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      ‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizing

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      ‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizingVictories at several companies energized organizers, but hostile corporations – and an impotent labor board – stymie negotiationsUS corporations have mounted a fierce counterattack against the union drives at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies, and in response, federal officials are working overtime to crack down on those corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics – maneuvers that labor leaders fear could significantly drain the momentum behind today’s surge of unionization.The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that polices labor-management relations, has accused Starbucks and Amazon of a slew of illegal anti-union practices, among them firing many workers in retaliation for backing a union. Nonetheless, many workplace experts question whether the NLRB’s efforts, no matter how vigorous, can assure that workers have a fair shot at unionizing.Serving $66 entrees for $18 an hour: the union push at an upscale New York restaurantRead more“We’re seeing the same situation over and over – workers going up against billionaires and billion-dollar companies with an endless amount of resources while our labor laws are far too weak,” said Michelle Eisen, a barista in Buffalo who helped lead the early unionization efforts of Starbucks in that city. “We’re all fighting for the same thing against different companies. We’re all in the same boat. No one denies that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome.”“The labor board is doing its job with the limited resources it has,” she added. “But Starbucks continues to break the law flagrantly.” The union asserts that Starbucks has engaged in illegal retaliation by firing 150 pro-union baristas and closing a dozen recently unionized stores.Echoing many union leaders, Eisen says US labor laws are woefully inadequate because they don’t allow regulators to impose any fines on companies that break the law when fighting against unionization. Starbucks and Amazon deny firing anyone illegally or violating any laws in their fight against unionization.“These workers were supposed to be able to get together without fear of retaliation,” said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, the union that workers at more than 280 Starbucks have voted to join. “But companies, including Starbucks, have determined that the penalty for retaliation is minimal – and much more appealing than allowing workers to unionize. Violating workers’ rights has simply become part of the cost of doing business.” Labor leaders complain that the penalty imposed for illegal retaliation is often just an order to post a notice on a company’s bulletin boards saying that it broke the law.Newly unionized workers are also frustrated and angry that efforts to reach a first contract are taking so long, with some unions asserting that companies are deliberately and illegally dragging out negotiations – an assertion the companies deny. Workers won breakthrough union victories at Starbucks in December 2021, and the next year saw several other organizing victories. REI workers had a successful union vote in March 2022, Amazon in April, Apple in June, Trader Joe’s in July and Chipotle in August, but none of those companies have reached a first contract.The extraordinary recent wave of unionization that corporate America has faced over the past year has been met with what union supporters say is an equally extraordinary wave of union-busting that has slowed and even stopped some unionization efforts.Shortly after workers at a Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine, petitioned for a unionization vote in the hope of becoming the first Chipotle in the US to unionize, the company shut down the store. The NLRB has accused Chipotle of illegal retaliation and sought to order the fast-food chain to reopen the store. Chipotle says the closing was for legitimate business reasons.Brandi McNease, a pro-union worker at the Chipotle in Augusta, said: “They closed it down because we were going to get our vote and they were going to lose. It’s much easier for a multibillion-dollar corporation to face whatever the consequences are of that then to allow a union into one of their stores.”The NLRB has accused Apple of illegally spying on and threatening workers. The company’s anti-union efforts helped pressure Apple store workers in Atlanta to withdraw their request to hold a unionization election, although workers at Apple stores in Towson, Maryland, and Oklahoma City have voted to unionize.Trader Joe’s closed its one wine shop in New York City days before that shop’s workers were to announce plans to seek a union election. The workers have accused the company of shutting the store to quash the union drive and retaliate against the workers. Trader Joe’s says it didn’t shut the store because of the employees’ organizing efforts.On 17 February, a day after employees at a Tesla plant in Buffalo announced plans to unionize, Tesla fired dozens of workers there. Union supporters complained to the NLRB that Tesla dismissed 37 workers “in retaliation for union activity and to discourage union activity”. Tesla said the terminations had nothing to do with the union drive and were part of its regular performance-evaluation process.The NLRB has brought 75 complaints against Starbucks that accuse it of more than 1,000 illegal actions. Federal judges have ordered Starbucks to reinstate numerous pro-union baristas who they say were fired illegally. The labor board has accused Starbucks of refusing to bargain with workers at 21 stores in Oregon and Washington state. The union asserts that Starbucks is deliberately dragging out negotiations to dishearten union supporters. Starbucks representatives have walked out of dozens of bargaining sessions, refusing to talk so long as union negotiators insist on letting other union members use Zoom to watch the sessions.The NLRB has accused Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, of illegally coercing and intimidating workers by saying they would be “less empowered” if they unionized. NLRB judges have ruled that Amazon fired several pro-union workers illegally, and the board recently accused Amazon of unlawfully terminating one of the most effective organizers at its JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, where the Amazon Labor Union won a landmark victory for the warehouse’s 8,300 employees last 1 April.Ohio train derailment reveals need for urgent reform, workers sayRead moreAmazon has filed a series of challenges to overturn the union’s Staten Island victory in the hope of not having to recognize or bargain with the union. In January, an NLRB judge upheld the union’s victory, but Amazon said it would appeal.“We know they plan to appeal and appeal and drag things out,” said Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union. Smalls voiced frustration that nearly a year after the Staten Island workers voted to unionize, there have been no contract talks.Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, admits to some surprise that several supposedly progressive companies are using hardball anti-union tactics. “What we have is new economy companies using the old, anti-union playbook on a national scale and in a way that people are paying attention to,” Sachs said.