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What Germany’s Election Result Means for Its Economy

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The next German government faces calls to loosen borrowing rules, slash energy costs and spur innovation. It won’t be easy.Friedrich Merz and his center-right Christian Democrats emerged victorious in Germany’s election on Sunday, but the celebrations may be short. The next government, almost certainly led by Mr. Merz as chancellor, faces a stagnant economy, President Trump’s threat to put tariffs on the country’s crucial export industries and a fourth year of war in Ukraine.What’s more, the ability to address these issues is hamstrung by strict limits on government debt and deficits, making it difficult to finance higher military spending, update crumbling infrastructure and carry out other initiatives that economists say are crucial to spur growth.A dispute over this rule, known as the debt brake, brought down the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, paving the way for Sunday’s early election. But relaxing the rule would require a two-thirds majority in Parliament to amend the Constitution, and the election outcome suggests it would be difficult to muster that much support.Already on Monday, Mr. Merz was facing calls from other politicians, economists and even the traditionally conservative central bank for the new government to find a way to adjust the spending limits to fit the country’s urgent economic demands.“In principle,” the Bundesbank wrote in a report on Monday, “it is entirely justifiable to adapt the debt brake’s borrowing limit to changing conditions when the public debt ratio is low.” German government debt is just over 60 percent of gross domestic product, far lower than in countries like Britain, France and the United States, where debt is near or above 100 percent of G.D.P.But after Sunday’s election, the two-party coalition that Mr. Merz hopes to form between his Christian Democrats, which won 208 seats, and the Social Democrats, with 120, will have to rely on other parties to achieve the two-thirds majority in Parliament necessary to change the Constitution.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

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    Amazon Union Push Falls Short at North Carolina Warehouse

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    The outcome was a setback for workers trying to score a second election success at an Amazon facility. The union vowed to keep trying to organize.Amazon workers voted overwhelmingly against a bid to unionize their North Carolina warehouse, the National Labor Relations Board said on Saturday, the latest setback in labor organizing efforts at the e-commerce giant.Workers at the RDU1 fulfillment center in Garner, outside of Raleigh, voted 2,447 to 829 against unionizing with Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, an upstart union founded by warehouse workers in 2022.Organizers at the warehouse, which employs more than 4,000 people, sought starting wages of $30 an hour. The current pay range is about $18 to $24, Amazon said. The union also demanded longer lunch breaks and increased vacation time. In a statement, leaders of CAUSE said the election outcome was the result of Amazon’s “relentless and illegal efforts to intimidate us.” They did not say whether they would challenge the outcome, but vowed to keep trying to organize. Eileen Hards, a spokeswoman for Amazon, wrote: “We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon.” Leading up to the election, the worker-led union filed charges with the labor relations board accusing Amazon of interfering with employees’ protected union activity. The company gave preferential treatment to workers who did not support the union, according to the charges filed by CAUSE. Amazon also unfairly fired the co-founder of the union one week before workers filed for a union election in December, CAUSE said in a filing.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

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    Amazon Union Dissident Wins Election as President

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    The Amazon Labor Union has been divided over strategy and governance issues after winning a representation vote at a Staten Island warehouse in 2022.A dissident group has won control of the Amazon Labor Union, the only union in the country that formally represents Amazon warehouse workers, election results on Tuesday showed.The union won a representation vote at a Staten Island warehouse in 2022 but has yet to negotiate a contract as Amazon contests the outcome. The group has been divided over governance and strategy, as well as personality conflicts, after falling short in efforts to organize other Amazon facilities.A leader of the dissident group, Connor Spence, will take over, succeeding the founding president, Christian Smalls, who chose not to run for re-election. Mr. Spence defeated the union’s current recording secretary and a third candidate in an election that attracted roughly 250 votes, out of thousands of workers at the warehouse.The result was announced by Mr. Spence’s group and confirmed by Mr. Smalls.Mr. Spence’s group brought a lawsuit last year to force leadership elections within the union. The two sides announced a settlement in January that set the stage for this month’s election, which was overseen by a court-approved monitor.The dissident group, the A.L.U. Democratic Reform Caucus, argued that Mr. Smalls and other union leaders had too much power and were unaccountable to rank-and-file members, a charge that Mr. Smalls rejected.The caucus also claimed victory for the union’s three other officer positions. It said in a statement that after a long fight to reform the union, “we are relieved to finally be able to turn our full attention toward bringing Amazon to the table.”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

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    He Won by a Landslide. Why Is He Fighting for His Political Life?

