The Starbucks Confronting Labor Laws in Washington D.C. And What Happens When You Don’t Stand Against Union Driving in the Workplace

A national bargaining committee made up of about 50 Starbucks employees is meeting weekly, mapping out strategies ahead of the talks. They’ve begun unveiling a set of noneconomic proposals addressing topics such as health and safety and nondiscrimination in the workplace.

The federal government has stepped up legal challenges against high-profile employers such as Starbucks and Amazon, for unfair labor practices. Federal law prohibits employers from retaliating for union activity or even questioning an employee about union activity. There are many paths that companies can take to challenge any accusation.

Reggie Borges said in a statement, “We respect our partners’ right to organize but believe that the best future is created with partners and not a third party.”

Schultz is expected do what he’s done proudly for decades, outlining the competitive wages and industry-leading benefits that Starbucks affords workers, including free college tuition and company stock, even for part-time employees.

(Many baristas cite tipping as a central issue in their demands, because unlike at many cafes and dine-out restaurants, credit card machines at Starbucks do not allow or prompt customers to add tips.)

“We do not have the same freedom to make these improvements at locations that have a union or where union organizing is underway,” Schultz told shareholders at the time.

Some of them have gotten further along in getting their stores to unionize, it seems like some of the workers at Amazon have. I wonder if it’s a little bit bitter for you to see other union drives happen at a faster rate.

Gailyn Berg, who works at a unionized Starbucks in Falls Church, Va., says that she gets a little angry when those working at the coffee shop ask how they aren’t getting benefits.

Berg, who used to work at a Starbucks store 10 miles away, went to Falls Church after leading a failed union drive there. Turnover at the new store has been high. A lot of the original union supporters left for college or other jobs soon after the election. They have been replaced by newcomers who don’t know much about the effort.

Berg has retreated away from the “gung-ho” idea of unionizing them all. attitude they’d embraced earlier in the year. But they haven’t abandoned the fight.

We’re scared. Leli is a union leader in Buffalo, N.Y. We just want to do our jobs like everyone else and not have worry about when the other shoe is going to fall.”

A federal judge in western Tennessee ordered the company to reinstate the seven workers. Starbucks said it disagreed with the judge’s ruling, maintaining that those fired had violated company policies.

Employers’ Sentiment to the NLRA and its Importance to Employees’ Concerns: A Comment on Starbucks CEO Howard Berg

“The penalties for breaking the National Labor Relations Act are quite weak, and that’s a huge problem because it doesn’t really serve as a deterrent,” says Rebecca Givan, associate professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “Employers think it’s worth break the law because the consequences are not very severe.”

Berg says that they don’t seem to care about them at all. Howard is busy trying to just continue on with his work but not acknowledging the fact that many of us have lost faith in him.

At a shareholder meeting last week, Starbucks’ new CEO Laxman Narasimhan and other executives did not indicate any change in the company’s feelings about unions, stressing the importance of maintaining a direct relationship with its employees.

The Starbucks revenue rose in the third quarter. Customer loyalty is measured through the number of rewards members. In August, the company projected net new U.S. store growth of 3% to 4% annually over the next few years.

Leli said they’ve been planning for months and have gathered input from thousands of employees. We want everyone to feel heard and seen.

Amazon Workers are Innocuous and Theirs to Be: An Investigation of New York State Labor Results From Amazon’s Warehouse Workplace Privacy Protection Act

The right to unionize was won by you. The labor contract is the next step. It is one of the most difficult tasks for any Union to start out with, and that is negotiations with any company, let alone Amazon, which is going to be pouring millions and millions of dollars into it. Without a contract, the union is just a bunch of things. How aware are you of that?

Goodall soon concluded “that the rumors were true,” about Amazon’s harsh working conditions. She watched workers injured, high turnover, and signs saying they wouldn’t get Covid pay. She says there are no excuses in defiance of state law. Ambulances are a common sight outside the warehouse, Goodall says, and one once came for her after her heart condition flared up while on shift. “When you see it on a daily or weekly basis, it becomes normalized, and people stop questioning it,” she says.

Yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA), which protects warehouse distribution workers from undisclosed or unlawful work speed quotas. In addition to protecting warehouse workers from unreasonably demanding work quotas, the law will require distribution centers to inform workers of their performance and rights in the workplace.

