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    Starbucks Executive, Prominent in Push Against Union Drive, Will Leave

    Starbucks said Friday that an executive who played a key role in the company’s response to a growing union campaign would leave by the end of the month.In a letter to employees, whom Starbucks calls “partners,” the company’s chief operating officer said that Rossann Williams, the president of retail for North America, would be leaving after 17 years at the company. The letter said the decision was “preceded by discussion about a next opportunity for Rossann within the company, which she declined.”John Culver, the chief operating officer, added in the letter that Ms. Williams “has not only been a fierce advocate for our partners, but she has been a champion of our mission, our culture and operational excellence.”Since December, when a store in Buffalo became the only one of Starbucks roughly 9,000 corporate-owned stores with a union, the campaign has spread rapidly across the country.The union has won over 80 percent of the more than 175 elections in which the National Labor Relations Board has declared a winner, and workers have formally sought elections at more than 275 stores in all.After workers at three Buffalo-area stores filed for union elections in August, Ms. Williams went to the city and spent much of the fall there leading the company’s response to the campaign. She spent many hours in stores, asking employees about concerns they had at their workplaces and even pitching in on tasks like throwing out garbage.But some workers said the presence of such a high-ranking official in their stores was intimidating and even “surreal.”Labor experts also raised concerns that Ms. Williams and other Starbucks officials deployed to the stores could be violating labor laws by intimidating workers and effectively offering to improve working conditions if employees voted against unionizing.The National Labor Relations Board later issued a complaint against the company along these lines, after investigating and finding merit to the accusations.The company denied that it had violated the law and has long said that it is seeking to address operational issues like understaffing and inadequate training, efforts it said had preceded the organizing campaign.In response to a question about whether she or the company might be undermining the conditions for a fair union election, Ms. Williams said in an interview in October that she had no choice but to intervene.“If I went to a market and saw the condition some of these stores are in, and I didn’t do anything about it, it would be so against my job,” she said at the time. “There’s no way I could come here and say I’m not going to do anything.”Mr. Culver’s letter said that Ms. Williams would be replaced by Sara Trilling, who most recently oversaw the company’s operations in the Asia-Pacific region. More

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    Inflation Expected to Remain High Even as Economy Slows and Layoffs Rise

    Kat Johnston didn’t expect the pandemic to make her less stressed about her finances. After all, she temporarily lost her job at the library where she worked full time. But, like many Americans, she found an unexpected reprieve from money worries: Months at home limited her spending, and she received expanded unemployment insurance and two one-time checks from the government.“When I first came back to work, I had probably $2,200 in savings — which I know is not much, but it’s more than I’d had in a while,” she said. But it was no match for the inflation that has come since. “That savings is pretty much gone now. As things have gotten so expensive, it’s been almost a paycheck-to-paycheck life.”Ms. Johnston, 31, lives in the Dallas area in a studio apartment and had hoped to upgrade to a one-bedroom — her cat will occasionally use her bed as a litter box, so being able to shut the door would be good. Yet rent is increasing enough that she is considering moving in with a roommate instead.Gas is so expensive that she is buying just a quarter of a tank at a time. Her $65,000 in student loans from undergraduate and graduate school were in forbearance before the pandemic because she was struggling to afford them on her roughly $40,000 annual income. She has been able to continue not paying them because of a government moratorium, but she knows that may not last forever.She’d like to find a better-paying job, but she’s unsure about leaving a secure position — and embarking on a draining job search — at a moment when economists and investors warn of an impending recession. “It does feel like whatever I was thinking I was going to do is on hold,” she said.Kat Johnston has returned to work full time but her savings are depleted and she is thinking about getting a roommate as rents in the Dallas area climb sharply.Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesMillions of Americans are feeling similarly stuck as their savings run low and their cost of living runs high. Now, the economy appears poised to slow — potentially sharply — in ways that could limit wage growth and cause job losses even as prices remain elevated. But instead of rushing to the economy’s aid by giving Americans money, as they did in March 2020, policymakers are engineering this slowdown. Then, the problem was a global pandemic; now, it’s stubbornly high inflation, and the main way the government knows to solve that is by inflicting some economic pain.In other words, the long-predicted “cliff” may finally have arrived.When the first round of pandemic aid programs began to expire in the summer of 2020, economists warned of a looming cliff facing both Americans who still needed government help and the pandemic-addled economy that was not yet ready to stand on its own. They repeated those warnings last fall, when Congress allowed unemployment benefits to expire for millions of workers, and again in January, when monthly payments for families with children came to an end.The loss of those programs and others, including enhanced nutrition benefits, was painful for many families. But for the economy as a whole, the cliffs turned out to be more like potholes. Consumers kept on spending, in part because trillions in government aid had allowed many Americans to build up at least a small financial buffer — as Ms. Johnston did — and in part because a record-setting recovery in the job market gave workers an income boost that helped offset the loss in government aid.Now, as savings run dry and consumers struggle under the weight of higher prices and rising interest rates, early cracks are beginning to show — and are likely to widen from here.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Greedflation: Some experts contend that big corporations are supercharging inflation by jacking up prices. We take a closer look at the issue. Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.For Investors: At last, interest rates for money market funds have started to rise. But inflation means that in real terms, you’re still losing money.Pay gains have been falling behind inflation for months. Credit card balances, which fell early in the pandemic, are rising toward a record high. Subprime borrowers — those with weak credit scores — are increasingly falling behind on payments on car loans in particular, credit bureau data show. Measures of hunger are rising, even with unemployment still low and the overall economy still strong.