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    Ben Houchen, a regional mayor in the north of England, faces a close re-election race, partly thanks to the broader troubles of Britain’s Conservative Party.The last time Ben Houchen ran to be mayor of Tees Valley, a struggling, deindustrialized region in northeastern England, he stormed to victory with almost 73 percent of the vote.Three years on, Mr. Houchen, a Conservative politician, faces a re-election contest in which even a narrow win would do.As voters in England prepare to vote in Thursday’s local and mayoral elections, the governing Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, are trailing badly in the opinion polls to the opposition Labour Party ahead of a general election expected later this year.So Mr. Houchen has campaigned on his own achievements, relying on his personal brand as the poster boy for “leveling up” — the Conservatives’ flagship policy of bringing prosperity to disadvantaged regions of England.But with Britain’s economy stagnating and its health service in crisis, will that be enough to outweigh the backlash facing the broader Conservative Party?“If Houchen loses, given the profile that he has, and given that in mayoral elections people are more likely to vote for the individual, that would suggest that it is actually his Conservative links that have done for him,” said Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the Center for Cities, a research institute. “Him losing would be bad news for Rishi Sunak.”The result in Mr. Houchen’s region could determine not just his fate, but that of the embattled Mr. Sunak. Victory would give the prime minister something positive to talk about on Friday when results come in and the Conservatives expect losses elsewhere. Defeat could stir panic among Tory lawmakers and possibly prompt a push to replace Mr. Sunak.Leveling UpHeidi McCullagh, second from left, says business has picked up for her sandwich shop and catering company while Mr. Houchen has been mayor.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOnce an area controlled by the left-of-center Labour Party, Tees Valley is part of a swath of England’s formerly industrial North and Midlands where voters switched en masse to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election.Since Mr. Houchen first became mayor in 2017, a vast, derelict steelworks near the town of Redcar has been demolished and cleared for new projects, a failing airport has been saved and civil servants and filmmakers have been lured far from London to the northeast.Many people in the area give him credit for these achievements. Heidi McCullagh, 42, runs a sandwich shop and catering business near the historic Transporter Bridge across the River Tees.“We are 110 percent behind Ben Houchen because he has created so many jobs,” said Ms. McCullagh whose windows display his posters. “We do quite a lot of catering for businesses in the area; it’s definitely picked up,” she said. “Ben Houchen does everything he can to make Tees Valley a better place.”Not everyone agrees. At the heart of his regeneration plan is an ambitious project called Teesworks, where, on the site of the former steelworks, construction vehicles busy themselves on a moonscape-like tract of land.Land clearance on the Teesworks site, near Redcar.Mary Turner for The New York TimesRay Casey and Helen Taylor, members of a group opposing the re-election of Mr. Houchen.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe idea is to convert this into a hub for low-carbon industries, but critics accuse Mr. Houchen of mishandling things to the financial advantage of two businessmen.The project, which has involved hundreds of millions of pounds in public investment, was initially half publicly owned, but a subsequent deal left the private-sector partners in the venture with 90 percent ownership. (Mr. Houchen declined requests for an interview, but has publicly defended the deal.)An independent review in January found no evidence of corruption but described “issues of governance and transparency” and said a number of decisions had not met “the standards expected when managing public funds.”Last week, Steve Gibson, a former collaborator on the project and the chairman of a major soccer club in the area, accused Mr. Houchen of “giving away everything they had worked for,” an intervention that may boost the chances of Labour’s candidate, Chris McEwan.