American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations

Latest story

75 Shares169 Views

Can a Tech Giant Be Woke?

by

The December day in 2021 that set off a revolution across the videogame industry appeared to start innocuously enough. Managers at a Wisconsin studio called Raven began meeting one by one with quality assurance testers, who vet video games for bugs, to announce that the company was overhauling their department. Going forward, managers said, the lucky testers would be permanent employees, not temps. They would earn an extra $1.50 an hour.It was only later in the morning, a Friday, that the catch became apparent: One-third of the studio’s roughly 35 testers were being let go as part of the overhaul. The workers were stunned. Raven was owned by Activision Blizzard, one of the industry’s largest companies, and there appeared to be plenty of work to go around. Several testers had just worked late into the night to meet a looming deadline.“My friend called me crying, saying, ‘I just lost my job,’” recalled Erin Hall, one of the testers who stayed on. “None of us saw that coming.”The testers conferred with one another over the weekend and announced a strike on Monday. Just after they returned to work seven weeks later, they filed paperwork to hold a union election. Raven never rehired the laid-off workers, but the other testers won their election in May 2022, forming the first union at a major U.S. video game company.It was at this point that the rebellion took a truly unusual turn. Large American companies typically challenge union campaigns, as Activision had at Raven. But in this case, Activision’s days as the sole decision maker were numbered. In January 2022, Microsoft had announced a nearly $70 billion deal to purchase the video game maker, and the would-be owners seemed to take a more permissive view of labor organizing.The month after the union election, Microsoft announced that it would stay neutral if any of Activision’s roughly 7,000 eligible employees sought to unionize with the Communications Workers of America — meaning the company would not try to stop the organizing, unlike most employers. Microsoft later said that it would extend the deal to studios it already owned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

More stories

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Microsoft Agrees to Remain Neutral in Union Campaigns

    by

    The pledge is unprecedented for Big Tech and makes it easier for roughly 100,000 workers to unionize.Punctuating a year of major gains for organized labor, Microsoft has announced that it will stay neutral if any group of U.S.-based workers seeks to unionize.Roughly 100,000 workers would be eligible to unionize under the framework, which was disclosed Monday by Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, Liz Shuler, during a forum at the labor federation’s headquarters in Washington.The deal effectively broadens a neutrality agreement between Microsoft and a large union, the Communications Workers of America, under which hundreds of the company’s video game workers unionized early this year without a formal National Labor Relations Board election. Officially, it provides a framework in which any group of Microsoft workers can negotiate their own neutrality agreements with similar terms.As part of Monday’s announcement, Microsoft and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. said they would collaborate to resolve issues that arise from the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace.Mr. Smith and Ms. Shuler said the partnership would include meetings in which artificial intelligence experts from Microsoft brief labor leaders and workers on developments in the field. Microsoft’s experts will also seek input from workers so they can develop technology in a way that addresses their concerns, such as the risk of job elimination.The two sides said they would work together to help enact policies that would prepare workers for jobs that incorporate artificial intelligence.“Never before in the history of these American tech giants, dating back 50 years or so ago, has one of these companies made a broad commitment to labor rights,” Ms. Shuler said at the forum. “It is historic. Not only have they made a commitment, they formalized it and put it in writing.”Liz Shuler, president of A.F.L.-C.I.O., noted polling that found widespread concern among workers about losing their jobs because of artificial intelligence.Susan Walsh/Associated PressWorkers’ anxiety over artificial intelligence appears to have grown over the past few years. Hollywood writers and actors cited concerns about A.I. as a key reason for their monthslong strikes this year, while Ms. Shuler pointed to recent polling showing widespread concern among workers that artificial intelligence could cost them their jobs.“I can’t sit here and say it will never displace a job,” Mr. Smith said at the forum, alluding to artificial intelligence. “I don’t think that would be honest.” But he added that “the key is to try to use it to make jobs better,” saying the technology could eliminate tasks that people consider tedious.The unveiling of the A.I. initiative comes a few weeks after the board of the start-up OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, fired the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, only to accept his reinstatement days later. The episode added to widespread concerns over how to ensure that companies develop and deploy artificial intelligence safely.Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor and played a role in reinstating Mr. Altman.Asked if the OpenAI controversy was an impetus for the new partnership with organized labor, Mr. Smith demurred and said the labor initiative had been in the works for months.“I wouldn’t say what happened in the board room at OpenAI changed it,” he said in an interview after Monday’s forum. “But it raised questions about how A.I. is governed and perhaps it gave even more credence to the kind of partnership we’re announcing today.”When Microsoft announced a neutrality agreement with the communications workers union in June 2022, the offer was conditional: The company was in the process of acquiring the video game maker Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. Microsoft pledged to stay neutral in union elections at Activision if the acquisition succeeded. (The acquisition has since been completed.)The key to artificial intelligence, said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, is “to try to use it to make jobs better.”Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesA few months later, when roughly 300 workers sought to unionize at ZeniMax Media, a video game company owned by Microsoft, Microsoft agreed to abide by the neutrality agreement in that case as well. The agreement allowed them to indicate their preference for a union either by signing authorization cards or anonymously through an electronic platform, a more efficient process than an N.L.R.B. election.The 300 employees unionized — a rarity in Big Tech — and are negotiating a labor contract that includes language restricting the use of A.I. in their workplace.The Communications Workers of America is one of several dozen unions affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the country’s largest labor federation. After the ZeniMax campaign, communications union officials believed that Microsoft would probably agree to stay neutral if the union sought to organize workers elsewhere at the company. But Microsoft had never explicitly agreed to do so beyond Activision or ZeniMax. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Economy

