Labor News & Commentary October 24, 2024 Miami-Dade public school system workers overwhelmingly vote to recertify & more

https://onlabor.org/october-24-2024/

By Luke Hinrichs

Luke Hinrichs is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentaries, Boeing union workers reject new labor contract, extending strike; Miami-Dade public school system workers overwhelmingly vote to recertify United Teachers of Dade union representation; and auto part workers at Julian Electric commit to keep organizing after losing union election.

Boeing machinists represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union voted 64 percent against a new labor deal that included 35 percent wage increases over four years. The rejection extends a more than five-week strike that has brought Boeing’s aircraft production to a halt. Over 32,000 Boeing machinists remain on strike.

In an unprecedented union vote, Miami-Dade teachers elected to retain their current union representing with 83 percent of the voting members selecting to recertify with the United Teachers of Dade (UTD). The vote is a sharp rebuke to a group called the Miami-Dade Education Coalition—funded by the anti-union, conservative Freedom Foundation—that challenged the UTD as the bargaining agent for the Miami-Dade county’s public school teachers. The challenge and recertification vote comes after Florida Governor Desantis signed a law, SB 256, last year aimed at pressuring unions by requiring certain public workers to pay dues and requiring certain unions to recertify if the number of dues-paying members drops below 60 percent of those eligible to join. At the same time, the law makes it harder for employees to pay dues by banning automatic dues deductions from paychecks and imposing stricter recruitment standards. Despite the union busting efforts, UTD will continue to represent the over 30,000 teachers and other employees of the Miami-Dade public school system.

Auto part workers at Julian Electric, a plant in Lockport, Illinois that supplies parts to major automobile companies, lost their union vote to join the United Auto Workers. With a final tied vote of 170 to 170, the National Labor Relations Board defers to the company and the unionization effort was defeated.