According to a December 16th release from the United States Department of Labor, OSHA issued a citation for 14 recordkeeping violations to Amazon. These violations only encompass the investigations performed at only six of Amazon’s 110 active US fulfillment centers.

There are new findings that show that Amazon workers are more likely to be injured than those working for warehouses of the same company.

New York Times: The Story of Two Friends and Two Fellow Warehouse Workers Creating the First Union at Amazon — Revisiting Their Favorites of the Year 2015

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with questions, please review the episode audio.

Hey, it’s Michael. This week, the daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and learning what’s happened in the time since they first ran. The tale of how two friends and fellow warehouse workers were able to form the first union at Amazon is back in today’s story. It’s Tuesday, December 27.

I’m really grateful — because I know you guys are in the middle of what is perhaps the biggest moment of your lives — that you made time to talk to us.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So Chris and Derrick, I want to start by asking you both about how you came to Amazon and to the JFK8 warehouse in the first place. What was it that brought you both there?

I have worked for Amazon since 2015. I was an entry level worker who got hired as a picker, got promoted to a process assistant and opened up three facilities for Amazon.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

New York Times – Opening an office in a new building, and Isn’t a car? When I moved to New York, I went with a PA

Right, right. I have been a PA for four years and have trained hundreds of employees as well as the management of the company. And so I applied to relocate to JFK, which it didn’t open yet. The building was still under construction. I had a plan to get into that building once it was launched.

I knew that I should be able to choose my shift, as well as the time of day that I was supposed to work, especially in opening a new building. I wasn’t given that opportunity. They threw me right on to the worst shift, which is 12-hour RT shifts.

12 hours Thursday, Friday, Saturday — they took my whole weekend away. I lived in New Jersey and didn’t have a vehicle at the time. So my commute was two and a half hours, three hours each way.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

New York Times Observations: Amazon as a new tool for sourcing human resources at large scales. What is next for Bezos?

Oh, I mean, at the time, you know, I was unemployed. I was doing a lot of different temp jobs. And if it wasn’t for my mother, I honestly wouldn’t be at Amazon. So my mom.

Yeah. She mentioned Amazon to me. So at the time, I didn’t really know too much about it. I just knew that a lot of people were getting hired at these Amazon facilities. I asked, “You know what?” Let me try it out for a day and see what happens.

I thought that the workers were in Amazon’s best interest. I thought they were just like, all right, you work hard, you move up. So immediately I adapted that philosophy. And I just worked as hard as I could.

Yeah. That’s — in my mind, I was like, you know what? I’m going to move up with this company. I’m going to excel because Amazon is such a big name. So, unfortunately, it did not go that way.

I didn’t know at the time. I was convinced that I would get promoted if I continued to work hard. But what they did do was they offered me an ambassador position. The ambassador are trained to train other workers. So all the new employees that get hired — it was my responsibility to train them.

Chris andDerrick are describing their experience. Based on our reporting on Amazon, that’s actually part of the company’s design. The system was created by Bezos in order to have lower-level warehouse jobs. Those were expected to have a tremendous amount of turnover.

There is a progressing H1N1 swine flu. Americans are very reliant on Amazon. The company is reporting record gains, and it’s hiring like crazy. In three months, it scoops up 350,000 workers.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

How do we get there? I’m going to go home with my friend and colleague, and I will take care of my assignments for you, and when I go home

Well, it was just the fact that we were in the dark. We didn’t know what we were doing, we were watching the news and the company was doing something else.

So it was something off in there, something off in the building, with managers, with the communication. And I wondered, what is going on here? We are sitting in the break room. Derrick can tell you. We were sitting there joking, we’re all going to die because we’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, and we’re watching CNN, and they’re telling us we need to be six feet apart with masks.

The same way — I was scared. The building was quiet, with no one knowing what the next steps would be. We were not sure what the plans were for Amazon. The energy that was going on was at that time.

Exactly. They feel like this is their time. Chris and Derrick are saying that a lot of confusion exists in the warehouse. Our reporting shows that information provided to workers by Amazon was quite unreliable. The workers in the warehouse had no idea what was going on with the cases in their own building.

I just kept applying pressure on HR. Every day I would go in there, and, like, what are y’all going to do — until March 24 when I came into work. The supervisor that worked most of the week was walking slowly. She used her own mask.

