Unionized employees of TruStage put strike on hold

Unionized employees of TruStage, formerly known as CUNA Mutual Group, have suspended their ongoing strike after more than two weeks, having won concessions from their employer on two key points.

Members of the Office and Professional Employees International Union's Local 39 chapter, which represents roughly 450 workers of the Madison, Wisconsin-based insurance provider, voted to temporarily resume work in a June 2 meeting following tentative agreements with TruStage representatives on issues such as job security and remote work flexibility. 

"We were able to make some important progress, but several large priorities and unfair labor practices remain unresolved," said Joe Evica, chief steward of OPEIU Local 39 and former qualified retirement plan specialist, in a press release. TruStage fired Evica on April 4 for allegedly violating data privacy rules.

Despite this progress, employees also voted 92% in favor of resuming the unfair labor practice strike if the negotiations fail to resolve their remaining grievances. OPEIU Local 39 has two scheduled bargaining sessions this week, where it plans to address the remaining concerns surrounding compensation, retirement security and affordable health care.

The union has filed nine active ULP charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the company alongside allegations of bad-faith bargaining, coercive actions and termination of employees (including Evica).

Union leaders finalized the initial decision to strike on April 24, with 92% of organized employees voting in favor of picketing outside of TruStage offices in Madison over the course of the week of May 19. A few days in, the group voted 94% affirmatively to push the strike into June with the possibility of future extensions if negotiations stalled again.

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TruStage said it remains determined to reach a fair agreement with OPEIU Local 39 and has set additional meetings to continue contract negotiations. "Regardless of union activities, TruStage remains determined to reach an agreement that is fair, market competitive and meets the needs of our employees, customers and company," the company said in a prepared statement.

Efforts across the financial services industry to form labor unions and negotiate foundational contracts have seen similarly tense negotiations between employees and upper management.

Members of Wells Fargo Workers United, which was established in late 2021 by employees of the $1.9 trillion-asset bank seeking to unionize, submitted ULP charges last month claiming that managers at an Oregon call center engaged in anti-union behavior. Their grievances include tearing down the group's posters and prohibiting staff from wearing shirts on company property that bear the imagery of the Committee for Better Banks, which helped found the Workers United group.

Workers United inspired other employees to attempt to organize, including those at the $38 million-asset Genesee Co-Op Federal Credit Union in Rochester, New York, and the $12 billion-asset Lake Michigan Credit Union in Caledonia, Michigan.

A recent survey conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based analytics and advisory firm Gallup found that roughly 71% of American citizens approved of labor unions in 2022, a level of public sentiment that hasn't been seen in more than 50 years. The record high was 75%, from 1953 to 1957.

There were 2,510 petitions for union representation filed in the 12-month span that ended September 30, 2022, a 53% increase from the 1,638 petitions submitted during the previous 12 months, according to NLRB data. This was the largest number of filings since the same period in 2016.

Groups are required to hold an NLRB-officiated election as part of the formal unionization process, where interested employees can vote in favor or against the decision to organize with a national labor organization.

These shifts in the country's perception of unions, combined with employee dissatisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to a rise in unionizing activity across the U.S., said Michelle Kaminski, an associate professor in the school of human resources and labor relations at Michigan State University.

"We've seen that the pandemic helped to turn things around, and also we saw these big organizing drives at corporations like Amazon that inspired other people, but it is still difficult to win organizing drives," Kaminski said.