Tag: NLRB

CPUSA: Labor movement experiencing a resurgence of militancy / by Press Associates

There were many young workers at the CPUSA Convention and they discussed, among many other things, latest developments in the labor movement. | Taylor Dorrell/PW

Reposted from Peoples World

Read more coverage of the Communist Party USA’s 32nd National Convention.

CHICAGO—The “resurgence of militant, class struggle unionism,” led by movements which installed new leaders in both the Teamsters and the Auto Workers, “is catalyzing reform” within organized labor, the CPUSA says.

And that in turn “indicates a major shift in the balance of forces between the working class and monopoly capital,” says the labor resolution the party’s convention in Chicago adopted on June 8.

Nevertheless, with union density at only 6% in the private sector, 33% in the public sector, and just over 10% overall, many people are suffering under capitalist domination.

“The pressure you may be feeling is the boot of capitalism pressing down on your chest,” Kooper Caraway, formerly of South Dakota and now from Connecticut, said during a panel discussion on the measure. The party’s goal “is to take that boot off the neck of the working class and put our foot on the neck of the capitalist class.”

Panelists and speakers from the floor described various ongoing labor struggles—the Auto Workers against the Detroit 3 and at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn.—and at places such as Starbucks and Amazon. Struggles among nurses and among low-paid workers were also described.

Many of the coming struggles, participants at the convention noted, will be in professions like health care, fast food, warehousing, and other super-exploitative occupations. But not all: An African-American woman from Houston described how the Republican Party has used school takeovers there and elsewhere to both harm students of color and hamstring unions.

New, younger workers involved

And many struggles, participants noted, will involve new, younger workers, a majority of them women, who have known much about corporate exploitation and oppression and are fed up with it and are unwilling to take it anymore. So they’re voting against bosses in two ways: Organizing into unions, or taking a hike from low-paying and often dead-end jobs.

Another way to grow the labor movement requires navigating  U.S. labor law. Organizing has been restricted ever since congressional Republicans emasculated the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act by turning it into an obstacle course for workers at the NLRB and through the courts via the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

The Protect The Right To Organize (PRO) Act, labor’s #1 legislative priority, would remove almost all obstacles Congress and courts have erected to benefit the corporate class. That class has also funded Republican opposition in the Senate which stopped the PRO Act in its tracks.

Those groups include farm workers, who were excluded on racial grounds—then as now most were Spanish-speaking—in 1935, and domestic workers, who were mostly Black women and excluded from the law for the same racist reason, to appease Southern segregationist senators.

“On farms, we’ve got young children breaking their backs working in the fields” starting at sunrise, Caraway said. “Then they go to school, then back to the fields” with only a few hours to spare to do their homework. “We have the moral obligation to go where people are hurting.

“Why should we follow laws that exploit our people and protect the capitalist state?”

Education and pressure can pay off. A participant from Atlanta said pressure—including strikes—by Waffle House workers in the Carolinas and Georgia, members of the Union of Southern Service Workers, an SEIU affiliate, forced company concessions.

“They told us we couldn’t beat a corporation like Waffle House,” an Atlanta Waffle House worker said on June 8. “They told us we couldn’t organize in the South, with its history of exploiting Black and brown workers. They were wrong: When we come together, united, taking collective action, we can shift the balance of power.”

They got $3 an-hour raises, increases in their base tipped wages and seniority raises. But they’ll keep fighting for the whole package, Erica promised the Chicago convention.

White-collar workers can be oppressed, too.  A Houston teacher told delegates that 93 of the 107 school districts which the Lone Star State’s schools chief has taken over—including the Houston Independent School District—have majorities of “low-income students who are Black or brown.”

That’s no coincidence. The takeover law is a favorite of white right-wing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the white Republican majority in the heavily gerrymandered legislature of the nation’s second most populous state.

“Most of those districts fail because the community doesn’t have a voice” in running them, Mary said. Similar Republican takeovers occurred in Philadelphia—though a later Democratic governor revoked it–and New Orleans. There the entire city school system has been privatized via so-called charter schools.

While panelists didn’t mention it, the conversion to charters literally destroyed the Teachers’ (AFT) New Orleans local, the largest in the South. It sued to overturn the privatization and get teachers’ jobs back, but lost in federal courts, all during the Republican George W. Bush administration.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Press Associates Inc. (PAI), is a union news service in Washington D.C. Mark Gruenberg is the editor.

When Employers Violate the NLRA, the Harm is Always Irreparable / by Andrew Strom

When Employers Violate the NLRA, the Harm is Always Irreparable | Photo credit: OnLabor

Reposted from On Labor

The Supreme Court recently heard argument in Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, a case where employers are trying to make it more difficult for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to obtain preliminary injunctions that undo an employer’s illegal acts while a case is pending. Without a preliminary injunction, an employer can interfere with organizing rights or refuse to bargain, knowing that it will take years before it is required to comply with a final judgment.  Everyone agrees that to obtain a preliminary injunction, the NLRB must show that in the absence of an injunction there will likely be irreparable harm.  The fight is over what constitutes irreparable harm. This is an instance where we should watch what employers do, and not what they say. Employers often make exceedingly weak arguments to the NLRB, and exhaust their appeals because they understand that the delay imposes harms on workers, and under current law workers are not compensated for those harms.

The Supreme Court has long held that irreparable harm is simply harm for which there is no adequate monetary remedy. Thus, an intangible harm, such as loss of First Amendment freedoms, is considered irreparable. During the oral argument, Starbucks’ lawyer, Lisa Blatt, argued for an extremely narrow definition of irreparable harm. Blatt contended that in the labor law context, irreparable harm only exists where there’s a specific pending event, for instance if workers are going to be prevented from voting in an upcoming election. The lawyer who argued for the government argued for a somewhat broader test, suggesting that the Court should consider whether the firing of a union activist “extinguishes the momentum of the union drive or impairs it in such a serious way that an order from the Board a year or two down the road won’t be able to restart the drive.” While workers are rarely able to restart a union organizing drive that’s been sidelined for two years, even if they were, they would still suffer irreparable harm. If an organizing drive that should have taken six months ends up taking three years, workers will not receive any compensation for the years in which they were effectively deprived of the right to organize, and thus, by definition, the harm is irreparable. The Board is currently considering the argument by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo that it should overrule its 1970 decision in Ex-Cell-O Corporation, and compensate workers for the lost opportunity when employers illegally refuse to bargain, but so far even Abruzzo has not sought a compensatory remedy for illegal acts that slow down an organizing drive. 