I looked at her, and I wondered what was going on. What are you doing? And then she was like, I don’t feel good. I went to go get tested yesterday. I told you to wait a second. You got a test? They let you do the tests?

Right. So I’m like, wait a second. And I was watching the news. They said in order to get the test, you had to have severe symptoms, such as bloodshot eyes. All of them were symptoms she was showing.

So I said, you probably need to go home, as a friend and a colleague. She did. She went right home. I said I will take care of your assignments. I will do all of your engagements. She has been working for several days around hundreds of people and has tested positive.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

Derrick and I walked out of the building. The first day of the Kentucky Farm Workers’ Strike at the Fermilab hospital, I think the building was closed down

I asked if I was crazy, I was looking around. I’m leaving. I’m clocking out and going home. And that’s exactly — I went right downstairs, got Derrick because I ride to work with him. It was noon. I said, yo, we need to get out of here.

So the next day, I came back to work, and Derrick came with me. We went straight into the break room at 7:00, 7:15. And at the top of our lungs, we yelling around, yo, we need to do something. We all just wanted the building to be closed and cleaned.

So just to be clear, what you want is the building to be closed down because people who worked in the warehouse tested positive for the disease. That is your request.

Yeah. We wanted to be closed for 14 days and cleaned and come back to work. And we probably wouldn’t be sitting here today.

Kentucky’s governor closed their warehouse after they walked off the job. I observed that in the article. And I’m like, why the hell we can’t get that? “All right, let’s plan a walk out here.” I said.

And now the media started to call. And I’m like, oh, all right. All right. I tell them at noon on March 30 that it is going down. And I just kept telling the media that over and over. Yes, we’re planning a walkout. How many people are there? And I knew the media wasn’t going to come if I would have said five people.

Oh, wow. I did not sleep the night before and we got up early on the day of the strike. I think I was like a mom eating spaghetti and my stomach turned. He came to get me. It was like we were crossing the bridge, and I didn’t know what it would look like.

I am not sure what will happen. Yeah. All these emotions are going through. And we get to the building. When I saw the helicopter hovering, I knew it was real. And we saw a row of media vans. I’m like, oh, shit. Look what we did.

In less than 5 minutes, I see 60, 50, and 100 workers. It is much like the handful of us in the parking lot holding the signs.

Dozens of workers walked out today over safety concerns about the spread of coronavirus, demanding the facility be closed for at least two weeks and sanitized. They’re also asking for —

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

What Happened When Chris and the Congress of Essential Workers (CLEWA) Founded in New York and Bessemer, Ten Years After the First Trade-off

Yes. They’re saying, “this is crazy. I don’t even know what to say.” So this is proof that even on that day, there were HR people at Amazon who thought this was a very bad idea. The chief counsel for Amazon has sent an email. He described Chris as not smart or articulate. He mistakenly sends the email to 1,000 people at Amazon.

You were fired because you held the walk out. This email has gone out about you that’s pretty derogatory. What happens next? What do you decide to do?

At that moment, that’s when we decide to continue to advocate for workers. The Congress of essential workers was founded by us. And I just said, you know what? We need to form something like a coalition to bring us together. And we formed this organization.

We traveled the nation starting in New York at billionaire Jeff Bezos mansions. We could not find all of them. We missed a couple. We started in New York after missing the one in Miami. And then we went to DC. We traveled to Beverly Hills. Then we went to Seattle. And then we — at that time, that’s when they started to unionize in Bessemer.

It is an important time to note, because it seems like Chris and the gang did not have a lot of traction. The initial burst of publicity about Chris being fired and the subsequent walk out had dissipated at this point. It just feels like the company has the upper hand.

They’re offering health care for free on the first day. It seems like the idea that this small band of workers are going to be able to challenge the company in the midst of everything is very unlikely. Chris says that later, like he says, comes Bessemer.

Yeah, I was like, OK, sure I support it 100 percent. We decided to drive 16 hours down there because I supported it so much. And I thought that would be helpful to their efforts. Instead, they said no, we want to do this the Alabama way. And I said, whatever the hell that means. What’s the Alabama way? I don’t know. But I know now what it is because they didn’t allow us to rally. They barely wanted us to talk to workers. They said that they don’t want you to talk to the workers because they’re going to make them angry and they’re going to fire you.

