Labor Rights News Thread

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caltrek
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Starbucks Fired Over 20 U.S. Union Leaders in Recent Months
by Michael Sainato
May 19, 2022

Introduction:
(The Guardian) Starbucks has fired over 20 union leaders around the US over the past several months as union organizing campaigns have spread across the country, the Guardian can reveal.

The news comes as Starbucks workers have filed petitions for union elections at more than 250 stores, spanning 35 states in the US. Starbucks’ chief executive, Howard Schultz, has led a campaign against the union movement calling it “some outside force that’s going to dictate or disrupt who we are and what we do”.

The US’s top labor regulator, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), has issued complaints against Starbucks over many of the firings, demanding reinstatement and backpay for seven fired workers in Memphis, Tennessee, three fired workers in Overland, Kansas, six fired workers in Buffalo, New York, and three fired workers in Arizona. These cases will go before an administrative law judge unless a settlement is reached before those hearings.

The NLRB has accused Starbucks of more than 200 violations of federal labor laws over the course of union organizing campaigns since late 2021. NLRB regional offices have issued complaints in regards to 45 cases against Starbucks, according to the NLRB. Starbucks also incited more legal concerns over recently announcing the rollout of new benefits for all employees, but exempting workers at unionized stores. Workers at several Starbucks stores have held strikes in protest of the company’s behavior toward union organizing.
Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... n-leaders
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A Group of Activision Blizzard Workers Vote to Unionize
by Amanda Silberling
May 23, 2022

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Ater months of organizing, the quality assurance testers at Raven Software, a division of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, have voted to unionize. This marks the first union at a major gaming company in the U.S.

Administered through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the vote passed 19-3 and two ballots were challenged, so a total of 24 out of 28 eligible workers voted.

These workers announced their intent to unionize in December, just days after Microsoft announced its plans to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, which would be one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. But as the news of the pending acquisition went public, these quality assurance (QA) testers — who mostly work on Call of Duty — had been on strike for about five weeks, protesting the layoffs of 12 contractors.

“On December 3, about a third of my department was informed that their contracts were going to be terminated early. And this was coming off of a five-week stretch of overtime, consistent work,” Raven Software QA tester Onah Rongstad told TechCrunch at the time, explaining the intent to organize. “We realized in that moment that our day-to-day work and our crucial role in the games industry as QA was not being taken into consideration.”

This five-week stretch of overtime work that Rongstad describes is referred to as “crunch” in the gaming industry, which has been often cited as a huge cause of burnout and stress for gaming workers. The union, which goes by the name Game Workers Alliance and is represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), can now attempt to bargain with their employer to instate rules that circumvent “crunch” or unexpected layoffs.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/23/activ ... qa-tester/
Don't mourn, organize.

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caltrek wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 2:30 pm Starbucks Fired Over 20 U.S. Union Leaders in Recent Months
by Michael Sainato
May 19, 2022

Introduction:
(The Guardian) Starbucks has fired over 20 union leaders around the US over the past several months as union organizing campaigns have spread across the country, the Guardian can reveal.

The news comes as Starbucks workers have filed petitions for union elections at more than 250 stores, spanning 35 states in the US. Starbucks’ chief executive, Howard Schultz, has led a campaign against the union movement calling it “some outside force that’s going to dictate or disrupt who we are and what we do”.

The US’s top labor regulator, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), has issued complaints against Starbucks over many of the firings, demanding reinstatement and backpay for seven fired workers in Memphis, Tennessee, three fired workers in Overland, Kansas, six fired workers in Buffalo, New York, and three fired workers in Arizona. These cases will go before an administrative law judge unless a settlement is reached before those hearings.

The NLRB has accused Starbucks of more than 200 violations of federal labor laws over the course of union organizing campaigns since late 2021. NLRB regional offices have issued complaints in regards to 45 cases against Starbucks, according to the NLRB. Starbucks also incited more legal concerns over recently announcing the rollout of new benefits for all employees, but exempting workers at unionized stores. Workers at several Starbucks stores have held strikes in protest of the company’s behavior toward union organizing.
Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... n-leaders
Starbucks like most of these companies wants slaves that will accept working for next to nothing. IF they had their way we'd work for nothing.
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OSHA Settles With Meatpacking Plant to Address Workers’ Repetitive Motion Injuries
by Madison McVan
May 19, 2022

Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) One of the U.S.'s most productive pork processing plants is being forced to restructure part of its workspace to prevent the repetitive motion injuries that plague meatpacking workers.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Seaboard Foods in Guymon, Oklahoma, for making its workers repeatedly lift 50-to-90-pound boxes onto conveyor belts, exposing them to possible shoulder and lower back disorders.