During the oral argument, Blatt insisted that the threat of a preliminary injunction is so “coercive” that it forces employers to settle unfair labor practice charges. There’s a different reason why cases often settle when the NLRB seeks a preliminary injunction, and it ties back directly to the irreparable harm argument. An NLRB Regional Director will generally only issue a complaint against an employer when they have a very strong case. So, once a complaint issues, management lawyers should be advising their clients that they are unlikely to prevail. But, in most cases, employers have little to lose and a lot to gain by delaying their inevitable defeat. If workers are fired illegally, there are no punitive or emotional distress damages. And any backpay owed is reduced by any interim earnings the worker earned at another job. For other violations, like a refusal to bargain, the only remedy is a prospective cease and desist order, so employers have a strong incentive to exhaust every appeal in an effort to delay as long as possible.

This incentive to delay explains why employers often raise frivolous arguments. Consider a pending case where Trader Joe’s is asking the NLRB to overturn a decisive union election victory. Trader Joe’s leading argument for overturning the election is that on the first day of the election, as the union’s lawyer walked through the store, he allegedly turned to one of the workers and raised his fist and shouted, “solidarity.” Trader Joe’s further alleges that the worker said, “I’m not part of the union group,” and then the lawyer responded, “Oh, you’re one of those.” While these facts are disputed, even if the allegations are credited, it’s absurd to suggest that the union lawyer’s conduct was intimidating, let alone that it changed the outcome of the election.

It’s been two years since workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York voted to unionize. Amazon predictably responded with a long list of objections, trying to set aside the election. The NLRB’s Regional Director rejected Amazon’s objections, but Amazon still refuses to bargain with the Amazon Labor Union. If a preliminary injunction forced Amazon to bargain while the litigation plays out, Amazon might well decide that its longshot objections aren’t worth the trouble. But, as I have previously explained, without a preliminary injunction, Amazon has nothing to lose by plowing forward with its flimsy claims – even if, as expected, it ultimately loses after exhausting all appeals, it will still have succeeded in postponing bargaining and demoralizing its workers.

Big business is playing a “heads I win, tails you lose” game enabled by right-wing courts. On the one hand, you have Starbucks telling the Court that there is no need to grant preliminary injunctions because workers will recover damages once litigation finally concludes. But, at the same time, SpaceX is arguing that the NLRB can’t award compensatory damages unless it figures out a way to empanel juries. And, the business lobby has opposed the NLRB’s pleas to increase its budget so that it could hire more staff and speed up case processing.

At the Supreme Court, the government’s lawyer was reduced to arguing that there is no need to rein in the NLRB when it comes to seeking preliminary injunctions because this is a tool that the Board hardly ever uses. The right-wing Justices weren’t buying that argument, but if they had it would provide little comfort to workers. The Board’s power to seek preliminary injunctions isn’t worth much if it can only be reserved for a handful of the most egregious cases each year. In 1969, a very different Supreme Court observed that because workers are economically dependent on their employer, they are more likely “to pick up intended implications of the latter that might be more readily dismissed by a more disinterested ear.” So, an employer’s illegal acts may not seem flagrant to a district court judge, but nevertheless they may be more than sufficient to intimidate workers.

Workers have long understood that justice delayed is often justice denied. The ability to seek a preliminary injunction is the only tool the NLRB has to prevent employers from using delay as an anti-union tactic. When Congress gave the NLRB the power to obtain preliminary injunctions, it did so to prevent employers from taking advantage of the Board’s slow-moving administrative processes to accomplish illegal objectives. The Supreme Court should honor that Congressional intent and not allow employers to violate the the law with impunity, secure in the knowledge that time is on their side.

Andrew Strom has been a union lawyer for more than 25 years. He is an Associate General Counsel of Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ in New York, NY. He is the author of Caught in a Vicious Cycle: A Weak Labor Movement Emboldens the Ruling Class, 16 U.St. Thomas L.J. 19 (2019); Boeing and the NLRB: A Sixty-Four Year-old Time Bomb Explodes, 68 National Lawyers Guild Review 109 (2011); and Rethinking the NLRB’s Approach to Union Recognition Agreements, 15 Berkeley J. Emp. &; Lab. L. 50 (1994), and has written for Dissent and Dollars and Sense. He also taught advanced legal writing at Fordham Law School. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. The views he expresses on this blog are his personal views, and should not be attributed to SEIU Local 32BJ.

At Supreme Court, Starbucks schemes to weaken labor board / by Mark Gruenberg

Starbucks workers fighting for a union link arms. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments by Starbucks against the NLRB which has consistently ruled in favor of the workers. | AP

Reposted from Peoples World

WASHINGTON—The ever-growing Starbucks unionization campaign—now up to 420 wins and counting—and the power of the National Labor Relations Board to punish employers, like Starbucks, who break labor law and defy its orders hit the U.S. Supreme Court on April 23. And Starbucks is trying its hardest to further weaken the board.

At issue was Starbucks’s challenge to one of the NLRB’s strongest “sticks” against a lawless boss, the 10(j) preliminary injunction. The board seeks such court orders only in extreme cases of labor law-breaking, when its normal sanctions won’t work.

Those “normal” penalties are mild: Orders to rehire fired workers and make them financially whole, to recognize and bargain with the union, and/or to post or read a we-won’t-do-it-again notice.

The board also seeks injunctions when the harm to the workers involved, in this case, the “Memphis 7” Starbucks workers, is both immediate and irreparable. Starbucks fired the workers, most of them people of color, for giving interviews to the media about their organizing drive there—outside their store and after hours.

The NLRB went to federal court when Starbucks wouldn’t settle the case. The board sought and got the preliminary injunction making the workers whole by taking them back with back pay, immediately, using two new standards which, the company claims, make it easier for the board to head to court.

Starbucks, subject of a dozen nationwide injunctions already for its labor law-breaking during the workers’ organizing drive, wants to go back to the old injunction rules, which imposed a tough four-part test for the agency to pass before it could go to court in the first place.

Under that test, the NLRB sought only 21 injunctions nationwide in fiscal 2022, the last data available, and won 14 of them. “This is not sounding like a huge problem,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson commented.

The lack of injunctions, along with employer intimidation, firings, spying, lies, closure threats, other labor law-breaking—in Memphis, Starbucks did close the store—could chill further union organizing, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Starbucks attorney Lisa Blatt. Blatt agreed it could.

Would make it easier

Left unsaid in the High Court’s session was that the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, labor’s top legislative priority, would not only make seeking injunctions easier but would also order the board to reinstate the harmed workers immediately, even if the bosses appealed the injunctions to the courts. That’s one of many PRO Act reforms to level the labor law playing field.

“Preliminary injunctions are extraordinary and drastic remedies,” Blatt told the justices during oral argument. “Here, the board seeks a coercive injunction backed by contempt sanctions, and the board seeks the very same injunctive relief that it would get if it won the case.”

“Why would the board get deference when the board doesn’t deserve any deference and has no expertise on how equity should be weighed?” Blatt asked when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged her.

The right-wing justices, except for Justice Barrett, and one comment from Justice Neil Gorsuch, asked no questions at all. But in the past, Justices Clarence Thomas and especially Samuel Alito have been particularly hostile to unions.

