that local distributors once had two- to three-week waiting lists for customers. The company eventually ramped up production to catch up with the growing demand. Partners with USW Marti said he was proud of the fact that the family-owned company has a strong partnership with its small USW work force, pointing out that negotiations for their most recent contract took 45 minutes, with only two proposals passing across the table between the two sides before they reached a tentative agreement. “These are great people,” he said, gesturing toward USW members at work. “People come here with the idea that it’s a lifetime job.” Many of the workers at Schell express a similar level of respect for their employers. Production worker and soon-to-be brewer David Widner said the good wages and benefits at Schell allowed him to buy a home, and his union contract provides him with a sense of security. “I’ve always wanted to work for a company that’s morally sound,” said Widner. “There’s a lot of honor and pride in working here.” District 11 Director Cathy Drummond said that USW members should be proud of their history at Schell as they look forward to continuing the tradition of brewing the highest quality products for the next generation. “Our union has a proud history of bargaining with employers to improve working conditions for members without compromising the viability of the company and sacrificing job security,” Drummond said. “August Schell is clearly committed to keep brewing and providing good, union jobs in New Ulm, and USW members are excited to be part of continuing the tradition.” In addition to the pride they feel, the small, close-knit work force at Schell also genuinely seems to enjoy their jobs. As Slade, the local president, put it, “there’s a lot worse things you could be doing than making beer.” — Feb 13
-
Nurses Win Staffing Fight: Members Overwhelmingly Approve Contract to End Strike, Raise Standards at RWJ Hospital Nurses who work at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey voted overwhelmingly in December to ratify a new contract that ended a four-month unfair labor practice strike and established staffing standards to protect workers and patients. Local 4-200 President Judy Danella credited the solidarity of the local union’s 1,700 members, as well as the support of other union members and the New Brunswick community, with helping to bring about the groundbreaking agreement that ended the nurses’ unfair labor practice strike. “This contract would not have been possible if the nurses hadn’t stood together and demanded what our patients deserve,” said Danella. “This campaign has always been about safety and quality care, and we are ready to get back to work doing what we love.” Return to Work Nurses began returning to work in early January under new staffing rules and enforcement mechanisms to help ensure that the hospital maintains safe nurse-to-patient levels, as well as infrastructure to facilitate greater communication between front-line nurses and the hospital administration. “We are very excited to go back to work with those rules,” Danella said. “It’s a start. We are the only contract that I know of in the state of New Jersey with these staffing ratios.” Under the agreement, the hospital also will add 70 registered nurse positions, effective May 1, 2024. Those positions will be a mixture of full-time and part-time employees. “We are particularly proud that this contract includes accountability and communication, which will ensure that staffing will remain a top priority moving forward,” Danella said. International Visit The nurses got a lift in their fight from workers across the world. In late August, USW members who were attending the Congress of UNI Global Union in Philadelphia led a delegation of 38 workers from 16 countries to join the Local 4-200 picket line. In addition, the RWJ nurses received strong support from their fellow USW members across the country as well as workers in their own backyard. Students and unionized faculty members at Rutgers University offered continuous support, as did members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which includes workers who live just a short drive or train ride from the RWJ New Brunswick facility. “We should not have to strike to win common sense solutions to protect our patients and communities,” said Nancy Hagans NYSNA president. “It is the responsibility of our government to enact policies that will protect us.” New York nurses successfully pushed their state legislators to enact such policies, which went into effect in January 2023. Members of Local 4-200 have long been advocating for New Jersey to adopt similar safe staffing rules. Staffing Fight Last spring, before the strike began, USW members joined hundreds of other health care workers for a large rally in Trenton urging state lawmakers to pass measures similar to the New York law. “Quite simply, safe staffing is good for patients and good for workers,” said International Vice President Kevin Mapp, who oversees the USW’s health care sector, which includes more than 50,000 workers across North America. “Health care workers put themselves on the line every day because they love what they do. Safe staffing improves patient outcomes and reduces burnout and turnover for nurses.” Danella promised that, following the victory at RWJ, the fight would continue for safe staffing across New Jersey and the United States. “Now we’ll take safe staffing to the next level,” she said. “We will continue to try to get the state of New Jersey to pass the safe staffing bill.” As the strike neared the three-month mark in late October, USW members and other health care workers packed a nearby Rutgers University auditorium as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont led a Senate committee hearing on safe hospital staffing. “Nurses at Robert Wood Johnson and workers all over this country want better wages and better benefits, but that is not the primary reason for the strike,” said Sanders, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “What nurses have told me, and I’ve had the opportunity on several occasions to sit down and talk with these nurses, is that what this strike has everything to do with is the safety of their patients.” Strong Contract In addition to delivering on the nurses’ safe staffing priorities, the new three-year agreement includes annual wage increases, limits health care costs and boosts retirement benefits. Though the fight was a difficult one for members, it also brought them together like never before, Danella said. “People that you would never know, people you met on the picket line, we formed little families along the way,” she said. “Some days, being on the picket line, it gave people the boost they needed to continue.” Now, Local 4-200 will shift the fight for safe staffing from the picket lines in New Brunswick to the halls of New Jersey government. “It just kind of started a movement,” Danella said. “It has been 20 years in the making, but I’m hopeful that it’s taken to the next level. Every nurse and every patient in the state of New Jersey deserves safe staffing.” — Feb 13
United Steelworkers Press Releases Feed
- Long-term care workers in Wyoming vote to join the USW
- Planned U.S. Steel Sale Meets Anger, Skepticism: USW Vows to Fight to Make Sure Company Lives Up to Obligations
- Members Ratify WestRock Contract: New Master Agreement Covers 5,500 Paperworkers in 24 States
- Brewing Success: USW Members Turn Out High-Quality Beer at Historic Minnesota Company
- Nurses Win Staffing Fight: Members Overwhelmingly Approve Contract to End Strike, Raise Standards at RWJ Hospital