Starbucks Workers United Wins in US’s Most Anti-Union City

An outside view of a Starbucks in New York City on March 8, 2022.

KENA BETANCUR / VIEWPRESS

BY John Logan,

Truthout

PUBLISHED May 29, 2022

The Starbucks Workers United union campaign continues to produce astounding election wins week after week. As of this writing, more than 260 stores have petitioned for National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections: The union has won more than 70 NLRB elections, most by overwhelming margins, and has lost only nine elections. The union has won elections throughout the country, including in places where union victories are rare, including in Mesa, Arizona; Boone, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Knoxville, Tennessee; Augusta, Georgia; and Overland Park, Kansas.

Last Monday, workers in Greenville, South Carolina, voted eight to one to become the first unionized store in the state. Greenville has a deserved reputation as being “among the most relentlessly anti-union cities in the nation,” as The New York Times described it in 1977. Starbucks Workers United’s victory there is arguably one of the most remarkable union wins in recent years.

South Carolina Has Lowest Union Density in the Nation

For the past two years, South Carolina has been the least unionized state in the country, and is the only state with a union density under 2 percent: South Carolina’s union density in 2021 was just 1.7 percent. The next lowest state, North Carolina, was 2.6 percent.

Most recent union campaigns in the state have failed: In a campaign that lasted for several years before a defeat in 2017, the machinists union was met with a blistering anti-union campaign inside and outside of Boeing in North Charleston, South Carolina. Then-Republican Gov. Nikki Haley stated, “We discourage any companies that have unions from wanting to come to South Carolina because we don’t want to taint the water.”

Then-Governor Haley’s labor director, Catherine Templeton, said on her first day in office, “Let me be very clear … this is an anti-union administration.” The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce — which has had links to anti-union organizations like Union Free South Carolina and Palmetto Shield — also discourages unionized firms. When its CEO retired in 2020, he listed “Keeping Unions out of South Carolina” among his major accomplishments.

Greenville Is the Most Anti-Union City in the State

Greenville is even more anti-union than the rest of South Carolina. The metropolitan area has only seven employers with any union workers, three represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, two by the Teamsters, one by the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers, and one by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Moreover, over the past decade, the city’s unionized workers have not participated in a single strike, protest or walkout.

The Greenville area has had an extraordinarily lawless anti-union history. In one especially bloody incident at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina, just outside Greenville, seven union supporters were shot and killed during the 1934 national textile strike.

In the 1970s, the J.P. Stevens textile mill in Greenville, along with its other mills in the Carolinas, became the country’s worst labor law violator. When it finally recognized the union in 1980, The New York Times reported that the “truce” marked “the end of one of the ugliest episodes in recent labor history: a 17-year war during which Stevens repeatedly harassed or fired union activists.”

Marketing anti-unionism:

The Greenville Area Development Corporation has stressed that weak unions are a major reason firms locate there, boasting that, “In 2021, the private sector unionization rate for the Greenville area was only 0.3%. The Greenville Metropolitan Statistical Area is the least unionized Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States…. There have been no reported work stoppages reported in the past ten years.” Even with a 0.3 percent private-sector unionization rate, the Greenville Chamber of Commerce lists “Promoting a Union Free Environment” prominently among its major policy and economic goals.

Greenville is also home to several leading law firms that specialize in fighting unions. The nation’s second-largest union avoidance law firm, Ogletree Deakins, was founded in Greenville in 1977 with 11 lawyers — along with five in Atlanta, Georgia. It now has more than 800.

Ogletree has played a key role in keeping Greenville and South Carolina union-less over the past several decades. It represented J.P. Stevens, and it helped several foreign auto transplants fight unionization, causing one recent profile to call it a “witness to history.” Attracted by the city’s anti-union reputation, Starbucks firm Littler Mendelson, alongside Jackson Lewis — the nation’s first- and third-largest union avoidance law firms — have long-established offices in Greenville.

Starbucks’s blistering and unlawful anti-union campaign:

For a corporation which consistently and prominently tries to associate itself with progressive values, Starbucks has engaged in one of the most brutal anti-union campaigns of recent decades. The union’s remarkable success has likely obscured some of the intensity and lawlessness of the anti-union campaign.

Starbucks’s anti-union campaign in Buffalo, New York, last fall was comparable in intensity and lawlessness to anything that Amazon or Walmart have ever done to crush unions. In May, the Buffalo regional NLRB office issued a complaint alleging that Starbucks committed more than 200 violations of federal law, an extraordinary number probably not seen since the United Auto Workers’s campaign at Caterpillar over several years in the 1990s.

Starbucks is alleged to have committed hundreds of other unfair labor practices across the United States. The NLRB currently has opened more than 100 allegations of unlawful anti-union behavior. On May 20, the NLRB imposed a bargaining order on Starbucks at the only Buffalo store at which the union had lost, a rare remedy only used when unlawful actions make a fair election impossible for the foreseeable future.

In addition to unlawful dismissals and other illegal actions in Buffalo, Starbucks management has fired workers in Phoenix, Arizona; Memphis, Tennessee; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina, and at multiple other locations.

How Did Starbucks Workers Pull Off Greenville Victory?

Given the city’s anti-union reputation, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Greenville victory is that pro-union workers won there pretty much the same way they’ve won at almost every other Starbucks store across the country.

Intrepid worker-organizers lead the Starbucks union campaign:

After resisting the company’s anti-union onslaught, Starbucks Workers United won two NLRB elections in Buffalo in December 2021. In the six months following those two historic wins in Buffalo, the union campaign has constructed a replicable model based around the dynamism of its intrepid, self-assured worker-organizers at stores all across the country.

New activists who reach out to the campaign by email, Twitter or through the Facebook page have been trained via Zoom meetings on how to organize their own stores. They then go on to play leading roles in organizing other stores in their own region. In regions such as the Boston, Massachusetts, area, worker-organizers have built up an incredible campaign infrastructure. The organization of the Greenville store — the first store in South Carolina to go union — followed a now-familiar pattern for the union campaign.