And Justice Gorsuch is the court’s chief crusader against retaining rule-making power with federal agencies—including the NLRB—which have expertise in the issues involved. He wants to turn it over to Congress or the courts.

Justice Department attorney Austin Raynor defended the board. Raynor got right to the heart of the matter. He said that without the potential stick of a 10(j) injunction, the board would be so weak that its powerlessness would chill union organizing drives.

“Not all unlawful discharges necessarily show irreparable harm” to the workers, said Raynor. “The question the board looks at and the question we think the court should look at is whether that extinguishes the momentum of the union drive or impairs it in such a serious way that an order from the board a year or two down the road won’t be able to restart the drive.”

And since corporate greed is a reason Starbucks strenuously resists unionizing, Raynor cited it, too.

“In a run-of-the-mine case, there’s only going to be purely private profit–profit motive interests on the other side–injunctive relief is typically going to be warranted,” he said.

“This is an expert agency that has said we think these are the most deserving of relief,” Raynor told Chief Justice John Roberts. “As Justice Jackson was mentioning earlier, this isn’t a case where the board has engaged in abuse or bringing all sorts of claims before courts. It’s been highly selective.”

“I don’t know why the inference isn’t the exact opposite, that these are the” labor law-breaking cases “you really feel that you’ve got to put, you know, the best behind them because these are the ones that are going to end up in court, the ones that are most vulnerable.”

“But the function of the Section 10(j) position, Mr. Chief Justice, is to preserve the board’s remedial authority” to solve the ultimate case and make the workers whole after company labor law-breaking. “So these are the cases where the Board is worried about irreparable harm accruing before the board can issue its decision.”

Sided with the NLRB

In friend-of-the-court briefs, 12 former Starbucks Workers, all of them disciplined and most of them fired for supporting unionizing, sided with the NLRB. Their friend-of-the-court brief told the justices what it’s really like after Starbucks fires you—and after its bosses use the board and the courts to delay and sometimes deny justice.

“Starbucks has committed more than 400 violations of federal labor law, including firing 59 union leaders and supporters, according to decisions of administrative law judges,” the brief for the fired workers says. “More than 60 additional complaints against Starbucks are awaiting decisions.”

The workers “suffered grave harm from Starbucks’s illegal retaliation. Several had to rely on public assistance or the help of family members to pay bills and buy food. They lost their health insurance coverage and struggled to pay medical bills, sometimes deferring care.

“One of them could no longer support her children, who had to move out of her home. Another began skipping meals and was unable to pay bills to the electric company, leading to the loss of electricity—and thus heat–in her apartment. The mental toll led several to struggle with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. For some, this manifested in thoughts of suicide and self-harm. One was hospitalized as a result.”

“Many of the harmed workers “are still awaiting a remedy for Starbucks’s conduct—even after findings of unlawful conduct, issued after full trials. This is due to the slow pace of unfair labor practice cases.”

By contrast, Starbucks painted a rosy picture boasting of its good working conditions, the workers noted. It conveniently overlooked that one of the dozen baristas filing that friend-of-the-court brief was JaysIn Saxton, of Augusta, Ga. He has some experience in Starbucks’s gap between rosy and reality.

When Starbucks then recently retired CEO and chief shareholder Howard Schultz made the same rosy claims, under oath, to the Senate Labor Committee, Saxton, a military veteran, was one of two baristas to follow him to the witness chair and call out his lies.

Saxton won his case before the NLRB—without an injunction—and walked back into the Augusta Starbucks store, but has since left the company “because it didn’t give him sufficient hours of work” to make a living and feed his family, the workers’ brief said.

“In light of the multi-step NLRB process, Congress knew effective interim relief was critical. Thus, Congress authored Section 10(j) to provide interim relief” while harmed workers waited…and waited…and waited for a final decision.

“Courts universally recognize section 10(j) is designed to protect the public interest in preserving labor peace through the process designed by Congress, not to vindicate private rights,” the AFL-CIO’s brief said.

“They look then to whether there is an on-going harm that, if allowed to continue, could not be fully remedied by any eventual remedial order from the board. By its nature, such a harm would have no adequate remedy at law, and an injunction to stop it would be in the public interest.

“At bottom then, Starbucks’ complaint is one of semantics. Whichever “analysis a court applies, each” is focusing on furthering the purposes of” the National Labor Relations Act. “This is demonstrated by the lower courts’ application of the two-part test in this case. The district court found the board presented compelling evidence the seven baristas were fired for their union activity.”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.

NLRB Head Says Corporate Union-Busters Want to Distract Public With Legal Challenges / by Julia Conley

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, is seen in Washington, D.C. on September 20, 2022(Photo: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“These esoteric arguments came about why?” said National Labor Relations Board Chief Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. “Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers.”

Reposted from Common Dreams

Amid an ongoing nationwide surge in union organizing across numerous industries in the U.S., powerful corporations in recent months have argued the federal watchdog tasked with ensuring fair labor practices is, itself, unconstitutional—but the nation’s top labor lawyer said Tuesday she doesn’t buy the claims of Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and other companies.

The “deep-pocketed, low-road employers want to divert [the National Labor Relations Board’s] sparse resources to defending ourselves in court,” NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said at a virtual event, “to slow down or prevent us from engaging in concerted action. They’re just trying to stop our enforcement actions.”

Abruzzo spoke at a webinar titled “Preserving the Administrative State: Threats to Administrative Law Enforcement in the Courts,” hosted by the left-leaning think tank Roosevelt Institute.

Watch the event below:

The event was held just over three months after SpaceX, billionaire enterpreneur Elon Musk’s space exploration company, filed a complaint against the NLRB after the board accused it of unlawfully firing eight employees. SpaceX claimed that a “constitutionally required degree of control is lacking” at the agency because its judges and five board members cannot immediately be dismissed by a president.

In moves Abruzzo on Tuesday called “jumping on the bandwagon,” an attorney for Trader Joe’s argued at a hearing weeks later that the “structure and organization” of the NLRB is unconstitutional, and Amazon made a similar claim in February. Starbucks said in its own legal filing that the limitation on removing NLRB judges and members “frustrates the presidential control Article II [of the U.S. Constitution] demands.”

“These esoteric arguments came about why?” said Abruzzo. “Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers for speaking about their workplace concerns. And then Amazon jumps on the bandwagon, Starbucks jumps on the bandwagon, Trader Joe’s, others get in on the action just because we’re trying to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers rights to organize and collectively bargain through representatives of their free choosing.”

All the companies have been accused by the board’s prosecutors of violating labor law—a fact that Abruzzo said the corporations are eager for the public to forget.

A key goal of the legal filings is to “to divert attention away from the fact that they are actually lawbreakers who need to be held accountable in a timely manner,” Abruzzo said at the Roosevelt Institute webinar. “And frankly, that strategy is working. There’s a lot of public reporting about the challenges as opposed to the law-breaking.”

