How Unions Police Contracts to Protect Workers

Anna Sanding and her coworkers knew they had straightforward language in their contract with Long Beach Medical Center: It said that they would earn at least 30 percent above the state’s minimum wage.

But when California set a higher minimum wage for healthcare professionals in 2024, the hospital refused to raise the workers’ pay accordingly.

Anna, chief steward for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 2801, recalled how the union tried to reason with management. But when common sense failed to carry the day, she and other union activists filed a grievance, took the case to arbitration, and won tens of millions in back pay and interest for members of the bargaining unit.

The hospital so far refuses to implement the award. The union will keep fighting.

“Where’s the savings in that?” Anna asked of the hospital’s greed.

Union workers regularly negotiate contracts with family-sustaining wages, affordable healthcare, safe working conditions, and retirement security. We earn higher wages and better benefits, on average, than our nonunion peers.

But contracts, typically bargained every three to five years, aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on unless we also enforce them each and every day.

That means monitoring workplace conditions, calling out violations, and holding management accountable. It means leveraging the grievance and arbitration processes, as Local 2801 did so well, when employers refuse to correct course.

Anna, a phlebotomist at the hospital for about 35 years, put it this way: “Don’t mess with us. We will fight for whatever we won as hard as we can.”

Employers breach contracts in various ways, such as cutting corners on safety, changing working conditions unilaterally, or doling out unwarranted discipline. Shortchanging workers on wages is another of the most common—and ultimately costly—ways that employers go rogue.

For example, workers who test and commission people-moving train cars at Los Angeles International Airport recently won a multi-million-dollar arbitration award against Alstom Transport USA for paying them less than required under a project labor agreement.

Support workers in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools filed a grievance to recover work and pay denied to them—in violation of their contract—when the district involuntarily transferred them from 12-month jobs to 10-month positions.

Even Disney, one of America’s wealthiest corporations, tried to rip off its workers.

In 2025, tens of thousands of union workers in California won $233 million in back pay from Disneyland for flouting minimum wage law. The settlement, including 10 percent interest, represents the largest victory over wage theft in state history.

Employers will try to get away with whatever they can, even when contract language is “clear and unambiguous,” as the arbitrator pointed out in awarding back pay to the USW members at Long Beach Medical Center. The hospital simply stopped paying what it owed when the new minimum wage for healthcare professionals took effect two years ago.

It’s galling for an employer to cheat like this, especially when it’s relying on the very same workers to deliver the goods and provide services that keep the place running in the first place.

Local 2801 members serve in dozens of roles, such as anesthesia technician, biomedical equipment technician, and facilities technician. Without them, management couldn’t even keep the doors open, let alone provide the top-quality, award-winning care patients receive there.

Anna was among the workers who voted years ago to join the USW and gain a voice on the job. “I really got tired of people being pushed around,” she recalled.

Now, as chief steward, she plays a key role in policing the union contract and making sure workers receive fair treatment. She talks to colleagues, documents workplace problems, and meets with management to address them, relying on a larger team of union lawyers and staff members whenever bigger issues like the pay dispute require additional support.

The arbitration victory energized workers in their ongoing fight for a new contract. It’s a reminder of their collective power to secure what’s rightly theirs, Anna observed, noting colleagues told her that they’ll use the long-overdue pay to cover bills and “do this or that” for their kids.

“It’s money that they should have had,” Anna said. “Now they’ll have it.”

Roxanne D. Brown is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.