“It’s a grim picture already,” said Elizabeth Ananat, an economist at Barnard College who has studied the pandemic’s impact on low-income families. “Families are doing much worse than they were a few months ago.”Matrice Moore-Carr, a registrar at a public hospital in Nashville, Tenn., kept her job during the pandemic, and even managed to get a bit ahead, thanks to stimulus checks that helped her pay off her electric bill and stop worrying, at least for a little while, about whether she could afford gas for her car.When prices began to rise last year, Ms. Moore-Carr took on overtime shifts in the emergency room to make ends meet. When that wasn’t enough, she took a part-time job as a hotel receptionist. Now she is working seven days a week, often multiple jobs in one day, and still struggling to pay her bills.“That’s what’s been helping me keep the gas in the car and food on the table and the electricity going,” she said. “I’ve been making it work. I’m tired, I’ll tell you that. I’m so sleepy.”Ms. Moore-Carr, 52, owns her home, which she said is the only thing that allows her to keep living in Nashville, where both rents and home prices have soared in the pandemic. But the price of everything else has gone up — she joked about buying a horse to save on gas. On Tuesday, she stopped by the bank and turned in $47 in pennies.What she said she really worries about is the prospect of losing her overtime hours.“I don’t know what I’m going to do if anything gets any worse than it is now,” she said. “Am I going to have to cut my meals back? Am I going to have to eat once a day as opposed to three? I don’t know. It’s just tough.”Low-income households, at least on average, emerged from the first two years of the pandemic in remarkably strong financial shape. Trillions of dollars in government aid ensured that poverty fell in 2020, despite the loss of tens of millions of jobs. New rounds of assistance in 2021, including monthly payments through an expanded Child Tax Credit, led to a sharp drop in measures of childhood poverty and hunger. Those programs came from a very different economic moment, however. In 2020, and to a lesser degree in 2021, the needs of individual households and the needs of the broader economy were aligned: Stimulus checks and other forms of government aid helped jobless workers and their families avoid eviction, while at the same time helping businesses avoid bankruptcy, landlords avoid foreclosure, and cities and states avoid a collapse in their tax revenue.Today, that alignment has broken down. Giving people money now might help them pay their bills, but it could also make inflation worse by adding to demand as businesses are already failing to produce enough goods and hire enough workers.The Federal Reserve is instead trying to cool off the economy by raising interest rates, making it more expensive to borrow money to buy a house or expand a company. Weaker business activity will slow hiring, leading to slower wage growth and, most likely, more layoffs. It could also allow America’s goods and services — limited for more than a year by supply chain snarls and labor shortages — to catch up to demand, putting a damper on rising prices.Fed policymakers argue that this strategy is necessary to put the economy on a more sustainable path. But even as conditions take a turn for the worse, inflation will probably take a while to slow, and Fed officials themselves think it will still be elevated at the end of the year.“The transition is going to be very difficult,” said Seth Carpenter, global chief economist at Morgan Stanley and a former Fed economist. “At least historically, it takes a really long time for inflation to come down, even after the economy slows.”Even if the Fed can avoid causing a recession, a weakening labor market will bring hardship for many. Job losses can be devastating, often setting off a downward spiral of eviction and debt. Those who keep their jobs are likely to get fewer hours of work and to lose bargaining power.“Low-income workers, workers with low levels of education, Black and brown workers are the first to lose their jobs and the last to get them back,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a Northwestern University economist who studies anti-poverty programs.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    The Fed Raises Interest Rates by 0.75 Percentage Points to Tackle Inflation

    The Federal Reserve took its most aggressive step yet to try to tame rapid and persistent inflation, raising interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point on Wednesday and signaling that it is prepared to inflict economic pain to get prices under control.The rate increase was the central bank’s biggest since 1994 and could be followed by a similarly sized move next month, suggested Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, underscoring just how much America’s unexpectedly stubborn price gains are unsettling Fed officials.As central bankers drive their policy rate rapidly higher, it will make buying a home or expanding a business more expensive, restraining spending and slowing the broader economy. Officials expect growth to moderate in the coming months and years and predicted that unemployment will rise about half a percentage point to 4.1 percent by late 2024 as their policy squeezes companies and workers.Mr. Powell acknowledged that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the Fed to slow inflation without causing a recession as outside forces, including the war in Ukraine and factory shutdowns in China, threaten to curb the supply of goods and commodities like oil. If the Fed has to quash demand to an extreme degree in an effort to bring it into line with limited supply, it could make for a slump that leaves businesses shuttered and people unemployed.“We’re not trying to induce a recession right now, let’s be clear about that,” Mr. Powell said, explaining that the Fed still wants to reduce inflation to its 2 percent goal while keeping the labor market strong — an outcome economists call a “soft landing.”But “those pathways have become much more challenging due to factors that are outside of our control,” he said, later adding that “the environment has become more difficult, clearly, in the last four or five months.”The latest move set the Fed’s policy rate in a range of 1.50 percent to 1.75 percent, and more rate increases are to come. Mr. Powell signaled that the debate at the Federal Open Market Committee’s next meeting in July will be over whether to raise rates half a point or to repeat an increase of three-quarters of a point, though he added that he did “not expect moves of this size to be common.”Officials expect interest rates to hit 3.4 percent by the end of 2022, according to economic projections they released Wednesday, which would be the highest level since 2008. They also foresee the Fed’s policy rate peaking at 3.8 percent at the end of 2023, up from 2.8 percent when projections were last released in March.As rates rise, policymakers anticipate that growth will slow and joblessness will climb slightly, starting this year.“What Powell and the rest of the F.O.M.C. are saying is that restoring price stability is the primary focus — if they risk a mild recession, or a bumpy soft landing, that would still be successful,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “The focus is greatly on inflation right now.”Until late last week, investors and many economists expected the central bank to raise interest rates just half a percentage point at this week’s meeting. The Fed had lifted rates by a quarter point in March and half a point in May, and had signaled that it expected to continue that pace in June and July.But central bankers have received a spate of bad news on inflation in recent days. The Consumer Price Index jumped 8.6 percent in May from a year earlier, the fastest increase since late 1981. The pace was brisk even after the stripping out of food and fuel prices.While the Fed’s preferred price gauge — the Personal Consumption Expenditures measure — is climbing slightly more slowly, it remains too hot for comfort as well. And consumers are beginning to expect faster inflation in the months and years ahead, based on surveys, which is a worrying development. Economists think that expectations can be self-fulfilling, causing people to ask for wage increases and accept price jumps in ways that perpetuate high inflation.