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    Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond AlabamaA vote on whether to form a union at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., has become a labor showdown, drawing the attention of N.F.L. players, and the White House.The votes on whether to form a union at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., need to be in by the end of the month.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMichael Corkery and March 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETPlayers from the National Football League were among the first to voice their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 election. The actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Ala., for a news conference last week, where he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-union leanings in urging workers at Amazon’s warehouse there to organize. Tina Fey has weighed in, and so has Senator Bernie Sanders.Then on Sunday, President Biden issued a resounding declaration of solidarity with the workers now voting on whether to form a union at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, without mentioning the company by name. Posted to his official Twitter account, his video was one of the most forceful statements in support of unionizing by an American president in recent memory.“Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union,” Mr. Biden said.A unionizing campaign that had deliberately stayed under the radar for months has in recent days blossomed into a star-studded showdown to influence the workers. On one side is the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and its many pro-labor allies in the worlds of politics, sports and Hollywood. On the other is one of the world’s dominant companies, an e-commerce behemoth that has warded off previous unionizing efforts at its U.S. facilities over its more than 25-year history.The attention is turning this union vote into a referendum not just on working conditions at the Bessemer warehouse, which employs 5,800, but on the plight of low-wage employees and workers of color in particular. Many of the employees in the Alabama warehouse are Black, a fact that the union organizers have highlighted in their campaign seeking to link the vote to the struggle for civil rights in the South.The retail workers union has a long history of organizing Black workers in the poultry and food production industries, helping them gain basic benefits like paid time off and safety protections and a means to economic security. The union is portraying its efforts in Bessemer as part of that legacy.“This is an organizing campaign in the right-to-work South during the pandemic at one of the largest companies in the world,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. “The significance of a union victory there really couldn’t be overstated.”The warehouse workers began voting by mail on Feb. 8 and the ballots are due at the end of this month. A union can form if a majority of the votes cast favor such a move.Amazon has posted signs in the facility and held meetings with workers, urging them not to unionize.Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York TimesAmazon’s countercampaign, both inside the warehouse and on a national stage, has zeroed in on pure economics: that its starting wage is $15 an hour, plus benefits. That is far more than its competitors in Alabama, where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.“It’s important that employees understand the facts of joining a union,” Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will provide education about that and the election process so they can make an informed decision. If the union vote passes, it will impact everyone at the site and it’s important associates understand what that means for them and their day-to-day life working at Amazon.” The company, which went on a huge hiring spree last year as homebound customers sent its sales to a record $386 billion, recorded more than $22 billion in profit.In Alabama, some workers are growing weary of the process. One employee recently posted on Facebook: “This union stuff getting on my nerves. Let it be March 30th already!!!”The situation is getting testy, with union leaders accusing Amazon of a series of “union-busting” tactics.The company has posted signs across the warehouse, next to hand sanitizing stations and even in bathroom stalls. It sends regular texts and emails, pointing out the problems with unions. It posts photos of workers in Bessemer on the internal company app saying how much they love Amazon.At certain training sessions, company representatives have pointed out the cost of union dues. When some workers have asked pointed questions in the meetings, the Amazon representatives followed up with them at their work stations re-emphasizing the downsides of unions, employees and organizers say. The meetings stopped once the voting started, but the signs are still up, said Jennifer Bates, a pro-union worker in the warehouse.In this charged atmosphere, even routine things have become suspect. The union has raised questions about the changing of the timing of a traffic light near the warehouse where labor organizers try to talk to the workers as they are stopped in their vehicles while leaving the facility.Amazon did ask county officials in mid-December to change the light’s timing, though there is no evidence in the county records that the change was made to thwart the union. “Traffic for Amazon is backing up around shift change,” the public records stated as the reason the county altered the light.Amazon regularly navigates traffic concerns around its facilities, and wasting unpaid time in congested parking lots is a frequent gripe of Amazon workers in Facebook groups.But the retail workers’ union president, Stuart Appelbaum, questioned the timing of the request in Bessemer, coming as it did at the height of the organizing. “When the light was red we could answer questions and have a brief conversation with workers,” he said.Last week, the union questioned an offer the company made to the Alabama warehouse workers to pay them at least $1,000 if they quit by late March. Mr. Appelbaum accused the company of trying to entice employees to leave before the vote ended.“They are trying to remove the most likely union supporters from their work force by bribing them to leave and give up their vote,” he said in an interview.But “The Offer,” as it’s known among employees, was the same that Amazon made to workers at all of its warehouses around the country. It is an annual program that lets the company reduce its head count after the peak holiday shopping season without layoffs. It has been in place since at least 2014, when Jeff Bezos wrote about it in a shareholder letter.“Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit,” Mr. Bezos said at the time. “In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”Mr. Appelbaum was not swayed. He said he believed that Amazon had chosen to make the offer across all of its warehouses when it did in order to help eliminate possible “yes” votes in Bessemer.President Biden stopped short of urging the Amazon workers to unionize, but his statement instantly raised the stakes of an already momentous campaign.