In addition to SpaceX’s alleged illegal firing of workers, the companies have been accused of retaliating against employees, limiting workers’ access to a warehouse, and closing store locations to discourage union activity, among other violations.

NLRB judges have already ruled against Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s in several workers’ rights cases.

Two of the companies—SpaceX and Amazon—were founded by the two richest men in the United States, Musk and Jeff Bezos.

“Once billionaires are scared of the power of the NLRB, they bring in the big guns,” Diana Reddy, a labor law professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said at the Roosevelt Institute event.

Abruzzo said courts are likely to reject the companies’ claims, noting the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the organizational structure of the NLRB in 1937.

Other federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission, have also been challenged as unconstitutional by corporate interests. Rulings in those cases are expecting in the coming months.

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

‘Historic’: Dartmouth Men’s Basketball Team Votes to Unionize / by Brett Wilkins

Members of Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team cheer on their teammates from the sidelines | Photo: Dartmouth Men’s Basketball/X

More Perfect Union called the move “a precedent that could change college sports.”

Reposted from Common Dreams

The Dartmouth College men’s basketball team voted Tuesday to unionize, becoming the first-ever U.S. collegiate athletes to do so—but the private New Hampshire university is mounting a challenge to the move that could end up in federal court.

Dartmouth players voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 560 in an election supervised by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the university’s human resources department.

“Today is a big day for our team,” said Dartmouth players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, two leaders of the organizing effort. “We stuck together all season and won this election. It is self-evident that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members. Dartmouth seems to be stuck in the past. It’s time for the age of amateurism to end.”

Haskins told the Associated Press that “I think this is just the start” and that the Dartmouth vote “is going to have a domino effect on other cases across the country, and that could lead to other changes.”

SEIU Local 560 president Chris Peck said he is “looking forward to standing in solidarity” with Dartmouth players “as they begin to negotiate their historic first contract.”

@SEIU_Local_560 🏀MAKING HISTORY!🏀Dartmouth Men’s Bball team votes to join SEIU L560 /X

Last month, the NLRB’s regional office ruled that the Dartmouth players are employees of the school with collective bargaining rights. Team members had previously petitioned the NLRB to organize with the SEIU.

Dartmouth officials appealed to the full NLRB.

“For Ivy League students who are varsity athletes, academics are of primary importance, and athletic pursuit is part of the educational experience,” the school said in a statement. “Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is as unprecedented as it is inaccurate. We, therefore, do not believe unionization is appropriate.”

Colleges and universities have been urging U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation prohibiting student-athletes from being classified as employees, asserting that being forced to provide pay and benefits and allowing them to form or join unions threatens their multibillion-dollar monopoly.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association weighed in on the Dartmouth vote:

The association believes change in college sports is long overdue and is pursuing significant reforms. However, there are some issues the NCAA cannot address alone, and the association looks forward to working with Congress to make needed changes in the best interest of all student-athletes.

Labor advocates and progressive politicians cheered the vote, with the AFL-CIO calling it a “huge moment.”

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said that “NCAA athletes make billions in profits for their universities and they deserve a seat at the table. This is the start of a new chapter in collegiate athletics.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media: “Congratulations to the members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team on voting overwhelmingly to become the first college sports team in America to form a union. It’s time for Dartmouth to respect their constitutional right to organize and bargain for a fair contract now.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Portland Museum of Art Security Associates & Gallery Ambassadors Unionize / by Andy O’Brien

Image via Maine AFL-CIO

Reposted from the Maine AFL-CIO News

Security Associates and Gallery Ambassadors of the Portland Museum of Art won their National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election on January 24 to unionize with the SPFPA (The International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America). 

“We made the decision to unionize for a plethora of reasons but just some are: to solidify and achieve better benefits and fairer wages, to have our voices be heard and be taken more seriously, and to acquire greater job security,” the union’s bargaining committee wrote in a statement. “We hope that the management of the Portland Museum of Art will use their principles in dealing with us and do so in good faith! When the majority of the employees of the Portland Museum of Art unionized with UAW Local 2110 in 2021, we were excluded from this as security guards. Now we are moving forward with the support of the members of the department and our coworkers from the wider museum.”  

In late 2021, PMA staff voted in a separate NLRB election to form a union with United Auto Workers Local 2110 of the Technical, Office and Professional Union, but a majority Republican-appointed NLRB sided with PMA management in its challenge to the make up of the bargaining unit and excluded gallery ambassadors. In late 2021, Local 2110 and PMA negotiated a first contract that included wage increases, health care and child care improvements, vacation benefits and more.

Andy O’Brien is lifelong Mainer, writer, former Maine state legislator, and former editor of The Free Press, a newspaper covering midcoast Maine. He covered Maine state politics for nine years with a focus on Lincoln, Knox, and Waldo counties. He is also the communications director of the Maine AFL-CIO.

Maine small businesses oppose new National Labor Relations Board rule / by Carol Bousquet

Early-morning light shines on shops on Main Street, Saturday, June 11, 2022, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Small businesses face a mix of old and new challenges as 2023 begins. A looming recession, still high (although easing) inflation and labor woes are a few things small businesses will have to tackle | Photo via Maine Public

Reposted from Maine Public Radio

The National Labor Relations Board’s new rule would expand the definition of joint employer under federal law. The rule says two employers using the same employees would be “joint employers,” and share responsibility for each others actions.

But Maine’s small businesses, many of them franchises, say that can expose them to decisions that they have no control over, like union issues.

Mike Layman, spokesman for the International Franchise Association, says Maine’s 2,200 franchises will be at risk under the new rule.

“This policy is not going to hurt Google and Amazon. It’s going to hurt small businesses and create an environment where on Main Street small business opportunities are going to dry up and be replaced by big businesses that don’t have to navigate this policy in nearly the same way,” Layman said.

The AFL-CIO supports the new Joint Employer Rule, saying corporations often control franchises which gives employees little say in their working conditions.

Adam Goode is Legislative and Political Director for the AFL-CIO.

“What we’ve seen is that corporations have scared small businesses, especially franchisees, into thinking the joint employer rule would destroy small business and the franchise model. We believe that’s false. We believe that it will protect and encourage collective bargaining as a means of solving labor disputes,” Goode said.

The rule is due to go into effect February 26. The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on a resolution next week that disapproves of the rule.

Carol Bousquet is Maine Public Radio Weekend Edition Host and Producer.

10 Working-Class Victories to Celebrate in 2023 / by Sarah Anderson

Shep Searl of Starbucks Workers United, Chicago | Credit: Starbucks Workers United

Reposted from ZNet

From the picket lines to state houses to the White House, champions in the fight against inequality landed huge wins.

Looking for something positive to celebrate on New Year’s Eve? Consider lifting a glass to the hardworking people behind these inspiring victories of 2023.

