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    How Times Reporters Investigated Amazon Employment Practices

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    A recent Times project that examined how the tech giant manages its workers took months of reporting and hundreds of interviews.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Last summer, amid a hiring spree at Amazon so gigantic it left historians struggling for comparisons, Karen Weise, a Times reporter who covers the company from Seattle, brought up a puzzling question to her editors. Approaching the million-worker mark, Amazon was on track to becoming the largest private employer in the United States. Yet, in spite of solid wages and generous benefits, it was quickly cycling through employees. Why?Executives had an “almost palpable fear of running out of workers,” she said later.In August, she got a call from Jodi Kantor, a Times reporter in Brooklyn who was talking to workers from a variety of industries who were struggling with strict rules about time and attendance during the pandemic. She wanted to look more closely at “time off task,” or T.O.T., Amazon’s practice of monitoring workers by the second and disciplining them for too many unexcused pauses.One hot day in a New York City park, Ms. Kantor met with Dayana Santos, an employee who had been repeatedly praised by her bosses but fired for too much T.O.T. during one bad day filled with mishaps she said were beyond her control. Ms. Santos’s story raised fairness questions, and a business one: Why would Amazon, voracious for workers, fire a good employee?Those questions led to a recent Times investigative report on the company that revealed systemic problems in its model for managing workers, such as unbridled turnover, minimal human contact, an error-plagued leave system, delayed benefits and mistaken firings.Ms. Santos had worked at JFK8 on Staten Island, a compelling setting for a potential investigation: the only Amazon fulfillment center in the nation’s largest city, operating under maximum pandemic pressure to deliver to homebound customers. Other media outlets had examined working conditions, injury rates and numerous other aspects of Amazon warehouses. The Times reporters, focusing on JFK8, had a different goal: to understand the connection between the company’s employment model and its astonishing success. They set out to chronicle Amazon’s core relationship with its humongous, growing work force — who got hired and fired, and the rules, systems and assumptions that governed everything in between.But JFK8 was vast — about 5,000 employees in a space the size of 15 football fields — and managers and human resources workers were reluctant to talk. Ms. Weise contacted corporate employees, many of whom never responded. To help tackle the huge project, Grace Ashford, a researcher on the Investigations desk, joined the team. Together she and Ms. Kantor spent many hours on the phone and at the bus stop outside JFK8, including on Prime Day, asking workers about their experiences.Often, Ms. Kantor and Ms. Ashford found that new hires were grateful for the pay but left after a few weeks. “Amazon was a lifeline for them, until it wasn’t,” Ms. Ashford said.Knowing that their requests to interview Amazon’s most senior executives were long shots, the reporters had to find creative ways of understanding the culture inside JFK8. They spoke with human resources staff and corporate leaders, who described Amazon’s glitchy, strained systems and the business challenge of maintaining staff during a public health emergency.Ms. Weise took masked walks with Paul Stroup, a data scientist who had tried to steer Amazon through the crisis but left thinking Amazon could do better by its workers. Ms. Kantor spent the fall shadowing Ann Castillo, who was struggling with Amazon’s treatment of her severely ill husband, a JFK8 veteran.Back office employees at a different location, in Costa Rica, described the partial collapse of the company’s leave systems early in the pandemic, leading to problems like halted benefits for Mr. Castillo.Data obtained through public records showed that Amazon’s overall work force was largely Black and Latino, but internal documents revealed that Black workers at JFK8 were disproportionately fired.After Ms. Santos, the worker fired for T.O.T., applied for unemployment, Amazon contested her benefits. In an obscure New York administrative court, the company filed internal policy memos that provided a rare inside glimpse of the T.O.T. system.After almost 200 interviews, a picture emerged of a company that “seemed far more precise with packages than people,” Ms. Kantor said. Amazon had tried to grow its business quickly by creating a giant semi-automated machine for hiring and managing — but that system often stumbled.Ms. Weise was able to confirm that while the company boasted of job creation, turnover at the warehouses was roughly 150 percent a year — a figure never reported before — meaning Amazon had to replace the equivalent of its entire warehouse work force every eight months.That number, and the entire project, took on deeper meaning when David Niekerk, the architect of Amazon’s warehouse human resources system, told her the turnover was more or less by design. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, had sought to avoid an entrenched work force, fearing laziness and a “march to mediocrity.” So upward mobility and raises for warehouse workers were limited.As Ms. Kantor wrote and Ms. Ashford continued to report, Ms. Weise led a delicate, six-week effort to confirm the voluminous information in the story with Amazon and garner its responses. By then, the company had provided some input, including a tour of JFK8 by the general manager and an interview with Ofori Agboka, head of human resources for the warehouses, who defended Amazon but acknowledged that the company had leaned too heavily on technology and self-service.As part of the fact-checking process, the reporters repeatedly asked Amazon about the T.O.T. policy and Ms. Santos’s firing. Shortly before the article was published, Amazon announced an immediate policy change: No longer could someone be fired for one bad day. Ms. Santos and others were eligible for rehire.The article elicited a strong public reaction, tips from other employees who want to tell their stories and an outpouring of reader comments. (“It was not Bezos who made Amazon. It was all of us who bought from it,” one said.) On July 1, Amazon announced an addition to its leadership principles — critical guidelines for internal decisions and management — that focused on being a better employer.In coming months, the focus is likely to be on whether Amazon will change some of the practices that have propelled it to dominance, either because of internal action or outside force.“They say that broadly, their work force is happy, and their internal surveys say that more than 90 percent would recommend working at Amazon to a friend,” Ms. Weise said.“But 150 percent turnover in a year means that something isn’t working for many people.” More