“Let me be really clear,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that, either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers. Full stop.”He added, “Workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important — a vitally important choice.” And it is one, he said, that should be made without intimidation or threats.Workers around the country, including Seattle, have expressed support for the union vote in Alabama.Credit…Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDespite the union’s suspicions, it has not filed any formal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, Mr. Appelbaum said. Typically, unions can raise objections to a company’s tactics before an election and the labor board can step in.If a complaint were to be filed, the labor board could potentially determine that the election is invalid because of Amazon’s actions. But after working for months to build support inside and outside the Amazon warehouse, the last thing the union wants is for the labor board to intervene and rule that the election must be held again. The voting has already been taking place in Bessemer for nearly a month.Mr. Sachs, of Harvard Law School, said that despite Mr. Biden’s admonishments of companies’ interfering in elections, the current labor law does allow Amazon to hold certain mandatory meetings with workers to discuss why they shouldn’t unionize and enables the company to post anti-union messages around the workplace.“It is very helpful that the president is calling out these tactics, but what we need is a new labor law to stop companies from interfering,” he said.It is rare for such a large union election to be held by mail. Over Amazon’s objections, the labor board required a mail-in vote after determining that federal election monitors would be at risk of contracting Covid-19 if they had to travel to Bessemer to oversee in-person voting.By pushing back aggressively against the union, Amazon risks angering Democrats in Washington, many of whom are already calling for more antitrust scrutiny of big tech companies, whose businesses have grown even larger in the pandemic. Amazon has mounted a public campaign supporting legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, buying prominent ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.In his video on Sunday, President Biden specifically mentioned how unions can help “Black and brown workers” and vulnerable workers struggling during the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.Ms. Bates, 48, one of the leaders of the union drive, started working at the Bessemer warehouse in May.She said she felt insulted by some of Amazon’s anti-union efforts, particularly the company’s statements to the staff that they would be required to pay nearly $500 in union dues every year. Because Alabama is a right-to-work state, there is no such requirement that a union member pay dues.“It angers me a little bit because I feel like they know the truth and they won’t tell the truth and are taking advantage because they know employees come from a community that is looked on as Black and low income,” said Ms. Bates, who is Black. “It felt really horrible that you would stand there and mislead people intentionally. Give them the facts and let them decide.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘One Property at a Time’: A City Tries to Revive Without Gentrifying

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterMarjorie Perry, a contractor, is one of the builders turning an abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times‘One Property at a Time’: A City Tries to Revive Without GentrifyingNeighborhoods in Newark are beginning to see a flurry of redevelopment, a decade after the city’s downtown gained vogue.Marjorie Perry, a contractor, is one of the builders turning an abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETNEWARK — Construction workers in the South Ward of Newark, one of New Jersey’s most distressed areas, are busy converting a long-abandoned bank into an apartment building and poets cafe.A decrepit mansion in the Central Ward built by a Newark beer baron before the turn of the 20th century is being revamped as a “makerhood,” a first-of-its-kind co-working residential and retail space.Siree Morris, a developer, recently finished erecting six three-bedroom apartments on a formerly vacant lot. Next up: condos made from shipping containers and an affordable-housing complex named for his slain brother, Michael, on the street where they grew up.While the downtown corridors of Newark, a poor industrial city burdened by decades of disinvestment, have been on the rebound for years, much of the rest of the city had been largely left behind.But now even the city’s far-flung residential neighborhoods are in the midst of a slow recovery.The transformation, fueled largely by a push to expand affordable housing and homeownership in this city of renters, is part of a deliberate strategy with an ambitious goal: erasing Newark’s long legacy of blight without pushing out residents, 86 percent of whom are Black or Latino.“It’s coming up the hill, into the inner city,” Arnita Rivers, a Newark resident who runs a variety store and barbershop and also works as a housing contractor, said of redevelopment.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesThe challenge of avoiding gentrification while revitalizing a city once synonymous with urban decay is steep.More than a quarter of Newark’s 282,000 residents live in poverty and only 22 percent own homes. Many neighborhoods are still reeling from the 2018 discovery of elevated levels of lead in tap water.Streets are pockmarked by an estimated 2,000 vacant lots, haunting reminders of the middle-class exodus that began before the city erupted in flames during five days of deadly unrest in 1967 and accelerated in the decades that followed.And Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, is now struggling under the catastrophic weight of the coronavirus: One in 342 residents has died from virus-related complications.But there are also signs of hope. Side streets are alive with forklifts and hard hats. Older men gather on corners, sharing stories of days gone by and expressing optimism for even the most overlooked swaths of the city. A breakfast for homegrown entrepreneurs — an extension of monthly “men’s meetings” initiated by Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka — attracted 2,500 just before the start of the pandemic.“You take it one property at a time, one parcel at a time,” said Mr. Morris, 38, who has continued to build throughout the pandemic. “That’s the only way to rebuild a community.”Fifteen miles from the heart of Manhattan, Newark’s downtown commercial district has successfully lured housing developers, a Nike factory store, a Whole Foods Market and the corporate headquarters for Audible, Amazon’s audiobook and podcast service.But in the last five years, more than 3,500 units of affordable housing have also been built or are underway, much of it outside downtown, city records show. Newark sold almost double the number of abandoned parcels at auction in 2020 as it did in 2019, and the average price of land — none of it downtown — was about 30 percent higher. Between 2015 and 2020, major crime, including murder, robbery and assault, plummeted by 40 percent.