Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week


While we await results on the second election at the Amazon warehouse in Alabama, I want to highlight an article relevant to that topic (as well as a few other articles on other matters.)  To call 2022 the year of unions, so far, is a fair statement.  On that note, the first article about Starbucks and its efforts to curb the ongoing unionization is worth leading things off this week.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


Howard Schultz Returning to Starbucks Amid Unionization Surge

Recently, it was announced that Howard Schultz would return to Starbucks as interim CEO as the company following the retirement of its current CEO.  Of course, amidst the shuffle in its corporate structure, the company is trying to find a way to stymie the ongoing unionization efforts sweeping across its stores around the country.  In his nearly 30 year tenure with Starbucks, Schultz had a track record of preventing unionization of its company owned stores.  (As readers might recall, unionization efforts are surging at the company owned locations with nearly 130 stores taking steps to unionize over the past few months.)  Will Schultz find a way to curb the unionization efforts?  It is hard to say, but with the company already behind the 8 ball in its fight, it might not be a bad idea to bring back Schultz given his prior success in beating back unionization efforts.


Ahead of Two Union Elections at Amazon, the Company Goes on Offense

Readers will likely recall that there are a couple union elections that are underway/have been approved at two Amazon locations.  The first, in Bessemer, Alabama is underway with results expected to be announced shortly.  The second is a Staten Island location in which voting started today and ends next week.  While Amazon has been able to defeat prior unionization efforts before, that does not mean they are sitting back and taking a “victory” for granted.  As Noam Scheiber at The New York Times writes, Amazon has been making its case directly to its workers why unionization is not the best choice.  At the two locations where elections are underway, the company has held meetings with its employees suggesting that a successful unionization would not change things for the better.  Will these meetings achieve the desired result (for Amazon)?  Time will tell…but we should know shortly.


Pennsylvania Moves to Raise Tip Threshold For Tipped Workers

This past Monday, the Independent Regulatory Review Commission approved raising the tip threshold for tipped workers in the state.  Currently, tipped workers can be paid as little as $2.83/hour if they receive at least $30 in tips in a month.  However, under the revision approved on Monday, tipped workers can be paid as little as $2.83/hour if they receive at least $135 in tips in a month.  To call this a significant change is an understatement.  Before this new regulation can take effect, it must first be submitted to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.  After approved by the Office of Attorney General, the regulation will be published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin after which it will go into effect in 90 days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more