Shift supervisors as lead organizers:

The lead organizer at Greenville, Hayden Mullen, first reached out to the union campaign via email and was connected with one of the experienced Buffalo-based organizers. Mullen had no previous involvement with unions; he had worked as a barista at another Starbucks outside Spartanburg, South Carolina, before transferring to the Greenville store to become a shift supervisor.

Shift supervisors have no managerial authority and thus are eligible to vote in NLRB elections. Most baristas trust their shift supervisors — often long-serving employees — more than store or district managers. Shift supervisors have been organizers at several stores, which has assisted the organizing. Some stores have had vocal anti-union shift managers, which can undermine organizing. However, at the first store to unionize in the South — in Knoxville — all the shift managers opposed the union, but it still won because the store had an unusually determined and charismatic lead organizer.

Inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Mullen had worked at American Eagle, Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and other low-wage service jobs. He was inspired and politicized by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns — as have other Starbucks activists — and strongly supported workplace organizing.

Before the Greenville union campaign became public last fall, Mullen informed his store manager at his former store in Spartanburg — who was sympathetic — that Starbucks would benefit from a union. Mullen’s Greenville store manager, in contrast, was curious about how unionization would change her job — which Mullen explained to her satisfaction. The Greenville store manager, however, later participated actively in the anti-union campaign, which Mullen attributes to pressure from Starbucks corporate representatives.

Starbucks has consistently worried that store managers are insufficiently dedicated to the anti-union campaign, and both CEO Howard Schultz and Executive Vice President Rossann Williams have implored them to get more involved. Some managers viewed as being too sympathetic to the union campaign have been reassigned or even fired from their stores.

From Zoom to petitioning for an election:

Mullen first had a Zoom meeting — followed by other contacts by Zoom, email and text — with a Buffalo-based Starbucks Workers United activist, and was given a step-by-step guide to the unionization process: how to print NLRB authorization cards; how to approach coworkers about signing cards; how to mail the cards and petition the NLRB for an election; and how to draft the “Dear Howard” letter requesting recognition.

The entire process from Mullen’s first Zoom meeting to mailing off the store’s authorization cards — signed by 75 percent of the store’s workers — took little more than one week at Greenville.

Anti-union reputation not an obstacle:

Mullen said that Greenville’s anti-union reputation did not impede organizing. Some workers had negative views on unions, primarily because they had worked at anti-union corporations such as Target where management had expressed anti-union views. Others wanted reassurance that it was legal to form unions in South Carolina.

However, when Mullen explained that this campaign was about getting respect and improving daily conditions, and that workers would negotiate their own collective agreement, most signed cards and subsequently voted for the union.

Throughout the campaign, Mullen kept secret the identities of union supporters so as not to expose them to management retaliation. Starbucks has allegedly fired more than 20 union activists, while others have allegedly been disciplined for minor infractions of rules — which would not have been enforced prior to the union campaign — or have had their hours reduced drastically.

Starbucks’s anti-union campaign:

The Greenville store got its vote scheduled within a month of having petitioned for an election. In most cases, Starbucks’s Littler Mendelson legal team has done everything possible to delay elections and vote counts.

When the store’s organizing committee is small — as measured by the number of signatures on the “Dear Howard” letter — Starbucks has generally facilitated faster elections, believing that it can win these ones. However, even in most of these cases, as in Greenville, management has significantly underestimated support for the union.

One-on-one anti-union meetings:

Prior to the election, Greenville management did not hold group captive-audience meetings — which, at other stores, have often proved ineffective or even counterproductive for management — and instead focused on one-on-one anti-union meetings with store “partners.”

These meetings were conducted by a combination of the store manager, district manager and a regional manager. In the meetings, the managers, asserted that the things workers most cared about, such as the ability to transfer from store to store, could be lost under a collective bargaining agreement.

Benefit threat:

Management also repeated the threat — first stated by CEO Schultz in early May, then repeated by Starbucks headquarters and subsequently amplified by district and store managers around the country — that Starbucks cannot extend upcoming benefit increases to stores already engaged in bargaining and those who have voted to unionize.

In reality, organizing and bargaining committees have already informed the company that they will not object and have called on it to extend any benefit increases to all partners; thus, the only reason that management has repeated this (almost certainly unlawful) threat is to disrupt the momentum of the campaign. The union has filed a complaint with the NLRB on this issue.

Starbucks’s scaremongering didn’t work:

After management’s one-on-one meetings, the lead union organizer talked with workers about Starbucks’s threat to eliminate benefits for unionized stores, including the ability to transfer stores, and other scare-mongering talking points. Most were satisfied with his reassurances, Mullen said.

Mullen believes the one-on-one meetings discouraged some of the store’s pro-union workers from voting. But only one worker voted “no,” and that worker told Mullen that he mailed his ballot early and that, if he had spoken to Mullen prior to sending it, he would likely have supported the union. Thus, despite the extraordinary result in Greenville — an eight-to-one win for Starbucks Workers United — Mullen was disappointed that the margin of victory wasn’t bigger because some pro-union workers decided not to vote.

Union campaign spreads beyond Greenville:

Three other Starbucks stores in South Carolina — in Columbia, Anderson and Sumter — have petitioned for NLRB elections. Last week, workers at the Columbia store participated in a three-day strike to protest Starbucks’s sacking of the store’s manager. Other than strikes by McDonald’s workers who were part of the Fight for $15, a three-day strike over unfair labor practices at a non-union employer is a rare event in South Carolina.

Other Starbucks stores will likely petition for NLRB elections soon. Mullen has already reached out to the other Greenville stores. If the campaign continues to spread and win, Starbucks Workers United might challenge Greenville’s reputation as the most anti-union city in the country.

Starbucks Union Is Reaching Areas Other Union Campaigns Couldn’t

Over the past several months, Starbucks Workers United has won victories — often by overwhelming margins — in several locations in which unions are unaccustomed to winning. By mid-May, stores in almost every state in the South had petitioned for NLRB elections, and activists believe the campaign would have spread even more widely if not for the terminations of the “Memphis Seven” early in the campaign. Now it is spreading in South Carolina.

