Posts tagged North Carolina
Starbucks workers union planning pickets, rallies through Nov. 2. See in which states
October 27, 2025 // Starbucks, for its part, says it is willing to bargain with the union, which the company says represents about 9,500 of its "partners," or employees. "Workers United only represents around 4% of our partners but chose to walk away from the bargaining table. If they’re ready to come back, we’re ready to talk," corporate spokesperson Jaci Anderson said in a statement to USA TODAY. "Any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks already offers the best job in retail including more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits for hourly partners," Anderson said. "We’re investing over $500 million to put more partners in stores during busy times. The facts show people like working at Starbucks. Partner engagement is up, turnover is nearly half the industry average, and we get more than 1 million job applications a year.”
Union County teachers hold ‘sick-out’ to protest amid pay supplement saga
October 23, 2025 // Tuesday, the Union County Public Schools Finance Committee worked through a plan to fund the $1,000 supplement this school year. UCPS Chief Finance Officer Shanna McLamb explained the plan would cost roughly $3.8 million and amount to about $100 more per month for teachers. Some parents say the pay issue has a direct impact on students.
Dollar store workers fight to improve jobs, even without a union
October 17, 2025 // In 2022, Williams joined an organization that seemed, to him, like his best shot: Step Up Louisiana. Like several successful campaigns before it, Step Up organizes workers to improve their jobs, but stops short of calling for a union under the National Labor Relations Board. The approach, sometimes referred to as “premajority unionism,” is a natural fit for places like the South, with histories of public hostility to unions. Today, suggest experts, it may also be workers’ best bet for building power amid the hostility of the Trump administration.
US senators demand Wells Fargo welcome employee unions
September 18, 2025 // A group of Democratic senators called on Wells Fargo (WFC.N), opens new tab to end its alleged campaign against employee unions, saying a more constructive approach could address a toxic workplace culture and help the bank recover from scandals that prevented it from growing.
Shawn Fain, Who Pledged to Reform U.A.W., Faces Internal Dissent
September 16, 2025 // The dissident workers’ main complaints about Mr. Fain are rooted in internal union matters like budgets and his treatment of other union officials, rather than in grand philosophical disagreements about labor and political issues. The people seeking to oust him say that he has spent too much of the union’s money on organizing campaigns in the South and other initiatives they consider misguided. They contend that he has improperly stripped two board members of critical duties and say he failed to prevent a Michigan-based automaker from laying off thousands of workers.
TVA privatization could spell trouble for unions in Appalachia, workers say
August 27, 2025 // Around 5700 union members work on a range of energy projects across the seven-state footprint of the Tennessee Valley Authority. From Western North Carolina to Tennessee, unionized workers work on TVA energy infrastructure, operate gas, coal, and nuclear plants, and check safety on waste ponds and landfills. While 24 full-time TVA employees work in Western North Carolina, union contractors are regularly called upon to maintain the region’s four major dams. Though all the states in which TVA operates are right-to-work states with resulting low union density, the TVA workforce is 57% unionized.
Boilermakers sue ex-president, demand he repay union nearly $500,000 he ‘misused’
August 3, 2025 // The Kansas City-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is suing the president it ousted two years ago, demanding that Newton Jones pay back nearly $500,000 of union money it says he misused. Filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the lawsuit says Jones has ignored the union’s order to reimburse the money he’s accused of taking.
Michigan’s auto jobs drive South from 8 Mile to I-65
July 23, 2025 // The biggest winner was North Carolina, which added 1 million+ jobs in other industries over the period. But the Tarheel State lost 12% of its auto jobs in that time. Even auto winner Alabama added five times more jobs in other sectors than it did in auto jobs. The number of overall jobs in North Carolina from 2000 to 2023 increased by more than 27%, while the number of jobs in Tennessee grew by 23.7%. The overall national average of jobs growth during those years was 18.3%.
Op-ed: Virginia Must Clarify Its Labor Laws
June 9, 2025 // The ideal outcome for Virginia would be to repeal the Democrats’ 2020 law and return Virginia to being one of the few states that outright prohibit collective bargaining in the public sector. North and South Carolina have for decades, and Utah joined them with a new law signed by Governor Spencer Cox (R.) this year. But with Democrats currently in control of the Virginia General Assembly, a repeal effort would go nowhere. In the meantime, the proposed regulations are needed to make sure local government unions are following the law. Virginia is a right-to-work state with many strong protections for employees in unionized workplaces. Public employees deserve those protections just as much as private employees do.
5.9% of Washington Workers Are Union Members, 6th Most in the U.S.
June 9, 2025 // Union membership in the United States has declined to its lowest point in decades. In 1979, unions represented 24.1% of the American workforce. By 2024, that share had fallen to just 9.9%, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and UnionStats. In absolute terms, this represents a drop of roughly 6.7 million members—from a peak of 20.9 million in 1979 to around 14.2 million in 2024.