“It’s not new, but it’s more prominent: firing union organizers, threatening to close stores, closing stores, not bargaining, holding captive audience meetings, selective granting of benefits. To observers of labor, this has been going on for a long time. What’s different is these companies that hold themselves as different and progressive – they’re proving they’re not. There’s a dissonance between these brands’ progressive image and their old-school union-busting.”Amazon has repeatedly denied any illegal anti-union actions. It said: “We don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees” and “our focus remains on working directly” with our them “to continue making Amazon a great place to work”. Amazon argues that the union’s win on Staten Island “was not fair, legitimate or representative of the majority” and should therefore be overturned, maintaining that the union illegally intimidated and harassed anti-union workers and illegally distributed marijuana to win support.Tesla fires more than 30 workers after union drive announcementRead moreStarbucks denies that it fired any pro-union baristas unlawfully, saying that those workers were dismissed for misconduct or violating company rules. The company denies that it is deliberately dragging out negotiations, saying: “Counter to the union’s claims, Starbucks continues to engage honestly and in good faith while ensuring actions taken align with decades of case law and precedent.” It added: “We’ve come to the table in person and in good faith for 84 single-store contract bargaining sessions since October 2022.” Starbucks acknowledges that it has walked out of bargaining sessions because the workers “insist on broadcasting” the sessions “to unknown individuals not in the room and, in some instances, have posted excerpts of the sessions online”.Leaders of the Starbucks union say they have repeatedly pledged that the workers would not broadcast, record or post excerpts of the bargaining sessions. Furthermore, they ask why Starbucks refuses to let union members watch the negotiations by Zoom when it allowed that practice during the pandemic and so many other companies allow the use of Zoom during negotiating sessions. For its part, Starbucks has accused the union of failing to bargain in good faith, a claim the union says is ludicrous.One study found that after workers won union elections, 52% of the time they were without a first contract a year later and 37% of the time without one two years later. Many companies drag out contract talks as long as they can in order to dishearten workers and show that there’s little to gain by unionizing and because they know they save money on wages and benefits by delaying – or never reaching – a first union contract. Moreover, many companies prolong contract talks in the hope that union members will grow frustrated with their union and vote to decertify it.Sarah Beth Ryther, a leader of the successful effort to unionize a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis, said the retailer is moving far slower than she hoped in negotiations. “I have said it was like writing a novel. We were on page one for a long time, and now we’re finally on page two,” Ryther said. “It’s just folks with very little experience who have organized an independent union, and to face these union-busting tactics, it’s hard. We’re not being paid a thousand dollars an hour like some TJ’s lawyers. We do this because we want to help our fellow workers.”Even if the NLRB rules that a company broke the law by negotiating in bad faith to drag out negotiations, federal law doesn’t allow the labor board to order management to reach a contract. “Even if the NLRB issues a complaint about bad faith bargaining, it takes a long time to handle those cases. Any meaningful order is a year down the road,” said Wilma Liebman, who headed the NLRB under Barack Obama. “The remedies take too long and they’re too weak. The board can’t order parties to reach an agreement or make concessions.”Liebman pointed to the big issue that labor organizing faces right now. “Can the unionization surge be sustained by continued growth?” she asked. “Otherwise it’s going to fizzle. This is the year that’s kind of make or break.”Under federal law, employers can’t be fined for illegal delays or bargaining in bad faith. The proposed protecting the right to organize (Pro) act sought to overcome lengthy delays by providing that if the two sides failed to reach a contract within 120 days of a new union’s being certified, a panel of arbitrators should be appointed to decide on the terms of a first two-year contract. The Pro act would also allow for substantial fines against employers that violate the law when fighting unions. The House of Representatives approved the Pro act in March 2021, but, facing a filibuster and unanimous Republican opposition, the legislation went nowhere in the Senate.Sachs says corporations have sizable incentives to violate the law when battling against unions because the National Labor Relations Act doesn’t provide for any fines for illegal actions. “We need to fundamentally change the incentive structure facing employers during union drives,” he said. “You can change the incentive structure in different ways. Consumers can do it if there is a national boycott of Starbucks or Apple or Chipotle or REI. That would have a huge impact. The other way to change the incentive structure would be to have massive monetary damages for anti-union violations. That would require not only legislative change, but the courts to order damage awards – and that would be a slow process.”Eisen, the barista in Buffalo, voices keen dismay that Starbucks keeps ratcheting up the pressure against the union drive. Arguably its most effective strategy to discourage unionization was not the firings or store closings, but when its CEO, Howard Schultz, announced that the company would give certain raises and benefits to its nonunion workers while denying them to workers at its unionized stores. The NLRB has brought a complaint asserting that this Starbucks policy illegally discriminates against union members.‘The lavatory waste comes on us’: unsafe, unsanitary work conditions, airport workers claimRead more“One of the things we need to win is public pressure,” Eisen said. “Can we let billionaires and billionaire companies continue to bully their way out of union campaigns? That’s essentially what is happening. It’s not fair. We need as much help as we can get. We need the public to recognize that these companies are not as good as they say they are.”The anti-union tactics have taken their toll. Partly because Starbucks’ aggressive anti-union efforts have discouraged and frightened many workers, the number of petitions for union elections at Starbucks stores has dropped from 71 last March to about 10 per month recently. Trader Joe’s workers in Boulder, Colorado, withdrew their petition for a unionization vote a day after they filed charges accusing the retailer of illegal intimidation and coercion. With highly paid anti-union consultants on hand to press workers to vote no, the Amazon Labor Union lost a unionization vote at a warehouse outside Albany, New York, and following that loss and facing an anti-union campaign, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, withdrew their petition for a union election.“That comes with the territory, but that’s what we signed up for as organizers,” said the Amazon Labor Union’s Smalls. “We know this is a marathon not a sprint. In the words of Mother Jones, you fight like hell. That’s what we’re doing right now, fighting like hell.”TopicsUS unionsAmazonStarbucksAppleUS politicsTeslaReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