    William E. Spriggs, Economist Who Pushed for Racial Justice, Dies at 68

    by

    An educator who served in the Obama administration, he championed workers, especially Black workers, and challenged his profession’s racial assumptions.William E. Spriggs, who in a four-decade career in economics sought to root out racial injustice in society and in his own profession, died on Tuesday in Reston, Va. He was 68.The A.F.L.-C.I.O., for which Dr. Spriggs had been chief economist for more than a decade, announced his death. His wife of 38 years, Jennifer Spriggs, said the cause was a stroke.One of the most prominent Black economists of his generation, Dr. Spriggs served as an assistant secretary of labor in the Obama administration and held other public-sector roles earlier in his career. But he was best known for his work outside of government as an outspoken and frequently quoted advocate for workers, especially Black workers.In addition to his role at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., based in Washington, he was a professor at Howard University, where he mentored a generation of Black economists while pushing for change within a field dominated by white men.“Bill was somebody who was deeply committed to the idea that we do economics because we have a social purpose,” William A. Darity Jr., a Duke University economist and longtime friend, said in a phone interview. “That this is not a discipline that should be deployed just for playing parlor games, and that we should use the ideas that we develop from economics for the design of social policy that will make the lives of most people far better.”Dr. Spriggs worked on varied issues, including trade, education, the minimum wage and Social Security. But the topic he came back to most frequently, and spoke most passionately about, was that of racial disparities in the labor market. Black Americans, he pointed out time and again, consistently experienced unemployment at double the rate of white people — a troubling fact that he argued got too little attention among economists.“Economists have tried to rationalize this disparity by saying it merely reflects differences in skill levels,” Dr. Spriggs wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times in 2021, before going on to dismiss that claim with a striking statistic: The unemployment rate for white high school dropouts is almost always below that of overall Black unemployment.During the nationwide racial reckoning after the death of George Floyd in 2020, Dr. Spriggs wrote an open letter to his fellow economists that was sharply critical of the field’s approach to race — not just in its failure to recruit and retain Black economists, which had been widely documented, but also in economic research.“Modern economics has a deep and painful set of roots that too few economists acknowledge,” Dr. Spriggs wrote. “In the hands of far too many economists, it remains with the assumption that African Americans are inferior until proven otherwise.”Biden administration officials said they had discussed appointing Dr. Spriggs to senior economic policy roles as recently as this year. In the end, he remained on the outside, nudging the administration in public and private not to back off its commitment to ensuring a strong economic recovery. In recent months he was a vocal critic of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to tame inflation, which Dr. Spriggs warned would disproportionately hurt Black workers.“Bill was a towering figure in his field, a trailblazer who challenged the field’s basic assumptions about racial discrimination in labor markets, pay equity and worker empowerment,” President Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.Mr. Spriggs speaking with Janet Yellen, then the chair of the Federal Reserve, at a conference in 2014. More recently he was a critic of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to tame inflation, which he said would disproportionately hurt Black workers.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersWilliam Edward Spriggs was born on April 8, 1955, in Washington to Thurman and Julienne (Henderson) Spriggs. He was reared there and in Virginia. His father had served during World War II as a fighter pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen and went on to become a physics professor at Norfolk State University in Virginia and at Howard, in Washington, both historically Black institutions.His mother was also a veteran and became a public-school teacher in Norfolk after earning her college degree while her son was in elementary school.“I remember studying history together,” Dr. Spriggs later recalled of his mother in a White House blog post written while he was at the Labor Department. “She would check out children’s books covering the topics she was learning about.”Dr. Spriggs earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a master’s degree in 1979 and a doctorate in 1984, both in economics. While in graduate school, he served as co-president of the graduate student teachers union, helping to rebuild it after a largely unsuccessful strike the year before.Dr. Spriggs stood out at Wisconsin, and not only because he was the only Black graduate student in the economics department, recalled Lawrence Mishel, a classmate who was later president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, where Dr. Spriggs also worked for several years.Even as a graduate student, Dr. Mishel said, Mr. Spriggs was skeptical of the orthodox theories that his professors were teaching about how companies set workers’ wages — theories that left no room for discrimination or other forces beyond supply and demand. And unlike most students, Mr. Spriggs wasn’t interested in working for the top-ranked school where he could find a job; he wanted to work for a historically Black institution, as his father had.He got his wish, teaching first at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro and then at Norfolk State University — where his father also worked — before taking a series of jobs in government and left-leaning think tanks. He returned to academia in 2005, when he joined Howard. He was chairman of its economics department from 2005 to 2009.In addition to his wife, whom he met in graduate school, his survivors include their son, William; and two sisters, Patricia Spriggs and Karen Baldwin. Dr. Spriggs had a shaping hand in the careers of dozens of younger economists.“I would not be an economist today without Bill Spriggs,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute.Dr. Wilson was taking a break from graduate school and considering leaving the field altogether when one of her professors recommended her for a job working for Dr. Spriggs at the National Urban League. He helped restore her passion for economics by showing her an approach to the work that was less theoretical and more focused on the real world, she said. After two years at the Urban League, she told Dr. Spriggs that she was going back to graduate school.His response: “We need you in the profession.”Jim Tankersley More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    Rural Georgia Factory, Flush With Federal Funds, Votes to Unionize