1. The ‘Year of the Strike’

More than half a million American workers walked off the job this year. In October, companies lost more workdays to strikes than in any month during the past 40 years.

Big 3 auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors, Las Vegas and Los Angeles hotel staff, and Kaiser Permanente health care employees were among those who used strikes to score big bargaining table wins. For UPS drivers, the mere threat of a Teamsters strike was enough to secure historic wage hikes and safety protections.

After renewing contracts with Ford, GM, Stellantis, and UPS, the UAW and the Teamsters doubled down on efforts to organize the unorganized. The Teamsters picketed outside 25 Amazon warehouses, demanding a fair contract for unionized drivers at a California-based delivery service for the notoriously anti-union retailer. The UAW set their sights on non-unionized car companies, causing so much indigestion among Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai executives that they immediately hiked wages for their U.S. employees.

2. Black worker organizing in the south

To move the needle on the country’s dismally low 6 percent unionization rate, the labor movement will need to make inroads in tough territory, particularly in historically anti-union southern states that have been magnets for investment.

Two union victories in 2023 are the latest proof that this goal is not impossible. The United Steelworkers won an election at a Blue Bird bus factory in Georgia with nearly 1,500 predominantly Black workers. In three Alabama cities, AT&T Mobility workers at In Home Expert hubs joined the Communications Workers of America.

3. A crack in the anti-union tech sector

The past year also saw union progress in another historically union-averse territory: the tech sector. Earlier this month, Microsoft forged an agreement with the AFL-CIO to remain neutral in organizing drives among their U.S.-based workers. This will make it easier for about 100,000 Microsoft employees to unionize, with potential ripple effects across the industry.

4. New trifecta states

In Michigan and Minnesota, pro-worker state legislators hit the ground running after Democrats won state trifectas in 2022.

Minnesota passed a blizzard of pro-labor reforms, including paid sick leave for most workers, minimum pay and benefits for nursing home staff, and wage theft protections for construction workers. Teachers will be able to negotiate over class sizes and nurses will have a greater say in staffing levels. The new laws also ban non-compete agreements and “captive audience” meetings designed to undercut union support.

This year Michigan became the first state in six decades to roll back anti-union “right-to-work” laws. They also restored a “prevailing wage” law requiring construction contractors to pay union wages and benefits on state-funded projects.

5. Cities lead the way on low-wage worker protections

The federal minimum wage for tipped workers has been stuck at $2.13 since 1991. In that vacuum, states and cities are taking action. This year, restaurant servers and other advocates in the nation’s capital successfully beat back last-ditch industry attempts to undercut a victorious 2022 ballot initiative to phase out the local subminimum tipped wage. After a multi-year, hard-fought campaign, DC’s tipped workers got their first raise this past summer, putting them on track to earn the full local minimum wage by 2027. The Chicago City Council also passed a five-year tipped wage phaseout plan, set to begin in 2024.

App-based delivery drivers in New York City had to fight back in 2023 against Uber, DoorDash, and other corporations’ efforts to block introduction of the nation’s first minimum wage for their occupation. Gig companies finally lost their legal challenges to the pay rule in late November. Delivery driver pay rose to $17.96 an hour on December 4 and will increase to $19.96 when the legislation takes full effect in 2025.

6. College campuses as labor hotbeds

Organizing among graduate and medical students continued to explode in 2023, with the highest number of union elections among these groups than in any year since the 1990s. In the first four months of 2023 alone, over 14,000 graduate students on five campuses voted to join the United Electrical union — all by margins of over 80 percent. Campuses across the country coordinated organizing efforts through a series of teach-ins and other events under the banner of Labor Spring, an initiative that will continue in 2024.

7. Stock buyback blowback

Many of the labor battles of 2023 skewered corporate executives for underpaying workers while blowing money on stock buybacks, a financial maneuver that artificially inflates CEO stock-based pay. Two precedent-setting federal policies to rein in buybacks also took effect in 2023. For the first time, corporations faced a one percent excise tax on buybacks. The Biden administration also began giving companies a leg up in the competition for new semiconductor subsidies if they agree to forgo all stock buybacks for five years. This important precedent should be expanded to all companies receiving any form of public funds.

8. Collective bargaining requirements on federally funded construction projects

With megabillions in new public investment flowing into infrastructure projects, it’s critical that the administration ensure these taxpayer dollars support good jobs. This week, Biden officials took an important step forward by finalizing regulations requiring the use of “project labor agreements” between employers and workers for large federal construction projects. The terms of these pre-hire collective bargaining agreements must cover all parties — contractors, subcontractors, and unions. This important rule should be expanded beyond construction to contractors that provide goods and other services.

9. Trashing “junk” fees

Working class Americans fork out tens of billions of dollars every year on deceptive, hidden charges that raise the cost of banking and internet services, concerts and movies, rental cars and apartments, and more. In October, President Joe Biden announced a plan to put these “junk fees” where they belong — in the trash.

Under the plan, the Federal Trade Commission aims to force companies to disclose the total price of goods and services up front and slap violators with big fines. This will mean no hidden fees — and more money in working families’ pockets.

10. NLRB rulings on Amazon and Starbucks

Anyone wondering whether our labor laws need fixing need look no further than the fact that Starbucks and Amazon have been able to get away with refusing to negotiate with workers who voted to unionize for well more than a year. (Two years for the path-breaking Buffalo, New York Starbucks workers). On the positive side, Biden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board seem to be making the most of their current authority and capacity.

In August, the labor board issued a ruling that will make union-busting harder in cases where a majority of workers have signed union cards but the employer still demands an election. Under the ruling, bosses who engage in unfair labor practices in these situations will now be forced to recognize and bargain with the union without an election.

In the meantime, the NLRB is continuing to try to hold Starbucks and Amazon accountable for rampant labor rights violations. The board has 240 open or settled charges against Amazon in 26 states and they’ve issued more than 100 complaints against Starbucks, covering hundreds of accusations of threats or retaliation against union supporters and failure to bargain in good faith. Most recently, the NLRB ordered the reopening of 23 Starbucks cafes, alleging the company had closed them to suppress union activity, in violation of federal law.

Reflecting on 2023, Starbucks barista and union organizer Shep Searl marveled at how diverse workers, “from Teamsters to actors,” demonstrated that there are many ways to win through collective action.

“Every day, we’ve been absorbing that information and utilizing it in our mobilization and escalation plan,” Searl told Inequality.org. “We aren’t going anywhere and so much of that is inspired by the other campaigns. If we stand together, there’s no mountain we cannot climb.”

Source: Inequality.org

Sarah Anderson is Global Economy Director and co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies

Labor Board: ‘Common law’—and common sense—defines joint employers / by Mark Gruenberg

National Labor Relations Board building | via PW

Reposted from the People’s World

WASHINGTON—Attempting to put an end, once and for all, to a controversy that has swirled for more than a decade, the National Labor Relations Board issued what it calls “a common law”—and common sense—rule on when joint employers are jointly responsible for obeying or breaking labor law.

