The Strategic Campaigns Department goes all in on the tough fights.
We work with local unions to strengthen communications, conduct corporate research and lead creative, attention-grabbing actions to ensure workers prevail in contract campaigns.
We build solidarity, leverage strategic opportunities and shine a light—in many cases, the USW Bat Light—on bad bosses. We tip the scales for union members.
Over the past three years, Strategic Campaigns played key roles as workers unionized new employers, evened the playing field and won their fair share.
We tip the scales for union members.
Winning First Contracts
Once workers organize, Strategic Campaigns rolls out the campaign needed to win a strong first contract.
We train local leaders and activists, launch Communication and Action Teams (CATs), set up texting systems, craft educational materials, write bargaining updates, and implement creative solidarity activities.
For example, when workers at Kumho Tire in Macon, Ga., encountered rocky negotiations after voting to join the USW in 2019, we coordinated the CAT’s efforts to share information, identify issues on the shop floor and engage new hires. Workers also handed out PAYDAY candy bars at the plant gate, underscoring the push for just wages at the heart of negotiations.
Our Bat Light action at Kumho’s Atlanta headquarters afforded members the chance to confront corporate leaders as they left work gawking at the “Fair Contract Now” message lighting up the building. All of this helped our members ratify a contract in August 2023 with real job security, major raises and good benefits.
About 1,500 workers at the Blue Bird bus factory in Fort Valley, Ga., won their own organizing fight in 2023, again showing it’s possible to unionize the South.
But the company proved so recalcitrant during negotiations that even the Grinch—played by a department staff member—showed up during the holiday season to demonstrate solidarity with workers.
Union members turned up the pressure by helping to land a federal grant to increase production at Blue Bird and by participating in a White House roundtable that focused on the pivotal role workers play in emerging industries. They ultimately inked an incredible first contract that ensured the taxpayers’ investment in Blue Bird included a meaningful seat at the table for workers.
If necessary, we embarrass greedy employers and take our fight over the bosses’ heads to elected officials, customers and shareholders.
In April 2023, we rattled management at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh by staging a Bat Light event—visible across the city—during an after-hours, adults-only “Speakeasy Science” program at the building.
Workers from all four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh chanted, handed out balloons, grilled hot dogs and reminded passersby that some things remained unchanged since the Roaring Twenties:
Carnegie organizations still refused to treat people fairly.
Workers at the science center and other museums ultimately turned the tide and secured the good contract they earned.
Demonstrating Unbreakable Solidarity in Glass
Uniting workers across multiple sites in various locations is exponentially more difficult than mobilizing union members at a single workplace.
We nonetheless led successful campaigns over the past few years to support master bargaining in numerous sectors. In many cases, as at Anchor Glass two years ago, these efforts resulted in industry-setting gains.
With our assistance, members at six Anchor Glass locations created short video messages to highlight company-wide solidarity and came up with a slogan, “One USW,” which they put on stickers, signs, T-shirts and ball caps. Local 129M in Shakopee, Minn., went a step further by providing customized educational materials to union siblings speaking Swahili.
Forged Together: Agreements at Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel
Strategic Campaigns collaborated with locals across Cleveland-Cliffs’ mines and mills to train new activists and engage members as the union headed into master bargaining in 2022.
Fortunately, company leadership took the high road and decided to do right by our members. We made significant gains in new contracts—and then geared up for the battle brewing at U.S. Steel.
U.S. Steel made clear that it wanted to knock workers backward. It hired a PR firm, created an app and forced workers to watch videos in which CEO David Burritt pushed an agenda seeking to increase health care costs and cut pay.
Strategic Campaigns collaborated with each U.S. Steel local to build a CAT, grow our texting system and develop effective educational materials that pushed back on the corporate spin, exposing the potential risks of Burritt’s unacceptable proposals.
We also highlighted the company’s hypocrisy of trying to reach into our pockets while doling out outrageous compensation packages to bosses and hefty dividends to shareholders.
As the campaign heated up, members united behind a “Forged Together” theme. They wore stickers, displayed signs in their vehicles, advocated during the company’s family day events and organized gate rallies at multiple locations.
When Burritt visited a mine in Minnesota, members lined the road in protest and held a rally demanding a fair deal. Later, members in Gary, Ind., disrupted an event where Burritt was speaking, letting him know whose voices really mattered.
Solidarity ultimately won the day. Members achieved increased pay, improvements to benefits and other enhancements in a contract they ratified in 2022.
Standing Strong When the Rubber Hits the Road
Master agreement campaigns with Bridgestone and Goodyear included walk-ins, with members rallying before work and then marching in together, chanting and yelling.
Their unity led to historic wins, including elimination of the companies’ much-despised two-tier wage systems, in August 2022.
Goodyear acquired Cooper Tire in 2021.
That left Local 207L in Findlay, Ohio, and Local 752L in Texarkana, Ark., with a common expiration date—June 7, 2024—as they fell under the Goodyear umbrella. And the locals resolved to leverage their strength in numbers during the next round of negotiations.
With our assistance, they held combined planning meetings, conducted a joint bargaining survey and distributed similar posters and educational materials to show Goodyear they were sticking together despite the company’s attempts to keep them apart.
The union council at Goodyear provided support, making it clear that previous and new locals at the company stood together. The workers in Findlay and Texarkana ratified new agreements last year.