    by

    Friday’s victory by the United Steelworkers at a factory building electric school buses was a test for Democratic hopes that clean-energy funding from Washington could bolster organized labor.Workers at a rural Georgia factory that builds electric school buses under generous federal subsidies voted to unionize on Friday, handing organized labor and Democrats a surprise victory in their hopes to turn huge new infusions of money from Washington into a union beachhead in the Deep South.The company, Blue Bird in Fort Valley, Ga., may lack the cachet of Amazon or the ubiquity of Starbucks, two other corporations that have attracted union attention. But the 697-to-435 vote by Blue Bird’s workers to join the United Steelworkers was the first significant organizing election at a factory receiving major federal funding under legislation signed by President Biden.“This is just a bellwether for the future, particularly in the South, where working people have been ignored,” Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Friday evening after the vote. “We are now in a place where we have the investments coming in and a strategy for lifting up wages and protections for a good high-road future.”The three bills making up that investment include a $1 trillion infrastructure package, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for clean energy to combat climate change.Each of the bills included language to help unions expand their membership, and Blue Bird’s management, which opposed the union drive, had to contend with the Democrats’ subtle assistance to the Steelworkers.Banners appeared outside the Blue Bird plant in the period leading up to the union vote.Jonathan Weisman/The New York TimesBlue Bird stands to benefit from the new federal funds. Last year, it hailed the $500 million that the Biden administration was providing through the infrastructure bill for the replacement of diesel-powered school buses with zero- and low-emission buses. Georgia school systems alone will get $51.1 million to buy new electric buses, but Blue Bird sells its buses across the country. Still more money will come through the Inflation Reduction Act, another law praised by the company.But that money came with strings attached — strings that subtly tilted the playing field toward the union. Just two weeks ago, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the Clean School Bus Program, pushed a demand on all recipients of federal subsidies to detail the health insurance, paid leave, retirement and other benefits they were offering their workers.They also required the companies to have “committed to remain neutral in any organizing campaign and/or to voluntarily recognize a union based on a show of majority support.” And under the rules of the infrastructure bill, no federal money may to be used to thwart a union election.The Steelworkers union used the rules to its advantage. In late April, it filed multiple unfair labor practice charges against Blue Bird’s management, citing $40 million in rebates the company had received from the E.P.A., which stipulated that those funds could not be used for anti-union activity.“The rules say if workers want a union, you can’t use any money to hire anti-union law firms, or use people to scare workers,” Daniel Flippo, director of the Steelworkers district that covers the Southeast, said before the vote. “I’m convinced Blue Bird has done that.”Politicians also got involved. Georgia’s two Democratic senators and southwestern Georgia’s Democratic House member also subtly nudged the plant’s management, in a union-hostile but politically pivotal state, to at least keep the election fair.“I have been a longtime supporter of the USW and its efforts to improve labor conditions and living standards for workers in Georgia,” the Democratic congressman, Representative Sanford Bishop, wrote of the United Steelworkers in an open letter to Blue Bird workers. “I want to encourage you in your effort to exercise your rights granted by the National Labor Relations Act.”Blue Bird’s management minimized such pressure in its public statements, even as it fought hard to beat back union organizers.“Although we respect and support the right for employees to choose, we do not believe that Blue Bird is better served by injecting a labor union into our relationship with employees,” said Julianne Barclay, a spokeswoman for the company. “During the pending election campaign, we have voiced our opinion to our employees that a union is not in the best interest of the company or our employees.”Friday’s union victory has the labor movement thinking big as the federal money continues to flow, and that could be good for Mr. Biden and other Democrats, especially in the pivotal state of Georgia.“Workers at places like Blue Bird, in many ways, embody the future,” Mr. Flippo said after the vote, adding, “For too long, corporations cynically viewed the South as a place where they could suppress wages and working conditions because they believed they could keep workers from unionizing.”The Blue Bird union shop, 1,400 workers strong, will be one of the biggest in the South, and union leaders said it could be a beachhead as they eyed new electric vehicle suppliers moving in — and potentially the biggest, most difficult targets: foreign electric vehicle makers like Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, which have located in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina in part to avoid unions.“Companies move there for a reason — they want as smooth a path toward crushing unions as possible,” said Steve Smith, a national spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “But we have federal money rolling in, a friendly administration and a chance to make inroads like we have never had before.”The Blue Bird plant, which rises suddenly off a rural highway lined with peach and pecan orchards, has long made it a practice to hire less educated workers, some of whom have prison records and most of whom start at $16 or $17 an hour, said Alex Perkins, a main organizer for the United Steelworkers in Georgia.A union was a tough sell for such vulnerable workers against a management that was fiercely opposed, organizers conceded. Coming off the last shift of the day on Thursday, most workers declined to speak on the record. A clutch of about a dozen workers stood on Friday at the Circle K gas station across the street from the plant in the predawn darkness, holding pro-union signs as the first workers arrived to cast ballots under the gaze of National Labor Relations Board monitors.But Cynthia Harden, who has worked at the plant for five years and voted in favor of organizing, did talk about the pressure workers were under to vote against it. Slide shows on the voting process, which showed ballots marked “no,” said that the company could go broke if the union won, and there was a sudden appearance of food trucks at lunch and banners on the perimeter fence reading, “We Love Our Employees!”“They’ve made some changes already, but if the union hadn’t started, nothing would have happened,” she said.The letter that Georgia’s Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, wrote to Matt Stevenson, Blue Bird’s chief executive and president, was remarkably timid, praising the company for its cooperation and its well-paying jobs before “encouraging all involved, whatever their desired outcome, to make sure that the letter and the spirit of the National Labor Relations Act are followed.”Mr. Perkins fumed at that tone, considering the work that unions had put in to help Mr. Warnock win re-election last year. “I won’t forget it next time,” he said.Both senators declined requests to comment on the election. More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Economy

