Posts tagged Howard Schultz
OPINION: Restaurants get a preview of regulation under Trump
December 18, 2024 // Under McFerran’s leadership, the board also greatly altered the organizing process. Previously, employees had to request permission from the NLRB for a vote on unionizing. Now a shop is assumed to be unionized if a majority of the workers so much as express a preference for union representation. A vote is held only if the employer seeks it as a way of keeping the union out. And if the NLRB decides the business is trying to nudge workers toward a "No" vote, it can scrap the election and recognize the union with a vote never being held.
Starbucks Could Owe Millions To Baristas Who Unionized
October 16, 2024 // A new federal complaint alleges the chain slashed workers' schedules without bargaining. The new NLRB complaint alleges Starbucks changed workers’ hours “without prior notice to the Union and without affording the Union an opportunity to bargain.” The complaint also says Starbucks has refused to provide the union information about the changes and how they impacted members’ paychecks.
Judge: Starbucks violated federal labor law by withholding pay hikes from unionized workers
October 2, 2023 // Starbucks violated federal labor law when it increased wages and offered new perks and benefits only to non-union employees, a National Labor Relations Board judge found Thursday. The decision is the latest in a series of NLRB rulings finding that Starbucks has violated labor law in its efforts to stop unions from forming in its coffee shops.
Sean O’Brien’s summer of the strike
June 26, 2023 // It’s the spark for the combative spirit that permeates Teamsters headquarters, where a whiteboard charts a long-term battle plan on a timeline — “practice picketing,” “CAT trainings” (for “contract action teams”), “identify strike teams” … and finally, on the July 31 spot that marks the end of the current contract: “STRIKE.” Why strike now? As O’Brien himself acknowledged in his Senate testimony, UPS already offers the most plum jobs in the logistics industry, with driver salaries starting at $93,000. But O’Brien argues that the pandemic gave UPS workers the greatest leverage they’ve had in decades. In 2020, union members risked their health to keep packages moving. UPS’s profits surged and have remained high, with customers still hooked on the online shopping habits they adopted during the lockdowns. “Our members are fed up” and remain convinced, he said, that “the only concern that was being addressed was UPS’s bottom line and their balance sheet.” No better time, O’Brien reasons, for workers to go to the mat to demand wages beginning at $20 an hour, tighter safety provisions and an end to the two-tier employment system ushered in by the last contract.
U.S. employers have gone from opposing international labor standards to hiding behind them. Now a complaint is trying to stop U.S.-style union busting from taking over the world
May 31, 2023 // What explains the shift? International standards are increasingly becoming part of the fabric of global governance. They might be embedded in trade agreements, procurement rules, or within the codes of conduct of investors. It’s not acceptable anymore for a global company to tell its investors that they reject international labor standards. So instead of being honest, employers seek to distort the meaning of international labor standards beyond recognition. It’s time for the ILO to make clear that U.S.-style interference with workers’ efforts to come together in a union violates the ILO Convention on Freedom of Association (convention 87). Such a finding might not deliver a change in U.S. law, but it would send a message to companies that they can’t hide behind the United Nations and the ILO to justify their union-busting tactics.
Starbucks Union Demands Company Bargain A National Contract
May 24, 2023 // The company's insistence on separate contracts for more than 300 organized stores has made the process unworkable, union president says. Fox said Starbucks should agree to a broad contract that sets a national minimum wage, “fair scheduling” procedures, guaranteed minimum hours and an agreement for union elections moving forward, among other provisions. Regions and individual stores could then add supplemental agreements if they choose to. But Starbucks said Workers United should stick to negotiating individual contracts since the union has been organizing stores one by one.
Opinion: America is on strike. Here’s what it means
April 18, 2023 // Let the protests in France be our warning of what happens when elite indifference goes too far. French President Emmanuel Macron drove a widely unpopular pension reform bill through Parliament without a vote, raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Discussing the controversial measure in an interview, Macron placed his hands under the table to remove the luxury watch he was wearing, further widening the chasm between himself and the working class. He bypassed the legislative body meant to represent his people. Now his people are lighting buildings on fire. If we want to avoid suffering the same fate as France, our political and financial leaders cannot behave with the same pomposity. Vulgar displays of riches spread quickly on social media. The only thing that spreads quicker is the backlash. This dangerous dichotomy combined with a larger wealth gap than at any other point in modern U.S. history seriously raises the risk of unrest.
Senate looks at labor laws which unions say interfere with workers’ right to organize
April 6, 2023 // These days, you know, a lot of union organizers are young and social media savvy, and they're speaking out loudly when they feel their labor rights have been violated. And also, under the Biden administration, the federal agency that enforces labor law has been pursuing a lot of these cases against employers.
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.
Unions are having a moment. So why isn’t union membership booming?
March 30, 2023 //