News & Commentary May 14, 2023

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/may-14-2023/

By Will Ebeler

Will Ebeler is a student at Harvard Law School.

In this weekend’s news and commentary, workers at an electric school bus factory in Georgia vote to unionize; the New York City Council passes a bill banning height and weight discrimination; Goldman Sachs agrees to $215 million gender discrimination settlement; and a new study finds higher minimum wage leads to increased employment.

On Friday, workers at a factory in rural Georgia that builds electric school buses voted to join the United Steelworkers in a 697-to-435 vote. The factory in Fort Valley, Georgia is run by Blue Bird Corporation and will become one of the largest unionized workplaces in the South. An organizer with the Steelworkers said the workers at the factory usually earn starting wages of $16 to $17 per hour and that Blue Bird has long made it a practice to hire less-educated workers, some of whom have prison records.

Some observers hope this union victory is a sign that new federal policies can encourage organizing efforts at companies receiving federal funds. Blue Bird is a beneficiary of last year’s infrastructure bill, which included a rebate program to promote the use of low-emission school buses, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized $5 billion over 5 years for clean school bus transportation. Those bills also included provisions that subtly encourage recipients to change their approach to unionization. For example, the EPA, which administers the school bus rebate program, will require any recipient company to report whether it has committed to labor neutrality or voluntary recognition and explain the benefits it offers to employees. And under last year’s infrastructure bill, federal money can’t be used to suppress a union election; the Steelworkers filed unfair labor practice charges against Blue Bird in April, alleging that the company had done just that.

But the experience of workers at Blue Bird suggests caution as to whether those measures will actually discourage union-busting. Cynthia Harden, who has worked at the factory for five years, described meetings where workers were shown slide shows that explained the voting process by showing ballots marked “no” and that said the company could go bankrupt if the union won. And she said there were suddenly food trucks at lunch and banners saying “We Love Our Employees!” on the factory’s perimeter fence.

FULL story at link above.