In 2016, then-Governor Haley’s labor director Templeton — a former Ogletree Deakins lawyer who was “the only woman involved in three successful defeats of the historic United Auto Workers drive on Nissan in Smyrna, Tennessee in the late 1990s” — warned a Greenville business audience about a new poll showing growing support for unions among the state’s newer residents: “It’s a shocking result, especially for those of us who were pretty sure we were anti-union…. [South Carolina has a] new demographic that we need to be aware of. And it’s only going to continue to become more of a majority.”

Templeton was fretting over a poll, but Starbucks Workers United has won an election in the nation’s most anti-union city. The newly unionized Greenville workers are the demographic that terrifies anti-union ideologues like Templeton, and more workers will likely follow their courageous example.

The union campaign has developed a grassroots dynamism that appears replicable, thus enabling it to spread even to cities and regions with ferocious anti-union reputations. Union revitalization in the U.S. will almost certainly require many more such campaigns, which are based to a significant degree on worker self-organization.

The campaign’s remarkable victory in the U.S.’s most anti-union city might just be a harbinger of things to come. If Starbucks Workers United can win in Greenville, it just might be able to win anywhere.

John Logan is professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University. He has published widely on the topic of employer opposition to unionization.

The advantages of unionization are obvious, so why don't more workers join unions?

Larry Savage, Professor, Labour Studies, Brock University 

and Stephanie Ross, Associate Professor and Director, School of Labour Studies, 

McMaster University

It’s well established that unionized workers earn better wages and have better benefits than their non-union counterparts. Unionized workers also experienced much greater levels of job security during the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the advantages of union membership are so obvious, why are fewer than one in three workers in Canada unionized?

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Thousands of teachers from the Peel District School Board hold a one-day strike in Mississauga, Ont., in February 2020.

While there’s no consensus about which factors are most likely to sway support for unionization, dissatisfaction with working conditions and the desire for dignity and voice at work are often cited as key reasons why workers seek out unions.

Wanting a union and securing a union, however, are two very different things. That’s because there are enduring obstacles to unionization that make it incredibly difficult for workers to turn their initial support for the idea of a union into reality.
Barriers to unionization

Labour laws play a fundamental role in either helping or impeding unionization. For example, independent contractors and the self-employed are legally excluded from union membership in Canada and, in many provinces, so are agricultural and domestic workers. For workers who can legally unionize, provincial governments — under pressure from the business community — have generally made it more difficult to exercise that right in recent decades.

Employers intent on resisting unionization frequently exploit loopholes in labour law to build opposition to unions within their own workforces. While many union avoidance tactics are illegal, employers are often less fearful of the penalties they may face for engaging in “union-busting” activities than of the consequences of unionization.

© (AP Photo/Jay Reeves) Amazon fought hard against a unionization push, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

Union avoidance is a multi-million dollar business. Lawyers and consultants devise strategies for managers to maintain union-free workplaces. These strategies can include active intimidation and surveillance of union supporters, exploiting divisions within the workforce to stir up opposition to the union or spreading misinformation about the implications of unionization.

These common union avoidance strategies are difficult to overcome, especially given the power imbalance between employers and workers.
Union substitution, suppression

Effective anti-union campaigns often rely on a combination of union substitution and union suppression.

Union substitution techniques are the carrots designed to increase worker loyalty to the employer, thus making employees less likely to identify with the union. Some non-union companies operating in highly unionized sectors try to keep wages and working conditions in line with those of unionized workers in an effort to dissuade their own workforces from considering a union.

If union substitution represents the carrot, union suppression techniques are the stick. Union suppression seeks to plant anti-union seeds of doubt in workers’ minds and play on fears that unionization might result in job loss. Suppression techniques often include targeting pro-union employees for discipline and dismissal.

In recent years, retail giants Target and Home Depot had their slick anti-union videos leaked on social media, providing insight into how much money and effort employers are willing to pour into such initiatives.

Walmart, meantime, uses a “Union Probability Index” to monitor employee behaviour and morale. If a store’s index gets high enough, head office sends teams into the store to ensure it remains union-free. And, as we saw in the cases of Walmart in Jonquière, Que., and Foodora in Ontario, some companies will shut down outlets or operations rather than tolerate a union.

Read more: Despite Foodora ruling, app-based workers face uphill union battle
Shortage of unions

Despite these aggressive union avoidance tactics, public opinion polls indicate that, if given the choice, many non-union workers would opt to unionize.

However, many of these workers, particularly those concentrated in relatively small workplaces in the private sector, simply can’t find a union willing to organize them. Organizing small workplaces is generally cost-prohibitive for unions and rarely results in broader bargaining power for workers in a particular sector.

Union supply problems explain why we’re more likely to see unions in large workplaces with more than 500 employees than in smaller workplaces with fewer than 20 employees.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes Swissport employees protest outside Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport in Montréal in December 2019. About 108 workers who are responsible for refuelling planes walked off the job.

The lack of union supply, labour relations power dynamics and the union avoidance strategies of employers all work together to dissuade workers from exercising their right to unionize.

This outcome isn’t accidental. It’s no coincidence that the rate of unionization has fallen in conjunction with the passage of anti-union labour law reforms in most provinces. Those reforms have made it more difficult for workers to exercise their legal right to unionize and easier for employers to interfere in union-organizing campaigns.
What’s ahead?

Governments could certainly change labour laws to facilitate unionization and crack down on employers engaging in union avoidance activities.

Many of the proposals contained in the former Ontario Liberal government’s now shelved Changing Workplaces Review could provide a road map for offering workers the necessary tools to exercise their rights more meaningfully, including a framework for broader based bargaining that would help workers in small workplaces.

Given growing levels of social and economic inequality in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to facilitate unionization is more urgent than ever.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Stephanie Ross receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Larry Savage receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/08/anatomy-of-anti-union-meeting-how-no.html

How No Evil Foods, a plant-based meat company, squashed a union drive

Union Busting in Buffalo Continues — But Restaurant Workers Are Fighting Back

Elmwood Taco and Subs faces community boycott and NLRB scrutiny as workers seek justice against anti-union retaliation.

