Last week, a judge in Connecticut blocked the Bureau of Prisons from terminating its collective bargaining agreement.
Page B39From§Eachthe early bird edition — 7 October 2026
Bureau of Prisons told to restore union contract, responds by getting accused of contempt
As it ran on the front
Last Tuesday a federal judge in Connecticut ordered the Bureau of Prisons to do something it had already been told to do once: reinstate the collective bargaining agreement its director tore up last year. One week later, this week, the union is back in the same courthouse, saying the agency never restored it at all, and asking a judge to hold the Bureau of Prisons in contempt. That is the whole arc of the story so far — a court win that produced no compliance, followed by a second filing asking the court to notice.
Cross the Atlantic and the shape repeats with a different workforce. In Bognor Regis, ten unionized security officers at the Butlin's holiday resort filed a collective grievance against a manager last month. The company's response was not to answer the grievance. It was to open investigations — into the ten who signed it, and, the union says, into the ones who didn't sign it either. A grassroots union is now seeking a court injunction over what it calls intimidation and blacklisting. The grievance gets no answer; everyone in the building gets a file.…
…(cont) Go back further and the same fight just runs longer. In June, José Luis Solorio Alcalá, the union leader at Honda's plant in Mexico, won his reinstatement. It took fifteen years. Fifteen years is long enough that a worker can file a grievance, watch it rejected, appeal it, watch that rejected, and die of old age before the employer complies — except he didn't, he waited it out, and he won.
Line them up and the pattern is not that employers break the law. Plenty of employers follow labor law without a judge standing over them. The pattern is what happens the moment a court tells one of them to stop: the Bureau of Prisons gets ordered to restore a contract and files nothing, the union files instead. Butlin's gets a grievance and opens investigations instead of answering it.
A contract is not restored because a judge signs an order. It is restored when somebody makes the employer do it, and that somebody is never automatic — it is a plaintiff, a union, a lawyer willing to go back a second time, a third time, for as many years as it takes. The Bureau of Prisons just found out a second filing is cheaper than compliance. So far it's been right.
“A judge already told them to restore the contract — the second lawsuit is the receipt that they didn't. Same move the resort pulled on its own security guards: don't answer the grievance, open a file on everybody who touched it, signers and holdouts both. The only time these guys follow a court order is when somebody makes them, over and over, for however long it takes — ask the guy in Mexico, fifteen years.”
“Look, the agency has operational discretion during an appeal period, that's — okay, there isn't an appeal, the judge just ordered it restored. What I mean is reinstating a contract takes time, systems, paperwork, it's not like flipping a switch. Did I say paperwork? There's no paperwork, they just haven't done it.”
The receipts
· Bureau of Prisons ordered to restore its union's contract from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Honda Mexico Worker Wins Reinstatement After 15-Year Fight from the morgue, 5 Jun 2026
· Court injunction sought against Butlin’s over alleged union intimidation and blacklisting from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.