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      AnalysisRepublicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workersSteven GreenhouseGOP courts blue collar voters but most favor anti-union ‘right to work’ laws and reject laws that would protect right to organize After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party seeks to rebrand itself as the party of the working class, its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers, museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.Congressional Democrats – seeing the surge in unionization drives along with the aggressive anti-union campaigns by Starbucks, Amazon and other companies – say there is increased urgency to enact the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (Pro Act), which would make it easier for workers to unionize. The Pro Act passed the House last year – with 205 Republicans voting against and five in favor – but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, largely because of a GOP filibuster, and will almost certainly fail to pass if Republicans gain Senate seats in the midterms.The Pro Act remains the Democrats’ overwhelming legislative priority for helping unions – it would, among other things, ban employers’ captive audience meetings and create substantial penalties for corporations that break the law when fighting unionization. Republicans denounce the legislation, vigorously opposing a provision that would override the right-to-work laws enacted in 27 states, laws that allow workers to opt out of paying union dues. The Senate Republicans’ policy committee has slammed the Pro Act, saying it would undermine worker freedom, “heavily tilt the scales in favor of labor” and “curb workers’ choices, threaten jobs and increase costs on employers”.It wasn’t always this way. Two decades ago, there were 30 union-friendly Republicans in the House, but that number has dwindled to a handful, partly because many of the party’s billionaire and corporate donors frown on pro-union Republicans. These donors see unions as bothersome institutions that favor Democrats and reduce corporate profits. Indeed, many Republican lawmakers treat unions and their leaders as enemies.Virginia Foxx, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, scoffed at the idea that there is a union resurgence and said Democrats “are in the pocket of Big Labor”. “Unions are hitting the panic button and praying that Democrats can gin up a PR campaign to cover up the declining numbers and lack of interest in union membership,” Foxx told the Guardian, noting that union membership has sunk to just 6% of the private-sector workforce. Foxx, who often serves as Congress’s chief spokesperson on labor matters, belittled unions’ recent gains, saying that only a tiny percentage of Starbucks and Apple stores have been unionized.Foxx, a nine-term House member from North Carolina, said: “If Democrats genuinely believe that union popularity is soaring and that union campaigns and strikes are resonating with American workers, then they truly have a tortured relationship with both math and reality.”Even as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported a 53% jump over the past year in the number of workplace petitions for union elections, Foxx and many other Republicans are backing bills that would make it harder to unionize. With corporations prohibiting union organizers from setting foot on company property to speak with workers, unions rely on NLRB rules requiring employers to give them workers’ home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses so they can communicate with them. But the Employee Privacy Protection Act, a Republican-sponsored bill re-introduced last March, shortly after the recent union surge began, would limit unions to obtaining just one of those three ways to contact workers. Foxx said workers should “never have to hand over their personal contact information” to “a union to which they object”.Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main union federation, said he has seen no sign of Republicans warming up to unions despite their increased popularity – 71% of Americans approve of unions. “I haven’t seen any change” among Republicans, Samuel said. “There’s been no outreach. We haven’t been getting calls from Republicans asking, ‘How can we help workers organize?’”Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the House education and labor committee, agreed, adding: “Republicans are pretty much as hostile as ever toward unions – pretty much down the line.”Scott said Democrats should rush to enact the Pro Act in light of the many daunting obstacles that workers face in seeking to unionize at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies due to intense corporate opposition and a flurry of alleged illegalities by management. In Scott’s view, especially important is a provision that would for the first time allow the NLRB to impose substantial fines against companies that violate the law when battling union drives. “The biggest improvement we need is to have some meaningful sanctions for unfair labor practices,” Scott said. “Right now, there is no meaningful deterrent.”Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a thinktank for conservative economics, said that many Republicans have grown more interested in worker issues. Cass acknowledged, however, that most Republican lawmakers remain hostile to organized labor because “unions are predominantly financing mechanisms for the Democratic party.”He said some Republicans are open to the idea of increasing worker power, but only if it’s done largely outside the framework of traditional unions. Nevertheless, whether with or without unions, hardly any Republicans are pushing to expand worker power – an idea that would irk corporate Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers instead emphasize worker choice and worker freedom – part of their decades-long effort to enact state right-to-work laws that allow workers to opt out of paying any dues or fees to the unions that represent them.Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina are co-sponsoring the National Right to Work Act, which would let workers in all 50 states opt out of union dues. Wilson told the Guardian that the bill would “eliminate forced-dues clauses” and “allow workers to choose for themselves”. He said Joe Biden and the Democrats were on “a mission to force unionization” on “workers by eliminating employee choice”. Senator Paul said their bill would “put bargaining power where it belongs, in the hands of American workers”. Unions assert, however, that workers have far more bargaining power by bargaining collectively, rather than as individuals.Cass, who worked in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, supports steps to give workers more power and said it’s a good time for Republicans to push to increase worker power. Their “constituents are significantly and increasingly working class”, Cass noted, adding that Republicans might be more willing to distance themselves from corporations now that more business executives “are on the other side”, having endorsed Democrats.For years, most Republicans lawmakers have opposed any increase in the NLRB’s budget; that agency oversees private-sector union elections and cracks down on employers that break the law in fighting unions. The labor board’s budget hasn’t increased since 2014, a budget freeze that has angered union leaders because they say it hampers the board’s ability to move quickly against law-breaking, anti-union employers.“The NLRB has been flat-funded for a long time,” said Scott, chair of the House labor committee. “With the popularity of unions increasing, the work of the NLRB has increased. In order to get their work done, the board needs significant increases in funding.”But Foxx called increasing NLRB funding “an inherently stupid idea”, asserting that the labor board tilts in favor of unions, just as Democrats asserted that President Trump’s labor board was far too anti-union.The AFL-CIO’s Samuel voiced dismay that many Republicans seem implacably opposed to anything that would help unions expand. “All this,” Samuel said, “illustrates their hostility to make it easier for workers to enjoy what is supposed to be their basic right under the law: to come together to form a union.”TopicsUS unionsUS politicsStarbucksAmazonanalysisReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      The Right to Fair Recollection