The citation came in December, and OSHA and Seaboard reached a settlement last week. The settlement reduced the company’s original fine, but it compels them to make changes to consider employees’ health, according to a copy of the settlement Investigate Midwest obtained.

It marks the federal agency’s first citation for ergonomic safety issues in several years.

Current and former Seaboard employees told Investigate Midwest last year that they developed injuries from the repetitive motions of their jobs. When they sought medical treatment and time off, they were often denied accommodations, punished or fired, they said.
Read more here: https://investigatemidwest.org/2022/05/ ... -injuries/
Don't mourn, organize.

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Trader Joe’s Grocery Store Workers in Hadley Push for Union Vote
by Chris McLaughlin
Updated May 27, 2022

Introduction:
(MassLive) Workers at the Trader Joe’s grocery store in Hadley announced in an open letter to the company’s CEO their intent to push for unionization citing stagnated wages and a desire for better pay, benefits and workplace conditions.

The letter, dated on May 14, is addressed to Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane, based in Monrovia, California, and was posted through the workers’ social media pages under the name “Trader Joe’s United.”

In it the workers say that they believe a union is a “necessary” next step for the Hadley location, adding that two years ago in March 2020 that Bane had mailed the employees arguing against unionization who said unions were attempting to “drive discontent” in the company’s stores.

In that same message two years ago, Bane said that unions were “falsely” claiming only they will protect the pay and benefits employees “currently enjoy” through joining one, according to the letter.

The Hadley store’s crew added in their letter that since that message from Bane, that the company has continued to “slash our benefits as our wages stagnate and our safety concerns go unaddressed.”
Read more here: https://www.masslive.com/news/2022/05/t ... y-ceo.html
Don't mourn, organize.

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After noting recent organizing efforts at Raven Software, Starbucks, Trader Joe's, and Amazon, former Department of Labor head Robert Reich presents reasons for an uptick in organizing efforts (see below).

Why Unions are Coming to the New Economy
May 24, 2022
1. Part of the reason for the upsurge is the so-called “labor shortage” which — as I’ve stressed — is actually a shortage of jobs paying living wages. At least for now, workers have bargaining leverage to demand better pay.

2. Another part is related to the pandemic and its psychological effect on many workers who have begun asking themselves why they’ve settled for lousy jobs and often unsafe working conditions, especially when corporations are scoring record profits and CEOs of big firms are taking home record multiples of the typical workers’ wages. More than at any other time in the last three decades, workers are telling employers “you can take this job and shove it.”

3. A third part of the revival of unions relates to America’s retreat from globalization. Four decades ago, when corporations began to move (or threaten to move) their operations offshore to hire lower-wage workers, American blue-collar workers lost their bargaining clout. Unions went into retreat. But starting with Trump and continuing with Biden — along with global supply bottlenecks that are now convincing corporations to bring suppliers home — outsourcing is in sharp decline. (Yesterday, Biden announced an agreement that he hopes represents the future of trade policy, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which focuses on increased cooperation in areas like clean energy and internet policy rather than opening markets.)

4. A fourth reason: More college graduates are now in blue-collar jobs, many leading unionizing efforts.

5. A fifth reason is a new appreciation of the importance of power in driving wages, and the fraudulence of the economic idea that “you’re paid what you’re worth.”
Reich goes on to note the huge inequality in compensation between corporate executives and workers, as well as inequality between Wall Street bankers and others.

Read more here: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the- ... rth-bs?s=r
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U.S. Department of Labor Fines Santa Maria Farms for Withholding Wages and Benefits
by Joshua Nelson
Update May 25, 2022

Introduction:
(Santa Maria Times) Three Santa Maria farms were ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor to pay more than $250,000 in back pay and fines after a series of investigations discovered they did not follow requirements of the H-2A program, including failing to issue wages and provide transportation to nearly 600 workers.

The H-2A visa program allows farmers to hire seasonal laborers from outside the United States. Through that program, the nearly 3,000 H-2A workers in Santa Barbara County are entitled to payment for inbound transportation from their home countries, daily meals and free housing, among other protections.

