Posts tagged National Labor Relations Board
Two former high-profile SEIU staffers allege they were fired in retaliation for role in strike
February 7, 2023 // The terminated employees played high-profile roles in the strike — on the picket line, at the negotiating table, and on social media. They both say they were fired in retaliation for those roles. “Our terminations sent a message: don’t do too much, or there will be consequences,” said Jazmine Reyes, an SEIU communications specialist who lost her job along with Alex Sanchez, an SEIU organizing representative.
Starbucks could be forced to bargain with workers who rejected union
January 25, 2023 // A U.S. labor board official is seeking a rare order requiring Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) to collectively bargain with workers at a Florida store, even after they voted against unionizing by a nearly two-to-one margin. The regional director of the National Labor Relations Board's Tampa, Florida office filed a complaint on Tuesday claiming unlawful threats, retaliation and surveillance by Starbucks managers were so severe that holding a new election at the store would be futile.
Pittsburgh-Area Teen Hits UFCW Union and Giant Eagle with Religious Discrimination and Unfair Labor Practice Charges
January 18, 2023 // North Huntingdon Giant Eagle employee Josiah Leonatti – a high school student – has filed federal discrimination charges against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1776KS union. He maintains that union officials refused to consider his religious beliefs after he expressed religious objections to joining and paying dues to the union. Union officials, according to his charges, subjected him to an illegal “religion test” to determine whether his religious beliefs count.
Tech Layoffs Threaten Unions’ Plan to Draw White-Collar Workers
January 18, 2023 // Some 500 technology companies have axed nearly 100,000 workers since last October, according to Layoffs.fyi, a public database of tech layoffs. Amazon this month announced it would cut 18,000 jobs, and on the same day, cloud computing company Salesforce and the online video-sharing service Vimeo said they would slash 10% and 11% of their staffs, respectively. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said in November it would eliminate 11,000 jobs—about 13% of its staff. Those reductions in force don’t bode well for unions that have increasingly funneled resources into tech organizing, which was, until recently, seen as an ever-growing pool of potential members. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, last year raised membership fees for the first time in two decades, hoping to raise $10 million a year for new organizing. Union leaders this month flocked to Las Vegas for the CES technology conference, set on understanding how the latest innovations in artificial intelligence could disrupt their industries.
The REI Union Effort Spreads To Another City
January 13, 2023 // REI workers in Northeast Ohio are aiming to make their store the third to unionize in less than a year, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The labor group said in a statement Wednesday that a “majority” of employees at the REI store in the Cleveland suburb of Orange Village had signed union cards and submitted a petition for a union election to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The board must ensure sufficient interest in unionizing before scheduling a vote.
Amazon union victory at Staten Island warehouse upheld by federal labor board
January 12, 2023 // A federal labor agency on Wednesday certified an independent union’s landmark victory at Amazon ’s Staten Island warehouse and threw out a litany of objections filed by the e-retailer. In a filing Wednesday, Cornele Overstreet, a director of the NLRB’s Phoenix-based office, said he agreed with a federal labor official’s prior ruling that all of Amazon’s objections should be dismissed.
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.
Yale grad students vote to unionize after decadeslong push
January 11, 2023 // Graduate students across the U.S., both at public and private institutions, have pushed in recent years to organize and bargain collectively. Columbia University, another Ivy League school, in 2018 agreed to begin contract negotiations with a union representing its graduate student teaching and research assistants, ending a long battle in which the university denied them the right to unionize.
Worker strikes and union elections surged in 2022 – could it mark a turning point for organized labor?
January 10, 2023 // The increase in strike activity is also important. And while the major strikes that involve 1,000 or more employees and are tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics arouse the greatest attention, they represent only the tip of the iceberg. The bureau recorded 20 major strikes in 2022, which is about 25% more than the average of 16 a year over the past two decades.
Big Labor’s Astroturfed Unionization of Starbucks
January 10, 2023 // It’s unclear the degree to which the Starbucks campaign has featured salts, but Brisack isn’t the only one. Articles in union and socialist publications Jacobin, In These Times, and Labor Notes all reference the organizing role played by employees who “consciously took jobs at Starbucks to organize.” Outside the workplace, Workers United also funded an array of consultants, organizers, and attorneys to support the campaign. When organizing her co-workers, Brisack would introduce them to professional organizers such as Bensinger “to show the baristas that she had a real union backing her,” according to the Washington Post.