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Oh no. Is Jeff Bezos preparing to run for office? | Hamilton Nolan

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      Oh no. Is Jeff Bezos preparing to run for office?Hamilton NolanWhen an unaccountable billionaire starts putting himself out in the world as a Public Policy Thinker, alarm bells should ring Jeff Bezos is getting nervous. You can tell because he’s going on Twitter more, the universal activity of those who are channeling their restlessness in an unhealthy way. This should make the rest of us nervous, too. This is a big, flashing warning sign that America’s richest union-buster is about to throw himself more forcefully into politics – an inevitability that could have many bad outcomes, but only one good one.For the past week, the centi-billionaire Amazon founder has been firing off tweets not about his typical, anodyne interests – improved penis-shaped rocket design, luxury head wax – but rather about his policy opinions. Though Bezos (or whichever PR drone drafts his tweets) writes with the bloodlessness of a man who has attended too many management consulting meetings, it is easy to imagine the seething anger that must have been present in order to prompt him to produce them in the first place. On May 13, he criticized one of Joe Biden’s economic pronouncements, tweeting that “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”He followed that up with another, saying “the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent.” On Monday, he again railed against the failed Democratic stimulus bills, saying they would have added to inflation.‘Extra level of power’: billionaires who have bought up the mediaRead moreIt would be too easy to point out here that, actually, union-busting is a tax that most hurts the least affluent, or to point out that Bezos could mitigate inflation’s damage by giving his own employees a raise. The notable thing here is not that the staggeringly wealthy executive chairman of one of the world’s most powerful companies would bristle at talk of raising corporate taxes, or that he would bemoan the pandemic-era stimulus packages that saved millions of Americans from total economic disaster. For Amazon, which depends on the existence of a nationwide standing army of desperate people who are willing to take unstable, low-wage warehouse and delivery jobs, the sales benefits of all of that stimulus money have been mitigated by what it has done to the labor market. As demand for employees has soared, it has become harder to hire people; and, more importantly, it has helped to embolden workers to the degree necessary to vote for a union, as Amazon warehouse workers did in Staten Island last month. Like Walmart and every other low-margin retail megacorp whose profits are dependent on total control of an infinite, compliant workforce, Amazon believes that unions are an existential threat. The economic conditions created in part by government stimulus programs have momentarily made things more conducive to organized labor, and therefore, must be crushed, reversed, and judged as historic mistakes, so that policymakers don’t go thinking about doing such a thing again.Of course Bezos believes all this. Duh. We knew he was a rat-bastard union-busting ultra-rich guy many years ago. The fact that he is flying his dumb Twitter flag like a bargain-basement Elon Musk is not really worth getting exercised about. What is distressing is what this signals about Bezos’s future plans. Because when an unaccountable rich business guy starts suddenly putting himself out in the world as a Public Policy Thinker, you can be sure that he is about to start seriously leaning into the world of political influence. And that means that we are now threatened by the very real possibility that Bezos is about to make himself the next, even richer Mike Bloomberg – something that could have devastating effects on the weak-willed functionaries of the already pathetic Democratic party.Though Bezos is certainly an economic Republican, it is hard to imagine him placing his political bets on being a Republican, if only because of what it would mean for his social life. No, if he decides that he must really jump into politics – to protect his own interests, and due to the classic rich-guy belief that nobody poorer than himself should be in charge – he is bound to use the Democratic party as his tool. He could, if he got annoyed enough, flood the party with so much incoming money that the entire “centrist” wing would crawl to his doorstep on its knees, begging to write any bill he wants. The big-picture impact would be to add a huge weight to the neoliberal side of the party’s scale, a powerful force trying to tilt the party away from its recent tiptoes towards progressivism, and towards the vision of the Democrats as the sober new corporate-friendly counterweight to the psycho Maga capture of the Republicans.Last month, Bernie Sanders sent a letter to Joe Biden calling on him to stop giving federal contracts to companies that break federal labor law, especially via illegal union-busting. That simple move could take billions of dollars away from Amazon, which – in the eyes of a labor-friendly NLRB, at least – is guilty of a lot of illegal union-busting. (Amazon disputes this.) It is also a great example of what could be the new vision of the Democrats: not the slick operators trying to arbitrage corporate campaign donations, but rather the party of labor, the party ready to take seriously its own rhetoric about the dangers of rising economic inequality. The Democratic response to the rise of crazies on the right does not need to be to simply try to woo Republican donors away; instead, the Democrats can become the actual populists, the ones who side with working people against the power of capital. (The Republican version of populism, which mostly means “being prepared to wear a John Deere ballcap while you say racist things”, pales in comparison.)Look, I love to see one of the world’s richest men spending his precious time whining on Twitter. That’s time that he’s not union-busting or coming up with aggressive new algorithms to monetize our lives, and besides, I know that time spent on Twitter will make him miserable, which I support. But I am here to warn you that this is a very bad omen. The last thing we need is Jeff Bezos transforming himself into the Democratic party’s biggest power-broker. Just keep playing with your rockets, Jeff. The farther away from Earth you get, the better for everyone.
