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      VW Workers in Chattanooga Seek Vote to Join Union

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      The United Automobile Workers union said that 70 percent of the 4,000 eligible Volkswagen workers at a Chattanooga factory had signed cards expressing support.Volkswagen employees in Tennessee who are hoping to join the United Automobile Workers asked a federal agency on Monday to hold an election, a key step toward the union’s longtime goal of organizing nonunion factories across the South.With the union’s backing, Volkswagen workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a vote on U.A.W. representation, saying that more than 70 percent of the 4,000 eligible workers at the plant had signed cards supporting the union.“Today, we are one step closer to making a good job at Volkswagen into a great career,” Isaac Meadows, an assembly worker at the plant, said in a statement.If held, an election would be the first test of the U.A.W.’s newfound strength after staging a wave of strikes in the fall against the three Detroit automakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — and winning record wage increases.The U.A.W. has been hoping to use momentum from its bargaining with the Detroit-based manufacturers to organize nonunion plants in Southern states that pay significantly lower wages than union factories. The U.A.W. says it plans to spend $40 million over the next three years on its campaign.Chattanooga workers have voted on U.A.W. representation twice before, and slim majorities rejected unionization each time. In a 2014 vote, the union had no opposition from Volkswagen management, but there was vocal resistance from state Republican leaders, who suggested that unionizing would jeopardize expansion and job growth at the plant. A second narrow loss came in 2019.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Workers at Microsoft-Owned Activision Vote to Unionize

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      The group will become the largest union at a video game company in the United States, while Microsoft pledged to stay neutral on the vote.About 600 workers at Activision Publishing, the video game maker owned by Microsoft, are unionizing, forming the largest video game workers’ union in the United States, the Communications Workers of America said on Friday. Microsoft recognized the union after the vote count was finalized.The employees work in quality assurance, testing Activision’s games for bugs, glitches and other defects, and 390 of them voted to form a union, while eight opposed the effort, the union said. About 200 workers did not vote.Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty and other blockbusters, for $69 billion in October. As part of its lengthy effort to convince regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft signed a first-of-its-kind pact in the industry to remain neutral if workers wanted to unionize with the C.W.A.Managers were trained not to express an opinion about whether unionization was good or bad, and the C.W.A. said Activision’s management upheld the pact and did not interfere in the workers’ organizing efforts.“That has been, organizing-wise, a huge blessing,” said Kara Fannon, a member of the union organizing committee who works for Activision near Minneapolis. “It has helped with a lot of people who were concerned about union busting or potential retaliation.”The new union is the first at Activision since the pact went into effect.“Microsoft’s choice will strengthen its corporate culture and ability to serve its customers and should serve as a model for the industry,” C.W.A.’s president, Claude Cummings Jr., said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Starbucks and Union Agree to Work Out Framework for Contract Talks

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      In an initial move, the coffeehouse chain said Workers United members would get improved benefits that other employees received in 2022.Starbucks and the union that represents employees in roughly 400 of its U.S. stores announced Tuesday that they were beginning discussions on a “foundational framework” that would help the company reach labor agreements with unionized workers and resolve litigation between the two sides.The union greeted the development as a major shift in strategy for Starbucks, which has taken steps to resist union organizing at the company since the campaign began in 2021, moves that federal labor regulators have said violated labor law hundreds of times.Starbucks, which has denied the accusations, said in a statement that it hoped to have contracts negotiated and ratified by the end of the year and would agree to a “fair process for organizing” — something the union has demanded for years. It said that, as a gesture of good faith, it was providing unionized workers with benefits it introduced in 2022 but withheld from union stores, like an option for customers to tip via credit card.Representatives of both Starbucks and the union, Workers United, said that while details must be worked out, they hoped to be back at the bargaining table in the coming weeks. Negotiations between the two sides had largely lapsed over the past several months.Workers who have helped lead the organizing said the development had surprised them. “It still feels pretty surreal right now,” said Michelle Eisen, a longtime barista at a Starbucks in Buffalo that was the first company-owned store to unionize during the current campaign. “There has not been a single call I’ve been on today where either I wasn’t crying or everyone else wasn’t crying.”If a framework is agreed to and quickly leads to contracts, experts said, it could be a major development in labor relations in corporate America, where companies like Amazon and Apple have resisted union organizing to varying degrees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eiffel Tower Closed by Strike for 4th Day