By Derek Seidman ,

Truthout

September 2, 2024

Elmwood Taco and Subs (ETS) workers take part in an unfair labor practice strike in December 2023 in front of ETS in Buffalo, New York.ETS Union

The past few years have seen a wave of unionization among U.S. food service workers, most notably at Starbucks, where Starbucks Workers United has organized nearly 500 stores.

The Starbucks union drive, which went public in August 2021, was born in Buffalo, New York. Locally, other workers inspired by the Starbucks campaign, as well as the earlier SPoT Coffee union drive, went on to organize new Buffalo workplaces ranging from the Lexington Co-op to Remedy House.

Some of these campaigns have faced intense union busting. Workers at Buffalo’s Tesla plant confronted anti-union actions and firings when they tried to unionize, and baristas at unionized Starbucks stores across Buffalo fought back against employer retaliation for years.

But there’s one new Buffalo union that has faced an almost unparalleled level of retaliation, workers say.

Last fall, Truthout reported on the union drive at Elmwood Taco and Subs (ETS), a popular food shop in the heart of Buffalo’s Elmwood Village, located directly next to the first unionized Starbucks store. In November, ETS workers won their union in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) vote by a 10 to 4 margin.

Unionization Wave Spurred by Starbucks Workers Is Spreading Across Buffalo

Workers at Elmwood Taco and Subs, an iconic local food shop, are continuing the wave of worker-led organizing.

By Derek Seidman , TruthoutNovember 27, 2023

But since then, the union says it has faced nothing but retaliation, union busting and bad faith bargaining. In July, the NLRB found merit in dozens of unfair labor practice charges filed by the union, including that an owner revved up and sped his truck at a picketer. Shockingly, one of the ETS owners is married to a Democratic county legislator who has previously received labor endorsements.

“These owners are probably the worst people I have dealt with in 49 years,” veteran labor organizer Richard Bensinger told Truthout.

The intensity of the retaliation has posed challenges for the union, but members remain hopeful that, through building community pressure, they can achieve some accountability and justice.

“If people even remotely care about workers’ rights, then they should not be going to ETS,” said Casey Moore, an organizer with Workers United. “People should not spend money at this company, and they should boycott them 100 percent until they stop union busting and bargain a contract in good faith.”
“The Most Vicious Union-Busting Campaign”

ETS workers had high hopes when they won their union last fall after a quick but tense union drive. They looked forward to bargaining a contract that would guarantee fairer pay and scheduling and more voice and respect on the job.

But almost immediately, the union says, ETS owners launched an aggressive campaign of retaliation.

Union supporters saw their hours cut. Violet Seguin, an ETS worker who helped start the union, says she went from working 38 hours a week to just five. She was also demoted from her role as a shift supervisor and suffered a wage cut.

“It was hard trying to figure out what to do for money and rent,” she said. “I eventually had to get a second job.”

The owners brought in family friends to work at ETS, workers told Truthout, and they stepped up intimidation tactics by installing voice recording cameras and showing up nearly every day to close the shop to hover over workers.

Seguin said the owners almost never helped close the shop before workers unionized. “We were very scared that one mistake would happen and we would get fired,” she said.

Truthout reached out to ETS for comment but did not receive a response.

Moore was a barista who helped organize the first Starbucks store next to ETS. Now she’s supporting the ETS union as an organizer with Workers United.

“They’ve just faced the most vicious union-busting campaign,” said Moore. “I don’t know if it’s surpassed Starbucks-level union busting, but it’s equally as bad, if not worse.”
“Boycott ETS!”

In early December 2023, barely a week after the union vote, ETS workers went out on strike, citing a range of unfair labor practices.

“We were on strike because our hours were cut so badly,” said Seguin.

In February 2024, seeing no progress, the union called for a community boycott of ETS, which is still ongoing.

ETS workers say that support from the labor community has been strong. This summer, several University at Buffalo Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) members turned out for a boycott picket at ETS. GSEU President Joey Sechrist told Truthout that it was important for the union to come out and support ETS workers.

“The company has been doing everything in their power to union bust, cutting workers hours, engaging in unfair labor practices, to effectively stamp out the union,” said Sechrist

.

Members of the University at Buffalo Graduate Student Employees Union join a boycott action in front of Elmwood Taco and Subs in June 2024.Derek Seidman

A flyer that Elmwood Taco and Subs boycott supporters handed out to customers and passersby during a June 2024 action.Derek Seidman

ETS worker Ash Shanahan says other workers on Elmwood Avenue have been supportive, while Seguin says that visitors to Buffalo for the April 8 solar eclipse expressed sympathy. “It’s been really nice having the community be supportive of the boycott and not going to ETS,” said Seguin.

Seguin also noted with laughter that the “pothole bandit” — a secretive prankster who goes around Buffalo filling potholes with artwork — etched “Union Strong” into the sidewalk in front of ETS.
“Proven to Be Union Busters”

ETS workers were vindicated in July when the National Labor Relations Board found merit in dozens of the charges that the union filed from October 2023 through January 2024, as first reported by the Buffalo News.

These included 21 “unlawful coercive conduct” charges ranging from “interrogating an employee about their union activity” to “threatening employee benefits in response to union activity,” as well as 10 charges of “unlawful retaliation” that included “cutting the hours of employees in response to union activity” and “establishing a more demanding time and attendance policy in response to union activity.”

There were also seven “unlawful bargaining violations” that included “demoting employees” and “unilaterally cutting the wages of employees,” both without notifying the union or providing an opportunity to bargain over the decisions.

One of the most egregious NLRB determinations was that ETS owner Ron Lucchino engaged in “unlawful coercive conduct” when he revved and sped up his truck “aiming at a picketer while pulling into the ETS parking lot.”

After the picketer “had to suddenly move out of the way to avoid being hit by the truck,” Lucchino continued into the parking lot, saw employees picketing the drive-thru area, and “sped towards [employees picketing the drive-thru area] in his truck, and aimed his truck at the picketers in order to intimidate them.”

With the merit determinations, the union is hoping that ETS owners will be held accountable for their unlawful behavior. For workers, the NLRB findings also offer some vindication.