      Hamilton Nolan is a labor reporter at In These Times
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      in US Politics

      Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their sway

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      Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their swayChallenging anti-union rhetoric and pro-union attitudes of younger workers are undermining highly paid consultants The nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”.Logan said anti-union consultants are often no longer as effective because workers and their attitudes have changed: workers, especially younger workers, are braver about speaking out, they’re using social media to outmaneuver the consultants, and they’re embracing highly effective strategies, like worker-to-worker organizing and interrupting so-called captive audience meetings, where consultants discuss the supposed evils of unions. Logan said workers often used to be far more scared to stand up to anti-union consultants, and one reason workers are less frightened is that the low jobless rate makes it easier for workers to find another job if they get fired for supporting a union.“They survived the pandemic, and they’re no longer so fearful,” Logan said. “The pandemic was such a frightening experience that workers have recalibrated their sense of risk about what they’re prepared to do in their lives. They’re more prepared to join a union campaign. They feel they’ve repeatedly been disrespected while their employers were making billions of dollars.”Logan was impressed that workers interrupted several of Amazon’s captive audience meetings. “The fact that they had the courage to do that helps show that something has fundamentally changed,” he said. “The mechanism of the captive audience meeting is much less successful if someone gets up and challenges what they’re saying. It all crumbles away.”Angelika Maldonado, a 27-year-old packer at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, was one of the workers who interrupted a captive audience meeting. She and other workers challenged Amazon’s assertion that workers might see their wages cut if they unionize. She also sought to rebut one of Amazon’s main arguments. “They put out all this propaganda that we were a third party,” Maldonado said. “Once we gained the trust of workers, they would see we are not a third-party union.” Rather, she explained, we are Amazon workers like them who created a union.Some Staten Island worker-organizers outed the anti-union consultants who walked the warehouse floor, urging workers to vote against unionizing. Workers sought to learn their names, and once they did, they tweeted out the consultant’s name and photo and urged workers not to talk to them. They further undermined the consultants’ effectiveness by highlighting that some of them earned $3,200 a day.Maldonado said: “We did some calculations and showed that instead of paying these union busters all this money, Amazon could have given everyone in the building a raise.”Wilma Liebman, chair of the National Labor Relations Board during president Obama’s first term, said anti-union consultants have grown less effective because they haven’t kept up with the changing workforce. “It’s hard to imagine how any of these union busters succeed. Almost all are old white guys,” she said. “They seek to demonstrate control with some intimidation factor. Whether these workers are white, African American or something else, it’s still a culture clash. It’s hard to imagine that the message of these consultants has much resonance.”Liebman added: “One way the consultants seem to be as effective as ever is in convincing employers to buy their services.” Some anti-union lawyers charge more than $1,200 an hour.A longtime management-side labor lawyer in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, said the recent string of union victories doesn’t mean that anti-union lawyers and consultants have become less effective. “More has been made of this than it should be,” he said. “I think it’s very situational.” He noted that unionization drives lost recently at a Hershey’s factory in Virginia and at HelloFresh food-packing facilities. (At those places, the workers didn’t challenge the anti-union consultants nearly as much as they did at Amazon or Starbucks.)The lawyer acknowledged that young workers are “challenging authority” more than their parents’ generation. “I think workers are more skeptical of what people say. They’re more willing to challenge, perhaps, than they were in the past.”A second lawyer, a partner at one of the nation’s leading anti-union law firms, also insisting on anonymity, said that workers’ smart use of social media has undercut union avoidance efforts. “The internet and social media have made employees much more savvy,” he said. “They’ve able to communicate better with each other and see different sources of information. I think social media has changed – and maybe leveled – the playing field.”Rebecca Givan, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers, said: “Young workers are more excited to speak up and counteract them, by, for instance, talking up in a captive audience meeting, challenging the supposed facts in a presentation. These are really new things.”Young workers are too young to remember Ronald Reagan’s busting the air-traffic controllers union. Many have been emboldened by Bernie Sanders and by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Many young workers feel angry and squeezed by large student debt loads and soaring rents.Givan said social media has helped inoculate workers against anti-union consultants: “When workers are rapidly able to share anti-union talking points and see that they use the same arguments at different companies and workplaces, that it’s all cookie cutter, all from the same playbook, it shows how tired their tactics and rhetoric are.”Richard Bensinger, an organizer with Workers United who helped lead the Starbucks’ unionization campaign, said new technologies have helped overcome the union-avoidance consultants. “I don’t think we could have done this without Zoom and virtual meetings and partners talking to partners,” he said. (Partners is the term Starbucks uses to describe its workers.) Thus far, workers have voted in favor of unionizing at 18 of the 19 Starbucks where votes have been counted, and workers at more than 200 Starbucks have petitioned for unionization elections.