“This right here is extremely personal to me,” said Siree Morris, a lifelong resident of Newark whose company recently finished construction of two new apartment buildings on a formerly vacant lot.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesBig neighborhood projects, like a $100 million expansion of Beth Israel Medical Center, are moving forward alongside smaller ones, including a 51-unit housing complex for seniors and the renovation of three homes that will be sold to residents of public housing using Section 8 vouchers.Even the brutal economic fallout of the pandemic is not expected to erase Newark’s gains.“They took advantage of the growth in downtown, and the strength, and they put effort into all of the wards,” said Doug Goldmacher, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service, a financial rating agency.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Amazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely Place

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely PlaceWorkers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are to vote next month on whether to unionize, the largest and most viable effort of its kind involving the technology giant.Union organizers talk to Amazon workers when they are stopped at a traffic light outside the warehouse in Alabama.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMichael Corkery and Jan. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThe largest, most viable effort to unionize Amazon in many years began last summer not in a union stronghold like New York or Michigan, but at a Fairfield Inn outside of Birmingham, in the right-to-work state of Alabama.It was late in the summer and a group of employees from a nearby Amazon warehouse contacted an organizer in the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union. They were fed up, they said, with the way the online retailer tracked their productivity, and wanted to discuss unionizing.As the workers arrived at the hotel, union officials watched the parking lot to make sure they had not been followed.Since that clandestine meeting, the unionizing campaign at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., has moved faster and further than just about anyone has expected. By late December, more than 2,000 workers signed cards indicating they wanted an election, the union said The National Labor Relations Board then determined there was “sufficient” interest in a union election among the warehouse’s roughly 5,800 workers, which is a significant bar to hit with the government agency that oversees the voting process. About a week ago, the board announced that voting by mail would start next month and continue through the end of March.Just getting to an election is an achievement for unions, which have failed for years to break into Amazon. But persuading the workers to actually vote for a union is a bigger challenge. The company has begun to counter organizing efforts by arguing that a union would saddle workers with dues without any guarantee of higher wages or better benefits.This will be the first union election involving the company in the United States since a small group of technical workers at a warehouse in Delaware voted against forming a union in 2014.Much has changed since that vote seven years ago that has allowed organized labor to make inroads with Amazon employees in a place like Alabama.Most of that change had come in the past year during the pandemic, as workers from meatpacking plants to grocery stores have spoken out, often through their unions, about the lack of protective gear or inadequate pay.The retail union has pointed to its success representing workers during the pandemic as a selling point in Bessemer.“The pandemic changed the way many people feel about their employers,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the retail union’s president. “Many workers see the benefit of having a collective voice.”Union organizers are also building their campaign around the themes of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the employees at the Amazon warehouse are Black, a fact that the retail union has used to focus on issues of racial equality and empowerment. And leading the organizing effort are about two dozen unionized workers from nearby warehouses and poultry plants, most of whom are also Black.Michael Foster has been helping to organize union support at Amazon’s warehouse. “I am telling them they are part of a movement that is world wide,” he said.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesSince Oct. 20, the poultry workers have been standing outside the Amazon gates every day starting at 4:30 a.m., urging workers stopped at a traffic light to join a union.“I am telling them they are part of a movement that is world wide,” said Michael Foster, a Black organizer in Bessemer, who works in a poultry plant “I want them to know that we are important and we do matter.”Unions have been forming in other unlikely places this year. This month, more than 400 engineers and other workers at Google formed a union, a rare move in the mostly anti-union tech industry. The Google union is meant primarily to bolster employee activism, while the union being proposed at Amazon in Bessemer would eventually be able to negotiate a contract and would seek to influence wages and working conditions.The unionization effort comes as Amazon has embarked on a hiring spree during the pandemic. Amazon now has more than 1.2 million employees globally, up more than 50 percent from a year earlier.But the company has also begun to face pressure from its corporate employees, over climate change and other issues, and from many warehouse workers around the country who have felt emboldened to speak up. The attention is only likely to increase with Amazon on pace to surpass Walmart as the country’s largest employer in a few years.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 22, 2021, 7:23 p.m. ETThe New Yorker returns an award for its story on a Japanese rent-a-family business.Biden’s top economic adviser warns the economy will be in ‘a much worse place’ without more aid.United Airlines might require its employees to take the vaccine.Success at the Bessemer warehouse, which only opened in March, could inspire workers in the booming e-commerce industry more broadly, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “If you can do it in Alabama, we can do it here in Southern California for sure,” he said. “It would have a huge ripple effect.”In a statement, Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company did not believe that the union “represents the majority of our employees’ views,” adding, “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs.”The company created a website that suggests that the union’s dues — which could total about $9.25 a week for a full-time employee — will leave workers with less money to pay for school supplies.