‘An Emerald City’Hanging a protest banner against Mr. Houchen over a bridge near Redcar last week.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOn a bitingly cold day last week, five activists hung a banner from a road bridge near Redcar.“Honk if you want Houchen out,” the banner read, and a steady flow of motorists sounded their horns as the protesters, wearing masks of Mr. Houchen’s face, cheered and waved.“He promises that Teesside will become an emerald city,” said Ray Casey, a member of a small group that opposes Mr. Houchen, called Teesside Resistance. “It’s always just over the horizon, though — we never get there.”Sipping a beer later, Mr. Casey, 63, said he felt the mayor ran “an operation entirely based on public relations and spin.”Yet no one disputes that investment has come to a region of 304 square miles with a population of around 660,000 people, or that Mr. Houchen has good contacts. Last year he was nominated for a seat in the House of Lords by his ally Boris Johnson, the former prime minister. He also has ties to Michael Gove, the Conservative minister responsible for “leveling up.”In the town of Darlington, a shiny, modern building is now the northern base of the Treasury, Britain’s finance ministry. Rail stations are being spruced up. A film studio has risen from the site of an old bus depot in Hartlepool, a gritty seaside town a long way from Hollywood in every sense.Sacha Bedding, the chief executive of a charity, says the area is so far just “creating the conditions” for real regeneration.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe Transporter Bridge, a major landmark in the Tees Valley.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe question is how much this is benefiting local communities.Sacha Bedding, chief executive of the Wharton Trust, a charity based in Hartlepool, said investment was “creating the conditions that will give the area a proper stab” at regeneration, but that little had yet improved in the neighborhood.“The number of people who have fallen into financial insecurity has grown, and people who are working have struggled massively,” said Mr. Bedding, adding that many lacked hope. “When not a lot feels like it has changed, you almost end up with the attitude, ‘Well, what’s the point in voting?’”Sitting on a bench in Darlington, Ryan Walton, 19, said he planned to vote Labour. “Things have improved but not enough,” Mr. Walton said. “It would be better if they broadened their horizons and redeveloped areas where people live.”Green ShootsThe site of the Northern Studios, a regeneration project of television and film studios, in Hartlepool.Mary Turner for The New York TimesIn a fractious televised debate last week, Mr. Houchen defended his record against attacks from Labour’s Mr. McEwan and Simon Thorley of the centrist Liberal Democrats.In a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie, Mr. Houchen was confident and pugnacious, accusing critics of peddling conspiracies. “If you think you can turn around and change fortunes in just a few short years, that just doesn’t happen, but what we are seeing is the green shoots,” Mr. Houchen said when asked whether local people felt better off.For the filmmaking business, some of those green shoots can be seen in a movie called “Upgraded,” parts of which were filmed at Teesside International Airport, which stood in for a New York airport.Teeside International Airport, which Mr. Houchen took into public ownership.Mary Turner for The New York TimesMr. Houchen brought the loss-making airport into public ownership in 2019, an unusual market intervention for a Conservative politician.But in terms of its main business — aviation — Teesside International has yet to break even and offers only a handful of flights on most weekdays.Waiting in a largely deserted departure area before flying to Amsterdam, Derek Muir, 68, praised Mr. Houchen for saving the airport and said he would vote for him because “he gets things done and brings investment into the area.”Looking around the airport, however, he said that the lack of any flights to London was disappointing. “I would like it to be more busy,” he added. 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    Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?