It was frustrating because if you’re an organizer, his story is a gold mine if you’re talking to workers and convincing them why they need a union. I felt like people from New York could leave. We don’t need y’all.

It looks like the three people are all saying the same thing. You saw that the organizers were not really connecting with the workers and they were taking a top-down approach. And, Jodi, you’re saying that’s a pretty conventional, traditional, old-school approach, and put it all together, it just didn’t succeed.

Right. When it comes to a union vote in a place like Bessemer, every worker has a say in the outcome.

Well, I should say, technically, the fight in Bessemer has stretched on a long time. The initial vote to form a union failed. And when that happened, what a lot of people just said was, OK, the conventional wisdom is true. You can not organize an Amazon warehouse.

Yeah. I went down there to see how the campaign was being handled and I think the fact that they weren’t engaging with the workers was a red flag.

Yeah, about working with a union. Because I feel like unions have been around for a long time. They have their very own way of approaching things. We were pretty sure it was going to be hard. It was very hard because there wasn’t any money or resources. That is what big unions provide. But the fact that we’re the workers and we can connect with them, that’s all we needed to really know.

We didn’t hesitate. As soon as it was over, there was some people on my team at the time that was like, we should wait. They wanted to take a look at Jane. They wanted to study all of these expertise. And they did. We took the courses. I never got a chance to take them. You know, Derrick was working.

So I said, let’s go while the Iron is hot. And also, I thought in my head, I said, how the hell are we going to listen to expertise when this has never been done before? In reality, we the experts. We invested in the company. We know the ins and outs of the company.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

How did you go about forming your own labor union? [CHUCKLES]: The first step in forming a union from scratch

Well, OK. Chris and Derrick, you get back to New York after your experience in Alabama. Tell us about how you go about trying to build your own union from scratch.

We didn’t know what we — we had no playbook. We was like, we’re going — we went to Walmart, picked up two tables, four chairs, and a tent, spent $150 out of GoFundMe, by the way. And we went out to JFK8, and we said, all right, let’s stay here by the bus stop. We just picked that spot.

[CHUCKLES]: In the beginning, it was nothing. I was out there by myself, literally. I would go there and set up the whole setup myself on hot summer days, and sit for hours just like that.

And feet up, just waiting for workers to trickle off the bus. I would catch them. And I tried to get as many people as possible. And we didn’t even know what we were pitching. We were just like, yo, I need you to sign up. We are going to form a labor union. We did not have a lot to offer. We did not have any of the following: authorization cards, pamphlets or anything like that. That’s it.

Sure. They’re the first step towards forming a union. You need workers to sign cards to make sure that you have enough support to hold an election. Once you get enough signatures — typically it’s 30 percent —

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

Amazon, I’m going to go out there, and I am going to come out and tell them how to stay there. I’ll be going out there to tell them what I can do

Amazon did not waste time. As soon as we set up, they arrived. You guys can’t be here. Dude coming over there yelling at us. He said he was going to call the cops. We said to call them. He is not going to call them.

Yes. First of all, we have the TCOEW — Congress Of Essential Workers — shirts. So I’m wearing it throughout the building. So I’m letting Amazon know right then and there, like, look, this is my stance. I’m going to continue to work. And I’m going to be like the voice of the associates in the inside of the facility.

Do not speak to the ALU members. A group of workers has no experience with a union. They were saying, oh, you will have to pay dues If you sign this card, it will count. They were throwing jabs at us.

But me being organized and me being an insider, that’s my job to ease the tension and let them know that, look, you sign this authorization card. There’s not going to be any penalty for signing the card. We have to gather support in order to have a election so that we can have a union. Every day — I’ll be talking to workers every single day. They would either sign the card inside the building, or if they didn’t sign the card inside, I’d go out there and talk to Chris. And it worked.

I was playing the outside game. They had the inside game and they were in control. 600 to 800 workers were about to get on and off this bus, and every day shift change we know that. But then it came to a point where we done signed them all up already. Now we like, did you sign it — we’re asking the same people that are there, so we had to change up our strategy.

We were just focusing more on days. So, now it’s like, we need to do the overnight. I told the team that they should stay until later in the day so we could get the night shift. And night shift was lovely. We locked ourselves up from the moment we started. People love the fact that we was out there setting up bonfires and —

We were cooking s’mores. We were singing guitar, acoustic music, and playing music. It felt like we were building a community right there at the bus stop. We would be holding hands, crying and singing. It was just like a real — you can’t explain the emotions that were going on. It was very spiritual.