“As far as inoculation, we get Samantha from the New York Roastery, which just voted to unionize, to speak to people at the Starbucks in Austin, Texas, telling them what to expect from the anti-union folks,” Bensinger said.Some Amazon and Starbucks workers have used TikTok to get out their pro-union message and WhatsApp and Telegram to spread the word and answer workers’ questions.Bensinger said the anti-union consultants and lawyers are still plenty effective, but often fall short. He noted that at one Buffalo Starbucks, 100% of the workers signed pro-union cards, but the union won there just 15 to 9. He said the solidarity and activism of the young workers was key to defeating the anti-union lawyers and consultants.“Young workers will only take so much,” he said. “A worker in Montana told me, ‘I’m making just $11 an hour and making Howard Schultz rich.’ Unions today are their big hope.”TopicsUS unionsAmazonStarbucksUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment A suburban two-bedroom apartment was the HQ from which Amazon’s multimillion-dollar anti-union effort was defeatedThe living room of the small two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island – sometimes called New York City’s “forgotten borough” – is overflowing with office supplies, mail, red union stickers, and flyers with information about unions.It seems almost unbelievable that amid this chaos, and armed with just $120,000 that they raised on GoFundMe, its occupants, Amazon workers Brett Daniels and Connor Spence, helped successfully unionize workers at the nearby gargantuan 855,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse – the first of the company’s warehouses in the US to vote for a union.‘The revolution is here’: Chris Smalls’ union win sparks a movement at other Amazon warehousesRead more“This is a monstrous win for the working class,” said Daniels. “The Amazon Labor Union showed what seemed impossible is possible.”The apartment in a two-floor suburban house was the headquarters from which Amazon workers pulled off one of the biggest wins for US unions in decades. Beating Amazon’s multimillion-dollar efforts to stop them organizing involved tireless organizing, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and a lot of free homemade food. But most of all, said 29-year-old Julian Mitchell-Israel, an Amazon worker and one of the original organizers with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), they listened.“It’s not that we’ve established a new model of organizing here,” said Mitchell-Israel. “The model is listening and highlighting people’s stories, and when we build a platform, using it to lift up their stories, because that’s what’s been compelling for the workers, that’s what’s gotten people to vote yes.”Amazon Labor Union defied the odds without any affiliation to national labor unions and precious little support from the political class which has seen other efforts to organize at Amazon rebuffed.The surprise victory has been hailed as historic in the US media, and its organizers have been bombarded with interview requests from around the world. Elected officials and prominent figures have issued public declarations of support, including Joe Biden and several members of Congress, all attention that had been lacking leading up to the vote as most media outlets and elected officials, including ostensible supporters of labor unionizing efforts, ignored the ALU’s efforts.The union has also received inquiries from Amazon workers at warehouses and delivery stations around the US and internationally, requesting assistance and asserting interest in organizing unions at their own work sites. There are meetings scheduled with New York elected officials in Albany and with Sean O’Brien, president of the powerful Teamsters union, who has also pledged to unionize Amazon.For Mitchell-Israel the noise is distracting attention from how ALU achieved its victory. “There’s just so much talk about this union in a way that, I think, abstracts it and makes it into a phenomenon that it’s not. It’s just people and stories and love and necessity, and that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “You go and you listen and rather than telling them they should vote yes, telling them here’s how you organize, you just ask them the right questions, and people will come up with their own answers to it. People have different answers, and because they’re the workers, they’re the ones being affected, it’s going to be the right answer.”With more than 1 million employees in the US, Amazon is the country’s second largest private employer. The company has faced public scrutiny for years over workers reporting abhorrent working conditions, high injury rates, and immense productivity pressures, which have contributed to annual turnover rates of about 150%.On Staten Island the Covid-19 pandemic brought the clash between Amazon and its workers to a head. ALU founder Chris Smalls, then as assistant manager at Amazon, helped lead a walkout in March 2020 over lack of Covid-19 protections and was fired shortly after. Leaked memos showed Amazon executives denigrating Smalls as “not smart or articulate” in a meeting with the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and suggesting it would be a win for them if they made him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement”.“Welp there you go!” Smalls tweeted last week.@amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go! @JeffBezos @DavidZapolsky CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 @amazonlabor We worked had fun and made History ‼️✊🏾 #ALU # ALUfortheWin welcome the 1st union in America for Amazon 🔥🔥🔥🔥— Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) April 1, 2022
      “The workers that I organize with are like my family now,” Smalls told the Guardian. “To bring this victory to them is the best feeling in the world next to my kids’ birth.”Smalls’s story proved a powerful one on Staten Island. “When I do talk to workers, I tell them I was fired wrongfully because I tried to protect workers’ health and safety, and that can happen to you,” Smalls said after helping to form the group. “You can complain or submit a grievance, and they could just terminate you or target you to be terminated, or retaliate against you. And there’s no protection, so the only way we’re going to be protected is by forming that union.”The ALU’s fight is far from over. Organizers are currently bracing for the upcoming union election at the LDJ5 sorting center in Staten Island, which begins on 25 April, and cementing resources, such as finding office space, ahead of the fight to negotiate a first union contract with Amazon, which continues to vehemently oppose unions.The tech company may have lost this battle but it continues the fight. “We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees,” said Amazon in response to the union