“Why not save the money and get the books, gifts and things you want?” the website says.An early version of the website included photos of happy-looking young workers, including the image of a Black man leaping in the air that appeared to be from a free stock photo website. On the site the man and a woman are pictured in an image labeled “excited african-american couple jumping, having fun.”Asked about the site, Amazon called it “educational” and said it “helps employees understand the facts of joining a union.” (As of last Tuesday evening, the company had removed the stock photos including that of the leaping man.)Race has often been at the heart of unionizing campaigns in the South. A century ago, multiracial steel and coal miners unions around Birmingham were a “cockpit of labor militancy,” Mr. Lichtenstein said.In the 1960s, unions — including the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union — gave Black workers a venue to assert their civil rights and gain more equality in the workplace.Organizing was dangerous work. A Black organizer with the retail union in Alabama named Henry Jenkins recalled being shot at and receiving death threats at his home. At one point, a bomb was found in his car outside a church in Selma. Mr. Jenkins died in November 2011 after an illness.The retail union has been influential in the Northeast, where it represents workers at Macy’s and Bloomingdales. But its strength has also grown in the South, particularly in poultry, an industry with traditionally dangerous jobs and a work force that with many Black employees.This spring, the union was active in publicizing deadly virus outbreaks in poultry plants. The union’s mid-South Council president, Randy Hadley, called out the industry for “egregious inaction” in providing basic protections for workers.“Some people do not expect us to succeed,” said Josh Brewer, the lead organizer in Bessemer. “I believe we can do it.”Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesBuoyed by its rising profile during the pandemic, the union trained a group of workers to start organizing additional poultry facilities across the South. When the Amazon workers reached out, the union, which had failed to gain traction at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island two years earlier, decided to redirect the poultry workers to the Bessemer warehouse. Unlike in past campaigns, the union decided it would keep mostly quiet during the Alabama organizing drive.“Some people do not expect us to succeed,” said Josh Brewer, who is leading the organizing effort. “I believe we can do it.”On the evening of Oct. 20, two dozen poultry and warehouse workers showed up outside the Amazon gates.Mona Darby, who has spent the past 33 years processing chickens, immediately started approaching the Amazon workers in their cars as they headed home. Ms. Darby grew up in Alabama, one of 18 children. She started working as a housekeeper for local doctors and lawyers when she was 15. But she wanted more stable work, health care and retirement benefits so she got a job in a chicken plant.Today, the starting wages in Alabama’s unionized poultry plants are about the same as those at Amazon. (The average hourly wage at the Bessemer warehouse is $15.30). But Ms. Darby said the union provided her with protections and job security that other jobs lack.“You can pay me $25 an hour, but if you don’t treat me well what’s that money worth?” she said.On that first evening at the Bessemer warehouse, Ms. Darby said a white man approached her and said Amazon didn’t want a union and he didn’t want her “Black ass on our property.”“You are going to see my Black ass out here all day, every day,” Ms. Darby said she responded.Mona Darby, who works at a poultry plant, said the union there provided her with protections and job security.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMs. Darby said she saw the man remove his name badge before he walked up to her. She told a police officer present what the man said, but he didn’t take notes.The Bessemer police said they had no record of the incident. Amazon declined to comment.Amazon pushed for the union vote to be held in person, despite the coronavirus. The National Labor Relations Board ruled against that.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesOn Dec. 18, lawyers for Amazon and the union gathered on Zoom to discuss how many workers would be part of the potential union.The hearing dragged on for days, as Amazon’s lawyer asked questions in minute detail about the warehouse, until the federal hearing officer eventually cut the testimony short.One issue Amazon has insisted on is that the election be held in person at the warehouse. The company even offered to rent out hotel rooms for the federal election monitors to help them isolate from contracting the virus in an area with an infection rate of 17 percent. The N.L.R.B. ruled against in-person voting on Jan. 15, stating that a company paying for hotel rooms for government employees was not a good idea. On Friday, Amazon asked for a stay of the mail-in election, arguing that infection rates were declining and insisting that voting should take place at the warehouse.Until all the votes are cast, Mr. Foster and the other poultry and warehouse workers are planning to stay outside the Amazon gates. He said some of the Amazon workers were fearful of being seen talking to the organizers at the stop light.On a few occasions, Mr. Foster has said a prayer with workers before the light changes to green.“We want to show them we are not leaving them until this is done,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Is Rivian the Next Tesla? Investors Bet Big on Electric Truck Maker

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    The Rivian factory in Normal, Ill. The company is hoping to cash in on the same opportunity that Tesla identified and has advanced: the electrification of transportation.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Next Tesla? Investors Bet Big on Electric Truck Maker RivianRivian, which has raised another $2.65 billion, plans to sell a pickup truck and S.U.V. it has worked on for more than a decade.The Rivian factory in Normal, Ill. The company is hoping to cash in on the same opportunity that Tesla identified and has advanced: the electrification of transportation.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 19, 2021Updated 6:24 p.m. ETPLYMOUTH, Mich. — It’s hard to imagine any company matching Tesla’s rocketlike rise. But if any electric car start-up could aspire to be the “next Tesla,” it would be Rivian.Founded in 2009, Rivian is preparing to produce an electric pickup truck and a sport utility vehicle. Both models are supposed to be on the road by the summer and will be made in a former Mitsubishi plant in Illinois. Rivian is also developing electric delivery trucks for Amazon.What distinguishes Rivian, however, is its extraordinary roster of investors. Amazon is not just a customer; it has put a lot of money into Rivian. Others backers include BlackRock, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Ford Motor, which plans to introduce a vehicle based on Rivian’s technology.The latest injection of capital was revealed Tuesday, when Rivian said it had raised $2.65 billion from a group led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price. Other investors included Fidelity and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. The investment round values the company at more than $27 billion, and brings the total investment in the company to $8 billion since the beginning of 2019.