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    Pandemic Wave of Automation May Be Bad News for Workers

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    The need for social distancing led restaurants and grocery stores to seek technological help. That may improve productivity, but could also cost jobs.When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be picked out not by a worker in their local supermarket but by a robot in a nearby warehouse.Gamers at Dave & Buster’s in Dallas who want pretzel dogs can order and pay from their phones — no need to flag down a waiter.And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a voice-recognition algorithm.An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring workers — at least at the wages that employers are used to paying — is providing new momentum for automation.Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.“Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic.The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut their staffs. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of leverage, leading to higher pay, more generous benefits and other perks.Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those gains. A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world.“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. “Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of them.”Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult — so much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while in high school.“We really felt like there has to be another solution,” she said.So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant’s technology began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales’s drive-through lanes. Now customers are greeted by an automated voice designed to understand their orders — including modifications and special requests — suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the kitchen and the cashier.The rollout has been successful enough that Ms. Gonzales is getting ready to expand the system to her three other restaurants.“We’ll look back and say why didn’t we do this sooner,” she said.Shana Gonzales, who owns four Checkers franchises in the Atlanta area, said she has had difficulty finding workers to meet demand.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesThe push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology.Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and stockholders to compete over their share of the income — a game that workers tended to lose. Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting firm.She cited the example of a client in manufacturing who had been pushing his company for years to embrace augmented-reality technology in its factories. The pandemic finally helped him win the battle: With air travel off limits, the technology was the only way to bring in an expert to help troubleshoot issues at a remote plant.“For the first time, we’re seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity, lowering cost, but they’re also increasing flexibility,” she said. “We’re starting to see real momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly.”Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity.In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that “a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation” — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.“If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality,” Professor Acemoglu said.Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn’t looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30 people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.“Our approach is, this is an assistant for you,” she said. “This allows our employee to really focus” on customers.Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course.The artificial intelligence system that feeds information to the kitchen at a Checkers.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesTechnology is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed, Ms. Gonzales said.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesRob Carpenter, Valyant’s chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking drive-through orders is only part of an employee’s responsibilities. Automating that task doesn’t eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.“We’re not talking about automating an entire position,” he said. “It’s just one task within the restaurant, and it’s gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks.”But technology doesn’t have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology could erode workers’ bargaining power.“Often you displace enough of the tasks in an occupation and suddenly that occupation is no more,” Professor Acemoglu said. “It might kick me out of a job, or if I keep my job I’ll get lower wages.”At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available. Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States, has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require someone to flip burgers — they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press of a button.“You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier,” said Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. “It certainly widens the scope of who you can have behind that grill.”With more advanced kitchen equipment, software that allows online orders to flow directly to the restaurant and other technological advances, Meltwich needs only two to three workers on a shift, rather than three or four, Mr. Hillis said.Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could significantly change workers’ prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.“If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?” Professor Warman said. Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he added.The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated. Kroger in April opened a 375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to better serve customers — and that it was a competitive necessity.“Competitors and other players in the retail space are developing technologies and partnerships to reduce their costs and offer improved service and value for customers,” she said. “Stop & Shop needs to do the same.”In 2011, Patrice Thomas took a part-time job in the deli at a Stop & Shop in Norwich, Conn. A decade later, he manages the store’s prepared foods department, earning around $40,000 a year.Mr. Thomas, 32, said that he wasn’t concerned about being replaced by a robot anytime soon, and that he welcomed technologies making him more productive — like more powerful ovens for rotisserie chickens and blast chillers that quickly cool items that must be stored cold.But he worries about other technologies — like automated meat slicers — that seem to enable grocers to rely on less experienced, lower-paid workers and make it harder to build a career in the industry.“The business model we seem to be following is we’re pushing toward automation and we’re not investing equally in the worker,” he said. “Today it’s, ‘We want to get these robots in here to replace you because we feel like you’re overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he has to do is push this button.’” More

