Its official: Pike Place Market’s workers will not be going on strike.
On Thursday January 28, over 90 percent of the market’s organized workforce voted to authorize a strike, bringing sixteen months of contentious contract negotiations to a head. Another vote was needed to move forward with the strike.
On Friday February 5 Market management, presumably feeling pressure from the strike threat, finally came to an agreement with representatives of Teamsters Local 117, the worker’s union. Today the members had to decide whether to accept the agreement. They voted in two shifts at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. and the final tally shows overwhelming support for the compromise.
“We recommended the agreement for approval,” says Paul Zilly, spokesperson for Local 117. “We did not achieve all of the results or resolve all the issues that are important to our members down there. But we did make some headway.”
What are the proposal’s contents? Details are thin, but it looks as though the Market has scrapped an unpopular classification policy, which would have made it very hard for maintenance workers to climb the career ladder. On the other hand an unpopular merit-pay system will remain in place (for more on these sticking points, read here.)
Labor peace at Pike Place will reign until next year, when negotiations begin again.
Will ‘workers’ at The Stranger strike if they can’t unionize?
Dirty Jackass Jake, how can a progressive like yourself work for a scab rag like the Stranger?
Dirty Jackass Jake, when are you going to call Yoko down at the Guild and organize the scab rag?
A perfect example of why workers need to be united in solidarity. Unions grant strike authorization to bargaining units for precisely this reason: because frequently the mere suggestion that workers might withhold their labor sufficient to get management to move off a seemingly intractable position and get down to actual, meaningful negotiation.
I think it’s cute that Jake Blumgart has his own little troll that follows him around everywhere he goes and posts exactly the same comment over and over and over. Seriously, click on “Forget it, Jake”‘s profile — every single comment the same. Guess who comes off looking like the loser shithead in a case like this? Hint: not Blumgart.
4
So why isn’t The Stranger unionized?