“We have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of 2021 and, with it, the exhilaration of Rivian starting to deliver its revolutionary products to customers,” Joseph Fath, a T. Rowe Price portfolio manager, said in a statement.A hefty war chest is no guarantee of success, and producing a new car from scratch is a monumental task for established automakers, let alone a start-up.“The process of creating something like this is anything but simple,” RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s a complex orchestra, several thousand parts coming from several hundred suppliers. It’s definitely far more complex than people think and far more complex than I thought it would be.”Rivian is hoping to cash in on the same opportunity that Tesla identified and has advanced — the electrification of transportation. To most auto executives, there is now little doubt this is the way the world is going. In the last five years, Tesla has gone from making 50,000 cars annually to making 10 times that many last year. General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen and others are investing billions to develop electric cars and trucks that eventually will begin supplanting fossil fuel models.“In my lifetime, we are going to go from a world where electric vehicles are a tiny subset of the market to where electric vehicles represent 100 percent of the market,” Mr. Scaringe said. “Some existing players will be able to make that transition, but it also creates opportunities for new companies to enter that space.”Another big trend reshaping the auto industry is autonomous cars. On Tuesday, Cruise, a unit of G.M. that is working in that area, announced it had raised $2 billion from Microsoft, G.M., Honda and other investors. Rivian and Tesla are also working on automated-driving technology.Rivian is different from Tesla in several respects. Tesla so far has grown by selling sporty sedans, a type of vehicle that is falling out of favor with consumers. Tesla intends to begin making an oddly angular, futuristic pickup, the Cybertruck, this year. But it hasn’t yet put heavy focus on the trucks and S.U.V.s that make up 75 percent of the passenger vehicle market in the United States.Rivian, on the other hand, is focused on producing “adventure” vehicles that owners can take off road, an approach that means Rivian won’t often compete head to head with Tesla.“There’s a perception that this is winner take all, and that’s just wrong,” Mr. Scaringe said. “Consumers need to have different brands, different flavors. Our success is not at all mutually exclusive to others’ success.”Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 19, 2021, 6:30 p.m. ETSmall-business relief loans start flowing again, with $5 billion worth approved in the first week.Representative introduces a resolution to recognize the journalists who covered the Capitol attack.Retailers drop MyPillow amid fallout from comments by its pro-Trump founder.Rebecca Puck Stair is the kind of car buyer Rivian hopes to attract. A movie location scout in Albuquerque, she has been interested in buying an electric vehicle for a few years, but needs high ground clearance and four-wheel drive for assignments that take her into the desert.“That didn’t exist in the market,” she said. “A Tesla doesn’t fit my needs.”About a year ago, she heard about Rivian for the first time and put a deposit down on an S.U.V. the next day — like Tesla, the company does not plan to sell through dealers. Ms. Stair has seen the Cybertruck, but the design is not for her. “It just screams ‘obnoxious guy truck,’” she said, laughing.Rivian’s truck and S.U.V., which start at $67,500, look more conventional, as if they could have been designed by Land Rover.Unlike Tesla, which is trying to grow quickly, Rivian is taking measured steps. Last year, before the pandemic struck, it said it planned to make around 20,000 pickup trucks and S.U.V.s in 2021 and some 40,000 in 2022. It has not yet offered an updated outlook. It is aiming to have production capacity of 250,000 vehicles a year at its plant in Normal, Ill., by the middle of the decade. The company has not disclosed how many orders it has taken, but a spokeswoman said it had customers lined up for all the vehicles it expected to make this year.And even as other auto start-ups go public by merging with shell companies that have bundles of cash and stock market listings, Rivian is not eager to do so. “We want to launch, demonstrate our capability and let our performance speak for itself before we can look into being public,” Mr. Scaringe, 38, said.That difference in the approaches favored by Rivian and Tesla probably has a lot to do with the men that lead the companies.RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s chief executive, is an engineer who tried to slash his carbon footprint at M.I.T. by getting around by foot and bike, taking cold showers and doing his laundry by hand.Credit…Lyndon French for The New York TimesTesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, is a disruptive force unlike anything the auto industry had seen in decades, perhaps not since Henry Ford. He has powered his company to stock market heights while attracting an army of fans. But Mr. Musk has also courted controversy — he has called government efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus “fascist.” His Twitter posts have gotten him and Tesla into legal jams, including with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not long ago, he claimed Tesla would have a million self-driving cars on the road in 2020, but the company has yet to demonstrate a fully autonomous vehicle.Mr. Scaringe, by contrast, is a bookish engineer, with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He once tried to slash his personal carbon footprint at M.I.T. by getting around by foot and bike, taking cold showers and doing his laundry by hand. His Twitter feed is so tame that one recent post was about the car color preferences of his children (blue).In the second half of this year, Rivian hopes to start producing its Amazon delivery van in large numbers. Amazon is already testing prototypes on the road. The retail giant has made the trucks a central part of its strategy to reduce emissions, placing an order for 10,000 to be delivered by the end of 2022.Rivian still has a lot of work to do. On a recent afternoon, engineers at its labs in Plymouth were tinkering with a half-dozen R1T pickups in various stages of development. A few were hand-built models with screws visible in door wells — telltale signs of early prototypes. One was a more refined version that seemed a step or two away from the production version.