“What we’re looking for is compelling evidence that inflationary pressures are abating, and that inflation is moving back down,” Mr. Powell said at his news conference Wednesday, noting that instead the inflation situation has worsened. “We thought that strong action was warranted.”One Fed official, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Esther George, voted against the rate increase. Though Ms. George has historically worried about high inflation and favored higher interest rates, she would have preferred a half-point move in this instance.Some analysts found the Fed’s economic projections and Mr. Powell’s view that a soft landing may still be possible to be optimistic in light of the more aggressive policy path the central bank has charted. Economists at Wells Fargo announced after the Fed meeting that they expected a downturn to start midway through next year.“The Fed is becoming a bit more realistic about how difficult it is going to be to lower inflation without inflicting damage on the labor market,” said Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. “There is that growing acknowledgment that a soft landing is increasingly difficult — I still think they’re painting a fairly rosy picture.”Stock prices have been plummeting and bond market signals are flashing red as Wall Street traders and economists increasingly expect that the economy may tip into a recession. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 rose 1.5 percent, climbing after the release of the decision and Mr. Powell’s news conference, most likely because investors had already expected the Fed to make a large move.The economy remains strong for now, but the Fed’s actions are beginning to have a real-world impact: Mortgage rates have risen sharply and are helping to cool the housing market; demand for consumer goods is showing signs of beginning to slow as borrowing becomes more expensive; and job growth, while robust, has begun to moderate.While the economic path ahead may be a rocky one, the Fed’s policymakers contend that things would be worse in the long run if they did not act. As prices surge, worker pay is not keeping up. That means that families are falling behind as they try to afford gas, food and rent, even in a very strong labor market.“You really cannot have the kind of labor market we want without price stability,” Mr. Powell said Wednesday, explaining that what officials want is a job market with lots of job opportunities and rising wages. “It’s not going to happen with the levels of inflation we have.”The White House has been emphasizing that the Fed plays the key role in bringing down inflation, even as the Biden administration does what it can to reduce some costs for beleaguered consumers and urges companies to improve gas supply.“The Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation,” President Biden wrote in a recent opinion column. He added that “past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation. I won’t do this.” More

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    Fed Set to Lift Rates as ‘Soft-ish Landing’ Becomes a Harder Sell

    The central bank has hoped to cool down the economy without pushing unemployment much higher. Stubborn inflation narrows that path.Federal Reserve officials are meeting this week with one major goal in mind: cooling the economy enough to slow rapid inflation.The odds of pulling that off without plunging the nation into a recession are growing slimmer.As the Fed prepares to take an aggressive stance to tamp down persistent inflation — likely discussing raising interest rates by three-quarters of a point on Wednesday — investors, consumers and economists increasingly expect that the economy could tip into a downturn next year. Even researchers who think the central bank can still pull off a “soft landing,” in which policymakers guide the economy onto a more sustainable path without causing a spike in unemployment and an outright contraction, acknowledge that the path toward that optimistic outcome has become narrower.“It was not obvious that a soft landing was feasible,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan, who still thinks it could happen. “The degree of difficulty has probably increased.”The trouble stems from America’s inflation data, which have been growing more worrying. Consumer prices accelerated in May to an 8.6 percent pace, the fastest since 1981. Even after volatile food and fuel costs, which the central bank cannot do much to control, are stripped out, inflation was firmer than expected last month as rents, airfares and hotel room rates surged. Compounding the problem, two recent reports showed, inflation expectations are headed higher.The data suggest the Fed may need to act more decisively, slowing consumer and business spending and the job market even more, to bring prices under control.Before last week’s inflation report, central bankers had been expected to raise interest rates by half a percentage point this week and then again in July. But now the Fed is likely to discuss moving more rapidly to try to stamp out inflation pressures before they become a permanent feature of the economic backdrop. It could also continue to raise rates by more than the usual quarter-point increments into September or even beyond, many economists predict.The Fed has already raised rates twice this year, by a quarter point in March and half a point in May. If it takes more drastic action — making mortgages and business loans even more expensive, choking off corporate expansion plans and crimping the labor market — it would make higher unemployment and a shrinking economy more likely.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Greedflation: Some experts contend that big corporations are supercharging inflation by jacking up prices. We take a closer look at the issue. Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.For Investors: At last, interest rates for money market funds have started to rise. But inflation means that in real terms, you’re still losing money.For months, the Fed has acknowledged that the path toward slower inflation was likely to be an unpleasant one. When the central bank raises the federal funds rate, it filters out through the economy to slow consumer and business demand, eventually weighing on wages and prices. The way to bring inflation under control is, essentially, to cause a little economic pain.Still, top policymakers have voiced consistent optimism that because America’s labor market was starting from a solid position, it might be possible to cool down inflation without erasing recent job market progress. With so many job openings per unemployed worker, the logic went, it might be possible to restrain conditions just enough to bring the supply of workers into better balance with employer demands.“I think we have a good chance to have a soft or soft-ish landing,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at his news conference after the central bank’s May meeting. He added that “the economy is strong and is well positioned to handle tighter monetary policy.”Food and fuel costs are very volatile, but the central bank cannot do much to control them. Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesBut somebody has to feel the pressure and stop spending for the Fed’s policy to work — and with inflation higher and more stubborn, it will take a bigger squeeze on demand to bring it in line.In fact, Mr. Feroli at J.P. Morgan said, the Fed’s economic projections — which will be released for the first time since March after this meeting — could show a marked slowdown in growth and an increase in the jobless rate to illustrate that policymakers are serious about reining in the economy and controlling prices. Joblessness is now at 3.6 percent, which is below the 4 percent level that Fed officials believe a healthy economy can sustain over the longer run.If the Fed has to slow the economy drastically, it will be a challenge to do that without causing a recession. For one thing, when unemployment spikes, recession tends to follow. Downturns have happened when the unemployment rate rose 0.5 percentage points over its recent low on average over a three-month period — a relationship called the Sahm Rule, after economist Claudia Sahm.For another, interest rates are a blunt tool and work with a lag, and the Fed may simply overdo it.Investors fear a bad outcome. Stocks sank into a bear market on Monday — meaning they have quickly dropped in value by 20 percent — as investors become nervous that the central bank is about to spur a recession in its quest to tame inflation.“People think that the soft-ish landing is a dream,” said Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities. “That’s the big picture.”It’s not just Wall Street that is increasingly glum. Consumer confidence fell to its lowest level on record in preliminary data from the University of Michigan survey, and expectations of higher unemployment in a New York Fed survey have been picking up.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    Microsoft Pledges Neutrality in Union Campaigns at Activision

    The accord could ease the path for thousands of workers to unionize at the game company, which Microsoft is acquiring, and addresses an antitrust objection.Microsoft and the Communications Workers of America union announced an agreement on Monday that would make it easier for employees to unionize at the video game maker Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft is acquiring for $70 billion.Under the deal, which appears to be the first of its kind in the technology industry, Microsoft agreed to remain neutral if any of Activision’s eligible U.S. employees want to unionize, and employees would no longer have to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election. The company has almost 7,000 employees in the United States, most of whom will be eligible to unionize under the arrangement.A group of nearly 30 employees at one of Activision’s studios voted to unionize through an N.L.R.B. election in May despite Activision’s opposition to holding the election. But completing such a process can be time consuming, with unions and employers sometimes spending months or even years litigating the results.Through the agreement, workers will have access to an expedited process for unionizing, overseen by a neutral third party, in which they will indicate their support for a union either by signing cards or confidentially through an electronic platform.“This process does gives us and Microsoft a way to do this quote unquote election without spending the time, the effort and the controversy that goes along with an N.L.R.B. election,” Chris Shelton, the president of the Communications Workers union, said in an interview.The union said that the neutrality agreement resolved the antitrust concerns it had with the acquisition, and that it now supported the deal, which Microsoft has said will close by the end of next June.Mr. Shelton and Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, suggested that the deal could pave the way to wider unionization across the company and the industry. “This is a great opportunity for us to work with Chris and the C.W.A. and to learn and innovate,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. Microsoft said it was prepared to “build on” the deal in the future, but did not specifically comment on whether it planned to extend the terms to other gaming workers at the company.Microsoft indicated that under the agreement, it would refrain from an aggressive anti-union campaign if other Activision employees sought to unionize. “In practical terms, it means that we’re not going to try to jump in and put a thumb on the scale,” Mr. Smith said in the interview. “We will respect the fact that our employees are capable of making decisions for themselves and they have a right to do that.”Brad Smith of Microsoft said he was committed to engaging with unions “when employees wish to exercise their rights and Microsoft is presented with a specific unionization proposal.”Markus Schreiber/Associated PressFacing their own union campaigns, companies like Amazon and Starbucks have held frequent mandatory meetings with employees to argue that a union could leave them worse off.The labor board has issued complaints against Amazon that include accusations of threatening workers with a loss of benefits if they unionize, and against Starbucks over accusations that it fired workers who sought to form a union and effectively promised benefits to workers if they chose not to unionize. Both companies have denied the accusations. In a recent case brought by the N.L.R.B. in Arizona, a federal judge denied a request for an injunction to reinstate pro-union workers whom the labor board said Starbucks had forced out illegally.The agreement between Microsoft and the union would also protect workers’ right to communicate among themselves and with union officials about a union campaign — something many employers seek to discourage — and stipulates that disagreements between the company and the union will be resolved through an “expedited arbitration process.” N.L.R.B. complaints can take months or years to resolve.When Microsoft and Activision announced their blockbuster deal in January, the game maker was under stress as it faced accusations that senior executives had ignored sexual harassment and discrimination. Those concerns spurred organizing among Activision employees, including workers at its Raven Software studio in Wisconsin, which has developed games in popular franchises like Call of Duty.After a group of roughly 30 quality assurance, or Q.A., workers announced that they were seeking to unionize, Activision sought to convince the federal labor board that their election should not go forward. The game workers accused Activision of union-busting tactics, like increasing the pay of non-Raven Q.A. workers and splitting Q.A. workers up by embedding them across the Raven studio.Activision maintained that while some changes in this vein had come after the union campaign went public, the broader shift in approach had already been underway — for example, its move to change the status of hundreds of temporary and contingent workers to permanent full-time employees in the fall.The company argued that the entire Raven studio, comprising hundreds of workers, should have been allowed to vote on forming a union, rather than just a few dozen Q.A. workers. Q.A. employees, often on temporary contracts, are commonly considered the most overworked and underpaid members of game studios.In early March, the union signed a letter asking federal regulators to scrutinize the acquisition. “The potential takeover by Microsoft threatens to further undermine workers’ rights and suppress wages,” the letter said.Microsoft has since tried to strike a conciliatory tone. It said it would not stop Activision from voluntarily recognizing the union before a formal election, which Activision did not do. After the Raven Q.A. workers voted in late May to form the first union at a major North American game publisher, Phil Spencer, the head of gaming at Microsoft, told employees that he would recognize the Raven union once the deal between the two companies closed, the gaming news site Kotaku reported, citing a video of an employee town hall.Activision said on Friday that it was starting contract negotiations with the newly unionized Raven workers. “We decided to take this important step forward with our 27 