Skip to main content

Senator Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign To Have Unionized Campaign Workers


Last Friday, it was announced that Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President will be the first major presidential campaign to have a unionized workforce.  Senator Sanders, running for the Democratic nomination again after a failed bid in 2016, has long championed labor unions and hourly workers.  However, last Friday’s announcement was noteworthy as the campaign had stayed quiet during the organizing efforts.  It was not until a majority of the bargaining unit signed cards designating United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to represent them did the Sanders campaign voluntarily recognize the union.  Realistically, the campaign was smart to stay quiet, or risk being confronted with an unfair labor charge for improperly conducting itself during a unionization effort.

So what does this actually mean for Sanders’ campaign workers?  For starters, negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement will begin shortly with the union set to represent all Sanders’ campaign workers below the rank of deputy director.  (Potentially, 1,000 Sanders’campaign workers could be represented.)  In this case, the union is seeking to implement pay parity and transparency within the campaign, eliminate gender bias and harassment, and implement equal treatment for all campaign workers.

It will be interesting to see which, if any, other Democratic campaigns for President follow suit.  If I had to guess, I would suspect that former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s campaign might be next as he has previously voiced support for his campaign staff, if they were to unionize.  Regardless of which candidate does/does not follow the Sanders’ campaign unionization, labor unions and their supporters are hailing last Friday’s announcement as a major victory for organized labor.


For additional information:  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/bernie-sanders-campaign-union

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more