win. “We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and US Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election.”Shortly after the union victory, internal documents leaked to the Intercept revealed a planned internal messaging app for employees would block the use of words or phrases such as “union”, “pay raises”, “living wage” or “representation”.Amazon has a record of firing workers involved in organizing activities and automatically terminating workers for minor infractions, including Jason Anthony, a picker at JFK8 on Staten Island and a labor organizer and founding member of ALU.In the summer of 2020, Anthony was automatically fired from Amazon when his unpaid time off went in the red. He had run out of his prescription medications and transportation to the warehouse was limited due to Covid-19 restrictions and staffing issues with public transit.Anthony had to wait over a year to be able to get rehired, but currently has a case being investigated with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about Amazon’s alleged lack of accommodations for workers with mental disabilities. He is currently on short-term disability leave from a back injury sustained at Amazon during peak season in December 2021.He has known Chris Smalls from long before Smalls emerged as a celebrity in the US labor movement. “Chris was the best person you could work with. He cared about his employees from a human perspective, not just as a manager,” said Anthony, “When he got fired in 2020, I went to the building to support him and when I got fired several months later, I called him and asked him for his support, so since then, we developed a brotherhood that will never ever be broken. We could argue, have internal disagreements here and there, but at the end of the day we always come together.”Now the ALU will begin its negotiations with Amazon with the aim of improving working conditions, pay, breaks and their lives as workers. The union plans on building out these efforts in the US and abroad at Amazon.New York is a union town and replicating the Staten Island victory may prove difficult across the US. Another effort to organize in Alabama hangs in the balance with Amazon currently ahead in the votes. But Anthony is convinced change is coming. “This victory is only the beginning of a global revolution,” he said.TopicsAmazonThe ObserverUS unionsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Teamsters president vows to pressure Amazon after New York votes for union

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      Teamsters president vows to pressure Amazon after New York votes for unionSean O’Brien says it’s vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has ‘total disrespect’ for its workers The Teamsters’ new president has pledged his powerful union will step up the pressure on Amazon and mount its own efforts to unionize the company after workers in New York voted to form the company’s first US union.In an interview with the Guardian Sean O’Brien said it was vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has “total disrespect” for its workers and was putting downward pressure on standards for unionized warehouse workers and truck drivers across the US.“You have an employer like Jeff Bezos taking a joyride into space, and he bangs on his workers to be able to fund his trip,” said O’Brien, who was inaugurated as Teamsters president on 22 March. He asserted that Amazon workers would benefit greatly from joining the Teamsters, saying that Amazon’s drivers and warehouse workers are treated and paid considerably worse than their unionized counterparts at other companies.“They’re awful, they’re disrespectful the way they treat their employees,” O’Brien said of Amazon.On Friday, a final vote count showed that Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize, 2,654 for a union, 2,131 against. Another vote to organize workers in Alabama hangs in the balance. Amazon beat off the union drive by 118 votes but the final tally is awaiting a review of 416 challenged ballots.O’Brien said he applauds any organization that seeks to take on Amazon: “I commend anybody who tries to take on a schoolyard bully like Amazon.”The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, while a new, independent union, the Amazon Labor Union, was behind the organizing at two Amazon facilities on Staten Island.O’Brien said that no union is better positioned than the Teamsters to organize Amazon because his 1.3-million-member union has decades of experience in unionizing and winning good contracts for warehouse workers and truck drivers. “This is the only union that has the proven track record of organizing workers in these industries,” O’Brien said.He said the Teamsters needed to organize Amazon as an obligation to “our members” and “our largest employers”, most notably United Parcel Service and DHL. Concerned that Amazon’s lower pay is undercutting Teamster employers and Teamster contracts, O’Brien said he didn’t want Amazon to threaten the livelihood of Teamsters or “diminish the standards established by collective bargaining agreements”.“We have to organize Amazon,” he said. “We have to have a plan in place. We have to execute that plan and not be scared to change that plan if it doesn’t work at times. Even a world champion team doesn’t win all the time. Hopefully we will have a favorable win-to-loss ratio.”Before winning a five-year term as Teamsters’ president, O’Brien headed a large Teamsters local in the Boston area for 15 years. He succeeded James P Hoffa, who stepped down after 23 years as Teamsters president.“We the Teamsters have the best resources out there, not just financially” to unionize Amazon, O’Brien said. “We have the ability to utilize our members who work in the industry, who know the benefits of working under a collective bargaining agreement and having dignity and respect in the workplace.“We have a lot of work to do,” he continued. “We have a plan to focus on the big metro cities,” where he said the likelihood of winning unionization elections would be greatest. He said that the Teamsters would mount “non-traditional campaigns” that include up lining politicians’ support and extensive community support behind unionization. He stressed the importance of worker-to-worker organizing: “We need to utilize our best organizers: our worker members who work in these industries.”Amazon officials say their company’s pay levels are competitive – $18 for a full-time entry-level worker in Staten Island and nearly $16 in Alabama. The company notes that its benefits, including health coverage, begin for full-time workers the day they join the company.Amazon officials have repeatedly said they are committed to maintaining an environment where its employees can thrive and feel appreciated and respected.News of the Staten Island victory comes as union activity is experiencing a resurgence in the US. Joe Biden has positioned himself as the most pro-union president in generations.