“They were proven to be union busters,” said Seguin.

“They Pushed Everybody Out”

Meanwhile, the union says ETS owners have been bargaining in extremely bad faith since late 2023, with no real desire to come to an agreement.

“We have been trying to bargain,” says Moore, “but we haven’t even remotely made any progress.”

Shanahan described a range of delay tactics by ETS owners. “They ask a billion questions just to waste time,” she said. “They filibuster throughout the whole thing.”

Meanwhile, the union says that ETS owners have been effectively forcing out union supporters. Union leaders like Seguin and Shanahan left ETS this summer, feeling like they had no other option because of the reduced hours and intense stress on the job.

“They pushed everybody out,” says Seguin.

Moore says the union has filed constructive discharge cases with the NLRB, arguing that ETS made working conditions so intolerable that workers had little choice but to leave. Constructive discharge happens when, instead of directly firing a worker, an employer creates working conditions so intolerable that the worker is effectively compelled to quit.

For the union, the owners’ goal seems clear: absorb any NLRB rulings while forcing out pro-union workers and moving toward a decertification vote later this year.

“They’re not actually coming to the bargaining table in good faith because their goal is to crush the union,” said Moore.

Workers United is hoping that mounting pressure from the NLRB, community and labor movement will help win justice for ETS workers and hold ETS owners to account. They and many other unions have also expressed support for the PRO Act, which would strengthen workers’ rights and weaken the ability of employers to bust unions and stall in bargaining.
Labor-Endorsed Democrat Married to Union-Busting Owner

ETS is owned by the Lucchino family, which also has extensive property holdings across Buffalo, including the bulk of the trendy Elmwood Avenue block where ETS is located. Jackie Kooshoian and Mike Lucchino, the children of Ron Lucchino, who opened the store in 1975, now oversee ETS.

But there’s a twist to the ETS story: Jackie Kooshoian’s husband is Michael Kooshoian, an Erie County legislator since 2022.

Kooshoian is a Democrat. In 2023, he was endorsed by the Buffalo Central Labor Council and the Western New York Area Labor Federation, and he appeared in photos with Buffalo labor leaders shortly before the ETS union drive went public.

“Buffalo is a union town” is a common local maxim. So the ETS union is drawing attention to the fact that a labor-endorsed county official is, they say, personally tied to and benefiting from a company engaged in intense union busting.A sign outside the Buffalo office of Workers United calling out Democratic Erie County Legislator Michael Kooshoian, whose family owns Elmwood Taco and Subs.Derek Seidman

“His family profits from this restaurant,” said Moore. “He has billed himself as a pro-labor Democrat. It’s very hypocritical.”

Peter De Jesús Jr., president of the Western New York Area Labor Federation (WNY ALF), told Truthout that “the situation at Elmwood Taco and Subs, and the involvement of Erie County Legislator Michael Kooshoian’s family in the anti-union activities, is deeply troubling,” adding that the recent NLRB merit determinations against ETS “underscore the severity of this issue.”

The WNY ALF, which represents 165 unions with 140,000 members across the region, previously endorsed Kooshoian. De Jesús Jr. says they’ve urged him “to address the actions of his family’s business” and that they’re “actively reviewing the situation and will take appropriate action based on our values for future endorsements.”

“It is clear that any endorsement from the labor movement is contingent upon a commitment to workers’ rights and union principles,” said De Jesús Jr. “Our message is simple: There is no place for anti-union behavior in any workplace, and those who support such actions will not receive our endorsement. The labor movement stands with the workers at ETS.”

Truthout reached out to Legislator Kooshoian for comment but did not receive a response.
Organizable After All

The ETS union drive is part of a larger wave of unionization in the U.S. food service sector over the past few years.

With high turnover, small dispersed shops and weak labor laws, the industry has been difficult to organize. But several broader shifts, including the impact of COVID-19 and the influx of Gen-Z workers, had created momentum for unionization in the sector.

“There are a lot of younger workers in low-wage jobs in the service sector, and they’re deeply attracted to the idea of organizing their own workplace,” labor expert John Logan told Truthout.

The Starbucks union drive that began in 2021 is the most well-known example, but other companies, from Chipotle to the Alamo Drafthouse, have also seen union drives.

“It’s really exciting to see so many service workers organizing, because for so long people said they just weren’t organizable,” said Moore.

The food service industry has responded harshly, lobbying against workers’ rights and coordinating industry-wide responses. Starbucks racked up hundreds of labor violations against workers before ultimately succumbing to pressure and agreeing to bargain in good faith.

Logan says that union busting within the food sector is not confined to major corporations like Starbucks, and that small restaurant owners can often view unions as “a sign of disloyalty to them” and as an obstacle to their desire for total control. “It’s a very personal thing,” he said. “It’s their business, and they’re not going to hand over control to anyone else.”
“Winning Means Getting Justice for the Workers”

In light of the NLRB’s merit determinations, the union is seeking a just settlement and for ETS to be held accountable for its union busting.

“Winning means getting justice for the workers,” said Moore. “Workers have the right to organize free from all the terrible things ETS has done.”

Challenges remain for the union. There has been significant turnover since last fall, and some newer employees are now “too scared” to get involved with the union, says Seguin.

Meanwhile, workers like Shanahan and Seguin push on in support of the union, even if they’re not currently working at ETS. They view the union campaign with great pride, even if they still bear some scars from the process.

“I’m super proud that I sat at the bargaining table,” said Shanahan, “and I will continue to do my best to sit there until, hopefully, we have a contract.”

“It’s definitely a huge accomplishment,” said Seguin. “No one has done that at ETS before.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license. See further guidelines here.

Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian living in Buffalo, New York. He is a regular contributor for Truthout and a contributing writer for LittleSis.

Union Democracy Is a Value, Not a Strategy

By Dave Kamper

February 1, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Democracy is a central value of every trade union worth the name. But we shouldn’t assume that a more democratic union means a more militant union.

Chris Bohner’s recent essay in these pages, “Direct Elections for Labor Leaders Make for More Militant Unions,” lays out an argument that at one level is so uncontroversial that it should be a platitude — unions should be democratic. No one who believes in organized labor in the United States (or anywhere in the world) can disagree with the sentiment. Nevertheless, Bohner is right to say it, because even seemingly obvious truths bear repeating.