“People are working all hours,” said Ryan Kalb, a special projects engineer. “We are trying to move quickly, and we want to be doing it. We all want to see this happen.”It was a similar story about 300 miles down the road at Rivian’s plant in Normal, a 3.4 million-square-foot factory that the company bought for $16 million in 2017. Since then, the plant has undergone an overhaul that cost more than $1 billion. Freshly painted and brightly lit, it has a long, winding assembly line where the R1T and R1S S.U.V. will be made. At the moment, only a few are built each day.Michael Ramsey, a Gartner analyst, said he was eager to see if Rivian could avoid the mistakes that hamstrung Tesla a few years ago, when Mr. Musk rushed to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan only to end up in what he called “manufacturing hell.”“Is Rivian going to be a giant future competitor to Ford and G.M.? I don’t know,” Mr. Ramsey said. “But they have all these mega-investments. They have a strategic partner in Ford. They have contracts with Amazon. Of all the E.V. start-ups, they seem to have the best chance of making it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Retailing’s Tumultuous Year Began Before the Pandemic

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRetailing’s Tumultuous Year Began Before the PandemicThe industry employs millions of people, and the upheaval it experienced played out in the lives of many Americans.Houston Premium Outlets, a mall in Cypress, Texas, on Black Friday.Credit…Go Nakamura for The New York TimesSapna Maheshwari and Dec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETThe retail industry was in the midst of a transformation before 2020. But the onset of the pandemic accelerated that change, fundamentally reordering how and where people shop, and rippling across the broader economy.Many stores closed for good, as chains cut physical locations or filed for bankruptcy, displacing everyone from highly paid executives to hourly workers. Amazon grew even more powerful and unavoidable as millions of people bought goods online during lockdowns. The divide between essential businesses allowed to stay open and nonessential ones forced to close drove shoppers to big-box chains like Walmart, Target and Dick’s and worsened struggling department stores’ woes. The apparel industry and a slew of malls were battered as millions of Americans stayed home and a litany of dress-up events, from proms to weddings, were canceled or postponed.This year’s civil unrest and its thorny issues for American society also hit retailers. Businesses closed because of protests over George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, and they reckoned with their own failings when it came to race. The challenges faced by working parents, including the cost and availability of basic child care during the pandemic, were keenly felt by women working at stores from CVS to Bloomingdale’s. And there were questions around the treatment of workers, as retailers and their backers treated employees shoddily during bankruptcies or failed to offer hazard pay or adequate notifications about workplace Covid-19 outbreaks.Many Americans felt the retail upheaval — the industry is the second-biggest private employment sector in the United States — and some shared their experiences this year with The New York Times.Joyce Bonaime of Cabazon, Calif., is collecting unemployment benefits for the first time after working in retailing since the 1970s.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York Times‘That’s what I did my whole life’Joyce Bonaime, a 63-year-old in Cabazon, Calif., has worked in retailing since the 1970s. In the past 14 months, she became one of many store employees whose lives were upended by bankruptcies — first at Barneys New York and more recently at Brooks Brothers.Ms. Bonaime had spent about 10 years as a full-time stock coordinator for a Barneys outlet at Desert Hills Premium Outlets near her home, overseeing the shipping and receiving of designer wares, when the retailer filed for bankruptcy and liquidated late last year.“Barneys treated people very badly at the end there,” Ms. Bonaime said. The retailer, she said, sent inconsistent messages about severance payments and the timing of store closures, which limited people from finding other jobs just before the holiday shopping season.After Barneys, Ms. Bonaime secured a full-time stockroom position at Brooks Brothers in the same outlet mall. But the pandemic forced the store to temporarily close in March, and she was furloughed. She anticipated returning once the store reopened this summer. But Ms. Bonaime’s job was terminated this month and lost her health benefits. She is now collecting unemployment checks for the first time in her life.When Ms. Bonaime started her career, working at shoe stores and completing a management training program at one chain, retailers had a different relationship with employees and communities, she said.“We went through training on the bones in the foot and the muscles; we knew a lot about our industry,” she said. “We would reach out to local high schools and work with the cheerleading team and find a shoe they liked for outfits and give them a discount and make sure they had the right sizes.”Ms. Bonaime, who is getting by right now, feels stuck. She had planned to work a few more years before retiring, but her options are limited. Businesses at the outlet mall are struggling — and it was already hard to interview last year as a woman in her 60s, she said. Amazon is hiring, but she is concerned about the risk of accidents in a warehouse.“This pandemic just changes everything because I would have no problem getting a job otherwise,” she said. “I just don’t think there’s going to be anything in retail, and that’s what I did my whole life.”Jeffrey Kalinsky, the founder of Nordstrom’s Jeffrey boutiques, says he is not ready to retire from retailing.Credit…Maggie Steber for The New York Times‘I was collateral damage’Soon after the pandemic hit, Nordstrom said it would permanently close its three high-end Jeffrey boutiques, which were founded by Jeffrey Kalinsky and acquired by the retailer in 2005. Mr. Kalinsky, a Nordstrom executive who had focused on bringing designer apparel to the retailer, retired as part of the move.The Jeffrey stores, in New York, Atlanta and Palo Alto, Calif., had dressed the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and even been lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” The first location, in Atlanta, would have celebrated its 30th anniversary in August.Mr. Kalinsky, 58, said in an interview that he was recovering from Covid-19 at the end of March when he became aware that the stores might remain shut after a temporary closure.