    Biden Devotes $36 Billion to Save Union Workers’ Pensions

    by

    The money comes from last year’s Covid-19 relief package and will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for 350,000 Teamster truck drivers, warehouse and construction workers and food processors.WASHINGTON — President Biden announced Thursday that he was investing $36 billion in federal funds to save the pensions of more than 350,000 union workers and retirees, a demonstration of commitment to labor just a week after a rupture over an imposed settlement of a threatened rail strike.Mr. Biden gathered top union leaders at the White House to make the commitment, described by the White House as the largest ever award of federal financial support for worker and retiree pension security. The money, coming from last year’s Covid-19 relief package, will avert cuts of up to 60 percent in pensions for Teamster truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction workers and food processors, mainly in the Midwest.“Thanks to today’s announcement, hundreds of thousands of Americans can feel that sense of dignity again knowing that they’ve provided for their families and their future, and it’s secure,” Mr. Biden said, joined by Sean M. O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, and Liz Shuler, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., as well as Marty Walsh, the U.S. secretary of labor.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A New Primary Calendar: President Biden’s push to reorder the early presidential nominating states is likely to reward candidates who connect with the party’s most loyal voters.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its effects on global markets, in the months and years to come could determine Mr. Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The pension investment came just a week after Mr. Biden prodded Congress to pass legislation forcing a settlement in a long-running dispute between rail companies and workers, heading off a strike that could have upended the economy just before the holidays. While the agreement included wage increases, schedule flexibility and an additional paid day off, several rail unions had rejected it because it lacked paid sick leave. A move to add seven days of paid sick leave failed in Congress before Mr. Biden signed the bill.The showdown over the rail settlement left Mr. Biden in the awkward position of forcing a deal over the objections of some union members even though he had promised to be the “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” The pension rescue plan announced on Thursday put him back in the more comfortable stance of allying himself with organized labor, a key constituency of the Democratic Party.The $36 billion, drawn from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last year, will go to the Central States Pension Fund, which is largely made up of Teamster workers and retirees. The fund has been the largest financially distressed multi-employer pension plan in the nation. As a result of shortfalls, pensioners were facing 60 percent cuts over the next few years, but the White House said the federal funding will now ensure full benefits through 2051.Many of the affected workers and retirees are clustered in Midwestern states that have been battlegrounds in recent elections, including Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as other states like Missouri, Illinois, Florida and Texas.In his remarks, Mr. Biden expressed sympathy for workers and retirees facing cuts not of their own making. “For 30, 40, 50 years you work hard every single day to provide for your family. You do everything right,” he said. “But then imagine losing half of that pension or more through no fault of your own. You did your part. You paid in. Imagine what it does financially to your peace of mind, to your dignity.”Mr. O’Brien hailed Mr. Biden’s move. “Our members chose to forgo raises and other benefits for a prosperous retirement, and they deserve to enjoy the security and stability that all of them worked so hard to earn,” he said in a statement. While much of public policy is determined by big corporations, “it’s good to see elected officials stand up for working families for once.”Republicans called it a politically inspired payoff. Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, dubbed the rescue plan “the largest private pension bailout in American history,” saying it rewarded those who mismanaged their pensions.“Despite years of bipartisan negotiations and recommendations, Democrats rejected protections for union workers in other underfunded multi-employer plans that are not as politically connected as the Teamsters’ Central States plan,” Mr. Brady said. “Now, American taxpayers are being forced to cover promises that pension trustees never should have been allowed to make.” More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    Leaders in Congress Say They Will Act to Prevent Rail Strike