However, Bohner goes much further and commits an error common to union reformers — conflating the morally good with the inherently strategic. A “more democratic union,” Bohner contends, “is a more militant union.” The path to a stronger, better union is through democracy.

Would that it were so. Building more effective unions requires commitment, patience, planning, and considerable skill, and cannot be achieved by changing a constitution. We are doing a disservice to those who want to build a better labor movement if we reduce the scope and scale of our challenges to the question of how leaders are chosen.
Democracy and Militancy

Let me back up, though, and begin by questioning one of Bohner’s underlying assumptions, that “‘one member, one vote’ is a right denied to most union members.” This simply isn’t true.

It is true that if by one member, one vote, you only mean direct election of an international union’s top leaders, most unions are not structured that way. But that’s the only way that Bohner’s assertion is true.

For example, Bohner criticizes the delegates of the convention of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) for not backing what he calls “commonsense resolutions” to make it easier for the union to strike, increase strike pay, and direct resources to organizing. He asserts that if “the general membership of the UFCW had direct elections, these resolutions would have likely received widespread support.” This is because, as he puts it, union conventions that elect leaders by the delegate system “entrench incumbents who can deploy the union’s vast legal, financial, political, and organizational resources to maintain power and stifle reform challenges.”

But the general membership of the UFCW does have direct elections. The delegates of that convention were all directly elected by members in secret-ballot elections. The UFCW constitution lays out the process in excruciating detail, one that guarantees members the right to vote.

Why is a convention delegate elected by one-member-one-vote a shill for incumbents, but an international union president elected by one-member-one-vote a liberatory figure who will change the union in fundamental ways?

Bohner here falls prey to another common error made by union reformers — treating union decisions they don’t agree with as self-evident proof of some kind of corruption.

Unions are political entities. Reasonable people can disagree on what the best path forward is for a union. To stick with UFCW: it’s entirely possible that UFCW convention delegates might have sad memories of the 2003–04 California grocery strike, where some seventy thousand UFCW members were out for 140 days, the union’s assets were cut in half, and the final deal was a bitter pill that few believe justified the walkout. Remembering that experience might well make a delegate reluctant to increase strike pay because of the risk that a long strike would drain the union’s coffers.

I’m not saying those convention delegates were right; I’m not saying they were wrong. I’m saying that their decision can be explained without resorting to allegations of corruption.

And, yes, it is likely true that, if the current leadership of UFCW opposed the reformers’ suggested changes, they might have tried to persuade convention delegates. That’s called politics, not corruption. Leaders get to try to persuade people to support their policies. That’s what leaders are supposed to do.

While Bohner reluctantly acknowledges that union democracy goes beyond direct election of international officers, that’s clearly the part he considers the most important. If so, he seems to me to be doing a disservice to, say, the National Education Association’s (NEA) annual Representative Assembly (RA), arguably the world’s largest parliamentary gathering, which some years can see close to ten thousand delegates, directly elected by members across the country. Democracy can and does have a different look in different unions.

However, even if we grant Bohner’s contention that union democracy equals one member, one vote, for the top leadership of the union, we shouldn’t assume that such a reform will automatically lead to a more militant, more organizing-minded, or more successful union.

Bohner (rightly) praises the Teamsters’ successful UPS contract campaign, a militant, strategic, well-executed plan that won a lot of good things for the members. But Bohner can’t (and doesn’t try to) explain why Teamsters presidents directly elected by the members since 1991 didn’t produce what he considers a revitalized and militant union, but the direct election of 2021 did.

Bohner has produced very provocative work on union finances, arguing that unions are hoarding assets at the expense of organizing and militancy. His argument is that more union democracy would change that trajectory. I can understand why people might want to believe it, but saying it doesn’t make it so.

The only systematic effort to study the relationship between union democracy and union organizing doesn’t support that point of view. In the mid-2000s, Andrew W. Martin looked closely at union financial data and came to the conclusion that the greater the influence union staff have on a union’s actions, and the less control local unions have over the operations of their locals, the more likely that union will engage in new organizing. Martin’s data is based on LM-2 reports to the Department of Labor, which is not an ideal source, but it is the same source that Bohner uses for his work on union finances.

As to the other half of Bohner’s argument, that directly elected union leaders will also be more militant, there isn’t any robust evidence to back it up. If you squint at the year 2023, it does kind of look like unions with directly elected leaders were more militant, but there are any number of years in recent memory where the most militant union was (say) the Communications Workers of America (CWA), or the NEA, or Service Employees International Union (SEIU), none of which directly elect their top leaders.
The Hard Work of Reform

What does seem to be true is that unions that become more focused on organizing and become more militant have gone through some kind of internal shift in power. But that shift in power isn’t always tied to changes in constitutional arrangements. If you’d asked folks before the recent United Auto Workers (UAW) strike what the most inspiring recent story of union reform and militancy was, many would have said the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In 2010, a CTU reform caucus won power and took the union in a much more aggressive direction, launching a series of powerful strikes and even getting a former CTU staffer elected mayor. The CTU reform story is inspiring and powerful; it does not feature notable constitutional changes.

The 2018 Red for Ed strike in West Virginia and elsewhere had a different path, but also one without a union-democracy-equals-union-militancy storyline. In West Virginia in particular, member-organizers bypassed official union structures and put together a statewide strike with little reference to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or NEA leadership in the state.

You see this again and again if you look at how unions reinvent themselves. That conflict is rarely centered on the union’s formal structures. What it always requires, though, is considerable amounts of hard work.

If you want to reform your union, reform your union. Have one-on-one conversations to identify organizing issues and figure out what it will take to move members in the direction you want to go. Find and support better leaders, at every level of the organization. Develop strategies to win based on the circumstances of your union and the employers against whom you struggle. Build energy for those strategies through even more one-on-one conversations, leadership identification, and action. Execute your strategies, and win.

If you want unions that do more organizing, that are more militant, you’re going to have to build it, carefully and consciously. No silver bullets. Just organizing.