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    June Jobs Report Delivers Good News and Big Questions for Washington

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    Payrolls surged and wages climbed, both positives for President Biden and the Federal Reserve. But stagnant labor market participation highlights a key risk.Employers are hiring and wages are rising but the number of people actively working or looking for jobs remains stagnant, a phenomenon that is making it difficult for the Federal Reserve and White House to determine how much the labor market has recovered and how long the U.S. economy will continue to need hefty support.Employers added 850,000 workers to payrolls in June, a strong number that was buttressed by rising wages as employers scramble to hire to meet surging customer demand. The report gives the Biden administration encouraging talking points, and the Fed a sign that the economy is making progress toward the central bank’s full employment goal.But the fact that workers aren’t rushing back to the job market injects a note of caution into an otherwise sunny outlook. The labor force participation rate, a measure of people working or looking for jobs, has barely budged in recent months and was unchanged at 61.6 percent in June. It remains sharply down from 63.3 percent before the crisis started.The labor force participation rate did not budge.Share of the working-age population who are in the labor force (employed, unemployed but looking for work or on temporary layoff) More

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    June 2021 Jobs Report: 850,000 Gain Is Better Than Expected

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    Hiring leapt back up in June as employers added 850,000 workers, the government reported Friday, a fresh sign that the labor market’s recovery is gaining momentum.The unemployment rate rose slightly, to 5.9 percent, the Labor Department said.The report follows several promising economic developments this week. Consumer confidence, which surged in June, is at its highest point since the pandemic’s onset last year. Stocks closed out the first half of the year at record highs, and businesses’ plans for capital investments are rising. The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that the economy was on track to recover all the jobs lost in the pandemic by the middle of next year.At the moment, more than six million fewer jobs exist than before the pandemic. Millions of people have dropped out of the labor force, however, and “job openings far outnumber the applicants,” said Karen Fichuk, chief executive of the staffing company Randstad North America. “It is truly across the board right now.”Aside from ever-present concerns about pay and benefits, workers are particularly interested in jobs that allow them to work remotely at least some of the time. According to a Ranstad survey of more than 1,200 people, 54 percent say they prefer a flexible work arrangement that doesn’t require them to be on-site full-time.Health and safety concerns are also very much on the minds of workers whose jobs require face-to-face interactions, the survey found.“This is a trickier phase of the recovery,” said Sarah House, a senior economist with Wells Fargo. Last year, millions of workers were only temporarily laid off and able to slot back into their previous positions with little delay once reopening began.Now, employers and workers are “having to make new matches and new connections, and that just takes more time,” she said.Economists also point to a widespread reallocation of labor — like rounds of musical chairs on a mammoth scale — in which workers are re-evaluating their options. During the pandemic, many workers who had held restaurant and retail jobs may have taken positions in warehouses and manufacturing plants.At the same time, the appetite for pandemic-driven jobs such as couriers and grocery store workers are ebbing as sectors like leisure and hospitality ramp up.Are you looking for work or workers? More