represented employees and C.W.A. to explore their ideas and insights for how we might better serve our employees, players and other stakeholders,” Bobby Kotick, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.In a blog post this month that appeared to foreshadow the deal, Mr. Smith announced a set of principles to guide Microsoft’s response to labor organizing, an indication that it was taking a more open approach across the company’s businesses.He wrote that he had observed Microsoft’s successful “collaborative experiences with works councils and unions” while working in Europe and said that in the United States the company would pursue “collaborative approaches that will make it simpler, rather than more difficult, for our employees to make informed decisions and to exercise their legal right to choose whether to form or join a union.”In the interview, Mr. Smith called the neutrality agreement “our first opportunity to put those principles into practice.”The Communications Workers of America, which represents employees at companies like AT&T Mobility, Verizon and The New York Times, has sought to organize tech industry workers in recent years. It has begun organizing retail workers at Apple Stores and helped workers at Google form a so-called minority union, which allows them to act together on workplace issues without having to win a union election.About a dozen retail employees at Google Fiber stores in Kansas City, Mo., who are formally employed by a Google contractor, recently voted to join the union.Kellen Browning More

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    Trader Joe’s Workers File to Hold Company’s First Union Election

    The workers, at a store in western Massachusetts, cited health and safety concerns and cuts to benefits at the grocery chain.In a sign that service industry workers continue to have a strong interest in unionizing after successful votes at Starbucks, REI and Amazon, employees at a Trader Joe’s in western Massachusetts have filed for a union election. If they win, they will create the only union at Trader Joe’s, which has more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees nationwide.The filing with the National Labor Relations Board late Tuesday seeks an election involving about 85 employees who would form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United, rather than affiliate with an established labor organization. That echoes the independent union created by Amazon workers on Staten Island and the worker-led organizing at Starbucks.“Over the past however many years, changes have been happening without our consent,” said Maeg Yosef, an 18-year employee of the store who is a leader of the union campaign. “We wanted to be in charge of the whole process, to be our own union. So we decided to go independent.”Ms. Yosef said the union had support from over 50 percent of workers at the store, known as crew members.“We have always said we welcome a fair vote and are prepared to hold a vote if more than 30 percent of the crew wants one,” said a company spokeswoman, Nakia Rohde, alluding to the N.L.R.B. threshold for an election. “We are not interested in delaying the process in any way.”The company shared a similar statement with workers after they announced their intention to unionize in mid-May.In explaining their decision, Ms. Yosef and four colleagues, all of whom have been with the company for at least eight years, cited changes that had made their benefits less generous over time, as well as health and safety concerns, many of which were magnified during the pandemic.“This is probably where we get to all of these things coming together,” said Tony Falco, another worker involved in the union campaign, alluding to Covid-19.Mr. Falco said the store, in Hadley, took several reassuring steps during the first 12 to 15 months of the pandemic. Management enforced masking requirements and restrictions on the number of customers who could be in the store at once. It allowed workers to take leaves of absence while continuing to receive health insurance and gave workers additional “thank you” pay as high as $4 per hour.But Mr. Falco and others said the company was too quick to roll back many of these measures — including additional pay — as vaccines became widely available last year, and noted that the store had suffered Covid outbreaks in the past several weeks after masking became laxer. The store followed the policy of the local health board, which altered its mask mandate at various points, lifting it most recently in March.Some employees were also upset that the company did not inform them that the state had passed a law requiring employers to provide up to five paid days off for workers who missed work because of Covid.“It was in effect seven months, and they never announced it,” Ms. Yosef said. “I figured that out at the end of December, early January.”Ms. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said this account was incorrect, but four other employees who support the union also said the company had not told them of the policy.A Trader Joe’s store in New York. Early in the pandemic, the chief executive wrote that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company.”Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesTrader Joe’s has generally resisted unionization over the years, including earlier in the pandemic. In March 2020, the chief executive, Dan Bane, sent employees a letter referring to “the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and complaining that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company through which they can drive discontent.”The company’s response to the current campaign appears somewhat less hostile, though union organizers have recently filed charges of unfair labor practices, such as asking employees to remove pro-union pins.Several employees said a broader issue was underlying their frustrations: what they saw as the company’s evolution from a niche outlet known for pampering customers and treating employees generously to an industrial-scale chain that is more focused on the bottom line.The company’s employee handbook urges workers to provide a “Wow customer experience,” which it defines as “the feelings a customer gets about our delight that they are shopping with us.” But longtime employees say the company, which is privately held, has gradually become stingier with workers.For years, the company offered health care widely to part-timers. In the early 2010s, the company raised the average weekly hours that employees needed to qualify for full health coverage to 30 from roughly 20, informing those who no longer qualified that they could receive coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act instead. (The company dropped the threshold to 28 hours more recently.)“It was done under the guise of ‘You can get these plans, they’re the same plans,’ but they were not the same plans,” said Sarah Yosef, the Hadley store’s manager at the time, who later stepped back from the role and is now a frontline worker there.“I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance,” added Ms. Yosef, who is married to Maeg Yosef.Retirement benefits have followed a similar trajectory: Around the same time, Trader Joe’s lowered its retirement contribution to 10 percent of an employee’s earnings from about 15 percent, for employees 30 and older. Beginning with last year’s benefit, the company lowered the percentage again for many workers, who saw the contribution fall to 5 percent. The company is no longer specifying any set amount.Tony Falco and Sarah Yosef at the Trader Joe’s store in Hadley. She said, “I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance.”Holly Lynton for The New York TimesMs. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said the change was partly a response to indications from many workers that they would prefer a bonus to a retirement contribution.Workers said the company’s determination to provide an intimate shopping experience had often come at their expense amid a rapid increase in business over the past decade, and then again with the resurgence of business as pandemic restrictions lifted.For example, Trader Joe’s doesn’t have conveyor belts at checkout lines and instructs cashiers to reach into customers’ carts or baskets to unload items. This can appear to personalize the service but takes a physical toll on workers, who typically bend over hundreds of times during a shift.(The company asks workers to perform different tasks throughout the day so they are not constantly ringing up customers.)Maeg Yosef and her co-workers began discussing the union campaign over the winter, angry over the store’s failure to publicize the state-mandated paid leave benefit and the change in retirement benefits, and some have drawn inspiration from the successful union elections at Starbucks, Amazon and REI.Their union campaign may also benefit from the same leverage that workers at those companies enjoyed as a result of the relatively tight job market.“People just keep leaving — I know they want to hire people now,” Maeg Yosef said. “It’s hard to keep people around.” More

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    Biden to Pause New Solar Tariffs as White House Aims to Boost Adoption

    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday announced a two-year pause on imposing any new tariffs on the solar industry, a decision that follows an outcry from importers who have complained the levies are threatening broader adoption of solar energy in the United States.The move is a victory for domestic solar installers, who said the tariffs would put at risk the Biden administration’s goal of significantly cutting carbon emissions by the end of the decade by reducing the flow of products into the United States. But it goes against the wishes of some American solar manufacturers and their defenders, who have been pushing the administration to erect tougher barriers on cheap imports to help revive the domestic industry.It was the latest example of President Biden’s being caught between competing impulses when it comes to trying to steer the United States away from planet-warming fossil fuels, as he has pledged to do. By limiting tariffs, Mr. Biden will ensure a sufficient and cheap supply of solar panels at a time of high inflation and attempt to put stalled solar projects back on track. But the decision will postpone other White House efforts that might have punished Chinese companies for trade violations and lessened Beijing’s role in global supply chains.To counteract complaints by the domestic solar industry, the administration said that Mr. Biden would attempt to speed U.S. manufacturing of solar components, including by invoking the authorities of the Defense Production Act, which gives the president expanded powers and funding to direct the activities of private businesses.The prospect of additional tariffs stemmed from an ongoing investigation by the Commerce Department, which is looking into whether Chinese solar firms — which are already subject to tariffs — tried to get around those levies by moving their operations out of China and into Southeast Asia.Auxin Solar, a small manufacturer of solar panels based in California, had requested the inquiry, which is examining imports from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.In 2020, 89 percent of the solar modules used in the United States were imported, with Southeast Asian countries accounting for the bulk of the shipments.If the Commerce Department determines that the factories were set up to circumvent U.S. tariffs, the administration could retroactively impose tariffs on shipments to the United States. But under the tariff “pause” that Mr. Biden ordered on Monday, such levies could not be imposed for the next two years.The decision is the latest turn in a long game of whack-a-mole the U.S. government has played against low-priced imports in the solar industry.While U.S. companies were some of the first to introduce solar technology, China came to dominate global solar manufacturing in recent decades by subsidizing production and creating a vibrant domestic market for solar installation. In 2011, the United States imposed duties on Chinese products to counteract subsidies and unfairly low prices. U.S. installers then started buying more products from Taiwan, but in 2015 the United States imposed duties on Taiwan as well.Trade experts said that pausing the tariffs could undercut trade laws aimed at protecting American workers by allowing companies in China to continue flooding the United States with cheap imports.Auxin Solar, a California manufacturer of solar panels.Anastasiia Sapon for The New York TimesMamun Rashid, chief executive of Auxin Solar.Anastasiia Sapon for The New York TimesOn Monday, Auxin’s chief executive, Mamun Rashid, said President Biden was interfering with the investigation.“By taking this unprecedented — and potentially illegal — action, he has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law,” Mr. Rashid said in a statement.To pause the tariffs, a Biden administration official said the administration was invoking a section of the 1930 Tariff Act, which allows the president to suspend certain import duties to address an emergency. Commerce Department officials said their investigation would continue and that any tariffs that resulted from their findings would begin after the 24-month pause expired.“The president’s emergency declaration ensures America’s families have access to reliable and clean electricity while also ensuring we have the ability to hold our trading partners accountable to their commitments,” Gina Raimondo, the Commerce secretary, said in a release.The possibility of tariffs has touched off an ugly battle in recent months over the future of the U.S. solar industry.American solar companies have said that the prospect of more — and retroactive — tariffs was already having a chilling effect on imports. Groups such as the Solar Energy Industries Association, whose members include several Chinese manufacturers with U.S. operations, have been lobbying the White House against the tariffs and on Monday welcomed news that the administration would pause any new levies.“Today’s actions protect existing solar jobs, will lead to increased employment in the solar industry and foster a robust solar manufacturing base here at home,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the president and chief executive of S.E.I.A., said in an emailed statement.“During the two-year tariff suspension window,” she said, “the U.S. solar industry can return to rapid deployment while the Defense Production Act helps grow American solar manufacturing.”Companies that rely on imported products — and U.S. officials who are prioritizing the transition to solar energy — have been complaining that the Commerce Department inquiry has injected uncertainty into future pricing for the solar market, slowing the transition away from fossil fuels. NextEra Energy, one of the largest renewable energy companies in the country, had said it expected to delay the installation of between two and three gigawatts worth of solar and storage construction — enough to power more than a million homes.“The last couple of months we have had to pause all construction efforts,” said Scott Buckley, president of Green Lantern Solar, a solar installer based in Vermont. Mr. Buckley said his company had been forced to put about 10 projects on hold, which would have resulted in the installation of about 50 acres of solar panels.Mr. Buckley said there was no easy solution to the country’s reliance on imported products in the short term and that the White House’s actions on Monday would allow companies like his to resume installations this year.