Posts tagged Chipotle
Barnes & Noble Education Workers Seek to Unionize, Extending Organizing Wave
April 10, 2023 // Workers say they’ve signed up most of the roughly 70 employees at the store on Rutgers University’s campus. After announcing their organizing campaign to local management, they plan to submit a filing Thursday asking the US National Labor Relations Board to conduct a unionization election. Employees are petitioning to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which currently represents retail workers at Macy’s Inc., H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB and, most recently, Recreational Equipment Inc., where it first secured a foothold last year in New York City. Barnes & Noble Education didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company, which retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. spun off in 2015, operates 785 physical bookstores for students and hundreds of online bookstores. It also has exclusive deals with schools and universities to distribute course materials.
The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins
April 5, 2023 // The practice of joining a workplace with the secret aim of organizing it is called “salting.” Westlake was addressing recruits at the Inside Organizer School, a workshop held a couple times a year by a loose confederation of labor organizers. At these meetups, experienced activists train other attendees in the art of going undercover. Speakers lecture and lead discussions on how to pass employer screenings, forge relationships with co-workers and process the complicated feelings that can accompany a double life. Most salts are volunteers, not paid union officials, but unions sometimes fund their housing or, later, tap them for full-time jobs. Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate that’s home to the new Starbucks union, hired Westlake as an organizer around the time the coffee chain fired him last fall.
Chipotle will pay a $240,000 penalty — roughly 1% of its daily revenue— for shutting down a store that tried to unionize
March 28, 2023 // The employees filed a petition to form a union last June — the first time Chipotle employees had taken that step. The following month, Chipotle said it would close the location, citing problems recruiting enough employees to run the location, CNBC reported. According to the Kennebec Journal, the National Labor Relations Board later found that the closure violated labor laws. The payment will be split among the former location's employees, who will receive between $5,800 and $21,000 each based on their seniority, pay rate, and other factors, per the Journal.
Labor Law Reform Is Needed for Unions to Succeed
February 9, 2023 // U.S. Department of Labor reported last week that union membership levels have actually declined over the last year and are now at their lowest level ever — 6% in the private sector.
US union membership rate hits all-time low despite campaigns
January 23, 2023 // The number of workers belonging to a union actually increased by 1.9% to 14.3 million. But that failed to keep pace with higher overall employment rates. The number of wage- and salary-earning workers rose by 3.9%, the government said. U.S. union membership has been falling steadily for decades. In 1983, the first year that comparable data is available, the union membership rate was 20.1%, the government said. Public-sector workers, like police and teachers, had the highest unionization rates last year, at 33%. Just 6% of private-sector workers were unionized.
White Castle’s New Robot Employee Wants to Know If You Want Fries With That
January 17, 2023 // "Flippy will drop everything into the fryer and then at the perfect time, take everything out, give it a little shake, and put it into the area for the packaging for the team members,"
As Starbucks unionizing slows, some strike, others skeptical
January 11, 2023 // Contract negotiations at three stores in Buffalo and Arizona began last spring. Since then, bargaining sessions have been held at 75 stores, but Starbucks has walked out on the meetings because it opposes having union officials join by Zoom. Starbucks says labor organizers are violating the rules by failing to share Zoom links or name remote participants and, in at least two cases, posting recordings from bargaining sessions on social media. The union says Starbucks is reversing itself after initially allowing Zoom negotiations last spring.
Law to Increase Fast-Food Worker Wages Halted by Judge, Pitting Industry Groups Against Unions and State
January 2, 2023 // If the signature drive doesn't qualify for a referendum and the law moves forward, fast food wages could be raised as high as $22 an hour by the end of 2023. California's minimum wage for all workers is set to rise to $15.50 an hour starting Sunday. Chang, the judge, scheduled a hearing on the matter for January 13. She also wrote that restaurant groups have failed to prove they properly served the state with the lawsuit, and she ordered them to do so.
Widespread strikes descend on California
November 18, 2022 // It’s strike season in California, again.
New ‘Striketober’ looms as US walkouts increase amid surge in union activity
September 26, 2022 // According to the labor action tracker at Cornell University, strikes in 2022 so far have significantly outpaced strike activity in 2021, with 180 strikes involving 78,000 workers in the first six months of 2022, compared with 102 strikes involving 26,500 workers in the first six months of 2021. The tracker recorded 41 strikes that started between 15 August and 15 September 2022, involving 35,250 workers.