The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that Starbucks broke the law in resisting workers’ campaigns to unionize — the first time in the national organizing drive. The company retaliated against the workers “to discourage employees from engaging in these or other concerted activities,” NLRB regional director Cornele Overstreet wrote, adding that Starbucks “has been interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed [by federal law].”
At press time, Peoria workers at Starbucks’ Campustown location are scheduled to vote in an NLRB election in late April, and in the last month 404 Starbucks workers at 16 additional stores filed for elections with Workers United, including shops in Chicago and St. Louis, according to Jonah Furman of Labor Notes.
Peoria’s Starbucks workers have an open charge with the NLRB, alleging illegal discipline, NLRB records show.
Amazon workers win in New York, appealing in Alabama. The independent Amazon Labor Union won the union election in Amazon’s huge facility in Staten Island, N.Y., by hundreds of votes, adding to Amazon workers’ momentum nationwide. Another Amazon warehouse in Staten Island was scheduled to vote April 25.
In Bessemer, Ala., where the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union lost an election by a 2-to-1 margin last year but was granted a “do-over” due to the company’s violations of labor law, the union may have fallen short, 875 Yes votes to 992 No votes. However, there are 416 challenged ballots; so the union could prevail depending on the outcome of its appeal.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) commented, “If Jeff Bezos can afford a $500 million yacht, a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms, and a rocket ship to blast a comedian to outer space, Amazon can afford to give its employees a raise. I stand in strong solidarity with the Amazon workers.”
News Guild shows Tribune newsrooms underpaid, overworked, 4/5 white. A 21-page report by The News Guild of conditions at the Chicago Tribune newspaper chain shows workers are underpaid, overworked, four-fifths white, and a big pay gap between whites and everyone else exists.
The union also asked respondents (more than 70% of full-time newsroom staffers) to evaluate conditions before vulture hedge fund Alden Global Capital took over the Tribune a year ago.
The Guild’s unionization drive has picked up so much steam that it now represents about half of the nation’s newsroom workers, including at historically hostile newspapers such as the Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
In central Illinois, the Guild represents remaining workers at the Peoria Journal Star, the Pekin Times and the Springfield State Journal Register.
The Tribune chain includes its flagship Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Daily News, the Hartford Courant, and the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.
More than 380 workers from the papers responded, and the data was aggregated to protect individuals.
Mineworkers mark one-year anniversary of Alabama strike. On April 6, the United Mine Workers held a rally in McCalla, Ala., where labor leaders from across the country joined together to show support for the 1,000 Mine Workers on strike against Warrior Met Coal.
Teachers, college faculty affiliate. The boards of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) voted for what the two organizations call “an historic affiliation” to pursue twin aims of organizing workers and defending democracy.
AAUP convention delegates are set to ratify the affiliation at its June convention.
AAUP and the Teachers have found themselves working together on academic freedom and democracy issues, since right-wingers who challenge democratic norms also oppose such tenets as teacher tenure and the right to dissent.
Assuming the agreement is approved, affiliation gives the joint group more political clout, in sheer numbers, and more impact in anti-union “red” states where public worker collective bargaining is curbed or — as is the case in North Carolina — banned.
“The AFT and AAUP are coming together to unleash the purpose, promise and possibilities of higher education,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “The idea of the university is to encourage and defend the free exchange of intellectual labor because all scholarship and teaching create value — whether it is social, economic or cultural.”
New Teamsters leadership team hits the ground running. No sooner were newly elected Teamsters leaders Sean O’Brien of Boston, Fred Zuckerman of Louisville, Ky., and their board sworn in on March 22 than they met to start planning for upcoming bargaining with the union’s largest employer, United Parcel Service.
Succeeding 23-year-incumbent James Hoffa and his board, President O’Brien and Secretary-Treasurer Zuckerman promised the Teamsters would be “a bigger, stronger, faster union” in their five-year term.
O’Brien also called Amazon retailer and distributor — the second-largest private firm in the U.S. — “an existential threat” to the Teamsters’ core: Truckers and warehouse workers.