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    Some experts say the outcome at a plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., may be organized labor’s most significant advance in decades. But the road could get rockier.By voting to join the United Automobile Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factory-wide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South.The result, in an election that ended on Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference it will make beyond the Volkswagen plant.Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region of the country. Some argued that the win could help set off a rise in union membership at other companies that exceeds the uptick of the past few years, when unions won elections at Starbucks and Amazon locations.“It’s a big vote, symbolically and substantively,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.The next test for the U.A.W. will come in a vote in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.In addition, at least 30 percent of workers have signed cards authorizing the U.A.W. to represent them at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, according to the union. That is the minimum needed to force an election, though the union has yet to petition for one in either location.“People only take action when they believe there is an alternative to the status quo that has a plausible chance of winning,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.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

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    VW Workers in Tennessee Start Vote on U.A.W., Testing Union Ambitions

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    The United Automobile Workers hopes contract gains at the Big Three carmakers will provide momentum in a broad effort to organize nonunion plants.Last fall the United Automobile Workers union won big pay increases from the Detroit automakers, and the impact rippled quickly through the nonunion auto plants scattered across the South.Afterward, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai and Tesla raised wages for their own hourly workers in the United States, none of whom are unionized. On production lines in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, those pay increases have been referred to as the “U.A.W. bump.”Now 4,300 workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will test whether the union can achieve an even greater bump. On Wednesday, they begin voting on whether to join the U.A.W., and the prospects of a union victory appear high. About 70 percent of the workers pledged to vote yes before the union asked for a vote, according to the U.A.W.“I think our chances are excellent,” said Kelcey Smith, 48, who has worked in the VW plant’s paint department for a year and is a member of a committee working to build support for the U.A.W. “The energy is high. I think we are going to nail it.”Volkswagen has presented reasons it believes a union is not needed at the plant, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga region. But it has also said it encourages all workers to vote in the election, which is to conclude on Friday, and decide for themselves. “No one will lose their job for voting for or against the union,” a company spokesman said.The stakes go beyond the Tennessee plant, Volkswagen’s only U.S. factory. A victory there would add fuel to the U.A.W.’s push to extend its presence to the more than two dozen nonunion auto plants in the United States, mostly clustered in Southern states where union resistance has been strong historically, and where right-to-work laws make it hard for unions to organize workers.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

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    Mercedes-Benz Workers in Alabama Ask for Unionization Vote

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    The United Automobile Workers union is mounting its most ambitious effort to gain an industry foothold beyond Detroit’s Big Three.Workers at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama have petitioned federal officials to hold a vote on whether to join the United Automobile Workers, the union said on Friday, a step forward for its drive to organize workers at car factories in the South.The union is trying to build on the momentum from the contracts it won last year at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, which gave workers at the three Detroit carmakers their biggest raises in decades.The U.A.W. is also trying to organize workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee and a Hyundai factory in Alabama, establishing a bigger presence in states that have drawn much of the new investment in automobile manufacturing in recent decades. A vote at the Volkswagen plant is scheduled for April 17 to 19.The drive has taken on added importance as Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia attract billions of dollars in investment in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. The U.A.W. is trying to ensure that jobs created by electric vehicles do not pay less than jobs at traditional auto factories.A large majority of workers at the Mercedes plant, near Tuscaloosa, had earlier signed cards expressing support for a vote. On Friday they formally petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election on whether to be represented by the U.A.W., the union said.Mercedes, which makes luxury sport utility vehicles in Alabama, said in a statement that it “fully respects our team members’ choice whether to unionize” and that it would ensure that workers had “access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”Southern states have traditionally been difficult territory for unions, in some cases because of legislation unfavorable to organized labor or because elected officials openly campaigned against unions. The lack of a strong union presence is probably one reason the region has attracted a big share of auto industry investment.Attempts in 2014 and 2019 to organize Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, where the German company makes the Atlas sport utility vehicle and ID.4 electric S.U.V., failed in part because of opposition from Republican elected officials in Tennessee.Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers raised hourly wages after the union won pay increases for Ford, G.M. and Stellantis workers. Still, the nonunion workers tend to earn less. In many cases, pay is less of an issue than work schedules, health benefits and time off.In a video on Friday, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said workers were fighting for “work-life balance, good health care you can afford, a better life for your family.”The union has complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes has retaliated against organizers in Alabama. The carmaker denied the accusations, saying it “has not interfered with or retaliated against any team member in their right to pursue union representation.” More

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    Why U.A.W. President Shawn Fain Has Taken a Hard Line