“This is a get back to work order,” he said. “That’s the way I think about it. Let’s clear the logjams.”Solar panels made in China. Major industry groups, some of which include Chinese manufacturers, had been lobbying the Biden administration to take action against the tariffs.Adam Dean for The New York TimesBut domestic solar producers and U.S. labor unions have said that the recent surge in imports from Chinese companies doing their manufacturing in Southeast Asia clearly violates U.S. trade law, which forbids companies to try to avoid U.S. tariffs by moving production or assembly of a product to another country.The domestic producers have accused importers — who have close commercial ties with China — of exaggerating their industry’s hardships to try to sway the Biden administration and preserve profit margins that stem from unfairly priced imports.“If you have a supply chain that depends on dumped and subsidized imports, then you’ve got a problem with your supply chain,” said Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.“We’re getting dependent on hostile countries without sufficient domestic production to ensure against price hikes and supply shocks,” said Michael Stumo, chief executive of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nonprofit group that promotes domestic manufacturing. “Whether it’s medicine, or PPE, or solar panels, you’ve got to have domestic production.”Some critics also said the legal rationale for the White House’s moves was specious, arguing that the administration was effectively declaring a state of emergency because of the consequences of its own trade laws.Scott Lincicome, a trade policy expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said that the administration’s actions seemed to be “quite the stretch of the statute.”The trade law provision that Mr. Biden invoked allows the president to “declare an emergency to exist by reason of a state of war, or otherwise,” and during such a state of emergency to import “food, clothing, and medical, surgical, and other supplies for use in emergency relief work” duty free.He said critics of U.S. tariffs had long proposed a “public interest” test that would allow levies to be lifted to mitigate broader economic harm, but Congress had never approved such an action.In a letter late last month, Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, complained that solar importers had spent “millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying to urge political interference in the trade enforcement process.” Biden administration officials had previously said that the Commerce Department’s inquiry was immune to political interference, describing it as “quasi-judicial” and “apolitical.”Solar tariffs have been a source of contention for decades, but they have taken on renewed importance in recent years as the consequences of climate change became more apparent. Chinese companies have expanded internationally, allowing them to continue to ship products to the United States, while American companies have struggled to compete.The global solar industry’s dependence on China has complicated the Biden administration’s efforts to ban products linked with forced labor in Xinjiang, the northwest region where U.S. officials say Chinese authorities have detained more than one million Uyghurs and other minorities. Xinjiang is a major producer of polysilicon, the raw material for solar panels.Solar importers complained that a ban last year on solar raw materials made with forced labor by Hoshine Silicon Industry temporarily halted billions of dollars of American projects, as companies struggled to produce documentation to customs officials to prove that neither they nor their suppliers were obtaining material from Hoshine.After the Russia invasion of Ukraine in February, high gasoline prices have also impeded a broader desire to push the country away from oil and left Mr. Biden asking oil-producing nations in the Middle East and beyond to ramp up production.White House officials said Monday that Mr. Biden would sign a suite of directives meant to increase the domestic development of low-emission energy technologies. He is set to make it easier for domestic suppliers to sell solar systems to the federal government. And he will order the Department of Energy to use the Defense Production Act to “rapidly expand American manufacturing” of solar panel parts, building insulation, heat pumps, power grid infrastructure and fuel cells, the administration said in a fact sheet. More

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    The Potential Dark Side of a White-Hot Labor Market

    The strong job market may be about to take a turn for the worse. That could come to haunt those who made choices based on today’s conditions.Shanna Jackson, the president of Nashville State Community College, is struggling with a dilemma that reads like good news: Her students are taking jobs from employers who are eager to hire, and paying them good wages.The problem is that students often drop their plans to earn a degree in order to take the attractive positions offered by these desperate employers. Ms. Jackson is worried that when the labor market cools — a near certainty as the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates, slowing the economy in an attempt to control rapid inflation — an incomplete education will come back to haunt these students.“If you’ve got housing costs rising, gas prices going up, food prices going up, the short-term decision is: Let me make money now, and I’ll go back to school later,” Ms. Jackson said. Anecdotally, she said, the issue is most intense in hospitality-related training programs, where credentials are often valued but not technically required.Strong labor markets often encourage people to forgo training, but this economic moment poses unusually difficult trade-offs for students with families or other financial responsibilities. Cutting working hours to go to class right now means passing up the benefits of strong wage growth at a moment of soaring fuel, food and housing costs.Taking advantage of the plentiful job opportunities available now could come with upsides — employment can build résumés and provide people with valuable experience and skills. But labor economists say that deciding to skip school and training today could come at a cost down the road. Research consistently suggests that people with degrees and skills training earn more and have more job stability in the longer run.“It’s really great to have income, but you also want to keep your eye on the future,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in an interview last week. “Workers with higher skills will have higher wages and more upside potential.”Ms. Daly speaks from personal experience. She herself dropped out of high school at age 15 to earn money. She eventually earned her graduation equivalency and enrolled in a semester of classes at a local college, but had to work three part-time jobs — at a Target, a doughnut shop and a deli — to support herself while she studied. She went on to pursue a degree full time and later earned a Ph.D. in economics.“That hard work was the best choice I have ever made,” she said. Drawing on her own experience and on the data she parses as a labor economist, she often urges young people to stay in training to improve their own future opportunities, even if they have to balance it with work.