With Starbucks and Amazon Workers as Inspiration, REI Employees Vote Union

In another significant union vote, workers at the REI store in New York’s Manhattan SoHo district have voted overwhelmingly to unionize. On March 2, they voted 88-14 to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union after an effort lasting nearly two-years. During these two years, the store engaged in a ceaseless anti-union effort to intimidate its employees to reject the union.

The store employed all the usual tactics – from one-on-one “meetings” where managers used pressure on individual workers, to flooding employee rest and break rooms with propaganda and falsehoods about unions.

Resentment among workers had been building at the REI store against inadequate safety measures, callous scheduling policies, overwork and underpayment.

Significantly, the REI workers pointed to the inspiration they received from Amazon and Starbucks workers who were organizing in facilities around the country. “Every new Starbucks that organizes — I also know organizers from RWDSU that have been in Bessemer [Alabama] helping to organize Amazon —all those stories are just incredibly inspiring,” said one. “I think organized labor is the future.” Another added. “Just seeing other groups stand up to Amazon, which is a behemoth, stand up to Starbucks which is everywhere, ingrained in every single neighborhood, it was really comforting. I didn’t feel alone. Also, you know, it was an inspiration, because these are people in my same situation, trying their best to stand up for themselves and their co-workers. I feel like I look to these drives, whether they’ve won their votes or not, for constant inspiration.”

Contract talks with REI management are expected to begin within the next three months.

Labor Press

 

 

TIMES TECH WORKERS WIN UNION RECOGNITION

After a year of running up against a stone wall, tech workers at the New York Times finally won their battle for union recognition. The 600 workers will join the 1300 workers in the editorial and business departments represented by the New York NewsGuild, Local 31003 of the Communications Workers of America. This will make the Times tech workers, the largest shop of tech workers with collective bargaining rights in the country.

The Times fought against the union all the way, refusing their request for voluntary recognition, then forbidding the workers from showing their support for the union, an unfair labor practice under labor law. It took some workplace actions to win the fight, including a half-day protest walkout against the Times attempts to stand in the way of an election for union recognition.

CWA News, 3/10

Amazon union head arrested on eve of election

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With a vote on union representation at the Amazon’s JFK8 facility on Staten Island, New York, set for March 25-30, the company had the leader of the union arrested on charges including trespassing on company property.

The union has responded by filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the company violated a December order not to inhibit workers’ ability to engage with colleagues in non-work areas on their own time. The union leader, Chris Smalls, said that the reason for his arrest was “we’ve got an election and they’re scared.”

Portside, 2/28

 

More Starbucks workers organize

In an update on the spreading movement of Starbucks workers to organize, nearly 350 more at 14 stores around the country have filed petitions for elections with the National Labor Relations Board. By one estimate, over 2,000 workers in 78 locations have filed for elections in the past two months. (For a fuller account of Starbucks workers efforts, see Labor News page on this website.)

Who Gets the Bird website, 2/19-2/26

Museum Workers Moving Toward Unions

Adding to the number of workers moving toward union organization, professional employees at a number of museums around the country are are forming collective bargaining units and demanding recognition. While workers employed at many of these museums, like security guards and carpenters are already organized, this is a first for curators, librarians, educators, conservators and others on the payrolls. Among the museums where this is taking place are the Whitney Museum of American  Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Union organizers place the increasing desire of white collar museum arts workers to organize has been the large and growing pay gap between these workers and museum executives.

NY Times, 2/22

unions and renewable energy

With the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, many workers are apprehensive about losing their jobs. A recent article on the website Truthout discusses the role that unions can play in creating the new union jobs that could accompany the transition.

Truthout, 1/22

 

DC BOOKSTORE GROUP RECOGNIZES UNION

The Washington DC bookstore group, Politics and Prose, which has 54 employees in three locations in the Capital, has voluntarily recognized Local 400 of the United Food and Commercial Workers as the bargaining agent for its employers, the union and owners announced in a joint statement.

“We look forward to working with the union,” said the company, “to solve problems and address needs.” Hailing “the growing movement of booksellers and baristas across the country who have unionized their workplaces,” the union said it “looked forward to negotiating our first contract and welcoming more bookstore workers in DC” into the union.

Publishers Weekly, 1/4

“HISTORIC” NURSES STRIKE ENDS IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH SIGNIFICANT STAFF IMPROVEMENTS

After more than nine months of a historic strike, nurses at Massachusetts St. Vincent Hospital, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, reached agreement on a contract calling for important improvements in staffing that will provide safer, high-quality nursing care for their patients. The strike was sparked by the impossibly overworked conditions of nurses at the hospital that cried out for additional staffing. The nurses had long complained about the need to add more staff to relieve their overload, a condition that was sharply exacerbated by the COVID-19 epidemic that was working them to exhaustion.

It was the longest nurses strike in the history of the state, marked by community support, rallies and marches as well as support from around the country. It was finally settled with the aid of federal mediators and a final session mediated by US Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. Hailing the tenacity and militant spirit of the nurses, Marlena Pellegrino, RN, co-chair if the hospital’s local bargaining unit called it “a true victory, not only for the nurses, but more importantly, for our patients and our community, who will have access to better nursing care.”

The agreement also commits the hospital to a guarantee to take no retaliation against strikers and that all the nurses will return to the same position they worked before the strike.

Massachusetts Nurses Association website, 12/17

BUFFALO STARBUCKS STORE BECOMES FIRST IN CHAIN TO UNIONIZE

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Despite the very small number of workers involved, the Starbucks store in Buffalo, NY made history Dec. 9 when it became the first one in the Starbucks chain to vote to unionize. The workers voted 19-8 to be represented by Workers United in an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.

Starbucks, the biggest coffee seller in the world, operates nearly 10,000 stores in the United States. It has waged a relentless war on union organizing attempts in Buffalo, closing some stores, and packing the others with new workers who, they hoped, would outvote the pro-union employees there. To counter the union organizing drive they sent in managers and executives to intimidate workers who have been complaining for years about the understaffing, chaotic conditions, restrictions on sick days, low pay and erratic hours.

Although the number of workers is small, the election is significant because it could mark a significant boost in the unionization of other Starbucks stores and among restaurant workers who are the least unionized workers in the country.

Robert Reich newsletter;  NY Times, 12/9;  Vox, 12/9;  AP News, 12/9

NLRB ORDERS NEW ELECTION IN AMAZON WAREHOUSE VOTE

Citing “flagrant disregard” of fair election rules by Amazon, the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new election at the company’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse. The NLRB found that Amazon improperly interfered with the first election earlier this year.

NLRB Atlanta region director Lisa Y. Henderson cited the company’s flagrant disregard” of agency procedures that guarantee free and fair elections and that they had “essentially hijacked the process.” The decision was a victory for the union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union which is waging a continued campaign to unionize Amazon warehouse workers.

Portside reprint of article by Jay Greene in Washington Post, 11/29.