That is when I knew this was going to work. When the workers got out of the bus, they were wondering where they were and that was a little bit of hope.

Think about the situation, like we said we went to Bessemer and they weren’t interacting with the workers. We had to make sure we did that consistently.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

Amazon’s Everyday Helped Amazon Union. I’m so excited to be there, I know you’re there, but where did you go?

There’s people that I know and heard them say, I signed up because I saw y’all out here for the last year. We made a sacrifice. We all gave up our personal lives. Amazon’s 24/7 — so I would tell my team that every time we’re not there, we’re losing. So we got to be there — one of us, two of us got to be out there. No matter what y’all doing, you got to be there.

We would have our alarm set on our phone so that the alarm go off, and, oh, these workers are about to get off. So that type of commitment — workers seeing us there consistently — helped ease the tension.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

“Giving away food” — An example of what happened to a unionized General Motors factory, when a worker left the building to become a ridesharing service

We were giving away marijuana. The people were giving out books. We were giving away clothing items. We were helping workers just — we were paying for people’s Ubers. One time a worker came out with high blood pressure. He had to go to the hospital with an expensive ride-sharing service. Amazon did not want to pay for it. They told him to go home on the bus. Whatever it took to get even one person, we were doing it. The national agreement was signed. In December that was what happened. We switched up our strategy again.

Yes. So this is a really important thing that happens. They got a landmark settlement from the National Labor Relations Board which lets them organize inside the building. So now the team is spending hours and hours a day in the break room. And there’s one particular day when Chris himself comes up to the building to deliver food to the workers inside.

Trust me. For them to see me get arrested for giving food, they were like, full on with y’all. That was the turning point. They lost the election there.

But if you want to find an example of it happening with a company this big, you’d probably have to go back to the auto workers who unionized General Motors in the 1930s.

New York Amazon Lawyers: I’m Sorry, I ain’t gonna tell you that I didn’t know before I arrived at the bus stop

In comparison to our one pro-bono lawyer, Amazon has six billion dollar lawyers on their side. And then we sit in the front. There are two people here. One on each side is given the chance to sit at the table.

There’s four or five board agents. There are two or three of them who are opening the ballots and getting them read. And then there’s one person that’s reading them. The two others are calculating them. And it’s from right to left, pretty much. They’re sliding — and we’re sitting in front of this small table, and we’re watching them say yes or no.

When we got down to the last two boxes, and we were up 300, 400, they’re not coming back from that. I was like, oh, there was too box — I was looking back at my team, looking back over their shoulder, and I was — we good.

Yeah, that’s right. I saluted the cameras. I was trying to tell people, stop being nervous. We got this. I’m not going to say something isn’t true. Several members of my team thought they lost as well. I ain’t gonna call them out —

Even though I was at that bus stop, I was still reading articles and looking at quotes from people who do not know what they’re talking about. We out here. Y’all can say what y’all want. I am familiar with what we are doing. I was like, they don’t know.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

The Amazon Labor Union: Where are we going? What have we learned from the last eight months? A Call to Derrick to find out where things are going?

We got a worker’s budget and sometimes no budget. So our campaign was built off of pure love and caring for one another. That’s it. Different buildings in different states were contacted by us.

People should know me by now. We’re fighters. That is definitely one thing for sure. We’re fighters. We will get a contract, no matter what they think. And whatever way, by any means, whatever it takes, we’ll get it done.

After the break, I called up Derrick once again to find out where things stand with the Amazon Labor Union since it first formed in April. We will be back.

So it’s been about eight months since we last spoke. You and Chris were talking about how the union vote went your way when we left off. I mean, it was huge and historic. At the time, you said it was just the beginning of a long process. We need to know about the major developments that have happened since then.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

New York Yankees Against Amazon: What Do We Need to Learn to Vote? How Do We Get There? What We Can Do to Get Our Way To An Election?

We’ve been trying to get other campaigns to go to different facilities. One campaign was at LDJ5 in Staten Island, which is directly across the street from JFK8. Also, ALB1 — that’s in Albany, New York.

No. Other buildings have started their campaigns. The campaign is located in the Valley of California, San Bernardino. The way it looks, they should be able to file the petition for an election soon. We want to get as many signatures as we can before we file. We want to make sure that the workers vote yes when it is time to vote, and we want as much support as possible.