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    Americans Are Retiring Earlier Because of Pandemic

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    After years in which Americans worked later in life, the latest economic disruption has driven many out of the work force prematurely.Dee Dee Patten, 57, hadn’t planned to retire early. But when the coronavirus-induced lockdown took hold in 2020 and business dried up at the mechanical repair shop that she and her husband, Dana, owned in Platteville, Colo., they decided to call it quits.Mildred Vega, 56, had even less choice in the matter. Soon after she lost her job because of a restructuring at a Pfizer office in Vega Baja, P.R., the pandemic foreclosed other options.Mrs. Vega and the Pattens are three of the millions of Americans who have decided to retire since the pandemic began, part of a surge in early exits from the work force. The trend has broad implications for the labor market and is a sign of how the pandemic has transformed the economic landscape.For a fortunate few, the decision was made possible by 401(k) accounts bulging from record stock values. That wealth, along with a surge in home values, has offered some the financial security to stop working well before Social Security and private pensions kick in.But most of the early retirements are occurring among lower-income workers who were displaced by the pandemic and see little route back into the job market, according to Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics and policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York City.“They might call themselves retired, but basically they are unemployed and in a precarious state,” Ms. Ghilarducci said. Economic downturns typically induce more people to leave the work force, but there has been a faster wave of departures this time than during the 2008-9 recession, she said.After analyzing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, Ms. Ghilarducci found that among people with incomes at or below the national median, 55 percent of retirements recently were involuntary.By contrast, among the top 10 percent of earners, only 10 percent of exits were involuntary. “It’s a tale of two retirements,” Ms. Ghilarducci said.For the Pattens, most of their company’s revenue came from inspecting school buses in the northern part of Colorado. When schools pivoted to remote learning in March 2020, the business stopped receiving its usual traffic.“On average, we had 10 to 20 buses a day that we brought in and inspected and then put them out on the road for the kids,” Mrs. Patten said. “When spring break hit, we didn’t see another bus.”When schools reopened, they had trouble finding a mechanic. In July, they managed to hire one, but he left almost immediately. And the work was too physically demanding for the couple to carry on by themselves, Mrs. Patten said.They sold their shop and equipment, along with their house, putting some of the money into a retirement account. When a separate certificate of deposit account matures, they plan to buy a home in Denver. Since Mr. Patten is 62, he applied for Social Security — but his monthly benefits will be far lower than what he would have received if he had waited a few more years.Mrs. Patten with a photo of her old home and business. When schools pivoted to remote learning, the Pattens’ business of inspecting school buses stopped.Matthew Staver for The New York TimesThe shift toward early retirement reverses a long-running trend. The share of Americans over 65 still active in the work force is 50 percent higher than it was 20 years ago. Some are working longer because they have to and can’t afford to retire, while others are living longer and in better health and want to keep going into the office.Early retirements not only reflect the pandemic’s economic impact but may also hold back the recovery, because retired workers tend to spend more cautiously. They will also be drawing on Social Security sooner rather than paying into the program and bolstering its long-term viability.