Posts tagged Berkeley
Unionized Berkeley REI Workers Get Pay Raises After Labor Board Alleged They Were Shut Out
August 7, 2025 // Following a years-long organizing effort, some workers at a Berkeley REI store are set to get retroactive pay raises and bonuses as part of a labor deal with two unions representing workers at 11 stores across the country. The agreement reached last week between REI Co-op, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union — which represents the Berkeley workers — and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union establishes a national bargaining structure for unionized workers that provides compensation some workers previously did not receive between 2022 and 2024.
UC Academic Workers Strike Over Pro-Palestinian Protest Arrests
May 22, 2024 // UAW 4811 is carrying out what the UAW calls a “Stand Up Strike.” Instead of a simultaneous systemwide strike like the one these same workers carried out in 2022, UAW 4811 is calling on its members on individual UC campuses, starting with Santa Cruz, to walk out. The strategy echoes the successful one that UAW’s traditional autoworker members staged against the big three U.S. automakers in 2023.
City Lights Workers Establish a Union
January 30, 2024 // At City Lights, Toledo cited “strikingly low pay, despite working at one of the most famous independent bookstores in the world,” as well as “no grievance process of any kind.” She noted that “the overwhelming majority of us, if not all of us, are low income in one of the most expensive parts of California and have housing situations to reflect it.” Some bookselling hires come on board at San Francisco’s minimum wage, which is presently $18.07/hour, although others with additional responsibilities—Toledo was hired to be in charge of consignment—earn slightly more. Toledo also expressed concern that there is “a total dearth of communication surrounding the direction of the publishing part of City Lights.” Union staffers see a need for greater transparency between the company's bookselling and publishing sides. “We have had a busy year for the store, and some of the newer titles from publishing are doing quite well,” Toledo said. City Lights, which celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2023, is known as a bastion of radical literature, free speech activism, and social justice, although its staffers have not until now been unionized.
REI Workers in North Carolina Go on Strike, Protest Unfair Labor Practices
May 5, 2023 // REI workers at a store in Durham, N.C. are going on strike to protest management’s response to their unionization efforts. Employees at the store filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on April 13 to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 1208. They said they are striking because of an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge they filed against management, citing “illegal discipline of workers who are involved in the union organization efforts,” a release said. According to a release, REI put an active union organizer on “‘administrative leave’ without clear information about his status.” The employees are also calling on management to “cease manipulating the election process.”
Urban Ore workers win vote to unionize, but salvage store’s owners may fight on
April 12, 2023 // It’s currently a guaranteed base wage of $13.16 per hour, according to Giammarinaro, plus a fluctuating income-sharing portion. Workers now get 15% of the store’s profits, split based on the number of workers and the hours worked. Knapp raised that percentage from 10% earlier this year and said he also provides health care benefits and twice-yearly bonuses. “Having the incentive fluctuate is a big reason we’ve been able to build the company to be as large and capable as it is,” Knapp said. Giammarinaro says his total pay ranges between $19 and $22 per hour, depending on the week. He said he makes less when customers stay home during rainy weather. Workers say wage fluctuation makes financial planning difficult and isn’t fair. “By creating the incentive structure this way, it shares the risk with us, but very little of the reward of being a true owner,” Giammarinaro said.
Workers at Berkeley’s Ecology Center aim to unionize
March 3, 2023 // Administrative employees at the 53-year-old Ecology Center, which operates Berkeley’s three farmers markets and a store on San Pablo Avenue, are seeking to form a union. Twelve workers at the Berkeley environmental nonprofit notified their managers via email on Friday that they want to join the Industrial Industrial Workers of the World Union (IWW), which the Ecology Center’s recycling drivers have been organized with since 1989. The Ecology Center currently employs 20 non-managerial workers who help operate Berkeley’s three farmers markets, staff the center’s store at 2530 San Pablo Ave. and do other administrative work like writing grants and teaching classes, according to union organizers. Organizers are seeking voluntary recognition from management,
New York’s biggest labor actions of the past year
February 28, 2023 // Only one other state, Hawaii, has a unionization rate higher than New York’s 20.7%. In the public sector, just around two-thirds of New Yorkers are in a union. In 2022 alone, nearly 200 workplaces in the state filed for representation through the National Labor Relations Board. But, despite the hype and a 57-year high in Americans’ approval of labor unions, New York’s union participation (and the country’s as a whole) is still trending downward. In 2012, 23.2% of New York workers were union members, 2.5 points higher than it is today. CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies Labor Department Chair Ruth Milkman said that despite 2022’s historic union victories, many were with small firms. “So all this publicity and media attention to these iconic companies that have had some recent experience of successful unionization, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the whole labor market in New York,” she said.
Dissension brews among striking UC union members over tentative agreement
December 19, 2022 // Freund said graduate students have leverage to fight for more gains by withholding their work grading final exams and assignments. Whatever dissent has surfaced among members of the bargaining team, leaders say the democratic process will be on full display this week. “We have a very large and diverse union with 36,000 people,” Jaime said. “It’ll be up to each individual member to decide how to vote on this contract.”
California retail workers vote for union at second REI store
August 29, 2022 // Full-time and part-time employees at the outdoor retailer secured a majority in a mail-in ballot election by voting 56 to 38 in support of joining United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, a 30,000-member labor union, according to a tally on Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board. John Logan, a San Francisco State University professor who studies anti-union actions, UFCW Local 5,
Health care workers in Northern California strike over short staffing, COVID protocols, pay
April 20, 2022 // "By moving forward with today's costly and disruptive strike, union leadership has made it clear they are willing to put politics above patients and the nurses they represent -- despite the intervention of federal mediators and our willingness to bargain in good faith while under threat of a strike," the health network said.