No, I mean, it’s not bittersweet. Because we got to really understand what’s happening. You need to understand the dynamics. These Starbucks stores — they have about 20 people. And you have to get 30 percent of them to sign authorization cards under the National Labor Relations Board process versus us, where we have over 8,000 workers, and we have to get 30 percent of them to sign authorization cards to even get to an election.

It’s already happening. It is already starting. I am very hopeful about the future because I know that unionizing is the future of technology, not just for Amazon but for many tech companies across the world. So this is just a turning point in the labor movement.

Well, right now, we have to get our certification to even bargain. That should be the number one by the new year. Once that occurs, we will put an order to negotiate with Amazon. That is part of a process as well. Amazon could challenge that.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

New York amazon union: Is it hard to stay? What has it been like to work at the bus stop for two weeks?

Our conversation tells us that Chris left the company. He told us he was forced out. You guys unionized at the warehouse and you still work there. What has it been like to work there?

Oh, yes. Yeah. So, just about two weeks ago, myself and Chris and other organizers were at the bus stop — not even on the property, not in the building — at the bus stop on public ground, passing out union literature to workers. There was an argument between two people, one of them being the organizers. But that same week, I went to work, and I was suspended because of the incident that took place —

So I was told that I was going to be suspended for seven days with pay. And the seven days was up as of yesterday, which was my birthday, actually. The suspension was extended for two more weeks. I need to return to work on the 28th of December, pending the investigation.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-amazon-union.html

The Daily (Dancing with The Daily): Getting a Little More Information about Construction and the Landsv”andelization

Interesting. So sketch the future out for me for just a moment. Let’s say we’re talking to you in a year’s time. Do you think this is going to look like it?

We’ll have a contract by 2024. That is the goal. Other facilities will also be unionized. That is going to happen.

Today’s episode was made by Diana and Mooj Zadieisko with assistance from other people. It was put together by Lisa Tobin, Michael Benoist, John Ketchum, and Anita Badejo, who also edited it, along with Chris Wood and Sophia Lanman.

Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk are from Wonderly. Special Thank you to Karen Weise, Martin Dicicco, and Steve Maing. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. You should see me tomorrow.

The Rise of Unions: Starbucks, Amazon, U.K., Food Service, and Retail in the Post-World Warp Era

Starbucks and Amazon were far from alone facing major union drives. As unemployment remained low and wages grew, workers in education and healthcare, food service and retail continued the pandemic-era push for higher pay, better sick leave and other changes to their working conditions. But tangible results are hard to quantify — so far. The lasting power of the labor movement may be told a lot in the coming years.

Some factors help explain the rise. Public support for unions is at a 60-year high (more on that below). And Starbucks played an outsized role in driving up that number. Starbucks accounted for roughly a quarter of all union elections this year, and the union was victorious in four out of every five elections.

U workers at a GM-owned electric vehicle battery cell plant in Warren, Ohio, and graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were involved in this year’s notable union campaigns.

For all the prominent union wins of 2022, it’s a very slow process getting to a collective-bargaining contract to negotiate pay raises or other changes that unionized workers want.

Wages increased over last year. With far more openings than available workers, wages grew even faster at some of the lowest-paying jobs. But adjusting for 7% inflation, overall wages actually declined, and many workers felt like they were losing ground.

Rail workers get a 3% raise in the first year, followed by another 3% in the second and third year, and finally a further 9% in the fourth and final year.

Food service workers at the San Francisco International Airport have won a raise over the course of the past two years. They’ll see wages rise from about $17 an hour to $22 an hour by 2024. The deal also included health insurance, retirement, and a one-time bonus.

Is Apple a union? Six weeks of legal harassment at a New York store — an Amazon employee test of the Fair Labor Practices

Only about 10% of U.S. workers belong to a union, but 68% of Americans approve of unions, according to Gallup. It’s the lowest level of support in the last 50 years.

But Amazon requested a review of the decision. If the review does not go in its favor, Amazon will still go to federal circuit court.

The judge made a statement that was not obvious or clear in the section of the decision dedicated to the consequences Amazon would face for engaging in unfair labor practices. Here’s that quote in its current context.