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    Shawn Fain owes his rise within the United Automobile Workers to a group determined to make the union far more confrontational toward automakers.When Shawn Fain sought the presidency of the United Automobile Workers union last year, he ran on a platform that promised: “No corruption. No concessions. No tiers.”That pledge encapsulated many members’ frustrations with years of union scandal and concessions to the three big Detroit automakers, including the creation of a lower tier of wages for newer employees. The platform helped propel Mr. Fain to the top job — where he has led a mounting wave of walkouts in recent weeks to demand more favorable contract terms.But the platform largely predated Mr. Fain’s candidacy. It was devised by a group called Unite All Workers for Democracy, which was officially formed in 2020 as a caucus — essentially, a political party within the union.The group set out to topple the ruling party, known as the Administration Caucus, which had run the union for more than 70 years. In 2022, Unite All Workers hashed out its party line, recruited candidates and ramped up a campaign operation to elect them.When the dust settled, the slate had won half the seats on the union’s 14-member executive board, with Mr. Fain, previously a union staff member, as president. Unite All Workers’ role helps explain why the union has taken such a hard line with the automakers.“We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward,” said Scott Houldieson, a founder of the group and a longtime Ford Motor worker in Chicago. “Shawn has been really upfront about what we’re trying to accomplish.”The first fruits of that approach may have emerged Wednesday, when negotiators for the union and Ford agreed on terms for a new four-year contract, including a wage increase of roughly 25 percent over the four years, according to the union.“We hit the companies to maximum effect,” Mr. Fain said in a Facebook livestream. The deal is subject to ratification by the company’s union workers.Since at least the 1980s, U.A.W. members have formed groups to challenge the union’s top officials, or at least prod them to be more confrontational with automakers. The efforts took on added urgency in 2007, when the union accepted tiers as a way to stabilize the automakers’ financial footing. (General Motors and Chrysler later filed for bankruptcy anyway; Ford avoided it.)Scott Houldieson, a founder of United Auto Workers for Democracy, said, “We had a platform we ran on, and we’re trying to push that platform forward.”Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBut the Administration Caucus always held a trump card: The union leadership wasn’t elected directly by members. Rather, future leaders were effectively chosen by existing leaders, then approved by delegates to a convention every four years.That changed after a corruption scandal in which two recent U.A.W. presidents were charged with embezzlement in 2020. As part of a consent decree with the federal government, members voted in a referendum on whether to directly elect union leaders. Unite All Workers, which was pressing for the change, waged an all-out campaign to persuade union members to support “one member one vote.”When the initiative passed by nearly a two-to-one ratio, Unite All Workers, whose members paid an annual fee, was poised to become a kingmaker of sorts in the union’s 2022 elections. The group had a budget of over $100,000, two full-time staff members and hundreds of volunteer organizers.“It was obvious that we could use the same infrastructure” of staff and volunteers to compete in the election, said Mike Cannon, a retired U.A.W. member who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee. “The only question at that point was, were we going to have any candidates?”Unite All Workers announced that anyone who wanted to join its campaign slate would have to fill out a detailed questionnaire and attend at least one meeting with its members.The group wanted to ensure that the candidates it backed were committed to running the union with extensive input from rank-and-file members, and to driving a much harder bargain with employers. It wanted an end to wage tiers, which it said divided and demoralized workers, and a focus on organizing new members, especially among electric vehicle and battery workers.Among those responding to the call was Mr. Fain, then a staff member in the union division responsible for Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. During his interview process, Mr. Fain explained how, as a local official in Indiana in 2007, he had helped lead opposition to the two-tier wage structure the union had agreed to, and how he had argued for more favorable contract terms after joining the headquarters staff.Some members of the group were skeptical that an employee of the old guard could be a reformer. But