“It felt like I had a gun pointed at me,” he said. “The folks I always dealt with at Nordstrom were always very transparent, and I can only surmise that they were looking at how to position themselves to get through this period — and I was collateral damage.”He had once told the Jeffrey staff that it was like the original cast in a Broadway musical, performing at an “amazing level” for customers every day. The hardest part of this year was telling employees about the closing, he said.“That day was probably the most difficult, emotional day of my entire life,” he said. “I felt just gutted. It was indescribable.” Employees have told him that they “miss the merchandise, they miss the edit, they miss the specialness.”His goal was for Jeffrey to carry the best merchandise but “sell it an environment that was very democratic,” he said. “I wanted to showcase it all and wanted it all to be next to each other. I wanted the friction of Gucci next to Dries next to Comme des Garçons. I wanted to feel the tension in a good way because that, in my opinion, is how the perfect closet is.”Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ETExtension of federal jobless benefits may not prevent a brief lapse.Frustration rises at Britain’s ports over clearing a logjam of thousands of trucks.How the aid bill changes the food stamp program.Mr. Kalinsky hopes to find a job designing for an American brand, saying he is not prepared to retire from retailing. He wonders if Jeffrey could have survived the pandemic by working with vendors and landlords.“We had an impressive business, a wonderful clientele, and we would have been fine — but did we have a piggy bank for Covid? No,” he said.Trent Griffin-Braaf shifted his passenger van business in Albany, N.Y., to e-commerce deliveries.Credit…David Steinberg for The New York TimesA man with a vanTrent Griffin-Braaf started this year feeling more confident than ever. The transportation company he created to ferry guests from hotels in the Albany, N.Y., area to local attractions like the racetrack in Saratoga Springs was catching on.But when the coronavirus shut down tourism, weddings and conferences, Mr. Griffin-Braaf’s passenger vans were idled and his business was in jeopardy. “We were really in a rough place,” he said.In the late summer, his company became a carrier for Amazon and shifted to e-commerce deliveries. His team of 70 drivers and other staff include immigrants from Africa and India, workers laid off from restaurants, a struggling nail-salon owner and recent college grads “just trying to figure it out” during the pandemic.His drivers cover a 150-mile radius around Albany, including many rural areas where the number of Amazon shoppers is increasing, he said. “All you see around here is Amazon,” he said. “Come work for Amazon.”Many of his drivers were earning 10 hours of overtime a week during the peak holiday season. “I feel blessed to be busy, because so many people aren’t right now,” he said.Mr. Griffin-Braaf, 36, has not given up on passenger vans. He has started driving workers living in parts of Albany with limited public transportation to their jobs at distribution centers and other businesses far from bus lines.On the weekends, he volunteers the vans to drive families to visit loved ones in upstate prisons. Mr. Griffin-Braaf, who served time in prison years ago, said that long term, he hoped to have tractor-trailers to move e-commerce packages across the country, and to offer van service in other “transportation deserts” around the state so people could get to work.“I know how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have a car, and I have seen how hard it is when you don’t get visits in prison,” he said. “I have lived these things.”Lauren Jackson owns and runs the Hair Hive in Buffalo with her sisters.Credit…Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times‘We are glad you are here’Lauren Jackson and her two sisters inadvertently chose the wrong time to open the first Black-owned beauty supply store in their hometown, Buffalo: March 7, two weeks before the state ordered them to shut down.So the sisters reopened it as an “essential business,” stocking hand sanitizers, masks and other pandemic necessities. Their store, the Hair Hive, reopened in early April, which helped them build a customer base while competitors stayed closed.“Everything happens for a reason,” said Ms. Jackson, 28.She and her sisters, Danielle Jackson and Brianna Lannie, had talked about opening the store for several years. It is five minutes from their childhood home on the east side of Buffalo, a predominantly Black neighborhood where their parents still live.The sisters were initially intimidated about trying to break into the well-established industry.“We didn’t want to tell anyone so they wouldn’t say, ‘You can’t compete with them,’” Ms. Jackson said. “We didn’t even tell our parents.”The sisters got a loan from a family member and another from a Buffalo nonprofit. Lauren Jackson said she had watched other Black-owned businesses in her neighborhood come and go over the years, including salons, barbershops and restaurants that often closed because the younger generation didn’t want to take over after the founding family members retired. Ms. Jackson wants to break that trend.“A lot of people come into the store because we are Black-owned,” she said. “They feel comfortable knowing we can relate with what’s going on with their hair. They tell us, ‘We are glad you are here.’”Feisal Ahmed returned to his sales job at Macy’s in Manhattan after a four-month shutdown.Credit…Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York Times‘Scared of what might be coming’In June, as the first wave of the coronavirus was finally coming under control in New York, Feisal Ahmed got a call from his manager at Macy’s.Would he like to return to his job selling luxury watches when the store in Herald Square reopened? “I am already there,” he told his boss. “Put me first in line.”Mr. Ahmed was in his early 20s and a recent emigrant from Bangladesh when he started working at Macy’s in 1994. He met his wife in the store, was able to make a down payment on a house in Astoria, Queens, and saved up enough money to start his own laundry, which he eventually sold.“I owe a lot to this job,” he said.But after an initial feeling of relief and excitement to return to work after four months of lockdowns, reality set in for Mr. Ahmed. He has gone some days without selling a single watch, for which he would earn a commission.Last week, business picked up for a few days, driven by last-minute Christmas shopping, but it was nowhere near a normal holiday pace. “The pandemic, job security — people are scared to spend money,” he said.Still, Mr. Ahmed feels lucky. In New York City, retail jobs make up 9 percent of private-sector employment, and many have been slow to return. At stores selling clothing and clothing accessories, employment is down more than 40 percent from a year ago, according to a recent report by the state comptroller’s office.Mr. Ahmed said that as a member of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, he had certain job protections. But he worries about what the winter will bring, as the pandemic continues to keep many shoppers away.“Employees are scared of what might be coming,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Amazon Workers Near Vote on Joining Union at Alabama Warehouse