“The jobs that are hot right now — restaurants, warehousing — these are things that won’t last forever,” Ms. Daly said.Many sectors are, unquestionably, booming. Today’s labor market has 1.9 open jobs for every available worker and the fastest wage growth for rank-and-file workers since the early 1980s. That’s especially true for lower-wage occupations in fields such as leisure and hospitality.The State of Jobs in the United StatesJob gains continue to maintain their impressive run, even as government policymakers took steps to cool the economy and ease inflation.May Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6 percent ​​in the fifth month of 2022.Slowing Down: Economists and policymakers are beginning to argue that what the economy needs right now is less hiring and less wage growth. Here’s why.Opportunities for Teenagers: Jobs for high school and college students are expected to be plentiful this summer, and a large market means better pay.Higher Interest Rates: Spurred by red-hot inflation, the Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates. What does that mean for the job market?Against that backdrop, fewer students are opting to continue their education. The latest enrollment figures, released in May by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, showed that 662,000 fewer students enrolled in undergraduate programs this spring than had a year earlier, a decline of 4.7 percent.Community college enrollment is also way down, having fallen by 827,000 students since the start of the pandemic. The decline is likely partly demographic, and partly a result of choices made during the pandemic.The shift to online learning was challenging for many students, and, just as schools were allowing students back into the classroom, the job market heated up and opportunities suddenly abounded. Inflation began to ratchet up at the same time, making earning money more critical as the cost of rent, gas and food climbed. That confluence of factors is likely keeping many students from continuing to pursue their education.Gabby Calvo, 18, left the business administration program at Nashville State this year. She said she did not know what she wanted to do with the degree, and had begun making good money, $21 an hour, as a front-end manager at a Kroger grocery store. The job was an unusual one for someone her age to land.“They didn’t really have anyone, so they took a chance on me,” she said, explaining that nobody else stood ready to fill the position and she had worked closely with the person who held it previously.Teenagers are often finding they can land positions they might not have otherwise as companies stretch to find talent, and teenage unemployment is now hovering near the lowest level since the 1950s.Ms. Calvo is hoping to work her way up to the assistant store-manager level, which would put her in a salaried position, and thinks she has made the prudent choice in leaving school, even if her parents disagree.“They think it’s a bad idea — they think I should have quit working, gone to college,” she said. But she has made enough money to put her name on a lease, which she recently signed along with her boyfriend, who is 19 and works at the restaurant in a local Nordstrom.“I feel like I have a lot of experience, and I have a lot more to gain,” Ms. Calvo said.The question, then, is how people like Ms. Calvo will fare in a weaker labor market, because today’s remarkable economic strength is unlikely to continue.The Fed is raising rates in a bid to slow down consumer demand, which would in turn cool down job and wage growth. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument: There is a risk that the central bank will end up pushing unemployment higher, and even touch off a recession, as it tries to bring today’s rapid inflation under control.That could be bad news for people without credentials or degrees. Historically, workers with less education and those who have been hired more recently are the ones to lose their jobs when unemployment rises and the economy weakens. At the onset of the pandemic, to consider an extreme example, unemployment for adults with a high school education jumped to 17.6 percent, while that for the college educated peaked at 8.4 percent.The same people benefiting from unusual opportunities and rapid pay gains today could be the ones to suffer in a downturn. That is one reason economists and educators like Ms. Jackson often urge people to continue their training.“We worry about their long-term futures, if this derails them from ever going to college, for a $17 to $19 Target job. That’s a loss,” said Alicia Sasser Modestino, an associate professor at Northeastern University who researches labor economics and youth development. Still, Ms. Sasser Modestino said that taking high-paying jobs today and pursuing training later did not have to be mutually exclusive. Some people are getting jobs at places that offer tuition assistance while others can work and study at the same time.Other students, like Ms. Calvo, might use the time to figure out what they want to do with their futures in ways that will leave them better off in the long run.Plus, the economy could be shifting in ways that continue to keep workers in high demand. Baby boomers continue to age, and immigration has declined sharply during the pandemic, which could leave employers scrambling for employees for years. If that happens, degrees and certificates — labor market currency for much of the past two decades — may prove less essential.Luemettrea Williams, who holds down three jobs in order to pay her tuition and other bills, at her job in a doctor’s office in Nashville in May.Laura Thompson for The New York Times“There comes a point at which there are so few high school graduates to play with that you have to give your pool cleaner a raise,” said Anthony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Plus, Mr. Carnevale said, economic policies coming out of Washington could add to the need for high-school-educated workers for a time. President Biden’s infrastructure bill, passed last year, is expected to create jobs in construction and other fields as it directs investment toward bridge rebuilding and airport and port upgrades.“We’re about to go through an era when you don’t need to go through college. That’s going to be a popular story,” he said.Even before the pandemic, people were increasingly questioning the value of a college education. Many people do not complete their degree or certificate programs, leaving them without improved job prospects and often crushing student loan burdens. And higher education alone is not a panacea: Some certificates and qualifications confer much greater labor market benefits, while others offer a smaller wage premium.But data and research continue to suggest that staying in school benefits workers over the long run. Unemployment is consistently lower for people with college degrees, and wages increase notably as education levels climb. The typical worker with only a high school diploma earned $809 a week in 2021, while one with a bachelor’s degree earned $1,334.“The high school job market has been declining since 1983,” Mr. Carnevale said. His research has shown that after the early 1980s, degree holders began to widen their lifetime earnings advantage.The economic resiliency that comes with education is what Luemettrea Williams is banking on. Ms. Williams, 34, has recently transferred to Nashville State as a nursing student.She had been working for years as a medical assistant in a doctor’s office, but got the job because she already knew the doctor; she did not have the relevant credential. Early in the pandemic, the doctor asked her what she would do if he retired, and she realized it was time to return to school. She is working three jobs to pay her tuition, along with her rising gas and grocery bills. She and her 9-year-old daughter have moved in with her aunt, but Ms. Williams is confident she’ll end up with a sturdy career at the end of her two-year program.“That is No. 1: being able to have a stable income where I don’t have to work three jobs to make ends meet,” Ms. Williams said. “I just have to get through these two years, and my life will change.” More