“Older generations tend to earn more and lift spending,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. With this group out of the labor force in greater numbers, “it’s more of a negative than a positive for the economy.”In the 15 months since the pandemic began, about 2.5 million Americans have retired, Mr. Daco said. That’s about twice the number who retired in 2019, which means there are essentially 1.2 million fewer people in the work force over the age of 55 than would otherwise be expected.The abrupt increase in retirements — as reflected in the way people describe their work status in monthly government surveys — has also fallen unequally among groups of different educational and ethnic backgrounds.A November 2020 study by the Pew Research Center found that the share of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 with just a high school diploma who are retired rose two percentage points from the prior February, double the proportion among those with a college degree.What’s more, the share of the Hispanic population in this age group who are retired jumped four percentage points, compared to one percentage point increases for white and Black boomers.Hispanic workers, especially Hispanic women, were hit disproportionately hard by the downturn in leisure and hospitality employment, said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center.In terms of older workers over all, “it’s anyone’s guess whether they will return,” Mr. Fry said.The proportion of adults 16 or older who are employed or looking for a job, now at 61.6 percent, has been slipping for years, falling from 66 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in early 2020. But it dived when the pandemic hit and has been slow to recover.The aging of the population, along with the tendency of less educated workers to drop out of the work force amid stagnating wages and fewer opportunities in higher-paid fields like manufacturing, has also hurt labor participation.And evidence is accumulating that more older workers are eyeing the exits.A recent household survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the average probability of working beyond age 67 was 32.9 percent, equaling the lowest level since researchers began asking the question in 2014. In November 2020, the figure was 34.9 percent.The premature retirement of millions of workers sensing a lack of opportunity may seem puzzling when many businesses are scrambling to find employees — a conundrum that has forced economists to rethink the workings of the labor market.Part of the answer appears to be a mismatch of skills between available workers and jobs. In addition, salaries in many open positions have remained too low to lure people from the sidelines.If the newly retired workers don’t return, the labor market could get a lot tighter, heightening the risk that the Federal Reserve will need to raise interest rates to tamp down inflation, said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago.“We already have a challenge of keeping labor force growth at decent levels,” he said. “Immigration is down, the birthrate is down, and it’s much harder for the economy to maintain its productive potential if all these folks stay retired.”Mrs. Vega said she might take a part-time job once the pandemic ebbs enough for her to comfortably return to an office setting, but she plans to spend the rest of her time with her parents and children.She qualified for a Pfizer pension available to retirees 55 or older. Though early retirement wasn’t in her plans, she is trying to make the best out of her situation.“I loved my job, but I don’t miss the stress levels,” she said. “The constant stress affects my mental and physical health. The pandemic made me realize how much time my job was taking away from me to spend with my family.”The Pattens feel unnerved with the sudden change after 22 years of nonstop work, but they, too, are looking at the upside.“We both know that, at our age, it was probably the best thing for us,” Mrs. Patten said. “We will get used to all of this time on our hands. Our plan is to volunteer, travel and look for a new place to live after 30 years on the old homestead.” More

