The Big Union Contract Fights Coming in 2025

In some of the most exciting fights of 2024, strikers shut down ports on the East Coast and backed up plane orders on the West. The coming year is full of expiring contracts that could keep the strike wave rolling.

ALIGNED TO FIGHT

The list includes some big contracts lined up so unions can bargain and possibly strike together.

California teachers in dozens of districts covering tens of thousands of educators have lined up their contracts to expire in June. These include unions in Los Angeles (35,000), San Diego (7,000), San Francisco (6,500), and Oakland (3,000). On the East Coast, another major contract, for 14,000 Philadelphia teachers, expires August 31.

Contracts expire September 30 for 57,000 workers at the health care giant Kaiser Permanente. Ten unions negotiate together as the Alliance of Health Care Unions—not to be confused with the SEIU-led Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which settled an agreement last year after the largest-ever strike in health care. The Alliance split from the Coalition in 2018.

Contracts for 16,000 members of the New York State Nurses at 17 hospitals, bargaining at 11 tables, expire the last day of 2025. Fifteen thousand Minnesota Nurses members at 15 hospitals also have contracts lined up to expire in 2025, after a < a href=https://labornotes.org/2023/10/minnesota-nurses-win-big-then-walk-back-winning-model>three-day walkout in 2022; the union has new leaders who argued it should have escalated to an open-ended strike back then.

Workers at 15 nonprofit legal agencies serving low-income clients in New York City have aligned their contracts to expire June 30. The agreements cover 2,500 workers across 15 units, in two United Auto Workers locals and one SEIU local.

Looking ahead, 2025 presents the chance for more unions to line up their contracts to expire next on May 1, 2028—answering the call from the United Auto Workers, whose contracts with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis will expire then.

National conventions of the Postal Workers (APWU) and Teachers (AFT) passed resolutions in 2024 supporting the call. The APWU contract, covering 225,000 workers, is still in bargaining after expiring September 30.

Meanwhile the contract for 200,000 Letter Carriers has been expired since 2023. A tentative agreement this fall sparked outrage because it would raise wages only 1.3 percent a year and preserve tiers. If workers vote it down (ballots are due back January 13), their negotiators must return to the table before the matter could move to binding arbitration. Members activists have been organizing grassroots contract rallies.

GROCERY

Contracts covering tens of thousands of grocery workers at the country’s largest supermarket chains expire in the first half of the year. The Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) represent 800,000 grocery workers across the country, many with subsidiaries of the same giant chains, but the contracts are mostly local by local and employer by employer.

Off the table for now is the threat of the Kroger-Albertson’s merger, which was recently shut down by two court cases backed by several of the UFCW locals that are bargaining this year. The two supermarket behemoths were attempting to further consolidate power; opponents of the merger feared it would lead to store closings and higher prices.

In January and February, UFCW Local 7 contracts expire for 17,000 workers at Safeway (Albertson’s) and King Soopers (Kroger) in Colorado. Then in March, contracts expire for 47,000 Kroger and Albertson’s subsidiary workers across a number of UFCW locals in Southern California. Also expiring in March are the contracts covering 20,500 Kroger workers with UFCW Local 1996 in Georgia.

May 1 is the deadline for the Allied Grocery agreement in the Pacific Northwest, covering 30,000 members of UFCW Local 3000 and Teamsters Local 38 across a number of chains, including some owned by Kroger and Albertsons. Also expiring in May is the UFCW Local 700 contract for 3,800 Kroger workers in Indianapolis.

Staffing is a key issue. “If they could use me for five jobs they would,” said Raymond Smith, a Local 770 member at Ralph’s in Los Angeles, the day before Thanksgiving. “Today, for example, is the busiest day of the year, and I’m going to be alone from 2 to 10 p.m. in the produce department.”

Several UFCW locals in the Northwest, California, and Colorado moved towards coordination in the last negotiations. But Smith said the companies will try to exploit divisions, pressuring certain locals to settle sooner and for less.

HEALTH CARE

The state of Washington’s contract with 55,000 homecare workers in SEIU Local 775 expires June 30. In California, 6,250 nurses at two Stanford hospitals have contracts expiring March 31; their independent union struck for seven days in 2022,

Contracts expire May 31 and June 30 for 6,200 Kaleida Health and Catholic Health workers in two Communications Workers (CWA) locals in Buffalo, New York. Local 1133 struck Catholic Health for five weeks in 2021, with support from Local 1168.

This time, they could walk out together at both chains for better benefits and stronger enforcement power on staffing ratios.

In Southern California, 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health workers are on day 52 of a strike that could last into the new year. They want the same benefits, like a pension and seven hours a week of prep time, that their Northern California colleagues already have.

AIR AND RAIL

Several big units of airline and railroad workers are making their way through the maze of negotiations laid out in the Railway Labor Act, which can take years.

Association of Flight Attendants members at United Airlines (28,000 workers), Alaska Airlines (6,900), and Frontier Airlines (4,000) have voted overwhelmingly to strike. At Alaska they rejected a tentative agreement in August. Many haven’t had raises in years.