The mandate, to take effect December 26, says that when two employers—think a local McDonald’s franchise and McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago—control a worker’s toil, from wages and hours to duties and work rules to hiring and firing to uniforms and training, then both are responsible for obeying or breaking labor law.

That means it should be easier for workers to organize and bargain without being bounced from pillar to post when it comes to whom to bargain with or complain about.

Using that same “basic common sense” explanation, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the new rule “an important win” for workers.

“The point of the rule is simple—when workers negotiate for fair wages and working conditions, companies shouldn’t be able to hide behind a subcontractor or staffing agency to deny us what we’ve rightfully earned.

“Today, too many employers use intermediaries like staffing firms or temp agencies to evade their responsibilities under the law. This rule ensures union members can bargain with each company that has the power to make changes in the workplace.

“The right to collectively bargain is nonexistent if the company that has the power to change workers’ terms and conditions of employment isn’t negotiating with workers.”

As might be expected, Republicans screamed the rule would hurt alleged “small businesses,” with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the top Republican on the Senate Labor Committee, introducing legislation to overturn it. He’s using the Congressional Review Act, which Republicans first used in 1995 to permanently kill OSHA’s ergonomics rule. Renegade Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., joined Cassidy.

The whole controversy actually did start at McDonald’s, when the Restaurant Opportunities Center tried to organize workers at one restaurant—and the owner denied responsibility for obeying labor law, shifting it to Chicago, which then shifted it back.

Gone back and forth

The NLRB itself has gone back and forth, depending on whether Democrats or Republicans are in the board majority. The Republican Trump regime in 2020 tried to fog the issue, and the responsibility, with a rule saying only the boss with “direct and immediate control” had to obey labor law, but federal courts bounced that, opening the way for this rule, published in the Federal Register.

“The board believes this rule will more explicitly ground the joint-employer standard in established common-law agency principles and provide guidance to” workers and businesses “regarding their rights and responsibilities when more than one statutory employer possesses the authority to control or exercises the power to control particular employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment,” the board said. It voted on party lines for the final rule.

“Under the final rule, an entity may be considered a joint employer of another employer’s employees if the two share or codetermine employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment.”

The agency explained common law, which it’s grounding its rule on, says that when one or more employers control a worker’s wages, benefits, working conditions, hiring, firing, safety and health, promotions, and other indications of control, both are responsible for obeying labor law when they do so—and the worker(s) can organize as a result.

“The common law… permits consideration of those forms of indirect control that play a relevant part in determining the essential terms and conditions of employment,” the board said in the court case, involving Browning-Ferris Industries, that overturned the Trump regime’s try at making the rule vague and thus tougher for workers

“The definition of ‘employer’” in labor law “textually indicates” the NLRA “looks at all” indications “of employer status, whether exercised ‘directly or indirectly.” Indirect employers, the board’s rule says, are joint employers of workers.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center, whose case involving McDonald’s years ago set off the whole long wrangle, had no immediate comment, but the National Employment Law Project weighed in on the issue when the board proposed the rule last year, and NELP General Counsel Cathy Ruckelshaus’s comment is still relevant.

“The NLRB’s new proposed joint-employer rule will make it easier for employees who work for a contractor, staffing or temp agency, or franchise, to drag the big companies higher up the employment chain into labor disputes,” said Ruckelshaus.

In plain terms, McDonald’s headquarters would be responsible for obeying or breaking labor law if workers at a local franchise tried to organize and bargain—and so would the local boss.

Board Chair Lauren McFerran, in announcing the rule, which she voted for, issued cautions. One is that it wouldn’t be retroactive. The other is the NLRB would still decide joint employer disputes case by case.

“The board’s new joint-employer standard reflects both a legally correct return to common-law principles and a practical approach to ensuring the entities effectively exercising control over workers’ critical terms of employment respect their bargaining obligations under the NLRA,” she wrote.

“While the final rule establishes a uniform joint-employer standard, the board will still conduct a fact-specific analysis on a case-by-case basis to determine whether two or more employers meet the standard.”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.

Workers win: NLRB says if bosses interfere in election, workplace automatically goes union / by Press Associates

via Teamsters

Posted in the People’s World on September 6, 2023

WASHINGTON—If you file a card-check majority for union recognition at your workplace, and the boss turns you down and demands an election instead—and then flagrantly and often breaks labor law on the way to the vote—guess what? The National Labor Relations Board now says you win your union automatically.

That’s because the bosses’ labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—has not only fatally skewed the election campaign—but made any “free and fair” follow-up balloting impossible, too, the board ruled.

The decision will help workers and unions by vastly improving the odds they win the right to unionize without going through rough boss labor law-breaking, often aided and abetted by union-busters. Combined with a prior NLRB ruling to remove some boss-erected obstacles to voting, the intent, the board said, is to truly implement the National Labor Relations Act.

Right now, “when a union requests recognition on the basis that a majority” of workers filed signed cards, the employer must either recognize and bargain with the union or petition for the election, the board said. If the firm breaks labor law, which is common, the board can void the vote and order a rerun or order immediate recognition and bargaining—but only after the union loses.

“However, if an employer who seeks an election commits any unfair labor practice that would require setting aside the election, the” employer’s election “petition will be dismissed, and—rather than re-running the election—the board will order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union,” the board’s release about its decision said.

The decision came in a case pitting Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, in Ventura County, Calif., and the Teamsters. Cemex broke labor law more than two dozen times. The violations were bad enough—such as outright threats to close—to not only skew that vote into a narrow union loss, but prejudice any future campaigns, balloting or bargaining.

“An employer is free to use the board’s election procedure, but is never free to abuse it. It’s as simple as that,” NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran said.

“The NLRB made the right decision with this case,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We look forward to negotiating with Cemex—regardless of whether or not the company looks forward to negotiating with us.”

“The way Cemex conducted itself when its workers sought to organize five years ago was on par with the way elections are undertaken in a tin-pot dictatorship,” said Chris Griswold, President of Teamsters Joint Council 42 and a VP of the parent union. His council includes Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. The council is also conducting an organizing drive at Cemex plants in Nevada.

“This company fired union supporters, intimidated them, harassed them, and broke nearly every other rule under the sun. If any good came out of this company’s scorched-earth thuggery, it’s that now employers will think twice before they break the law to break the union.”

The usual procedure when a firm breaks labor law so flagrantly is for the board to void the election as impossibly skewed and order a rerun and to make illegally fired workers whole, now including debts such as credit card bills workers had to run up because of being illegally fired. But where there’s a definite pro-union majority and rampant labor law-breaking, as at Cemex, the NLRB decided a rerun order isn’t good enough. An automatic win is.