Confronting Injustice
Local 607L represents about 300 members, the majority of them Hispanic women, at Amfuel in Magnolia, Ark.
When the deep-pocketed defense contractor committed numerous unfair labor practices and tried to gut their contract, the workers embarked on a tireless four-year-long fight for fair treatment.
Strategic Campaigns assisted with text message updates that sustained the members’ morale and conveyed their unflinching resolve. Members organized T-shirt days, held parking lot meetings, fired off postcards to management and displayed signs in their cars.
We provided updates and other materials in English and Spanish, helping to sustain support in the plant and build respect in the community.
The company surrendered in spring 2024, on the day the workers planned to begin an unfair labor practice strike. The workers not only beat back all concessions but won raises, additional holidays and other improvements.
We continue working toward another long-sought victory in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where some of our members holding critical public-sector jobs work under expired contracts and wait for overdue raises.
To ramp up the pressure, the department organized rallies in St. Thomas and St. Croix during Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.’s state of the territory address in January 2024. These efforts gained a flurry of media attention and resulted in District 9 meetings with the governor.
While much of the department’s work revolves around organizing and bargaining, we also step in when locals encounter obstacles mid-contract.
Local 14323 requested our help three years ago when the Catholic Cemeteries Association began outsourcing some of our members’ work in Hartford, Conn.
Our research found that the contractor had a spotty health and safety record, and on the Sunday before an arbitration hearing, members rallied in front of the Archdiocese of Hartford. This solidarity and perseverance pushed Catholic Cemeteries to settle before the hearing.
Extending Aid to Health Care Workers
Some of our locals represent health care workers spread across numerous departments and buildings in sprawling hospital systems—making member engagement that much more challenging and good contracts all the more rewarding.
Local union leaders at Geisinger Lewistown Hospital in Pennsylvania met members one-on-one in break rooms and held membership appreciation events to build solidarity and get feedback. These efforts two years ago helped to continually grow participation in sticker actions and rallies, unnerving the hospital and ultimately leading to victory.
Strategic Campaigns worked with members at Essentia Health in Minnesota to set up a series of short, in-person CAT trainings for workers on different shifts, allowing us to boost participation and launch a solidarity-building petition drive on the way to a new agreement in 2022.
The department now is involved in developing an extensive campaign for negotiations later this year with Local 7600 at Kaiser Permanente. We recruited hundreds of CAT members across three medical centers and more than a dozen clinics, developed new educational materials to aid in worker outreach, and adapted trainings to build community and union support among workers in a diverse range of jobs, from direct patient care to fully remote call centers.
Backing Workers on the Picket Line
More than 1,700 nurses began an unfair labor practice strike against Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., in August 2023 to demand the safe staffing levels needed to protect their patients.
We helped the local establish strike committees, set up communication systems and conduct in-depth leverage research to shame the hospital in the community and among industry peers.
The department also supported a dedicated team of picket captains, who managed a complex schedule covering multiple locations, and developed an online sign-in process that tracked member engagement over thousands of picketing shifts.
In addition, Strategic Campaigns supported a community outreach and events committee that planned public actions, such as rallies in the CEO’s neighborhood. We also deployed the Bat Light and rallied at a chamber of commerce event where the CEO—undeservedly received a leadership award.
After the four-month-long strike, the hospital accepted the union’s demands for staffing minimums as well as mechanisms for enforcing the new staffing requirements and fair compensation for nurses who showed up through the pandemic.
We extended similar support to union members in the aerospace, cement, coatings, container, mining and other industries during strikes and lockouts, sometimes helping to end long disputes or deliver long-overdue improvements.
Local 6588 members, makers of high-end rugs at V’Soske in Puerto Rico, stood strong on the picket line for 19 weeks—with no crossers, in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave—to secure their first raises in more than seven years.
Along with District 4, the department helped coordinate actions where members distributed leaflets in English and Spanish at the strike line in Puerto Rico and at the company headquarters in New York. The members’ unwavering solidarity and determination won them a contract with significant pay increases.
Taking Fights to the Boardroom
In 2021 and 2022, the department filed a shareholder proposal demanding that Marathon Petroleum improve its clawback policy and impose financial consequences on top executives for conduct negatively affecting the company’s financial results or reputation.
Our members presented the proposal in 2022 and 2023, and Marathon adopted it last year. It was a victory in the union’s work to engage Marathon and hold the company accountable.
Targeting New Opportunities
The Strategic Campaigns Department continues to study the new, low-carbon economy emerging in North America because of climate necessity and unprecedented levels of government investment.
This seismic change to industrial and manufacturing work is creating new industries with workers who urgently need and absolutely deserve unions.
In collaboration with the Organizing Department, we studied lithium-ion and other alternative-chemistry battery supply chains with a particular focus on mining, refining, and recycling operations. This work resulted in a successful organizing drive last year at Eos Energy Enterprises in Turtle Creek, Pa., with more such successes likely to come.
The department is also pursuing opportunities in cement, both in partnership with existing employers to seek public funds for facility upgrades and with new players like Sublime and Brimstone that use low-to-no carbon approaches to cement making. Our union has secured neutrality at both new employers.
Similarly, Strategic Campaigns is tracking employers involved in federally funded hydrogen hub development to identify workers’ needs for job protection and organizing.
These public dollars come with provisions encouraging employer-labor partnerships. We are identifying and prioritizing opportunities now.