other U.A.W. dissidents vouched for him. “I knew the claims were legit,” said Martha Grevatt, a longtime Chrysler employee on the steering committee of Unite All Workers.Martha Grevatt said she had found Mr. Fain’s pledges to shake up the union “legit” even though he had been a staff member under the previous leadership.Daniel Lozada for The New York TimesThe group backed Mr. Fain and six other candidates for the union’s 14-member executive board, and all seven won.As president, Mr. Fain has appointed critics of the former leadership as his top aides, including one who served on the Unite All Workers steering committee. Board members, including Mr. Fain, have attended some of the group’s monthly membership meetings and taken part in one of its WhatsApp chats.Many of the group’s priorities became demands in the union’s contract negotiations, and Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of Unite All Workers.But for all the connections between the group and the union leadership, they are not one and the same.Some board members who ran on the Unite All Workers slate have at times taken positions in tension with the group’s priorities. In recent weeks, Margaret Mock, the union’s second-ranking official, has expressed concern to fellow board members about the walkout’s cost to the union’s budget. At a special board meeting last week, she offered a proposal intended to scale back spending on organizing during the strike, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The board set aside the proposal; Ms. Mock did not respond to a request for comment.For its part, Unite All Workers considers itself accountable to rank-and-file members, not an extension of the leaders it helped elect. On a tentative deal with any of the three large automakers, Unite All Workers plans to appoint a task force to provide an assessment of the proposal to the union’s members. The group’s members will then decide whether to support it.“I would say it’s not automatic that the caucus endorses” an agreement, said Andrew Bergman, who serves on the Unite All Workers steering committee.Still, as a practical matter, the group is highly unlikely to oppose an agreement, since Mr. Fain has forcefully pressed for its core priorities.“For years, we’ve been playing defense at every step, and we’ve been losing,” Mr. Fain said in a video streamed online on Friday, explaining why the strike would continue. “When we vote on a tentative agreement, it will be because your leadership and your council thinks we’ve gotten absolutely every dollar we can.” This week, the union expanded the strike to the largest U.S. factories at Stellantis and General Motors.The approach has raised concerns among employers and business groups. John Drake, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that the Detroit automakers could struggle to remain competitive after the strike, and that Mr. Fain appeared to be overreaching in extracting concessions.“It feels like there’s not really a strategy here,” Mr. Drake said. “It’s like pain is the goal.”Mr. Fain has indicated that he hopes to use momentum from the strike to organize nonunion companies like Tesla and Honda, a key objective of the insurgent group that endorsed his candidacy.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe best analogy for Unite All Workers may be to a group called Brand New Congress, created by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent, to help elect congressional candidates beginning in 2018.Not long after the 2016 presidential election, Brand New Congress urged an obscure New York bartender and activist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to challenge a longtime incumbent in a Democratic congressional primary. A sister group provided her with training and campaign infrastructure. After she won, two people involved with the groups joined her staff.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has since become far more prominent than those early backers, and in principle she could take positions at odds with their progressive stands. But in practice, it’s unlikely. The worldview is embedded in her political identity.Mr. Fain’s story is similar: a once-obscure progressive who was catapulted to a position of power by a group of insurgents and was determined to enact their shared principles once he got there. Except that, in backing him and his colleagues, Unite All Workers helped win not just a few legislative seats, but the reins of an entire union.After Vail Kohnert-Yount, a Unite All Workers steering committee member, seconded Mr. Fain’s nomination for president at the union’s convention last year, he spoke to her about relying on government assistance as a new parent decades ago.“I remember thinking this guy has not forgotten where he came from — he’s very much stayed that person,” Ms. Kohnert-Yount said. “We did our best to endorse a candidate we believed in.” More