    by

    Democratic and Republican leaders prepared to intercede as President Biden warned the prospect of a December strike put the U.S. economy “at risk.”After a meeting with President Biden, Democratic and Republican leaders pledged to pass legislation that would avert a planned nationwide rail strike in December.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress vowed on Tuesday to pass legislation averting a nationwide rail strike, saying they agreed with President Biden that a work stoppage during the holidays next month would disrupt shipping and deal a devastating blow to the nation’s economy.The rare bipartisan promise to act came as some of the nation’s largest business groups warned of dire consequences from a rail shutdown. Mr. Biden, who had promised to be the most pro-union president in the country’s history, said the federal government must short-circuit collective bargaining in this case for the good of the country as a whole.“It’s not an easy call, but I think we have to do it,” he told the top four lawmakers from both parties during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday morning, as the Dec. 9 strike deadline loomed. “The economy is at risk.”Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would vote Wednesday on a tentative agreement that Mr. Biden’s administration had helped negotiate between rail companies and the unions earlier this year. The agreement raised wages but lacked provisions for paid medical or family leave.Late Tuesday, facing substantial frustration among progressives who demanded that the offer include paid leave, Ms. Pelosi said she would also bring up a separate proposal to add seven days of paid sick leave to the agreement. It is unclear whether Republicans in the Senate would agree to such an addition, but the plan to hold a vote illustrated the degree of discontent among pro-union liberals about the agreement Mr. Biden had struck.“They demand the basic dignity of paid sick days. I stand with them,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. “If Congress intervenes, it should be to have workers’ backs and secure their demands in legislation.”Senate leaders said they would work to pass legislation to avert the strike quickly after it passes the House, as expected. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told reporters that “we’re going to need to pass a bill,” suggesting that Republicans did not intend to try to block such a move. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, said, “I think it will pass.”If it does, it will be bittersweet for Mr. Biden, who has built a decades-long political career by stressing his support for unions in their battles against management. Aides said the president had been reluctant to override the will of union workers, but ultimately changed his mind when three of his cabinet secretaries told him that negotiations had broken down and a strike seemed inevitable.Officials said Mr. Biden concluded that the effects of a strike, including hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, would be too damaging. Frozen train lines would snap supply chains for commodities like lumber, coal and chemicals, and delay deliveries of automobiles and other consumer goods, driving up prices even further.The American Trucking Associations, an industry group, recently estimated that relying on trucks to work around a rail stoppage would require more than 450,000 additional vehicles — a practical impossibility given the shortage of equipment and drivers.Understand the Railroad Labor TalksCard 1 of 5Averting a shutdown. More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Economy

