Category Archives: US unions

Starbucks CEO to testify before Senate over opposition to stores unionizing

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Bernie Sanders had threatened to subpoena Howard Schultz if he refused to appear while workers file unfair labor practice charges

The Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before a Senate committee investigating the company’s intense opposition to national efforts to unionize its stores.

Senator Bernie Sanders had threatened to subpoena Schultz if he refused to appear before the US Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee. Sanders said Schultz had “refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked” for over a year.

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Bird Union drops Audubon name to distance from namesake’s racist past

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Two Audubon Society chapters and the union formerly know as Audubon for All are severing the name of the white supremacist

A prestigious US wildlife conservation group is facing new pressure to distance itself from its namesake’s racist past after two Audubon Society chapters and its employees’ union announced they were dropping his name from their titles.

The society at a national level has been mulling for more than two years how to handle its association with John James Audubon, a prominent 19th-century artist, naturalist and slave owner whose detailed, colourful paintings in the book The Birds of America set the gold standard for generations of ornithologists.

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Leaked audio reveals US rail workers were told to skip inspections as Ohio crash prompts scrutiny to industry

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Exclusive: employee says manager told her to stop marking cars for repair, as Ohio derailment brings hard look at industry’s record of blocking safety rules

In leaked audio heard by the Guardian, a manager for one of the US’s largest rail companies can be heard explaining to a former carman that they should stop tagging railcars for broken bearings. The manager says doing so delays other cargo.

The disclosure comes as federal agencies investigate the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. A wheel-bearing failure was cited as the cause of the crash in a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

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Starbucks condemned for ‘intimidation’ of US union organizers

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Bernie Sanders moves to summon chief executive Howard Schultz to Senate committee to explain repeated anti-union violations

Starbucks is under fire over the company’s response to unionization efforts as senator Bernie Sanders threatens to call its chief executive before his committee on alleged labor violations and staff petition for it to end “intimidation” of organizers.

Sanders, chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, announced on Wednesday that the committee will be voting on whether to issue a subpoena to compel the Starbucks chief, Howard Schultz, to testify about Starbuck’s federal labor law violations, and to authorize a committee investigation into labor-law violations committed by major corporations.

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California dialysis clinic workers push to unionize over short-staffing and low pay

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Employees say they want to improve both working conditions and patient care but ‘the companies are not doing anything’

For 29 years, Guadalupe Tellez, a registered nurse, has worked in the kidney dialysis industry and currently works for the Fresenius Kidney Care in the city of Ventura one of several dialysis clinics where workers are currently pushing to unionize in California.

“We want to improve our wages, benefits and patient care overall. There’s a lot of issues in dialysis that need improvement and it’s been years and years and years, and it seems like the companies are not doing anything to improve any of it,” said Tellez.

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Shock and anger after fired worker killed by police at Oklahoma pork plant

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Chiewelthap Mariar, 26-year-old Sudanese refugee, shot dead after police called to escort him from Seaboard Foods factory in Guymon

Workers at a pork processing plant in Oklahoma have condemned the calling of police by management that resulted in the killing of a worker who had just been fired.

Chiewelthap Mariar, a 26-year-old refugee from Sudan, was killed by police officers while working at the Seaboard Foods meatpacking plant in Guymon on 9 January.

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More than 7,000 nurses go on strike at two New York City hospitals

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Nurses walked off the job at the Mount Sinai and Montefiore medical centers in Harlem and the Bronx over staffing issues

More than 7,000 nurses at two New York City hospitals went on strike on Monday, saying their concerns around staffing issues had not been addressed by management.

Talks failed on Sunday night. At 6am on Monday, nurses went on strike at Mount Sinai medical center on the Upper East Side and Montefiore medical center in the Bronx.

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Thousands of nurses in New York City to strike in pursuit of fair contract

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Strike date at seven hospitals set for 9 January after 98.8% vote in favor, with wages, staff ratios and health insurance key issues

At least 12,000 nurses at seven hospitals in New York City are threatening to strike after their union contract expired at the end of last year. A strike date is set for 9 January.

The nurses are pushing for the hospitals to implement and enforce safe staffing ratios, improve wages in line with inflation, and maintain health insurance coverage as opposed to proposed cuts by the hospitals.

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How will the NHS strikes affect you?

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Ambulance workers and nurses are taking action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Here’s what to expect

• Nurses pledge tougher strikes

Nurses will hold their second day of strike action on Tuesday in more than 70 trusts and health organisations in England, Wales and northern Ireland. On Wednesday, three unions, the GMB, Unison and Unite, will take strike action at ambulance trusts across the country. More than 10,000 ambulance workers in the GMB have voted to strike at nine trusts in England and Wales.

