An Iowa labor leader in a YouTube video is accusing state legislators of trying to bust unions and raising the possibility of “rolling strikes” over a bill that would add what he says is an onerous new resgulation for public employee bargaining units.
In the video posted Thursday evening, Jesse Case, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 238, which represents a variety of government employees, expressed his frustration with Senate Study Bill 3158, saying the measure is “another attempt to bust public sector unions across the state.”
“But guess what, we’re fighting back. We’re not taking it. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take the fight to them. We’re going to take the fight to their town, to their county, to their farm, to their business. We’re going to have rolling strikes across the state of Iowa,” Case says in the video.
The bill, which cleared a subcommittee Wednesday, would amend legislation passed in 2017 that requires collective bargaining units to hold a recertification vote about 10 months before the expiration of an existing contract, allowing members to say whether they want to continue to be represented by the union. The new measure would require the employer― such as a state agency, a police department or a school ― to provide a list of employees in the bargaining unit within 10 days of receiving notice from the Iowa Public Employee Relations Board of a recertification election.