The NLRB’s ruling goes beyond present board orders, in the Supreme Court’s Gissel case.

Gissel hasn’t really worked, the NLRB said.

“Decades of experience…persuaded us Gissel bargaining orders are insufficient to accomplish the twin aims” of labor law: Letting workers freely choose whether to unionize or not and “’deterring employer misbehavior’ the Supreme Court identified in that case.

“Gissel’s focus upon the potential impact of an employer’s unfair labor practices upon a future rerun election creates perverse incentives to delay, which we believe can be diminished,” NLRB said.

“Our experience leads us to conclude application of Gissel resulted in persistent failures to enable employees to win timely representation. By making remedial bargaining orders more readily available” the Cemex decision “will ‘deter employer misbehavior’ in the period before” an election.

Otherwise, “representation delayed is often representation denied,” the NLRB declared.

Two labor law analysts applauded the ruling, but with “Yes, but….” statements.

“The NLRB’s Cemex decision is a significant victory but overlooks something critical. Workers only seek elections if they have a desire to organize in solidarity. We still need greater protections for workers to generate that solidarity,” wrote Desiree LeClerq, an assistant labor law professor at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations and a one-time NLRB staff attorney.

And Tamash Shahriari-Pasha in Harvard’s On Labor blog wrote the Cemex decision “fails to remedy situations where employers commit serious” labor law-breaking “early on in union campaigns, thereby unlawfully preventing unions from ever gaining majorities in the first place.”

In the Cemex case, the firm’s ready-mix concrete truck drivers voted against the union 166-179, the board explained. That loss more than four years ago came after the union presented 207 signed election authorization cards, more than half of the total number (366) of drivers.

Cemex “engaged in extensive unlawful and otherwise coercive conduct before, during, and after the election, which requires, among other remedial measures, setting aside the results,” the board’s General Counsel—its chief enforcement officer—and the Teamsters charged, and backed the charges with evidence. The campaign was also company-wide and coordinated from the top.

Cemex broke labor law more than two dozen times. It threatened to close the Ventura plant, costing workers their jobs, illegally spied on and quizzed workers about their union views, banned workers from talking with organizers or displaying pro-union paraphernalia “and hired security guards to intimidate employees immediately before the election.” Cemex also had its union-buster, LRI Consultants, “convey the same message,” company-wide.

Cemex also broke labor law before the vote by disciplining lead union activist Diana Orneias for allegedly talking with union organizers on what the firm called “company time.” Cemex suspended Orneias for eight days after the loss and fired her on Sept. 6, 2019, because of her union activity.

Besides issuing an immediate bargaining order, without a rerun election, the board also ordered Cemex to reinstate Omeias, eradicate its discipline, and make her whole financially.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Press Associates Inc. (PAI), is a union news service in Washington D.C. Mark Gruenberg is the editor.

Unions Can Still Strike—Don’t Let the Supreme Court Tell You Otherwise / by Alexandra Bradbury

For the moment, the labor movement may have dodged a bullet. The Supreme Court did not do what many had feared it would do in the case of the cement drivers’ strike at Glacier Northwest: overrule longstanding precedent that employers generally cannot sue unions in state court over strikes covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Photo: Teamsters Local 174

Originally published in Labor Notes on June 1, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters Local 174 is outrageous—valuing property over workers’ rights. But it could have been much worse.

Unions still have the right to strike. Employers still can’t generally sue unions in state court for losses caused by strikes. But the decision does open the door to whittling away those rights more in the future.

The practical impact of the Court’s decision is that employers will be suing unions more often for alleged property damage caused by strikes—and that therefore unions (and their attorneys) are likely to be more cautious.

But the Court did not do what many had feared it would do in this case: overrule longstanding precedent that employers generally cannot sue unions in state court over activities—like strikes—covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

Instead, it found that this case fell under an already-existing exception for intentional damage to employer property or failure to take reasonable precautions to prevent such damage.

Workers and unions are right to be furious at this ruling. But we should be careful not to sensationalize or overstate it—which could do more damage to the right to strike than the ruling itself does, by making workers scared to exercise it.

“American workers must remember that their right to strike has not been taken away,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in response to the ruling. “All workers, union and nonunion alike, will forever have the right to withhold their labor.” His statement went on:

The Teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter their size or the depth of their pockets. Unions will never be broken by this Court or any other.

Today’s shameful ruling is simply one more reminder that the American people cannot rely on their government or their courts to protect them. They cannot rely on their employers.

We must rely on each other. We must engage in organized, collective action. We can only rely on the protections inherent in the power of our unions.

HARDENED CONCRETE

The question the Supreme Court considered in the Glacier case was whether the employer could sue Teamsters Local 174 in state court over the allegedly intentional destruction of the company’s concrete when striking drivers who had set out with deliveries of ready-mix concrete returned their loaded trucks, requiring the company to dispose of it before it set.

Prior court cases say that an employer can’t sue a union in state court over activity arguably covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Instead, the employer has to go to the National Labor Relations Board.

There is an exception, though, if striking employees intentionally damage employer property or don’t take reasonable precautions to protect employer property. For example, in one case, employees walked out of a foundry when molten iron was ready to be poured—which the court found could have caused substantial property damage.

This exception is narrow: property damage that is intentional or caused by a lack of reasonable precautions. It doesn’t include things like economic losses due to temporary closure of a store or factory, strawberries rotting in the field because farmworkers are on strike, or milk going sour in the fridge because baristas have walked out.

The trial court in Washington state dismissed Glacier’s claim because it found that the Teamsters’ strike action was arguably protected under the National Labor Relations Act. The Washington State Supreme Court affirmed.

The United States Supreme Court has now overruled that decision and sent the case back to the trial court, because it says that—assuming the facts alleged in the employer’s complaint are true—the union did not take reasonable precautions to prevent concrete from hardening.

The Supreme Court did not order the trial court to decide against the union, just that the case be allowed to proceed. And it left open the possibility for the state courts to dismiss the case again, depending on what the NLRB does about a pending unfair labor practices complaint against Glacier related to the same strike.

The NLRB issued its complaint against Glacier after the Washington State Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the state court case. The U.S. Supreme Court explicitly did not rule on whether the lawsuit would have been preempted if the NLRB had issued the complaint earlier.

CHIPPING AWAY

Depending on how future cases play out in state and federal court, Glacier could end up being a relatively small change to labor law or another in an escalating series of court decisions chipping away at the right to strike.

Already the laws are stacked against powerful strikes. Employers routinely obtain injunctions limiting where and how many strikers can picket; economic strikers can be permanently replaced; secondary targets often can’t be picketed; and so on.

Comparisons to other areas of law, like abortion rights, are useful. Roe v. Wade was not overturned in one night. It took nearly 50 years of legal battles in which courts questioned and undermined Roe v. Wade, until a conservative majority finally overruled it.

