Labor News & Commentary April 8, 2024 Harvard academic workers win a union & more

https://onlabor.org/april-8-2024/

By Holden Hopkins

Holden Hopkins is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary, journalists at several newspapers are on strike, Harvard academic workers win a union, and the National Labor Relations Board could hear a case that would impact the ability of workers in the legal marijuana industry to organize.

Journalists represented by the News Guild are on strike today at the Austin-American Statesman, Long Beach Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Both the Austin-American Statesman and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle are owned by Gannett, who faced strikes from two dozen unions last year as Elyse reported at the time. These strikes are both ULP strikes, based on what the union is calling Gannett’s failure to bargain.

The Long Beach Post has been striking over layoffs since late March, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike is nearing its eighteenth month.

On Friday, almost four thousand non-tenure track faculty at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard Divinity School voted to join the Harvard Academic Workers Union organized through the UAW. This comes on the heels of Wednesday’s union win for the roughly one hundred members of Harvard Law School’s clinical faculty. Both elections saw upwards of ninety-three percent of votes cast in favor of the union. This is just the latest in the UAW’s recent academic worker union election wins in the region, as 1,300 workers at the Universities of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute voted to join in the past two weeks.

FULL story at link above.