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    Amazon Union Group, Challenging Christian Smalls, Seeks Vote

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    A split over the stewardship of the union’s high-profile president, Christian Smalls, has led a rival faction to file a lawsuit seeking an election.A dissident group within the Amazon Labor Union, the only certified union in the country representing Amazon employees, filed a complaint in federal court Monday seeking to force the union to hold a leadership election.The union won an election at a Staten Island warehouse with more than 8,000 employees in April 2022, but Amazon has challenged the result and has yet to begin bargaining on a contract.The rise of the dissident group, which calls itself the A.L.U. Democratic Reform Caucus and includes a co-founder and former treasurer of the union, reflects a growing split within the union that appears to have undermined its ability to pressure Amazon. The split has also threatened to sap the broader labor movement of the momentum generated by last year’s high-profile victory.In its complaint, the reform caucus argues that the union and its president, Christian Smalls, illegally “refuse to hold officer elections which should have been scheduled no later than March 2023.”The complaint asks a federal judge to schedule an election of the union’s top officers for no later than Aug. 30 and to appoint a neutral monitor to oversee the election.Mr. Smalls said in a text message Monday that the complaint was “a ridiculous claim with zero facts or merit,” and a law firm representing the union said it would seek legal sanctions against the reform group’s lawyer if the complaint was filed.The complaint states that under an earlier version of the union’s constitution, a leadership election was required within 60 days of the National Labor Relations Board’s certification of its victory.But in December, the month before the labor board certification, the union’s leadership presented a new constitution to the membership that scheduled elections after the union ratifies a contract with Amazon — an accomplishment that could take years, if it happens at all.On Friday, the reform caucus sent the union’s leadership a letter laying out its proposal to hold prompt elections, saying it would go to court Monday if the leadership didn’t embrace the proposal.The reform group is made of up more than 40 active organizers who are also plaintiffs in the legal complaint, including Connor Spence, a union co-founder and former treasurer; Brett Daniels, the union’s former organizing director; and Brima Sylla, a prominent organizer at the Staten Island warehouse.The group said in its letter that enacting the proposal could “mean the difference between an A.L.U. which is strong, effective, and a beacon of democracy in the labor movement” and “an A.L.U. which, in the end, became exactly what Amazon warned workers it would become: a business that takes away the workers’ voices.”Mr. Smalls said in his text that the union leadership had worked closely with its law firm to ensure that its actions were legal, as well as with the U.S. Labor Department.Jeanne Mirer, a lawyer for the union, wrote to a lawyer for the reform caucus that the lawsuit was frivolous and based on falsehoods. She said that Mr. Spence had “improperly and unilaterally” replaced the union’s founding constitution with a revised version in June 2022, and that the revision, which called for elections after certification, had never been formally adopted by the union’s board.Retu Singla, another lawyer for the union, said in an interview that the constitution was never made final because there were disagreements about it within the union’s leadership.Mr. Spence said he and other members of the union’s board had revised the constitution while consulting extensively with the union’s lawyers. A second union official involved in the discussions corroborated his account.The split within the union dates from last fall, when several longtime Amazon Labor Union organizers became frustrated with Mr. Smalls after a lopsided loss in a union election at an Amazon warehouse near Albany, N.Y.In a meeting shortly after the election, organizers argued that control of the union rested in too few hands and that the leadership should be elected, giving rank-and-file workers more input.The skeptics also complained that Mr. Smalls was committing the union to elections without a plan for how to win them, and that the union needed a better process for determining which organizing efforts to support. Many organizers worried that Mr. Smalls spent too much time traveling the country to make public appearances rather than focus on the contract fight on Staten Island.Mr. Smalls later said in an interview that his travel was necessary to help raise money for the union and that the critics’ preferred approach — building up worker support for a potential strike that could bring Amazon to the bargaining table — was counterproductive because it could alarm workers who feared losing their livelihoods.He said a worker-led movement shouldn’t turn its back on workers at other warehouses if they sought to unionize. A top union official hired by Mr. Smalls also argued that holding an election before the union had a more systematic way of reaching out to workers would be undemocratic because only the most committed activists would vote.When Mr. Smalls unveiled the new union constitution in December, scheduling elections after a contract was ratified, many of the skeptics walked out. The two factions have operated independently this year, with both sides holding regular meetings with members.In April, the reform caucus began circulating a petition among workers at the Staten Island warehouse calling on the leadership to amend the constitution and hold prompt elections. The petition has been signed by hundreds of workers at the facility.The petition soon became a point of tension with Mr. Smalls. In an exchange with a member of the reform caucus on WhatsApp in early May, copies of which are included in Monday’s legal complaint, Mr. Smalls said the union would “take legal action against you” if the caucus did not abandon the petition.The tensions appeared to ease later that month after the union leadership under Mr. Smalls proposed that the two sides enter mediation. The reform caucus accepted the invitation and suspended the petition campaign.But according to a memo that the mediator, Bill Fletcher Jr., sent both sides on June 29 and that was viewed by The New York Times, the union leadership backed out of the mediation process on June 18 without explanation.“I am concerned that the apparent turmoil within the ALU E. Board means that little is being done to organize the workers and prepare for the battle with Amazon,” Mr. Fletcher wrote in the memo, referring to the union’s executive board. “This situation seriously weakens support among the workers.”Colin Moynihan More