Similarly, right-wing attorneys and judges will try to build on Glacier to expand employers’ ability to sue unions. But for the moment, the labor movement may have dodged a bullet.

Alexandra Bradbury is the editor of Labor Notes.

Starbucks CEO Schultz raked over coals by Sanders in the Senate / by Mark Gruenberg

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz smugly drinks from a Starbucks mug as he is grilled by Sen. Bernie Sanders at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, Wednesday, March 29, 2023, in Washington. Sam Amato, left, of Buffalo, N.Y., listens in. Amato is a member of Starbucks Workers United and says he was illegally fired from Starbucks after 13 years. | All photos: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Originally published in the People’s World on March 30, 2023

WASHINGTON—In an often-contentious 4-1/2-hour Senate hearing, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz denied, ducked and stonewalled workers’ reports and National Labor Relations Board findings of the monster coffee chain’s constant, centrally-controlled and nationwide labor law-breaking.

Senate Labor Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., led off the March 29 session by declaring of Schultz that “Even if he’s a multimillionaire, he’s not entitled to break the law.”

Things went downhill from there when Schultz was in the witness chair.

Whenever Sanders and other committee Democrats, using worker statements and evidence unearthed by the NLRB in a 218-page order banning Starbucks’s constant labor law-breaking in Buffalo and nationwide, tried to get the ex-CEO to promise to obey the law—or at least come to the bargaining table with workers of the 300 Starbucks stores who have unionized so far—he refused.

Instead, Schultz claimed his team scheduled 85 face-to-face meetings with workers at individual stores. But when workers elsewhere zoomed in, his bargainers left. Wrapping himself in privacy concerns, Schultz claimed they did so because the sessions could divulge personal information.

One late witness, after Schultz finished, former NLRB member and veteran labor lawyer Sharon Block, put the Starbucks unionization campaign, and the company’s reaction, into a national context, and not just one of fed-up low-wage workers unionizing for protection, recognition and financial improvements.

Those are all true. But Block added that in her decades of writing labor law as a congressional staffer, enforcing it at the NLRB and now teaching it at Harvard, she has never seen such widespread defiance by any company. And if Starbucks gets away with it, she warned, other firms will be even more emboldened to resist, defy and break labor law against workers.

Before that, Schultz kept denying every single labor-law breaking charge thrown at him by the workers and the NLRB. So far, there are more than 500 charges, formally called unfair labor practices. And Schultz kept returning to Starbucks’s supposed reputation as a caring company. The Starbucks workers, testifying later, refuted him.

Operating from the grass roots

The workers, operating from the grass-roots but aided by Starbucks Workers United, have won union recognition votes at more than 300 Starbucks stores nationwide, and triumphed in 83% of all elections. They’ve also had to file more than 1,200 labor law-breaking complaints to the NLRB.

“You cannot be pro-people and anti-union,” Tennessee worker Maggie Carter said.

Carter and Jayson Saxton, an illegally fired worker from Augusta, Ga., testified after Schultz’s 3-1/2 hours in the witness chair. They told quite a different story of company pursuit of profits, low pay, lousy working conditions and severe discipline, all of which and more drove them to unionize.

Now ex-CEO Schultz, who’s worth $3.7 billion and who made $21 million in total compensation last year, dismissed their charges, along with those in the NLRB’s ruling, or denied knowing anything about them. When one Republican asked him how much top Starbucks execs made, he ducked.

Meanwhile, Carter and Saxton brought walking, talking evidence of how Starbucks mistreats its “partners,” as the company calls workers, when they try to unionize to protect and better themselves.

It was a tale of forced captive audience meetings, discrimination in hours and transfers between stores, benefits offered to non-union store workers but denied to those in unionized stores—using labor law as an excuse—minimum wages until last May and no health coverage through an already expensive company policy if you worked fewer than 20 hours a week.

And there were arbitrary cuts in hours, too, Saxton said. In one three-week period, a worker could go from 25 hours—qualifying for coverage—to five hours to 15.

Single mom Carter told senators Starbucks retaliated against her union organizing by holding up her transfer request from Jackson, Tenn., to Knoxville, Tenn., for three months. She had to quit while awaiting a decision, and that denied the health benefits she needed for her child. Carter wanted to transfer to Knoxville so she could go to college part-time.

Pro-union workers “were getting disciplined for minor violations” like dress code variations, she added. When the union won the Jackson vote—its first win in the South—on March 29, 2022, Starbucks retaliated “by walking out after 30 minutes” of their first bargaining session. “And on May 3, they said we wouldn’t get any” benefits that were promised to non-union store workers.

Schultz’s reason, repeated over and over to senators? Labor law, he claimed, bans additional benefits during an organizing drive—even when the union waives its right to contest those increases.

And Starbucks’s “captive audience” meeting in Jackson had an extra twist due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Such meetings, which feature anti-union harangues by bosses, union busters or both—and discipline if you don’t attend—are common.

Worked from Day 1 of pandemic

“I worked—we all worked—from Day 1 of the pandemic” in Jackson, Carter explained. “It was the only one that stayed open” despite the spreading modern-day plague. She was paid $8.35 an hour. This past May, Starbucks raised all baristas to $17.50, an outcome one speaker said was due to the union drive.

“They brought in a manager from outside we had never seen before” for a captive audience meeting, she said. “We weren’t told we didn’t have to attend.” Schultz says Starbucks prefers “direct communication” with workers—a common employer argument.

“This manager gave us Covid. We had to shut the store down for five days.”

Saxton, an illegally fired Starbucks worker from Augusta, Ga., and a partially disabled veteran, said even before the firm canned him for organizing its store there, it cut his hours so much he lost its already costly health insurance. That retaliation meant he had to go back to the local Veterans Administration clinic for his care, but also left his wife and child without coverage.

After the firm fired an Augusta manager for being too sympathetic to the workers, it brought in an anti-union manager “who moved everything around every day. Then she wrote down names” for discipline when disoriented workers couldn’t find the new locations of the machines.

“They were definitely engaging in anti-union activity,” Saxton said.

If Starbucks beats the unionization drive by dragging it through the board and the courts, using its wealth to produce interminable delays to wear down the grass-roots workers and their union backers, Starbucks Workers United, that sends a message to rest of the corporate class, said Block.

“What has happened” at Starbucks “is not just a collection of individual violations. It is a coordinated company campaign that shows the company has the will, the stamina and the resources” to defeat any union organizing drive.

“What will other workers around the country think of when they see Starbucks can do this?”

Her answer: “Workers rights” in the U.S. “are as weak as a Starbucks coffee cup.”

Video of the hearing is at https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/no-company-is-above-the-law-the-need-to-end-illegal-union-busting-at-starbucks.

Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but a holy terror when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.El galardonado periodista Mark Gruenberg es el director de la oficina de People’s World en Washington, D.C. También es editor del servicio de noticias sindicales Press Associates Inc. (PAI).