Labor News & Commentary July 25, 2024 FAA and National Air Traffic Controllers Association came to agreement & more

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/july-25-2024/

By Divya Nimmagadda

Divya Nimmagadda is a student at Harvard Law School.

Four unions representing 14,000 workers at Disneyland Park – collectively named Disney Workers Rising – reached a tentative agreement on a three-year labor contract. The deal includes wage increases and “addresses issues that will make the attendance policy work better for cast members.” The union will vote on whether to finalize the tentative agreement on Monday, July 29th. As Everest wrote a few weeks back, this agreement is a product of months-long negotiations, with talks beginning back in April. The workers’ concerns largely centered around pay and leave – a survey revealed that 28% of members “have food insecurity, 64% are rent-burdened and 42% missed work for medical treatment because they didn’t have enough leave.” The union filed unfair labor charges against Disney in May based on “unlawful discipline, intimidation and surveillance of union members exercising their right to wear union buttons at work.” Just earlier this week, the union’s members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike in response to the company’s behavior. If such a strike had taken place, it would have been the largest strike to date in 2024.

The FAA and National Air Traffic Controllers Association came to agreement on several changes to worker conditions. Specifically, the FAA stated that it will increase the minimum rest time between shifts and limit consecutive overtime assignments. The FAA Administrator stated that “The science is clear that controller fatigue is a public safety issue, and it must be addressed.” The hope is that these changes will begin to offer relief to an “understaffed workforce.”

Dancers scheduled to perform during the Olympics Opening Ceremony have dropped their strike notice after negotiating a new compensation deal. The notice was filed last week based on “outrageous disparities” between pay and housing conditions amongst the dancers. With the new deal, the lowest-paid dancers will receive “between $150 – $260 extra for their performance,” though the housing concerns were left unaddressed. This comes in the midst of several other labor disputes in the country ahead of the Olympics.