Posts tagged staffing

    Southwest, American Airlines passengers face looming winter woes

    November 28, 2023 // "We're behind the industry in every area you can think of in our contract. So we're asking for quite a bit. Obviously, wages, retirement, disability. One of the big pillars that other airlines didn't have a huge issue with, but we do, is our scheduling system," Santoro said.

    If SEPTA Transit Police go on strike, who fills the void? What you need to know

    November 21, 2023 // With a SEPTA strike, figures show more than 250 SEPTA police officers won't come to work. The officers cover SEPTA property across the city and into Delaware, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery Counties – as well as regional rail that reaches Trenton and Wilmington. At the massive 69th Street transportation hub, SEPTA police stay busy answering calls.

    CVS, Walgreens pharmacists move to unionize

    November 14, 2023 // The latest pharmacist walkout, originally dubbed “Pharmageddon” over fear of a widespread walkout with large ramifications, took place last week but ended up having minimal participation and impact. A Walgreens spokesperson told Reuters the protest closed only three pharmacies temporarily. CVS Chief Executive Karen Lynch told Reuters some workers called in sick at a few stores but there were no closures or disruption in service.

    Pharmacy staff from CVS, Walgreens stores in US start three-day walkout

    October 31, 2023 // Some employees at CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) and Walgreens Boots Alliance's (WBA.O) U.S. pharmacies launched a three-day walkout starting Monday to push the companies to improve working conditions and add more staff to their stores. The walkout, which has been dubbed "Pharmageddon" on social media platforms such as Meta's Facebook where it was largely planned, started on Monday and led to the closing of some stores in New York City, two organizers told Reuters. Shane Jerominski, a former Walgreens pharmacist and one of the organizers of the walkout, told Reuters that as many as 5,000 pharmacy workers would walk out across the three days, but said that the exact number of affected stores and participating staff was not clear due to the lack of a union.

    Union workers reach a tentative deal with Kaiser Permanente after the largest-ever US health care strike

    October 13, 2023 // “The frontline healthcare workers of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions are excited to have reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente,” the union coalition said on X. “We are thankful for the instrumental support of Acting US Labor Secretary Julie Su.” The company also thanked Su its tweet about the deal. “We are excited to have reached a tentative agreement with the frontline health care workers of the union coalition. We are thankful for the instrumental involvement of Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Su,” it said in its tweet. The strike last week lasted only three days, the length of time it had been scheduled to run. But the coalition of unions was threatening an eight-day strike next month with even more workers walking out if a new deal was not reached by October 31.

    San Francisco State University facing mass staffing cuts

    October 6, 2023 // The move is part of a cost-savings measure by a system facing a troubling trend: Fewer San Franciscans are having children, meaning there are fewer young adults in California to attend the state universities. Kent Bravo, a spokesperson for San Francisco State, said the university had to deal with the reality of a shrinking student body: “We must rethink our operations to match current enrollment.” The faculty union, however, said the cuts are outsized and dramatic. “It’s very aggressive, and it’s out of scale,” said Brad Erickson, a full-time lecturer in the School of Liberal Studies, and president of the union’s San Francisco State chapter. He criticized the university for saying the cuts represented a “glide path” towards financial sustainability, and called the process “chaotic.”

    This New Labor Rule Could Be Trouble for McDonald’s

    October 5, 2023 // McDonald’s and other franchise companies have made it clear they believe the stakes are high. The “reality is that our business model is under attack,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said of possible joint-employer regulations in a speech at a franchising industry conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, in remarks he also published on LinkedIn. Changes by the NLRB, he said, would transform franchisees “from independent small-business owners to employees of the parent brands.” Heightened joint-employer liability could hurt the franchise model in two main ways, according to the International Franchise Association. One possibility, along the lines of what Kempczinski described, is that a franchisor would exert more control over the franchisees. That undercuts one of franchisors’ big selling points to potential franchisees—that they’re offering a path to running their own business, with all of the freedoms that provides. It could also add compliance costs, and potentially, legal and liability expenses. Those increased costs are also a frequent worry for franchisees, says restaurant consultant John Gordon, principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group. Franchisees typically pay franchisors a percentage of their sales, and their profit comes after those fees and their operating expenses. Franchisees are “justifiably afraid of the franchisor passing costs onto them that weren’t part of the franchise agreement,” he says, and wary of joint-employer liability for that reason.

    Why Wells Fargo is the only big bank where workers are trying to unionize

    September 18, 2023 // Bank workers first started organizing informally over concerns about sales pressure back in 2015 — before the fake account scandal broke to the public. Workers reached out to the Committee for Better Banks, an organizing group, which put them in touch with CWA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and members of Congress, Weiner said.