Posts tagged captive audience meetings
What You Need To Know About Gen Z’s Support for Unions
August 10, 2023 // Nevertheless, to sustain a lasting revival of union membership in the United States over the coming years as today’s young workers make up an increasing share of the workforce, it is imperative for lawmakers to pass measures that would help these workers exercise their right to come together in collective bargaining. Congress has a number of measures that it could pass to help workers of all generations form unions without corporate interference, such as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen workers’ legal organizing protections. Young workers need policymakers who champion their right to speak up on the job.
eBay charged with multiple unfair labor complaints in struggle with its first union
August 1, 2023 // “They have refused to give us our rights to status quo. Our Weingarten rights. They refuse to recognize us as a union. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that [the union has] been certified even if we present them with certification,” Thomas said. “So they are just continuing to make all these changes and refusing to work with us and refusing to follow their legal right to sit down or their legal responsibilities to sit down and bargain with us at the table.” Though the TCG Union-CWA was formed just this year, workers were set to vote on unionization back in 2020. According to Thomas, before the 2020 vote, TCGplayer management made promises to improve benefits and implement better pathways to promotion.
Frank Ricci: Five Years After Janus
June 30, 2023 // Following the decision and decreased national interest, laws meant to obscure union members’ rights have been adopted. As a result, public sector union management across the country has hesitated to inform employees of their rights, fearing they will receive charges from local labor boards. At the state level, unions have used their political clout to ban captive audience meetings where the employer shares their position on a topic and to bar management even from attending union orientation sessions. This allows the unions to utilize so-called “dark patterns” — techniques that lock members into deliberately deceptive contracts designed to deprive them of their rights.
Op-ed – New York: Lawmakers pass bill banning ‘captive audience’ meetings
June 14, 2023 // “Employers have become much more aggressive in using captive audience meetings to force workers into hearing the employer’s one-sided propaganda on unionization and other issues,” Appelbaum said in a statement following the legislation’s passage. “These meetings often leave workers feeling pressured and intimidated. It is time that the law catches up to the reality of the moment by allowing workers to refuse to attend these meetings without fear of retaliation.” Three states, Connecticut, Oregon and, most recently, Minnesota have banned the meetings. After the Connecticut ban passed, a coalition of U.S companies led by the U.S Chamber of Commerce sued the state in federal court, arguing that the law is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act and that it breached employers First Amendment-protected freedom of speech.
NLRB Takes on Free Speech Yet Again
May 31, 2023 // Eventually, the anti-free speech charges brought by the NLRB will find their way to federal court, where they are likely to run into a buzzsaw. Not only is employer free speech protected by Section 8(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision from 2008 has made that point abundantly clear. In the meantime, the agency will continue harassing businesses for engaging in perfectly legal activity. This seems like a ridiculous waste of time and money. Despite getting an extra $25 million from Congress last year, the NLRB is still pleading poverty. Perhaps if agency spent its money more productively, it wouldn’t feel the need to go back to the taxpayers for more.
Connecticut school bus driver files labor charges against Teamsters
April 6, 2023 // Mary Boland of New Milford, a driver for All Star Transportation since 2003, alleges the union never stopped deducting membership dues after she requested to be a nonmember in October of 2022 and that they never provided an audit. She is being represented by the National Right to Work Foundation, which provided legal counsel in the Beck decision in 1988. Boland was originally represented by Teamsters Local 677, which organized in 2006, but that union was disbanded and replaced with Local 671 in September of 2022. Boland had been paying fees, not full union dues, to Local 677 before it was replaced, according to the charges filed with NLRB.
Baristas Form First Unionized Peet’s Coffee in US With Help From Starbucks Workers
January 25, 2023 // SBWU organizer Tyler Keeling from Lakewood, California played an instrumental role in PWU's efforts, as detailed last week in Jacobin. PWU expressed gratitude to Keeling before and after the union vote.
The State of the Union: Unpacking the Recent Rise in Labor Unionization
January 20, 2023 // Considering unions’ historical role in curbing disproportionate corporate profits and inequality, it makes sense that the NLRB reported a 57% jump in union representation petitions and 14% more complaints of unfair labor practices in the first half of 2022. In the current moment, it seems that workers are turning to unionization as a means of righting the wrongs of corporate inequality. But this push for unions, while having recently enjoyed a burst of momentum, has been a long time coming. Public support for unions stands at 71%, up from 48% in 2010 and at its highest since 1965, according to a recent Gallup poll. Organizers are also being buoyed by a political environment conducive to labor organizing. President Biden has taken decidedly pro-union stances since entering office, replacing Trump’s pro-business and anti-labor NLRB general counsel with former union attorney Jennifer Abruzzo and backing the PRO Act, which would simplify the process of unionizing. It also helps that unions have evaded the extreme partisanship that has swamped most other issues in contemporary politics: While Democrats are twice as likely to view unions favorably compared to Republicans, almost half of Republicans still say that they would approve of unionization in their workplaces.
Blank Street Coffee Is Popping Up Everywhere. Workers Hope A Union Will Follow.
January 11, 2023 // deGraffenreid said the desire for unionism is “definitely in the air” when it comes to coffee shop workers, noting the massive success of Starbucks Workers United, which organized more than 200 shops at the previously non-union chain in less than a year. But interviews with deGraffenreid and three other workers supportive of the UFCW effort suggest Blank Street’s somewhat unique business model also helps explain why workers are interested in unionizing.
Union-friendly changes in the works at U.S. labor board
January 4, 2023 // The U.S. National Labor Relations Board's Democratic majority is poised to make a series of key changes to federal labor law in 2023 that will aid unions amid a surge in organizing that gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. The NLRB and its general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, have signaled their interest in overturning a number of Trump-era decisions that were favored by business groups.