Tag Archive for: TECHNICAL OFFICE AND PROFESSIONAL

VIDEO: Legal Aid Society Workers in NYC Hold Informational Picket, Demand Management Stop Stalling Negotiations

New York City – On Thursday August 3rd, members of the Legal Aid Society chapter of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (UAW Local 2325) held an informational lunchtime picket across all five boroughs of New York City. The picket was organized by the chapter’s Contract Action Team (CAT).

Legal Aid Society ALAA members took to the picket line to voice their frustrations over bargaining and record attrition of their members. An unprecedented number of attorneys have left the Legal Aid Society in recent years due to stagnant wages, inflation, student debt, and rising cost of living.

All the while, Management has failed to recruit new staff. Those members who remain are facing crushing caseloads as they struggle to provide world-class legal representation to the most vulnerable New Yorkers in criminal, family, housing, and immigration courts.

“We’re really fighting for basic human dignity, a fair wage, autonomy to do our job,” said Olga Karounos, a criminal defense attorney at Legal Aid. “We’re not just fighting for our lawyers, but for our clients themselves.”

The chapter has been bargaining with management since September 2022 and is still without a contract. Management has failed to come to the union with any substantive economic offer to meet the union’s primary demand of significant base salary increases. In addition to fighting for salaries, LAS chapter members are advocating for reasonable caseload caps for our members representing clients in Housing Court and for flexible working conditions.

“This can’t be tolerated – it’s an untenable and unsustainable position for all the attorneys,” said Atusa Mozaffari, a housing attorney with the Legal Aid Society. “Hopefully, as contract negotiations continue, our voices will be heard, and we’ll get the things we deserve.”

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UAW Kicks Off Negotiations with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network

Around 1,400 UAW members at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are demanding economic justice as contract negotiations kicked off on July 11, 2023, at the VisTaTech Center on the campus of Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan.

Workers are fighting back against stagnant wages, a prolonged wage progression, outsourcing, lack of job security, and insufficient training.

The UAW represents four bargaining units at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan: Local Union 1781 (Region 1), Local Union 2500 (Region 1), Local Union 2145 (Region 1D) and Local Union 2256 (Region 1D).

The UAW represents two bargaining units at Blue Care Network of Michigan, Local Union 1781 (Region 1) and Local Union 2145 (Region 1D).

Workers at BCBSM and BCN are employed in various fields such as Customer Services, Membership and Billing, Claims and Enrollment, Pricing, Analyst, and Maintenance.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer, Margaret Mock, who is the union’s Director of the Technical, Office and Professional (TOP) Department, stated: “As we embark on this historic first-time multi-employer bargaining, our mission is to achieve, significant wages increase, depletion of wage progression, preserve health care, and to bring jobs back to the bargaining unit that have been outsourced and insourced.”

While workers at BCBSM and BCN struggle to make ends meet, BCBSM CEO Daniel Loepp has been paid nearly $45 million in just the last three years alone.

 

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MAIDA ROSENSTEIN: PRESIDENT, UNITED AUTO WORKERS LOCAL 2110 TECHNICAL, OFFICE AND PROFESSIONAL WORKERS HONORED

The Workers Defense League in New York recently honored UAW Local 2110 Maida Rosenstein during the group’s 81st anniversary dinner May 16. Rosenstein has always given priority to organizing new workers. She has been involved in graduate worker campaigns at New York University and Columbia, at a host of nonprofits and museums, and in higher education. For more than 30 years, she has strongly promoted membership-led, grassroots union activity, in contract negotiations campaigns, new organizing and political action. As a result, Local 2110 has developed a broad group of leaders, and a degree of mobilization and activity that stands out within the labor movement.

Rosenstein’s first successful strike was in high school when she led a “pants strike” to force the school to allow girls to wear pants. She and her classmates were reprimanded and sent home, but a week later the rules were changed and girls were allowed to wear pants to school. The strike taught her that collective action was a potent weapon in promoting women’s rights.

After receiving a degree in art from Rutgers University, she became a university clerical worker, and in 1981 she joined District 65 UAW’s organizing committee at Columbia University. The goal was to organize 1,100 clerical workers, and the campaign, which brought together her feminist views and her commitment to workers’ rights, was a tough one. There were years of legal delays and a vicious anti- union campaign in which the university claimed that the union would interfere with the highly personal relationship between a secretary and her boss. She learned the basics of organizing and the drive was transformative for her. After the union won the election in 1983, she became a fulltime organizer and ultimately was elected as vice president and then president of UAW Local 2110 (the successor to the District 65 Technical, Office and Professional Division).

Rosenstein serves as the vice chair of the UAW New York State Political Action Council and is chair of the UAW International Advisory Council on Technical, Office and Professional Workers. She is also elected to the New York State Committee of the Working Families Party.

Other honorees included Robert Martinez Jr., president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and James Slevin, president of Local 1-2, Utility Workers Union of America.

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UAW-NYU graduate employees ratify contract

UAW-NYU Graduate Employees Approve Only Contract Covering Private Sector Graduate Employees

The United Auto Workers announced today the ratification of the contract with New York University which covers over 1200 graduate employees, members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee-UAW Local 2110, who perform various functions for the university including teaching and research.  Once again, this makes NYU the only private university in the country with a unionized graduate employee workforce.  The agreement was ratified by 99% of the membership, with nearly 1,000 members voting.

“This contract is a major step forward for our members,” said Julie Kushner, Director of UAW Region 9A.  “They did not back down after being stripped of their bargaining rights in 2005.Their commitment to justice will have a huge impact on  the working lives of teaching and research  assistants throughout the university. This victory has already inspired other private sector graduate employees to organize.”

The agreement made substantial gains in wages, health care, including a 90% subsidy towards individual coverage and first time support for dependent coverage, childcare benefits and tuition waivers.  In addition, it doubles the starting wage to $20 per hour over the life of the five-year agreement for workers at NYU’s Polytechnic School of Engineering, who perform and support cutting edge research. (Greater detail is appended below.)

“This contract will make a real difference in our lives here at NYU and will raise the bar for private sector graduate working people nationally,” said Lily Defriend, a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department. “Right here in New York City our campaign and this contract win have contributed to graduate employees at Columbia and The New School organizing at the UAW.”

After being the first group of private university graduate workers to successfully unionize in 2000, the UAW won a groundbreaking contract at NYU.  In 2005 the university withdrew recognition, hiding behind a Bush-era NLRB decision stripping graduate employees of the right to collective bargaining.  Undeterred, the workers at NYU fought an eight-year battle for recognition and the university agreed to recognize the UAW once again subject to an election, in which they remained neutral, conducted by the American Arbitration Association.  The workers voted 98.4% in favor of being represented by the UAW in December 2013.

The UAW represents more than 45,000 academic workers across the U.S., including graduate employees at the University of Massachusetts, University of Connecticut, University of Washington, University of California and California State University.

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