A major issue is “boarding pay.” Flight attendants are generally not paid for the time they spend working on the ground before airplane doors close. Two other flight attendant unions settled contracts in 2024, the Transport Workers with Southwest and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants with American; APFA won boarding pay.

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Ten thousand Teamster technicians at United are early in bargaining; the airline is demanding concessions.

Workers at the largest freight railroads, many of whom were forced into contracts by Congress in 2022, are already back at the table. Though the process typically takes years (the 2022 agreement replaced one that expired in 2018), this time some railroads sought early, quick agreements with individual unions ahead of national negotiations. Some unions settled and most ratified their tentative agreements. Workers in four of the 12 rail unions have already voted down tentative agreements.

Now that more traditional negotiations are getting underway, the rail industry is left in an extremely fragmented bargaining landscape, with rail unions and rail employers bargaining away from a central negotiating table. The railroads continue to cut jobs and make the remaining workers work more hours under grueling schedules.

BUILDING TRADES

The master contract between the Operating Engineers and a Southern California contractors’ association, covering 10,000 workers who run heavy-duty equipment like cranes and paving machines, expires June 30.

A solar energy boom and a bump in infrastructure work has helped the union grow its membership slightly since the last contract. Building trades unions often use growing membership and market share to demand stronger contracts; contractors use any dip to demand concessions.

Electrical Workers (IBEW) Locals 191 (Everett, Washington) and 520 (Austin, Texas) both have May 31 expirations, covering 2,000 and 1,900 workers respectively. Both locals have grown in membership. The Washington local is active in Boeing plants and the Texans are busy building Samsung and SpaceX factories.

Most IBEW contracts prohibit strikes, sending stalled negotiations to a "Council on Industrial Relations” where management delegates typically ram down a concessionary deal. Activists in multiple locals have set the goal to win back their right to strike.

Rounding out the year, 12,000 IBEW lineworkers with Local 1245 at Pacific Gas & Electric, California's largest utility, have a contract expiring on December 31, 2025. But don't expect any New Year's Eve blackouts; the local last struck in the 1920s.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Twenty-nine thousand faculty members, counselors, librarians, and coaches in the California State University system have a contract expiring June 30. The California Faculty Association waged its first systemwide strike last January, after 18 months of bargaining over a contract reopener.

That strike ended after one day with a tentative agreement. But the Caucus of Rank-and-File Education Workers formed to demand stronger raises, family leave, and job protections against A.I. The new caucus has since won union-wide resolutions to establish a strike fund and expand open bargaining.

Tens of thousands of student workers at private and public universities have organized since 2016. Some are still fighting for first contracts; others are coming up on contract expirations.

UAW contracts expire June 30 for 4,900 student workers at Harvard and 3,000 at Columbia, mainly graduate instructors and researchers . Harvard student workers struck for three days last time around. Columbia students struck for a month, rejected a deal, and struck again for two months. 500 clerical workers with the UAW at Columbia also have a contract expiring in January.

United Electrical Workers (UE) contracts expire in January for 2,500 graduate workers at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University.

MANUFACTURING

Three thousand IUE-CWA members at GE aerospace and generator manufacturing facilities around the country have contracts expiring June 22, after a two-year extension. A central issue is job protections: GE continues to chip away at work through offshoring and spinning off subsidiaries.

Another Boeing Machinists contract is up July 27: 2,500 members of IAM District 837 in St. Louis work for the defense division, building F-15 and F-18 fighter jets.

Also in defense manufacturing are 2,500 General Dynamics workers in Groton, Connecticut, whose UAW Local 571 contract expires in April. Another 4,000 UAW members who make airplane engines for Rolls Royce in Indiana have a contract expiring on February 26.

Two first contracts in Tennessee auto should hopefully be settled in 2025: at the Chattanooga Volkswagen assembly plant (covering 4,000 members) and the Spring Hill General Motors Ultium battery plant (1,000).

Ford BlueOval battery plant workers outside Louisville, Kentucky, recently launched their drive to join the UAW; if they win, they could start bargaining this year for plants expected to eventually have 5,000 workers in action.

LONGSHORE AGAIN

Twenty-five thousand Longshore (ILA) workers on the East and Gulf Coasts returned to work after a three-day strike in September with a tentative agreement for a 61 percent wage increase—and a contract extension to January 15 for everything else.

The major unresolved issue is port automation and technology; the ILA and the employers’ association have already gone back to, and walked away from, the table over this topic. Employers are expected to fight hard for more “flexibility.” Biden did not intervene in the September strike, but the contract expires five days before Trump takes office. The president can seek an injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act if he deems the situation a “national emergency.”

All the 2025 contracts will be negotiated on a changed terrain, under a second Trump administration backed by right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk eager to go to war with unions. But many companies have enjoyed years of record profits and big stock increases, and the labor market remains relatively tight.

Will unions be able to wrest big gains from their employers? Stay tuned to Labor Notes for updates throughout the year.