The General Counsel has requested certain atypical remedies, including a notice reading and supervisor training by a Board agent. I refuse to grant these requests. Some unfair labor practices weren’t obvious or clear cut and that’s what I found. The traditional remedies of the Board are enough to effectuate the policies of the Act.

Last year the company was accused of illegally threatening and surveilled union organizers in New York, and if the board issues a complaint again it will be the first. So far, the NLRB hasn’t gone as far as to say that the determination requires an election redo at LDJ5 as it did in Bessemer, Alabama.

Apple wants employees to not vote to unionize. The legality of the method? Ambiguous. What Apple and many employers regard as informational lunch ‘n’ learns have been described by union activists and a key US official as captive audience meetings that amount to illegal coercion. “It was just like six weeks of solid union-busting roundtables, which were scheduled throughout the day,” Civick says. Customer queues back at the store lengthened in the meantime, she says.

“For me and a lot of my other coworkers, it was the worst six weeks to work at Apple,” says the five-year veteran—a particularly notable comparison at a store where she and other workers complain they have sometimes been made to clean up leaking sewage.

The PRO Act: Proposed Senate Reintroduction for the Protecting the Right to Organize (Progress Against Labor Practices)

Unions have fought back, filing hundreds of unfair labor practice charges over anti-union activities, citing things like companies closing stores, cutting hours, and threatening and firing organizers at stores that had or were trying to unionize. (Companies have also filed unfair labor practice charges against unions, but far fewer.)

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act has passed the House of Representatives twice since 2020, but the Senate has failed to advance the measure. Civick spoke today alongside Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and other lawmakers at a press conference marking the reintroduction of the proposal. The bill also has a Republican sponsor, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick.

“The PRO Act is more than just labor reform—it’s a civil rights necessity,” Schumer says in a statement. “This legislation empowers marginalized workers—women, people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community.”

The revolt by the former allies of Mr. Smalls was an attempt to overthrow the leadership and many of the dissidents are white. (Ruel Mohan, a mixed-race worker involved with the union who is one of the critics, said of the rift: “I didn’t see anything that had to do with race.”)

At a tense union meeting in December, Mr. Smalls told longtime organizers that they should step aside if they couldn’t get along with him or those loyal to him. “You got a problem with me? Deuces,” he said, using a slang term for “goodbye.” Two groups have been operating independently after the meeting.

Do unions really want to come back? The case of a Manhattan worker who sprayed champagne and drunkenly drank from the bottle

The economy heard the Champagne pop. One year ago this week, a fired Amazon warehouse worker who became a labor activist sprayed champagne and then drank from the bottle outside of labor offices in New York City.

Researchers who study labor movements say that labor law is biased in favor of employers, making it difficult to overcome corporate hostility towards unions. The public’s support is not enough to make a union comeback happen.

“Though it’s too small in scope and too Resistive by Employers, those of us who’ve been watching it for decades have been pleasantly surprised by the success that has occurred.” said Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at the Graduate Center.

Companies can engage in anti-union activities if the law allows them to, Milkman says.

Starbucks insisted that individual stores shouldn’t be allowed to hold union elections, so all stores in a geographic region must vote together in one election, increasing the difficulty for union organizers. The Starbucks elections went on despite the federal labor officials ruling against the coffee shop.

In January of this year, the company was ordered to begin negotiations with the union after federal labor officials found Amazon’s objections to the election to be meritless.

But even where the NLRB has found violations of workers’ rights to organize, the board’s decisions don’t have much financial bite. The agency’s administrative law judges can only impose what are called “make whole” remedies, things like back pay, reinstatement and reimbursement for financial harms suffered as a result of unlawful activities.

But with a divided Congress, hopes for passage are slim. And without any change in the law, Milkman says it’s hard to imagine a significant uptick in the unionization rate in the U.S.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/28/1165294695/labor-union-starbucks-amazon-howard-schultz-workers

Proposal for a Resolution of the Proton-Proton Human Rights Violation Action in Sen. Clinton’s Supermajority Campaign at Starbucks

The PRO Act is not going to be enacted, which means Sen. Clinton is going to make public of those in power. Earlier this year, Sanders threatened to subpoena Schultz, calling on him to end the “relentless union-busting campaign” at Starbucks.

Even if the proposal gets a large number of votes, it’s not clear how much weight it would have. Starbucks encouraged shareholders to vote against the proposal, saying it had begun its own human rights impact assessment.