As in the rest of the country, 2023 was a momentous year for unions in Northern Nevada. At the very end of the calendar year, Tesla said it would raise pay for gigafactory workers amid a union push. In October, the Washoe County School Board approved 20 percent raises for teachers as part of two-year bargaining agreements.
In September, dozens of workers at GM’s Reno Parts Distribution center went on strike in solidarity with 37 other locations across 20 states. Represented by the United Auto Workers Local 2126, the workers held signs and chanted pro-labor slogans outside the sprawling 400-thousand square foot warehouse in the North Valleys.
By the end of October, the UAW had reached tentative agreements with Detroit’s Big 3 automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, owned by Fiat Chrysler.
“There are a lot of other employees in northern Nevada that we're still trying to fold into the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council because at its basic, most basic, we're strongest when we work together,” said Wendy Colborne, the communications director for the CLC as well as for the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada at a recent gathering of local union heavyweights.
“And the more of us we can pull together into a unit, that's the whole principle of a union in the first place is that we're stronger working together. So trying to bring everyone together to have that voice not only in their workplaces but at the legislature.”
Colborne was joined in discussing current labor strategies in a small conference room in the local Teamster’s office, tucked into the hills above North McCarran Blvd., with Gary Watson and Ross Kinson both from the Teamsters Local 533 joining in.
Pro-union photos, posters, and framed press releases line the walls of the main room, halls, and the conference room.
“Essentially, we're a broad union for the most part, and the backbone of us is, you know essentially the trucking world,” Watson, the President of Teamsters Local 533 in Reno explained.
“We have a lot of UPS workers, within the garbage industry waste industry, city transit, numerous things to that aspect. We represent the workers and negotiate contracts on their behalf, make their living wages better and conditions, you know, whether it's healthcare, pensions or their hourly wages, to bring them into the middle class.”
Watson says he was a good fit for the role of labor organizer because he has always been willing to make trouble with bosses, or in other words: advocate for workers.
A food pantry the local Teamsters union runs to help with community needs, amid rising prices.
Kinson, a so-called business agent at the Teamsters Local 533 is also president of the Central Labor Council. Like Watson, he began his career at UPS, eventually taking a pay cut to go to work in the support side of organized labor.
“The sentiment is that young people should be reaching out to us and should be very openly talking if their workplaces suck,” Kinson said in a matter of fact, no holds barred way as his appreciated style.
“They should be organizing,” he added. “They should be contacting us. They should be reaching out to us and we will go in and we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that they have a better workplace.”
Unions provide workers with the ability to negotiate for better wages, benefits and working conditions, protect legal rights for workers, provides community, political influence, education, training and solidarity. Historically, on the national level, unions which formed in the mid-1800s helped institute 40-hour work weeks, eight-hour work days, weekends, paid vacations, sick leave, health care, overtime benefits, holiday pay, pregnancy and parental leave, breaks during the work day, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, improved working conditions, pensions and retirements, sexual harassment laws and Social Security benefits among a long list of crucial accomplishments.
File photo of this year’s Reno LaborFest.
The Reno LaborFest, held this year on Sept. 4 at Idlewild Park is now a highlight of the local public calendar, but Colborne explains there is plenty more the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council and their partners provide on a regular basis, from training and apprenticeship, to tools and workwear, job placement and even food assistance.
“Not only do we put on the Reno Labor Fest, which is an awesome hands-on event where you can come and check out our apprenticeship programs, but we've also been working with Washoe County School District to implement a union pre apprenticeship program in Washoe County high schools as part of their CTE career and technical education.”
Colborne explained the apprenticeship program is earn-while-you-learn, tuition free, with guaranteed job placement. Assistance with the costs of books, tools, and supplies is available.
In the back of the Teamster’s office, three rows of tall metal shelving stand neatly stacked with cans and boxes of non-perishable food items across from a folding table covered in produce.
Collecting and distributing food donations to striking workers is a longstanding tradition of organized labor. Here, food assistance from the pantry is actually available to anyone in the community regardless of employment status or union membership or whether or not a strike is going on.
That afternoon, the Teamsters office was paid a visit by Scabby the rat, a 20 foot tall inflatable rodent with visible scabs in reference to the common name for strikebreakers or anyone who crosses a picket line.
In Northern Nevada in recent years, the high cost of living and a rampant lack of affordable, accessible housing combined with a large sector of low wage employees in industries like hospitality and retail have created a regional economic environment with limited prospects for upward mobility.
For the Teamsters and the Central Labor Council, the challenges residents face locally underscore the need for strong labor unions and the power of collective bargaining to lift hard workers into the middle class.