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Greetings from the Burgh, where I am working on a longform piece, but need your help to pay the video editor.
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Broadway Strike Could Start on Thursday
The American Federation of Musicians Local 802 says that it would go on strike on Thursday if no deal was reached in contentious contract talks with the Broadway League employer association. The strike could force thousands of unionized actors and crews to walk out as well in order to honor picket lines.
“On the heels of the most successful season in history, the Broadway League wants the working musicians and artists who fueled that very success to accept wage cuts, threats to healthcare benefits, and potential job losses," the union said in statement. "Faced with such an egregious erosion of their working conditions, Local 802 Broadway musicians and other artists are ready to leverage every ounce of their collective power, up to and including a strike. Committing to anything less would mean sacrificing far too many hard-won gains.”
(Also, check out our map “22,000 Entertainment Workers Have Unionized in 2 Years” on how Broadway and Off-Broadway productions have seen a surge in organizing in the last few years)
UAW-Backed Maine Senate Candidate Faces Criticism Over Rape Jokes & Nazi Tattoo
Last week, the UAW announced that they were going to back Graham Platner in the race for Maine’s Senate seat.
“He’s focused on the real problems facing workers across this country — not the distractions the billionaire class uses to divide us,” said UAW President Shawn Fain in a statement. “His campaign is rooted in the same core issues our union fights for every day: a living wage, affordable health care, retirement security, and time outside of work to actually live our lives. The UAW is proud to endorse candidates like Platner taking on the broken status quo.”
Now, this week, it has emerged that Platner both has a Nazi tattoo on his chest and has made questionable comments about rape and race on social media. From the Maine Monitor:
A leading Jewish organization called it “troubling” that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has a skull-and-crossbones symbol linked to Nazi paramilitary organizations on his chest.
In a video from his brother’s wedding about a decade ago, Platner is shown dancing shirtless. He gave it to a liberal podcast in an effort to get ahead of opposition research into his background, is the latest bout of turbulence for the upstart Democrat hoping to win his party’s nomination to take on U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in 2026.
Platner’s deleted social media posts surfaced last week, including those from 2013 in which he asked why Black people “don’t tip” and suggesting people concerned about being raped shouldn’t be inebriated around people they don’t feel comfortable with, among other comments. His campaign’s political director, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, resigned Friday.
The UAW did not respond to requests for comment about whether they would continue to back Platner, but on Tuesday, some progressives continued to rally around Platner.
“We don’t have enough candidates that will take on the powers that be and fight for the working class,” Bernie Sanders told reporters on Capitol Hill today.
For more, check out the non-profit Maine Monitor.
12,000 Penn State Faculty & Grad Employees Could Unionize in Two Elections This Year
This week, 5,000 Penn State graduate employees are slated to vote on joining the UAW. The union, which received an overwhelming majority of union authorization cards, is widely expected to win.
Their vote could be the first major faculty vote win in the Penn State system this year. SEIU also announced that they had launched an effort to unionize nearly 8,000 faculty in the Penn State system, which could see a union election later this year.
If successful, it means that over 12,000 faculty and graduate employees could unionize at Penn State this year.
“We're having so many conversations with faculty every day, and everyone is really enthusiastic about forming a union," Heather Page, the student engagement and outreach librarian at Penn State Fayette told WPSU.
100,000 New Zealand Workers to Strike
Finally, this week, more than 100,000 New Zealand public sector workers are expected to go on the largest strike in 40 years in the country. Workers say that they are concerned about low pay and understaffing, especially in the country’s national healthcare system.
"Health NZ needs to listen to the voice of workers and come back to the bargaining table with an offer that provides for safer staffing levels, ends delays in recruiting new staff, and a better pay offer that reflects their value to the health system," PSA National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said in a statement. "The coalition government is totally out of touch and refusing to listen. They don't understand what it's like to work in a hospital where you are constantly short-staffed.”
In an attempt to attack the union, New Zealand Minister of Public Service Judith Collins wrote an open letter to parents of school children that would be affected by the strike, claiming that the strike is more motivated by Palestine than pay and staffing levels.
“We regret even more that the strike appears to be politically motivated by the unions,” wrote Collins. “What else could possibly explain that in early October, when we were trying to negotiate with the secondary teachers’ union, the number one item on their agenda for a meeting with Education Minister Erica Stanford was Palestine. Palestine. Not terms and conditions. Not student achievement. Not the new curriculum. Palestine. That’s not what students or parents should expect.”
Public education union leaders and Palestine solidarity activists blasted the New Zealand government for the statements.
“Ukrainian, Palestinian and New Zealand school children all deserve protection and we should expect our government to speak up loudly in their defence, without having to have a teachers’ union raise government inaction on Gaza with them,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa co-director Maher Nazzal. “But even after 24 months of genocide, Collins won’t find the words to express New Zealand’s horror at the indiscriminate killing of school children in Gaza.”
News & Headlines Elsewhere
- Federal workers given secret order as Trump tears down part of the White House
- Trump immigration policies would slash workforce estimate by 15.7 million and slow GDP growth by a third over the next decade, study says
- Amazon hopes to replace 600,000 US workers with robots, according to leaked documents
- Remote Strike: How BC government workers take the picket online
- Alberta set to order teachers back to work next week if strike unresolved
- Tunisian city on general strike over factory pollution
- Finally, a look at how Black labor unions impacted the creation of the stanzaic blues poem
Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending comments, complaints, and cooking recipes to melk@paydayreport.com