“The Biden administration has done a great job for unions right out of the gate,” O’Brien said. “An administration that’s not afraid to endorse unions is great.” He praised, in particular, a 2021 law that Biden backed that helped secure the pensions of millions of union members and retirees, including many Teamsters whose pension plans were seriously underfunded.O’Brien said the Teamsters and other unions need to do a far better job explaining to Americans how unions lift workers and the nation as a whole. He said many Americans view the Teamsters favorably despite the movie The Irishman about scandals inside the Teamsters a half-century ago. “During the worst pandemic we’ll ever face people saw that we delivered packages, did trash pick-ups, did food and grocery deliveries,” O’Brien said. “We’ve proven our worth providing goods and services to keep this country moving.”He talked at length about the importance of holding politicians accountable, especially when they fail to back workers and unions. “I can’t remember people’s birthdays. But I can remember the last person that screwed me. That’s how we’re going to deal with those politicians who vote against us. We’ll run people against you. We’ll campaign against you.”TopicsAmazonUS unionsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why the White House stopped telling the truth about inflation and corporate power | Robert Reich

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      Why the White House stopped telling the truth about inflation and corporate powerRobert ReichStarbucks, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Amazon – all protect profits by making customers pay more. We need the political courage to say they can and should cover rising costs themselves The Biden White House has decided to stop tying inflation to corporate power. That’s a big mistake. I’ll get to the reason for the shift in a moment. First, I want to be clear about the relationship between inflation and corporate power.Share the Profits! Why US business must return to rewarding workers properly | Robert ReichRead moreWhile most of the price increases now affecting the US and global economies have been the result of global supply chain problems, this doesn’t explain why big and hugely profitable corporations are passing these cost increases on to their customers in the form of higher prices.They don’t need to do so. With corporate profits at near record levels, they could easily absorb the cost increases. They’re raising prices because they can – and they can because they don’t face meaningful competition.As the White House National Economic Council put it in a December report: “Businesses that face meaningful competition can’t do that, because they would lose business to a competitor that did not hike its margins.”Starbucks is raising its prices to consumers, blaming the rising costs of supplies. But Starbucks is so profitable it could easily absorb these costs – it just reported a 31% increase in yearly profits. Why didn’t it just swallow the cost increases?Ditto for McDonald’s and Chipotle, whose revenues have soared but who are nonetheless raising prices. And for Procter & Gamble, which continues to rake in record profits but is raising prices. Also for Amazon, Kroger, Costco and Target.All are able to pass cost increases on to consumers in the form of higher prices because they face so little competition. As Chipotle’s chief financial officer said, “Our ultimate goal … is to fully protect our margins.”Worse yet, inflation has given some big corporations cover to increase their prices well above their rising costs.In a recent survey, almost 60% of large retailers say inflation has given them the ability to raise prices beyond what’s required to offset higher costs.Meat prices are soaring because the four giant meat processing corporations that dominate the industry are “using their market power to extract bigger and bigger profit margins for themselves”, according to a recent report from the White House National Economic Council (emphasis added).Not incidentally, that report was dated 10 December. Now, the White House is pulling its punches. Why has the White House stopped explaining this to the public?The Washington Post reports that when the prepared congressional testimony of a senior administration official (Janet Yellen?) was recently circulated inside the White House, it included a passage tying inflation to corporate consolidation and monopoly power. But that language was deleted from the remarks before they were delivered.Apparently, members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers raised objections. I don’t know what their objections were, but some economists argue that since corporations with market power wouldn’t need to wait until the current inflation to raise prices, corporate power can’t be contributing to inflation.This argument ignores the ease by which powerful corporations can pass on their own cost increases to customers in higher prices or use inflation to disguise even higher price increases.It seems likely that the Council of Economic Advisers is being influenced by two Democratic economists from a previous administration. According to the Post, the former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers and Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, have been critical of attempts to link corporate market power to inflation.“Business-bashing is terrible economics and not very good politics in my view,” Summers said in an interview.Wrong. Showing the connections between corporate power and inflation is not “business-bashing”. It’s holding powerful corporations accountable.Whether through antitrust enforcement (or the threat of it), a windfall profits tax or price controls, or all three, it’s important for the administration and Congress to do what they can to prevent hugely profitable monopolistic corporations from raising their prices.Otherwise, responsibility for controlling inflation falls entirely to the Federal Reserve, which has only one weapon at its disposal – higher interest rates. Higher interest rates will slow the economy and likely cause millions of lower-wage workers to lose their jobs and forfeit long-overdue wage increases.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsBiden administrationOpinionUS domestic policyUS economyUS politicsEconomicsInflationAmazoncommentReuse this content More