    Amazon Union Success May Point to a New Labor Playbook

    by

    After the stunning victory at Amazon by a little-known independent union that didn’t exist 18 months ago, organized labor has begun to ask itself an increasingly pressing question: Does the labor movement need to get more disorganized?Unlike traditional unions, the Amazon Labor Union relied almost entirely on current and former workers rather than professional organizers in its campaign at a Staten Island warehouse. For financing, it turned to GoFundMe appeals rather than union coffers built from the dues of existing members. It spread the word in a break room and at low-key barbecues outside the warehouse.In the end, the approach succeeded where far bigger, wealthier and more established unions have repeatedly fallen short.“It’s sending a wake-up call to the rest of the labor movement,” said Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union. “We have to be homegrown — we have to be driven by workers — to give ourselves the best chance.”The success at Amazon comes on the heels of worker-driven initiatives in a variety of other industries. In 2018, rank-and-file public-school teachers in states like West Virginia and Arizona used social media to plan a series of walkouts, setting in motion one of the largest labor actions in recent decades and forcing union leaders to embrace their tactics.White-collar tech workers have organized protests at Google and Netflix over issues like sexual harassment and prejudice toward transgender people. At colleges like Grinnell and Dartmouth, workers have recently formed unions that are unaffiliated with existing labor groups.And at Starbucks, where workers have voted to unionize 10 corporate-owned stores and filed for elections in roughly 150 more over the past six months, the campaign has largely expanded through worker-to-worker interactions over email, text and Zoom, even as it is being overseen by Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.Nonunion Starbucks employees typically receive advice from their newly unionized counterparts, then meet with co-workers in their stores, distribute union cards, decide whether and when to file for an election and respond to media inquiries — responsibilities that professional union staff members often carry out in traditional campaigns.“I can give my opinions — experience means something, but living it means more,” said Richard Bensinger, an organizer for Workers United, referring to the difference between organizing as an outsider and working at a company.Some union officials have criticized the labor movement for being content to shrink gradually, like a wheezing media giant ill suited for the internet age, rather than experiment with new models and invest aggressively in recruitment. They have pointed to a decline in funding for an A.F.L.-C.I.O. department dedicated to organizing, though the federation’s president, Liz Shuler, has said organizing remains a priority and is funded through different mechanisms.A Landmark Win for Unionization at AmazonWorkers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island delivered one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation.The Vote: Despite heavy lobbying by the company, workers at the warehouse chose to unionize by a wide margin.How the Union Won: After Amazon fired Christian Smalls, he and his best friend rallied other warehouse workers with home cooking and TikTok videos.Amazon’s Approach: The company has tried to counter unionization efforts with employee “training” sessions that carry clear anti-union messages.Times Investigation: In 2021, we found that the Staten Island facility clearly displayed the stresses in Amazon’s employment model.Other activists and scholars have complained that even when established unions do invest in organizing, some are too intent on controlling key decisions and use workers merely as props who recite union-crafted talking points.Amazon employees on Staten Island lined up to vote last month.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesIn her book “No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age,” the organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey wrote skeptically of two common approaches of established unions. One is “advocacy,” in which union officials try to hammer out deals with corporate executives or political power brokers to allow workers to unionize, but with little input from workers.Ms. McAlevey also questioned an approach she called “mobilization,” in which the union takes on an employer primarily through the efforts of a professional staff, consultants and a cadre of activists rather than a large group of rank-and-file workers. “The staffers see themselves, not ordinary people, as the key agents of change,” she wrote.Some union officials have argued that the Fight for $15 campaign, in which the service employees’ union has spent tens of millions of dollars seeking to raise wages and help fast-food workers unionize, and OUR Walmart, which had similar goals for Walmart employees, were effectively mobilization efforts run largely by professional operatives.“They were engaged in a campaign to try to bring to bear a lot of external pressure, with show strikes and community support, to jack up Walmart to deal with them,” said Peter Olney, a former organizing director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, alluding to protests involving activists but few workers. “My critique is that was not going to happen. Walmart is not going to respond to show strikes. You have to have real strikes.”The critics typically acknowledge that the campaigns helped galvanize support for higher wages even if they fell short of unionizing workers. Defenders say the goal is to have an impact on a company- or industrywide scale rather than a few individual stores. They point to certain developments, like a pending California bill that would regulate fast-food wages and working conditions, as signs of progress.In other cases, workers themselves have perceived the limitations of established unions and the advantages of going it alone. Joseph Fink, who works at an Amazon Fresh grocery store in Seattle with roughly 150 employees, said the workers there had reached out to a few unions when seeking to organize in the summer but decided that the unions’ focus on winning recognition through National Labor Relations Board elections would delay resolution of their complaints, which included sexual harassment and health and safety threats.When the workers floated the idea of staging protests or walkouts as an alternative, union officials responded cautiously. “We received the response that if we were to speak up, assert our rights publicly, we’d be terminated,” Mr. Fink said. “It was a self-defeating narrative.”The workers decided to form a union on their own without the formal blessing of the N.L.R.B., a model known as a “solidarity union,” whose roots precede the modern labor movement.For workers who do seek N.L.R.B. certification, doing so independent of an established union also has advantages, such as confounding the talking points of employers and consultants, who often paint unions as “third parties” seeking to hoard workers’ dues.At Amazon, the strategy was akin to sending a conventional army into battle against guerrillas: Organizers said the talking points had fallen flat once co-workers realized that the union consisted of fellow employees rather than outsiders.“When a worker comes up to me, they look at me, then see I have a badge on and say, ‘You work here?’ They ask it in the most surprising way,” said Angelika Maldonado, an Amazon employee on Staten Island who heads the union’s workers committee. “‘I’m like, ‘Yeah, I work here.’ It makes us relatable from the beginning.”In recent years, a variety of groups have sought to make it easier for workers to organize independently. The nonprofit Solidarity Fund has provided stipends to workers involved in organizing campaigns and awarded $2,500 grants to seven Amazon workers on Staten Island last year.A for-profit company, Unit, provides software allowing workers to track the support of co-workers and file authorization signatures electronically with the N.L.R.B. The company, structured as a public benefit corporation, pairs workers with one of its professional organizers during the most delicate portions of the unionizing process, such as employer anti-union meetings. It recently helped its first group of workers unionize at Piedmont Health Services, a health care provider in North Carolina with roughly 40 eligible employees.Christian Smalls, an Amazon union leader and former employee, introduced Angelika Maldonado, who works at the Staten Island warehouse, at a rally last month.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesThe problem for independent organizing efforts is that their momentum can be hard to sustain, even with such cutting-edge tools, or after securing a win through a strike or an election.“The organizing never stops,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “You can’t sit back. For a normal first contract campaign, it averages three years. If Amazon contests this in court, this is going to take a lot longer.”Established unions like the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which came close to winning a do-over election last week at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., and recently notched a victory at the outdoor retailer REI, can provide institutional support to see the effort through.For worker-led unions, such challenges may point to the need for a hybrid approach in which they retain control of their organizations but seek guidance and resources from more established unions — something that is already occurring to varying degrees.The Amazon workers on Staten Island received pro bono legal help from employees of established unions as well as office space, and the Communications Workers of America lent them a messaging platform capable of sending out texts to co-workers en masse.At Starbucks, Workers United has paid for extensive legal work, such as litigating the company’s challenges to election petitions. One of the Buffalo baristas involved in the original campaign is also an organizer paid by Workers United.The question is whether traditional unions, while ramping up their contributions to these efforts, including opposition research and other public relations strategies, will be able to resist the temptation to seize control from the workers who fueled them.Mr. Dimondstein, who said his postal workers union was prepared to contribute resources to the Amazon campaign with no strings attached, advised his fellow union leaders to stand down and play a similar long game.“We need to make sure this doesn’t break down into jurisdictional fights — who’s getting these types of workers, these members,” he said.But when asked whether he thought established unions would be able to resist that temptation, Mr. Dimondstein confessed his uncertainty. “Well, I don’t know how confident I am,” he said. “I know it’s necessary.” More