Adams Bros. Farming, Boavista Farms and Profresco Inc. in Santa Maria and SARC Inc. in Nipomo were required to pay $223,228 in back wages and $33,888 in fines upon the conclusion of the Labor Department’s investigations which ran from April 2020 to February 2022.

Under federal law, employers are required to maintain strict records, which the Department of Labor can audit, among other investigative techniques.

“Employers that benefit from the H-2A guest worker program must be aware of all their responsibilities,” said Ruben Rosalez, Wage and Hour Division regional administrator in San Francisco. “Agricultural workers employed under the H-2A program must be paid as their contracts require and be provided with what they need to live and work safely while contributing critical labor to California’s agriculture industry.”
Read more here: https://santamariatimes.com/news/local/ ... 78345.html
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'It's War,' Says Amazon Labor Union After Company Fires Top Organizer
by Jake Johnson
June 10, 2022

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) "They f***** with the wrong uncle."

That was how Amazon Labor Union (ALU) president Christian Smalls responded Thursday after the e-commerce behemoth's management reportedly fired Pasquale "Uncle Pat" Cioffi, an organizer credited with convincing hundreds of hesitant employees to support the unionization effort at the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York.

"Amazon fired our beloved Uncle Pat today!" Smalls, a former Amazon employee who was fired after organizing against the company's lax coronavirus safety measures, wrote on social media. "They retaliated against him for organizing ever since our last rally... At our last rally he stated he flipped 500 people and ever since those remarks the company targeted him."

In a Twitter thread late Thursday, ALU noted that Cioffi, a former dockworker who was employed at Amazon for two years, was "instrumental in the JFK8 victory, and is one of our most influential and outspoken supporters."

"He was fired for arguing with a manager about mistreatment of workers," the union wrote. "What they did to Pat is unjustifiable. It's clearly motivated by anti-union animus and they're only going forward because they believe it's more cost-effective to fire him and deal with the backlash than it is to allow to him to continue organizing during our contract campaign."
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022 ... organizer
Don't mourn, organize.

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Sanders and Gillibrand Call on Amazon to Recognize Historic Union Victory
June 11, 2022

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Friday sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy urging him to drop the company’s objections to the historic union election on Staten Island before a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing on Monday and finally recognize the Amazon Labor Union.

“If Amazon can afford to spend $10 billion in stock buybacks to enrich its wealthy shareholders and executives—including the second richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos—it can afford a unionized workforce,” the senators wrote. “If Amazon can spend over $4 million in a single year on union-busting and $213 million on your compensation, it can afford a workforce that can collectively bargain for better wages, better benefits, safer working conditions, and reliable schedules…We strongly urge you to respect the will of Amazon workers by dropping your objections, recognizing the Amazon Labor Union and negotiating in good faith before the NLRB hearing on June 13th. It is time for Amazon to end its blatant disregard of labor law and treat workers with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

Since the workers on Staten Island became the first-ever Amazon warehouse to successfully vote to form a union in the United States, Amazon has refused to negotiate a first contract, refused to recognize that the union exists, and filed 25 objections to the election – despite the NLRB certifying the victory.
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022 ... n-victory

Read full letter here: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-cont ... etter.pdf
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Starbucks Union Says Howard Schultz Broke the Law During New York Times Interview
by Dave Jamieson
June 11, 2022

Introduction:
(Huffington Post) The union that represents Starbucks workers at roughly 150 stores has accused CEO Howard Schultz of violating labor law during a public interview with The New York Times this week, and has filed charges against the company at the National Labor Relations Board.

Starbuck Workers United says that in a conversation with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Times’ DealBook D.C. policy forum on Thursday, Schultz threatened to refuse to bargain in good faith with the union. The charge hinges on comments Schultz made while discussing the coffee chain’s relationship with its workers in the context of the union campaign.

“We have to demonstrate to our people they can trust us,” Schultz said, which prompted Sorkin to ask if he could ever envision “doing that and embracing the union as part of it?”

Schultz flatly answered, “No.”

Both the union and the employer are required to engage in meaningful dialogue when they negotiate a contract. The union says Schultz’s remark suggests he doesn’t intend to do so, and that it sends a message to employees that unionizing would be “futile.” Conveying futility to workers is also considered an unfair labor practice under collective bargaining law.
Read more here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/starbuc ... cbe505c12
Don't mourn, organize.

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