Anti-Union Amazon Workers Explain How Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings Turned Them Against RWDSU

OF COURSE IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THIS IS ILLEGAL UNDER LABOR/ LABOUR LAW

36-year old anti-union worker Daniel Tavaris displays anti-union flair that the company encourages workers to wear (Peter J. Callahan/Payday Report)

BY: MIKE ELK MARCH 29, 2021

(Note: None of these anti-union workers that we interviewed provided by Amazon, but were meet randomly in the parking lot of the warehouse, independent of the company anti-union PR efforts. You can watch all the interviews with anti-union workers here)

While captive audience meetings are often depicted as being hostile situations, Jeremiah Okai said he found the meetings were “cool.” 

“They were cool, they were just telling us what the union did,” said 19-year-old Okai. 

It was the presentation about union dues that helped persuade him to vote against the Amazon union in Alabama.

“[The union] is going to take money away from me,” Okai said. “I don’t want no money taken away from me.”

A COMMON MYTH UNION DUES ARE THE BEST TAX CREDIT A WORKER CAN GET IT A 100% TAX DEDUCTION

Ashley Beringer, 32, says she found the mandatory anti-union meetings to be a bad thing.

“It’s just them, I guess, just trying to protect their, you know, their businesses,” said Beringer. 

She said she was on the fence about the union, but the mandatory anti-union meetings helped persuade her to vote against the union. 

“I guess I’m more so against it because I don’t know much about [unions], I’ve never had to deal with unions until now,” she said. 

She said she found the captive audience meetings informative and ultimately decided to vote against the union as a result. 

“I don’t want someone coming in and changing everything, especially if certain things are, you know, are good in the situation,” said Beringer. “And if [the union] comes in, I don’t know how it’s gonna be.” 

Ken Worth, 59, said that the mandatory anti-union meetings helped him reflect on his own negative experiences with unions in the past. 

“I’ve been a member of unions in the past and was actually a member of this same union,” Worth said. “I don’t really feel like they represented us well. I think that, you know, unions could do a whole lot more.” 

(Watch interviews with 4 anti-union workers here)

Across workers, especially young workers who have never dealt with a union, many are finding little reason to suddenly shift things up and bring a union into what is a good paying job. 

Many of the workers that voted against the union like 36-year-old Daniel Tavaris said that he feared a union could change what is a good situation for them where they make roughly $16 an hour — nearly $10-an-hour above the minimum wage. 

Walking by with a lanyard covered with “Vote No” pins, Tavaris said that Amazon asked him to wear the pins at work to show their opposition to the union. 

“I got this from Amazon, they’ve been giving them out,” said Tavaris. “Everybody has been wearing them.” 

In the end, Tavaris sees little need for a union. 

“I don’t really have any problem,” he said of his decision against the union at Amazon. 

Echoing the sentiments of many Amazon workers who voted against the union, Okai said, “Amazon didn’t give me no reason to support a union, I can support myself.”

Payday Report – Covering Labor in News Deserts

Mike Elk

Mike Elk is a yinzer labor reporter who covered the drug war in Brasil and spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian. In 2016, he used his $70,000 NLRB settlement from being fired in the union drive at Politico to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. The son of United Electrical Workers (UE) Director of Organization Gene Elk, he lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Email: Melk@PaydayReport.com

G/O Media Workers From Gizmodo, Jezebel, Kotaku and More Go on Strike

Todd Spangler 

© Courtesy of WGA East/GMG Union


Members of a union representing about 100 editorial staffers at G/O Media publications — including Jezebel, The Root, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Jalopnik and Gizmodo — have gone on strike after its contract with the company expired Monday at midnight.

Gizmodo Media Group Union, organized with the Writers Guild of America, East, unanimously approved the strike (with 93% of members voting) after the union’s second contract expired Feb. 28. Members of the GMG Union began picketing outside G/O Media’s offices at 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York City on Tuesday.

In a statement, the GMG Union said, “In 2015, this union broke new ground when it organized the first digital media union. Now, GMG Union will break ground yet again: We are the first digital media shop to go on an open-ended strike for a fair contract.”

The GMG Union said it has been engaged in “good-faith negotiations” with G/O Media since late January. “At every step, G/O Media has slowed down the process with a lack of preparedness and stalling tactics,” it said.

The union is asking G/O Media to maintain its cap on healthcare costs; guarantee minimum wage increases; add trans-inclusive health coverage (compliant with World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines); and maintain parental leave benefits. The union comprises roughly 100 reporters, editors, artists, podcasters, social media specialists and videographers.

In a memo sent Tuesday to G/O Media staff, CEO Jim Spanfeller wrote that he was “disappointed we could not come to terms on the current GMG Union contract. We bargained in good faith right up until the deadline late last night when the Union voted to cut off talks and strike.” Spanfeller claimed that the terms G/O Media offered the union were “not only equivalent to, but in some instances better than, terms agreed to by The Onion Union (GMG’s sister union here at G/O) just one year ago.”

“We are struggling to understand why terms agreed to by half the editorial union members last year are not acceptable to the other half now,” Spanfeller wrote in the memo. “Unfortunately, that puts G/O Media in an untenable position with regard to these current negotiations.”

G/O Media was formed in 2019 after Univision sold Gizmodo Media Group and The Onion to private-equity firm Great Hill Partners and Spanfeller, who owns a minority stake in the company. Univision had in 2016 bought several assets of Gawker Media in a bankruptcy auction (which didn’t include Gawker.com, owned by Bustle Digital Group).

With the strike vote, the GMG Union launched a GoFundMe fundraiser to provide support for union members “who will suffer financial duress from this interruption to their normal pay and benefits.” By 3 p.m. ET on March 1, the campaign had raised $32,279 of the $45,000 goal.