  • 88 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    A Top A.F.L.-C.I.O. Official Joins Greenpeace USA

    by

    The move by Tefere Gebre, the No. 3 official at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., highlights what many labor and environmental officials say is a need to cooperate.Signaling the growing importance of ties between labor and environmental organizers on climate change, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s third-ranking official has announced that he was leaving to join Greenpeace USA.The official, Tefere Gebre, the labor federation’s executive vice president, will become chief program officer for the environmental group on Tuesday. He will oversee all of Greenpeace USA’s campaigns, communications, direct action and organizing and report to the group’s co-executive directors.“I’m not leaving the workers’ movement — I’m bringing workers to the environmental movement,” Mr. Gebre said in an interview.Labor and environmental groups have forged alliances to reduce carbon emissions while providing a safety net for workers whose livelihoods are threatened by the shift and ensuring that green jobs will pay well. But these coalition-building efforts have occasionally hit snags that have hobbled climate legislation like President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which is stalled in the Senate.Mr. Gebre will continue those efforts, while taking a leading role on other issues related to environmental justice, like elevating the focus on people of color affected by pollution.“I care about little kids in the 110 corridor in Los Angeles without a vote of their own, who wake up with asthma,” he said, referring to the area of South Los Angeles along Interstate 110. “They have nothing to do with polluting the environment, but they pay the price for it. We have to make it a movement for them.”An independent organization affiliated with the international Greenpeace network, Greenpeace USA employs about 150 people with an annual budget of $50 million to $60 million, largely from the organization’s three million members.Among the group’s prominent campaigns, said Annie Leonard, the co-executive director who helped recruit Mr. Gebre, are one focused on democracy, such as protecting the right to protest amid a flurry of bills that could threaten it, and another focused on protecting oceans. Mr. Gebre will oversee all of that work.At the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Mr. Gebre worked extensively on community and civil rights issues and was a key liaison to environmental groups, but he said he had often become frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm of powerful union presidents.Internally, he said, he argued that the looming migration of hundreds of millions of people because of climate change could lead to xenophobia, right-wing populism and increasing authoritarianism and that climate was therefore a top priority for the labor movement.“Our movement will never grow under authoritarianism,” he said, adding, “Everyone shook their head, but there was no action.”Mr. Gebre, who was born in Ethiopia, came to the United States as a teenager after escaping to a refugee camp in Sudan in 1983. He rose to become the executive director of the Orange County Labor Federation in California, and has been executive vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 2013.As a top A.F.L.-C.I.O. official, he often clashed with members of the inner circle of Richard Trumka, the longtime president, who died in August. Mr. Gebre said he believed that the federation focused too much on electoral and legislative politics and not enough on movement-building and organizing, and that the labor movement was underinvesting in key industries like technology.Officials including Liz Shuler, the current president, have said that the choice between organizing versus political objectives like passing pro-labor legislation is a false one, and that the federation needs to succeed at both.“We are incredibly grateful for Tefere’s service and leadership as executive vice president,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “He understands that worker rights and climate justice can only be achieved together, and we will work closely with him in his new role.” More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    The Achilles’ Heel of Biden’s Climate Plan? Coal Miners.