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US Starbucks workers to begin three-day strike in push for unionizing

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More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out to show support for unionizing, an effort that Starbucks opposes

Starbucks workers around the US are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain’s stores.

More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old unionization campaign.

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Railroad workers pressure Congress and Biden to address working conditions

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Workers and labor activists criticize Congress after it blocked a strike by voting to impose a contract agreement

Railroad workers and unions are ramping up pressure on the US Congress and Joe Biden to address poor working conditions in the wake of the recent move to block a strike when Congress voted to impose a contract agreement.

Workers and labor activists in America have criticized that action for undermining the collective bargaining process in the US and workers’ right to strike.

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‘We’re really worried’: US supermarket mega-merger raises mass layoff fears

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Kroger and Albertsons seek deal through FTC but employees say previous merger experience has them deeply concerned

Thousands of workers at two of America’s biggest supermarkets are warning of potential mass layoffs as the giant firms push for a merger.

Kroger, the second largest grocery chain in the US, and Albertsons, the fourth largest, are pushing for a merger through the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the proposal.

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University of California workers continue strike amid threat of arrests

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Strike of 48,000 is largest in history of US higher education as some workers protest at offices of high-level university administrators

Tens of thousands of academic workers throughout the University of California are currently on their fourth week of striking for a new union contract and the situation is intensifying amid the threat of arrests after direct actions by some strikers.

The strike of 48,000 academic workers, including graduate workers, academic researchers, postdoctoral scholars and teaching assistants, began on 14 November and is the largest in the history of higher education in the US.

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Largest queer health center in the US midwest to lay off 15% of staff

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Staff cuts at Chicago’s Howard Brown Health could squeeze care as attacks on LGBTQ+ and trans healthcare have escalated

Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit community health center in Chicago that is the largest provider of health and wellness care for the LGBTQ+ community and people living with HIV in the US midwest, has announced it wants to lay off at least 100 employees, or about 15% of staff.

The layoffs were proposed as voluntary in the first instance, but the company says “a reduction in workforce is required”, suggesting that if 100 volunteers are not found then layoffs will be compulsory.

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US rail unions decry Biden’s proposal to impose settlement through Congress

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Workers could be prevented by congressional decree from striking over paid sick leave and quality-of-life issues

Railroad workers have expressed dismay at Joe Biden’s proposed solution to a looming strike that threatens to derail the US economy, which they say belies his image as the most pro-union president in generations.

As a 9 December deadline looms for the long-running labor dispute between the US’s largest railway companies and their unions, Biden has called on Congress to intervene and block a strike that could cost the US economy around $2bn a day by some estimates.

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Congress to take up bill to avert rail strike as Biden and unions clash – live

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Progressives in Georgia are leaving nothing to chance with just one week to go before polls close in the state’s Senate runoff election.

A coalition of progressive groups has launched a massive canvassing effort for the Democratic party since election day, when neither Democrat Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker were able to win enough support to avoid a runoff.

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Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strike

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Citing ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations

The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.

Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.

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Biden asks US Congress to block railroad strike that could ‘devastate economy’

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With 9 December deadline fast approaching, business groups also push US government to intervene in labor dispute before holidays

Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, saying a strike would “devastate our economy”.

Biden’s move comes as business groups have warned that the looming strike would hit just before the holiday season and worsen the US’s inflation problems.

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Workers at Amazon’s largest air hub in the world push to form a union

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Employees at the company’s hub outside Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport are now mobilizing

Amazon workers at the air hub outside the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport, Amazon’s largest air hub in the world, are pushing to organize a union in the latest effort to mobilize workers at the tech company.

Workers say they are dissatisfied with annual wage increases this year. About 400 of them have signed a petition to reinstate a premium hourly pay for Amazon’s peak season that hasn’t been enacted at the site yet. Their main demands also include a $30 an hour starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings.

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Graduate workers across University of California system to strike for better pay

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Students, researchers and scholars are negotiating contracts in what could be the largest strike in US’s higher education history

Graduate workers including teaching assistants and student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have voted to authorize a strike which could be the largest in higher education history in the US.

Their unions – UAW 5810, UAW 2865 and SRU-UAW – representing 48,000 workers are currently negotiating union contracts for four separate bargaining units. They are coordinating to push increased compensation, childcare reimbursements, job security protections, sustainable transit incentives, eliminating fees for international scholars and stronger disability accommodations.

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