The union posted photos of the picket line Tuesday on social media:

Digital Writers Gain Ground in Contentious WGA East Election

Tina Fey, Amber Ruffin and Other NBCUniversal Stars Support MSNBC Union Drive

 

Kotaku and Gizmodo Media Group workers strike

Gaming site staff and counterparts from other sites say G/O Media has refused to provide written counterproposals to good-faith bargaining efforts

Brendan Sinclair

Managing Editor

Tuesday 1st March 2022

The Gizmodo Media Group Union went on strike today, with staff at Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Lifehacker, and The Root all halting work and asking people not to visit their sites for the duration of the strike.

The group's existing contract with G/O Media expired last night, and the union identified a number of issues on which it could not come to an agreement with the company for a new contract.

"Since January 31, the Gizmodo Media Group Union (GMG Union) and G/O's Media's outside counsel have met five times," GMG Union said. "Every session, the company's outside counsel sidestepped and delayed, refusing to provide written counterproposals to the union's good-faith proposals. How can you bargain a contract when the people across the table won't even clearly state what they're advocating for?"

The union said G/O Media was refusing to add work-from-home flexibility into the contract or commit to keeping its remote workers remote. (Earlier this year, G/O Media saw almost half of The AV Club staff depart when they were given the choice of relocating to Los Angeles or losing their jobs.)

The union also criticized the company as being unwilling to commit to healthcare standards for trans employees, sufficient parental leave, or diversity hiring initiatives, as well as "lowballing" salaries.

"Kotaku staff is [very] trans, non-binary, and genderqueer," Kotaku editor-in-chief Patricia Hernandez said on Twitter. "I stand with them, and everyone else at G/O Media fighting for better working conditions to make the content that you love."

The union said 93% of its membership participated in a strike authorization vote, and 100% of those voting were in favor of the action. It has also set up a strike fund to support its workers.

G/O Media did not immediately return a request for comment.

 

Writers from Gizmodo, Jezebel, Kotaku, and More Are On Strike

By Julia GlassmanMar 1st, 2022, 

Workers in the Gizmodo Media Group (GMG) Union, which includes staff writers for Gizmodo, Jezebel, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Lifehacker, and The Root, have announced that they’re on strike after their contract with G/O Media expired Monday night at midnight. The strike includes both a physical and a digital picket line. Workers are asking people not to read or accept freelance work from any of the six websites listed above, and they’re also inviting people to march with them in solidarity outside the G/O Media offices at 1920 Avenue of the Americas in New York City.

Why is the GMG Union Striking?

According to the GMG Union’s website, the union is fighting for six concessions from G/O Media in a new contract: keeping a cap on healthcare costs and offering trans-inclusive healthcare; offering higher salaries to new employees; offering more expansive parental leave; codifying remote work options; making diverse hiring a priority; and avoiding possible forced relocations for workers. The GMG Union claims that G/O Media has met with the union five times but has failed to adequately address the union’s concerns.

“Every session,” the Union says in a statement, “the company’s outside counsel sidestepped and delayed, refusing to provide written counterproposals to the union’s good-faith proposals. How can you bargain a contract when the people across the table won’t even clearly state what they’re advocating for?”

GMG has been embroiled in ongoing labor disputes with G/O Media ever since they were acquired by Great Hill Partners in 2019 and Jim Spanfeller, who is allegedly a herb, was hired to oversee the company.

The NewsGuild of New York, which represents over 3,000 journalists in New York City, has released a solidarity statement, writing that “when Management slow-walks negotiations, as they are with GMG Union, it is an effort to weaken worker power. Management is relying on standard anti-union stalling tactics in a misguided attempt to sap the strength and determination of union members who are fighting for a strong collective bargaining agreement.” (GMG Media writers are members of the Writers Guild of America, East.)

According to Variety, G/O Media claims that it “bargained in good faith right up until the deadline late last night when the Union voted to cut off talks and strike.”

How Can You Help?

If you’re in New York City, you can join the picket line at 1920 Avenue of the Americas. You can also avoid clicking on any links that lead to Gizmodo, Jezebel, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Lifehacker, or The Root.

If you’re able to donate some money, the GMG Union has set up a GoFundMe to help out workers whose paychecks and health benefits will take a hit because of the strike. You can also buy merch, send a letter of support to Great Hill Partners, the equity firm that owns G/O Media, or spread the word on social media.

(image: GMG Media/WGA East via Twitter)

Journalists at Gizmodo and related websites go on strike.

The contract between about 100 workers at six publications and G/O Media expired on Monday night.

By Katie Robertson
March 1, 2022

Journalists from G/O Media publications including Gizmodo and Jezebel went on strike on Tuesday and protested in front of the company’s New York offices after contract negotiations fell apart.

GMG Union, which represents about 100 workers from Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker and The Root, said on Twitter that it was asking people not to read content from or contribute to the publications.

The workers are doing an open-ended strike after their contract expired on Monday night. The two sides were unable to come to an agreement on a variety of issues, including pay raises and health care benefits.

GMG Union, which is affiliated with the Writers Guild of America, East, said in a statement that all of the workers it represents had voted in favor of a strike after bargaining with G/O Media since late January. The union is asking for the company to maintain its cap on health care costs, add trans-inclusive health coverage and guarantee minimum wage increases.

Lisa Marie Segarra, a member of the GMG Union bargaining committee and an editor at Kotaku, said striking workers were now locked out of the company’s Slack messaging platform and their email accounts.

“The whole reason we’re going on strike is many of us are underpaid, and a strike doesn’t really help with that but we’re fighting to get the things we deserve,” Ms. Segarra said.

G/O Media was formed in 2019 by Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm, after it bought a group of websites that used to be part of the Gawker Media universe. In an email to the staff on Tuesday that was provided by a G/O Media spokesman, the chief executive, Jim Spanfeller, said management had “bargained in good faith right up until the deadline last night.”

“To be clear, the terms we offered the GMG Union were not only equivalent to, but in some instances better than, terms agreed to by The Onion Union (GMG’s sister union here at G/O) just one year ago,” Mr. Spanfeller said.

The G/O Media spokesman said that the company’s compensation was “extremely favorable when compared to other digital publishers.” He added that the company had proposed health care coverage that was equal to that of nonunion workers.

Katie Robertson is a media reporter. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at Bloomberg and News Corporation Australia. Email: katie.robertson@nytimes.com @katie_robertson