Posts tagged San Antonio
Labor Day 2025: More protests than parades and picnics
August 20, 2025 // But the biggest blowout, organizers hope, is going to be on Labor Day itself. Local events can be found at MayDayStrong.org. There is also a toolkit for event hosts and organizers to coordinate their actions. The organizers hope to exceed the estimated five million people who hit the streets on No Kings Day back in April. The key demands at all the protests will be: “stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration, protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs for working people,” plus “fully funded schools, and healthcare and housing for all.” Marchers will also demand the Trump regime “stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people, and all our communities and invest in people, not wars.”
Former fire union president arrested for trying to scare highest-ranking female firefighter out of applying for chief
June 6, 2024 // Under Steele, the fire union successfully rallied voters in 2018 to put limits on the city manager’s pay and tenure and to give the union the unilateral power to call for binding arbitration during contract negotiations. However, that victory soon backfired on firefighters. After the union invoked its new power in 2019, a panel of arbitrators handed down a contract that fell short of what firefighters had hoped and for which the union is still trying to make up ground in its latest negotiations. Steele retired from SAFD as a battalion chief in August 2021, leaving the union at the same time. He is free on bond after being booked into the Hays County Jail Friday.
Albany Starbucks Employees Seek Vote to Kick Out SBWU Union
March 1, 2024 // Dowey and her colleagues join Starbucks partners and other coffee company employees across the country in banding together to vote out SBWU union officials. In the past year, Starbucks employees in Manhattan, NY; two Buffalo, NY locations; Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; Greenville, SC; Oklahoma City, OK; San Antonio, TX; and Philadelphia, PA, have all sought free Foundation legal aid in filing or defending decertification petitions at the NLRB. Foundation attorneys have helped employees at independent Philadelphia coffee shops Good Karma Café and Ultimo Coffee successfully oust Workers United union officials, who are affiliated with SBWU. Many employees of Starbucks or other coffee establishments are requesting decertification votes from the NLRB roughly one year after union bosses attained power in their workplaces, which is the earliest opportunity afforded by federal law to do so.
Journalists turn to picket lines as the news business ails
February 16, 2024 // At the L.A. Times, where Schleuss got his start as a labor activist, owner Soon-Shiong made deep cuts last June and again last month, saying he is losing tens of millions of dollars a year on the paper. He says the union's refusal to give him greater leeway in making job cuts in January forced him to lay off more journalists. He had offered buyouts in exchange for relaxing protections by seniority. The union instead went out on strike.
Will Starbucks’ union-busting stifle a union rebirth in the US?
August 28, 2023 // Many baristas say one Starbucks strategy in particular has discouraged workers from unionizing. In May 2022, Schultz announced that Starbucks would give certain raises and benefits to workers at its more than 9,000 non-union stores, but not offer those raises and benefits to its unionized workers. Starbucks insists it would be illegal to impose any raises or benefits on its unionized stores without first negotiating about them, but the NLRB’s general counsel asserts that this policy constitutes unlawful discrimination against Starbucks’ unionized workers. Under this policy, Starbucks has given its non-union workers, but not its unionized ones, a more relaxed dress code, increased training, faster sick leave accrual and, most important, credit card tipping. (Workers at the first few Starbucks stores to unionize had asked early on for credit card tipping.)
San Antonio Symphony to dissolve after board, union fail to strike labor deal
June 21, 2022 // The San Antonio Symphony will soon be no more after a unanimous vote from its board of directors. The board announced the dissolution June 16 and said it will file for chapter 7 bankruptcy. "The assets of the symphony now lie in the hands of a trustee who will liquidate them, pay what creditors remains, and close the doors," the board said in a statement on its website. Symphony Society of San Antonio, Mary Ellen Goree, bankruptcy
PRO Act allies hit the road
December 6, 2021 // Our Revolution, the progressive advocacy group Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) launched in 2016, Communications Workers Association, and the Worker Power Coalition, which includes several national unions, kick off a nationwide tour today aimed at rallying lawmakers around the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, Democrats’ wide-reaching bill that would make it easier for workers to join unions.