    by

    For years, environmentalists have sought compromises with labor unions in industries reliant on fossil fuels, aware that one of the biggest obstacles to cutting carbon emissions is opposition from the unions’ members.States like Washington, New York and Illinois have enacted renewable-energy laws that were backed by unions representing workers who build and maintain traditional power plants. And unions for electricians and steelworkers are rallying behind President Biden’s climate and social policy legislation, now in the Senate’s hands.But at least one group of workers appears far less enthusiastic about the deal-making: coal workers, who continue to regard clean-energy jobs as a major risk to their standard of living.“It’s definitely going to pay less, not have our insurance,” Gary Campbell, a heavy-equipment operator at a coal mine in West Virginia, said of wind and solar jobs. “We see windmills around us everywhere. They’re up, then everybody disappears. It’s not consistent.”Mr. Biden has sought to address the concerns about pay with subsidies that provide incentives for wind and solar projects to offer union-scale wages. His bill includes billions in aid, training money and redevelopment funds that will help coal communities.But Phil Smith, the top lobbyist for the United Mine Workers of America, said a general skepticism toward promises of economic relief was nonetheless widespread among his members. “We’ve heard the same things over and over and over again going back to J.F.K.,” Mr. Smith said. The union has been pointedly mum on the current version of Mr. Biden’s bill, which the president is calling Build Back Better.Unfortunately for Mr. Biden, this skepticism has threatened to undermine his efforts on climate change. While there are fewer than 50,000 unionized coal miners in the country, compared with the millions of industrial and construction workers who belong to unions, miners have long punched above their weight thanks to their concentration in election battleground states like Pennsylvania or states with powerful senators, like Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.When Mr. Manchin, a Democrat and one of the chamber’s swing votes, came out against Mr. Biden’s $150 billion clean electricity program in October, his move effectively killed what many environmentalists considered the most critical component of the president’s climate agenda. The miners’ union applauded.And Mr. Manchin and his constituents will continue to exert outsize influence over climate policy. Mr. Biden’s roughly $2 trillion bill includes about $550 billion in spending on green technology and infrastructure. Even if the bill passes largely intact, most experts say future government action will be necessary to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming.All of that has raised the stakes for courting coal miners.“Our guiding principle is the belief that we don’t have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment,” said Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which has united labor and environmental groups to marshal support for initiatives like Mr. Biden’s. “But our ability to continue to articulate that belief with a straight face depends on the policy choices we make.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Coal miners,” he added, “are at the center of that.”It is impossible to explain mine workers’ jaundiced view of Mr. Biden’s agenda without appreciating their heightened economic vulnerability: Unlike the carpenters and electricians who work at power plants but could apply their skills to renewable-energy projects, many miners are unlikely to find jobs on wind and solar farms that resemble their current work. (Some, like equipment operators, have more transferable skills.)It is also difficult to overstate the political gamesmanship that has shaped the discourse on miners. In her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton proposed spending $30 billion on economic aid for coal country. But a verbal miscue — “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said while discussing her proposal at a town hall — allowed opponents to portray her as waging a “war on coal.”“It is a politicized situation in which one political party that’s increasingly captured by industry benefits from the status quo by perpetuating this rhetoric,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies the politics of climate policy.And then there is Mr. Manchin, a complicated political figure who is among the Senate’s leading recipients of campaign money from the fossil fuel industry.Mr. Manchin has sometimes resisted provisions favored by the miners’ union, such as wage-replacement payments to coal workers who must accept a lower-paying job. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t something he was interested in doing,” said Mr. Smith, the union’s lobbyist. A spokeswoman for Mr. Manchin declined to comment.Yet in other ways Mr. Manchin has channeled his constituents’ feelings well, suggesting that he might be more enthusiastic about renewable-energy legislation if they were.At a forum in the spring, he talked about the tendency to forget coal miners — “We feel like the returning Vietnam veteran,” he said — and questioned the proposed trade of “the traditional jobs we’re about to lose, for the transitional jobs that I’m not sure are going to be there.”In interviews, coal workers said they were skeptical that Mr. Biden’s spending plan would ultimately benefit them. Mr. Campbell, a recording secretary for his union local, said he would be pleased if an electric-vehicle battery plant opened in West Virginia under a manufacturing tax credit pending in Congress.“It’s definitely going to pay less, not have our insurance,” Gary Campbell, a heavy-equipment operator at the Loveridge mine, said of wind and solar work.Kristian Thacker for The New York TimesBut he doubted it would happen. “Until something gets done, I don’t want to jump on anyone’s coattail,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of promises, that’s about it.”Dustin Tingley, an expert on public opinion on climate policy at Harvard University, said that while investments in green technology were popular among the general public, many coal country residents simply didn’t believe these investments would produce jobs in their communities over the long term.“If you’re some 35-year-old, 40-year-old worker in fossil fuels thinking about transitioning to some new industry, you need to have the expectation that the jobs will actually be around,” Dr. Tingley said.The clean-energy bill that Illinois passed in September illustrates the tension. The legislation allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and ensures that construction workers will receive union-scale wages on most nonresidential projects. It also includes tens of millions of dollars for worker training.But Doris Turner, a Democratic state senator from central Illinois whose district includes a coal-powered plant and mine workers, said she had voted “present” rather than “yea” on the bill because of lingering concerns about workers.Ms. Turner, a first-term senator who helped win a concession to extend the life of the local coal plant, said she sometimes felt like the Joe Manchin of Illinois. “I’m trying to build relationships with new colleagues, and all of a sudden here we are with this energy legislation and I’m like, ‘I can’t do that,’” Ms. Turner said. “Nobody was very rude, but I could hear sighs.”Pat Devaney, the secretary-treasurer of the Illinois A.F.L.-C.I.O., who was involved in negotiating the bill, said coal workers presented the most vexing policy dilemma.“That one is a little bit tougher of a nut to crack,” he said, adding that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other labor groups would continue to push for proposals like health benefits and lost-wage compensation for displaced workers, programs that didn’t make it into the recently enacted Illinois law.Such delays in economic relief are typical and have heightened miners’ opposition to clean-energy legislation, said Heidi Binko, executive director of the Just Transition Fund, a nonprofit group focused on growing local economies hit hard by the decline of fossil fuels.Ms. Binko cited the example of the Obama administration, which in 2014 proposed an ambitious regulatory effort to reduce carbon emissions that appeared likely to accelerate the closing of coal-fired plants. The administration later unveiled an economic development package for coal country — after voters there had already become alarmed.“It would have been received so differently if first the administration had done something to help the people left behind,” Ms. Binko said.Private philanthropists have often reinforced the problem, Ms. Binko said, by spending millions on campaigns to shut down coal plants, but little on economic development that would ease the political opposition to renewable energy in states like West Virginia.Carrie Doyle, a senior fellow in the environment program of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which makes grants to organizations working on climate change, said philanthropists were only beginning to address the shortfall in funding for economic development.“It feels like it should have been put into place a while ago,” Ms. Doyle said. “Some of that funding is happening now, but it needs to scale.”While such efforts will come too late to ease the passage of Mr. Biden’s climate legislation, they could be essential to ensuring that renewable energy remains politically viable.Some scholars point to international trade as a cautionary tale. In the 1990s and 2000s, Congress approved multiple trade deals. Economists argued, as they do on renewable energy today, that the benefits to the country would far outweigh the costs, which would be concentrated among a small group of workers who could be compensated for their losses, or find new jobs for similar pay.But the failure to ease the economic blow to manufacturing workers, who many economists now concede were devastated by greater trade with China, helped unravel political support for free trade. In 2016, both major presidential nominees campaigned against the 12-nation trade pact that the Obama administration had spent years negotiating.If displaced fossil fuel workers go through a comparable experience, these scholars say, the political effects could be similar, unraveling support for climate policies.“There are lessons to be learned from that experience,” said Dr. Tingley, speaking of the fallout from trade. Among them, he added, “was just recognizing how hard it is to pivot, given where people are in life.” More