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Workers Near Vote on Joining Union at Alabama WarehouseThe election, expected early next year, will be one of the few times that employees of the e-commerce giant have had an opportunity to decide whether to join a union.Amazon has gone on a hiring spree during the pandemic, adding 1,400 employees a day.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMichael Corkery and Dec. 22, 2020, 5:27 p.m. ETThousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Birmingham, Ala., moved closer this week to holding a vote on whether to form a union, a milestone at the nation’s fastest growing large employer and a coup for organized labor, which has tried for years to make inroads at the e-commerce giant.After three days of hearings before the National Labor Relations Board, which concluded on Tuesday, Amazon and the union agreed on one of the most crucial details of an election: which types of workers in the facility would be allowed to vote.The agreement between Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union sets the stage for one of the few times that the company’s workers have had an opportunity to vote on whether to unionize.The vote at the fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., about 14 miles from Birmingham, could cover roughly 5,800 workers, including full-time and seasonal employees.Amazon and the union still need to agree whether the voting will take place by mail or in person. The election is expected to be held early next year, though the N.LR.B. still needs to set a date.The previous union election at Amazon involved a few dozen technical workers at a warehouse in Delaware in 2014. They decided not to unionize.Amazon is undertaking a historic hiring spree during the pandemic, adding 1,400 employees a day and putting the company on a pace to become the nation’s largest private employer in a few years.“We don’t believe this group represents the majority of our employees’ views,” an Amazon spokeswoman, Heather Knox, said in a statement about the union. “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs.”The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents workers at brick-and-mortar retailers like Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, H&M and Zara. The union’s ranks also include a diverse mix of workers at places like the General Mills factory that makes cereal in Iowa and poultry plants across the South.The union was involved in opposing Amazon’s proposal to build a second headquarters in New York, around the same time it was trying to organize workers at the company’s large warehouse on Staten Island. But that 2018 effort never progressed to a formal union election.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 22, 2020, 6:42 p.m. ETNew Labor Department rule would let employers distribute tips more widely.France reopens border with Britain to trucks, requiring rapid Covid-19 tests for drivers.Covid comments get a tech C.E.O. in hot water, again.The pandemic rekindled attention in Amazon’s labor force, part of a broader focus on the safety, pay and sacrifices of essential workers in grocery stores and e-commerce centers who helped keep goods flowing to homebound consumers during this year’s shutdowns.Amazon also faces increasing scrutiny, both on Capitol Hill and by state officials, about its growing might in the retail industry and its role as a large employer.Amazon has trumpeted its investments in safety, including providing its workers with free Covid-19 testing in labs it set up and operates. It also points to its starting wage of $15 an hour and health care benefits. Labor advocates and some elected officials have still raised concerns about the rates of injuries in warehouses, inflexible work schedules and the surveillance of workers to maximize productivity.The company has also been accused of retaliating against workers who speak out. Last week, the N.L.R.B. said it had found merit in a worker’s claim that Amazon illegally retaliated against him for staging protests this spring outside the Staten Island warehouse to draw attention to concerns about safety during the pandemic. Amazon said the worker had been fired for “a clear violation of our standards of conduct and harassment policy.”The Bessemer warehouse opened just as Covid-19 arrived in the United States. Amazon announced plans for it in 2018, part of an expansion into midsize metropolitan areas so the company could store more products closer to customers for quick delivery. The local economy used to depend on steel industry jobs, but those have largely disappeared, and Amazon, which pledged to hire 1,500 people, received $51 million in local and state tax incentives. Average pay at the warehouse is $15.30 an hour, Ms. Knox said.In November, the union submitted its petition to hold the election, saying it had sufficient support among the workers it said should be part of the bargaining unit. The company asked for more time to prepare a response, citing the busy holiday shopping season.“This is a year where more consumers than ever are shopping online and expecting prompt and accurate deliveries,” Amazon said in a filing with the N.L.R.B.Haggling over the terms of a union election can drag on for months, but this process moved relatively quickly. The union filed a petition for the election with the N.L.R.B. about a week before Thanksgiving.Over the course of the hearing, which began on Friday, lawyers for the union and Amazon discussed how many workers at the center should be allowed to vote. Amazon argued that temporary workers, usually hired during the holiday season, should be included, along with full-time and part-time employees performing the same tasks.The union agreed to include the seasonal workers, even though it means expanding the pool of employees it needs to win over. But by conceding the seasonal issue, the union probably avoided days of testimony from Amazon that could have stretched well past Christmas and slowed some of the organizing momentum.“Our interest is in making sure there is an election soon,” Richard Rouco, a lawyer for the union, said on Monday.The other sticking point is whether the voting should occur in person or by mail. Amazon wants the election to occur in person, even though the N.L.R.B. has raised serious concerns about exposing its election monitors to the coronavirus in the Bessemer area, where there has been a high rate of virus infections.Harry Johnson, a lawyer for Amazon, suggested that local hotel rooms and buses could be rented exclusively for the federal officials to prevent them from being exposed while they conducted the election.Mr. Rouco retorted, “I am not going to let Amazon buy a city” to prevent workers from voting by mail.The N.LR.B.’s regional office in Atlanta is expected to rule on the mail-voting issue early next month.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    With 3 Billion Packages to Go, Online Shopping Faces Tough Holiday Test

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    @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More