Welcome to Thursday’s Almanac, for and about Iowa’s workers.

If break time’s over, here’s the tl;dr:

Six months later, UnityPoint still refuses to recognize its nurses union;
Upcoming Iowa layoffs and worker news;
Guess who ELSE hates generative AI?

A Des Moines hospital chain has been refusing to recognize its nurses union for six months.

Belinda Carpenter, a registered nurse who works at three of the four UnityPoint hospitals where nurses voted to unionize last year, is fed up with her employer not recognizing United Nurses of Iowa, which unofficially won its union election in December.

“They’ve had to waste millions of dollars to try to stop us,” she told Iowa Starting Line. “And we’re not going anywhere.”

To prove it, nurses are holding a rally to protest UnityPoint’s actions on June 8.

”Every day that they continue to let these objections stand is a day that nurses aren’t allowed to use their voice to speak up for their patients,” said Whitney Armstrong, a critical care nurse at Iowa Methodist Medical Center. “UnityPoint right now … is preventing us from being able to take care of our patients.”

It’s this week’s top story.

Watch the latest edition of Clocked In on:

P.S. Another 200 nurses at a UnityPoint hospital in Sioux City have just filed for a union; read about it below.

Work in health care? How have your bosses been treating you lately?

Amie Rivers

Newsletter Editor, Iowa Starting Line

Member, COURIER United (WGA East)

Email me

China won’t say if trade deal is real: Trump claims that China committed to buying upwards of $17 billion in US agricultural products each year for the next three years. But his claim was not confirmed by the Chinese embassy.
Now that he’s the official Democratic nominee for governor, I’m saving this March news article where Rob Sand said he would, if elected, claw back state subsidies paid to companies that cut jobs and leave, like Whirlpool in Amana.
Matter of fact, now that the primary’s over, I might start collecting candidates’ worker-first policies so we can hold them accountable!
Zach Wahls had the union endorsements, but it wasn’t enough to carry him past Josh Turek, who will now face US Rep. Ashley Hinson for the open US Senate seat in Iowa being vacated by Joni Ernst. Here’s who else won in Iowa.
Starting up a union: One hundred ninety-seven full-time, part-time, and PRN nurses with UnityPoint – St. Luke’s in Sioux City filed a petition May 27 to hold an election on whether to unionize with United Food and Commercial Workers. // Fourteen full-time, part-time, and on-call bus and paratransit drivers at Siouxland Regional Transit System filed a petition May 18 to hold an election on whether to unionize with AFSCME Council 61.
Voting on a union: Eighteen full- and part-time maintenance workers at Fair Oaks Foods in Davenport will vote June 17 on whether to unionize with UFCW Local 431.

All information taken from Iowa Workforce Development’s WARN Act website. Read WARN Act and Iowa WARN Act criteria here.

CNH Industrial in Burlington is closing and laying off:
15 workers by June 26,
13 workers by Sept. 25, and
five workers by Dec. 31.
Read more here.
Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off:
25 workers by June 13,
10 workers by June 27,
29 workers by July 11, and
one worker by July 25.
Read more here.
First Student in Waterloo is closing and laying off 120 workers by June 30. Read more here.

I have many choice words for proponents of generative AI (particularly if they are writers, because WTF?!?!).

But given that a lot of people have jumped on the “welp, it’s inevitable” bandwagon, I wondered if I was just being the “old man yells at cloud” meme.

Turns out, the kids hate it too!