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      Unions accuse the company that manages the monument of pursuing financial policies that risk its well-being and worry that a fee paid to the city of Paris could cut into the repair budget.Anthony Aranda, a 23-year-old tourist from Peru, had only two days to visit Paris with his cousin, so getting to the top of the Eiffel Tower featured prominently on his to-do list. But on Thursday, he had to cross it off that list without stepping foot on France’s famed Iron Lady.A labor strike, now in its fourth day, was keeping the tower closed.“We are traveling to London next, so this was our last chance,” Mr. Aranda said in the drizzling rain as he looked up at the wrought-iron monument. “That was the idea, at least.”Mr. Aranda, who is studying electronic engineering in Spain, said he would get over the disappointment — adding, as striking workers banged drums nearby, that “they are just fighting for their rights.”But in Paris, just months before the city is to host the Summer Olympics and Paralympics, there are worries that the fight could turn into a protracted and highly visible labor dispute at one of the French capital’s most visited monuments. The site is so symbolic, in fact, that medals created for the Games will be encrusted with iron from the tower itself.“It’s the image of France,” Olivia Grégoire, France’s minister in charge of tourism, told Sud Radio, adding that she understood the concerns of the Eiffel Tower workers.The main allegation by unions representing the strikers is that financial mismanagement at the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, which operates the monument, is jeopardizing essential renovation work. The unionized workers have threatened to continue their walkout as long as necessary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      President of Powerful Service Workers Union Will Step Down

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      Mary Kay Henry of the nearly two-million-member Service Employees International Union will not seek re-election when her term ends in May.Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest and most politically powerful labor unions, announced Tuesday that she would step down after 14 years in her position.Ms. Henry was the first woman elected to lead the union, which represents nearly two million workers like janitors and home health aides in both the public and private sectors.Under her leadership, it launched a major initiative known as the Fight for $15, which sought to organize fast-food workers and push for a $15 minimum wage. Winning over skeptics in the ranks, Ms. Henry argued that the union could make gains through a broad-based campaign that targeted the industry as a whole rather than individual employers.Labor experts and industry officials cite the campaign as a major force behind significant minimum-wage increases in states including California and New York and cities like Seattle and Chicago. It also pushed a recent California law creating a council to set a minimum wage in the fast-food industry, which will become $20 an hour in April, and to propose new health and safety standards.But the Fight for $15 campaign has not unionized workers on a large scale and enabled them to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their employers.Ms. Henry’s tenure has coincided with a series of legislative and legal challenges to organized labor, including state laws rolling back collective bargaining rights and allowing workers to opt out of once-mandatory union fees, as well as a landmark Supreme Court ruling allowing government employees to do the same.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Meets With Teamsters President as Union Weighs 2024 Endorsement

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      Sean M. O’Brien, the general president of the Teamsters union, sat down with former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday at Mr. Trump’s seaside mansion, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the union, said the meeting was simply one of a series of meetings the Teamsters plan to have with all the presidential candidates.But this particular meeting, which the union detailed in a lengthy post on social media that was accompanied by a picture of Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Trump, came at a remarkable moment. At a public hearing in November, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a staunchly pro-Trump Republican from Oklahoma, called Mr. O’Brien a “thug,” a “bully” and a coward, and challenged him to a fight.President Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history, as have several leaders of organized labor, and the Teamsters endorsed his candidacy in 2020. In December, Mr. Biden issued an executive order mandating what are known as project labor agreements — which establish fixed work, wage and labor standards at construction sites — for all federal contracts exceeding $35 million. That order was a potential boon to the Teamsters union, which is likely to control transportation at many of those sites and would have to be brought into contract talks as funds from Mr. Biden’s signature domestic achievements start to flow.Just last week, the Biden administration named Cole Scandaglia, the Teamsters’ senior legislative representative, to a high-profile advisory board at the Transportation Department. And in 2022, the administration moved to shore up a pension fund that affected 350,000 Teamster retirees.Yet there was Mr. O’Brien next to a beaming Mr. Trump, whose appeal to working-class voters will be key to his re-election bid. Mr. O’Brien promised the former president a seat at another meeting later this month in Washington, this time with rank-and-file members.Serious issues need to be addressed “to improve the lives of working people across the country, and the Teamsters union is making sure our members’ voices are heard as we head into a critical election year,” Mr. O’Brien said in a statement. “We thank the former president for taking time during this private meeting to listen to the Teamsters’ top priorities.”Teamsters leaders have met with other candidates, mainly on the margins of the 2024 election and none with Mr. Trump’s profile. The first two meetings came last month, with former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, whose presidential campaign has barely registered with voters, and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine independent who qualified this week for the presidential ballot in Utah. The union has also met with Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, Democratic candidates, as well as Cornel West, who is running as a left-wing independent.A spokesman for the Biden campaign, Ammar Moussa, said the president “looks forward to continuing to work with the Teamsters and workers across America to ensure working Americans get a fair share of the wealth they’re helping to create.”In September, Mr. Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he stood with members of the United Auto Workers striking in Michigan. Pressure from the administration helped resolve the strike, and has helped other unions expand their organizing.Still, while the U.A.W.’s brash new president, Shawn Fain, has praised Mr. Biden and castigated Mr. Trump, the U.A.W. has so far not endorsed the president’s re-election bid, and Mr. O’Brien may have added to the White House’s frustration. As the Teamsters line up meetings with each presidential candidate, the union’s leadership appears intent on maintaining its leverage, just as Mr. Fain has. More