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    Canada Goose’s Image Is Challenged by Union Effort

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    Production of the company’s parkas was once fully unionized, but labor organizers say the owners have taken a harder line in recent years.Canada Goose, the luxury jacket maker, has cultivated an image that is not only chic but also socially conscious. It has forged alliances with environmental advocates and talked of its commitment to high labor standards.These efforts have paid off as the company outgrew its roots as a family enterprise and built a worldwide following for its parkas, which can cost over $1,000 and have been worn by celebrities like Daniel Craig and Kate Upton. “We believe that the brand image we have developed has significantly contributed to the success of our business,” the company wrote in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in March.But production employees of Canada Goose, who were all unionized as of 2010, have complained that the company has taken an increasingly hard line toward labor that is at odds with its stated values.Shoppers at a Canada Goose store in New York in 2019. Employees have accused the luxury jacket maker of being anti-union.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn 2019, a company official was cited by a provincial labor board for unfair labor practices during a union election at a newer facility, and some employees complain that the company has retaliated against them in recent months for supporting a union.“People have fear,” said Alelie Sanvictores, a worker who has been active in union organizing. “Some people are scared to talk to me.”Canada Goose denies that it is anti-union and that it has retaliated against union supporters. “It is the employees who will decide their path forward, and Canada Goose will support their decision,” the company said in a statement. The company dismissed the official cited for unfair labor practices.On Wednesday, a few dozen labor activists picketed the Boston headquarters of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that owns and controls Canada Goose, hoping to pressure the jacket maker to endorse a union at three plants in Winnipeg.Pro-union demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the Boston headquarters of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that controls Canada Goose.Philip Keith for The New York TimesThe tensions at Canada Goose appear to illustrate the challenges of seeking rapid growth while maintaining a high-minded reputation that helps sustain a luxury business.An immigrant named Sam Tick founded Canada Goose, then known as Metro Sportswear Ltd., in 1957. Its lone factory, in Toronto, unionized in the mid-1980s.After Mr. Tick’s grandson Dani Reiss took over as chief executive in 2001, he sought to increase worldwide sales of what had largely been a North American operation. Still, he committed to making its parkas in Canada even as much of the country’s apparel industry was moving offshore.“By keeping the majority of our production domestic, we contribute to local job growth and can more easily maintain our high manufacturing and labour standards,” the company wrote in its 2020 sustainability report.But Mr. Reiss has seemed more skeptical of unions than his predecessors at Canada Goose. After the company bought a production facility in Winnipeg in 2011, the union sought a voluntary recognition or a neutrality agreement that would allow workers there to unionize easily.“Dani Reiss said he wasn’t interested in doing that,” said Barry Fowlie, who for roughly a decade has directed the Canada Council of Workers United, the union that represents workers at the company.A company spokeswoman said the union had never asked for voluntary recognition “in any official context.”Bain Capital purchased a majority stake in Canada Goose in 2013 and listed it on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges in 2017.Under Bain’s ownership, the number of unionized workers increased to over 1,000 just before the pandemic, thanks to growth at the original Toronto plant and the addition of two more facilities there. A collective bargaining agreement that predated the new sites makes all Toronto-based production workers part of the union.But facilities in Winnipeg, where the company’s three factories had over 1,000 production workers before the pandemic, are not covered. The growth of the work force there has helped lower the company’s union membership among production workers to about one-third today, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Workers at the Winnipeg plants say many of them make the province’s minimum wage, which is about 12 Canadian dollars per hour (around $9.65), though workers can earn more if they exceed certain production targets. The company said nearly 70 percent of workers were making more than the minimum wage.Canada Goose committed to making its parkas in Canada, even as much of the country’s apparel industry was moving offshore. Mark Blinch/ReutersIn interviews, five workers complained that managers were often abusive toward the largely immigrant work force.One worker, Immanuelle Concepcion, said her supervisor flew into a rage over mistakes in some jackets she appeared to have worked on. “She told me, ‘How dare you allow this to happen? How dare you?’” Ms. Concepcion recalled. “I was shaking. I haven’t experienced humiliation that way.”The Canada Goose spokeswoman said that the company had gotten no reports of “frequent abuse” and that all reports of harassment were investigated.In June, the company disciplined two workers at one of its Winnipeg plants shortly after they had identified themselves as union supporters. One said he had routinely been wearing headphones while working, but was warned and then written up for it — on two consecutive days — only after he went to work wearing a union T-shirt.Until then, said the worker, Trevor Sinclair, “my supervisor never said anything about it.”Canada Goose said that “no employees face disciplinary action due to union organization” and that disciplinary action had been taken against Mr. Sinclair once management became aware of his violation.Nearly 30 percent of Canadian workers are union members, compared with about 11 percent of American workers. Mr. Sinclair said he felt that Canada Goose was essentially importing an American model of fighting unions.“The way they treat us is not how Canadians treat each other,” he said. “Management doesn’t really understand what Canada is about.”Philip Keith contributed reporting. More

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    Fed Unity Cracks as Inflation Rises and Officials Debate Future

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    Federal Reserve officials are debating what to do as price risks loom, even as its leaders and the White House say today’s surge will most likely cool.Federal Reserve officials spoke with one voice throughout the pandemic downturn, promising that monetary policy would be set to full-stimulus mode until the crisis was well and truly behind America. Suddenly, they are less in sync.Central bankers are increasingly divided over how to think about and respond to emerging risks after months of rising asset values and faster-than-expected price increases. While their political counterparts in the White House have been more unified in maintaining that the recent jump in price gains will fade as the economy gets past a reopening burst, Washington as a whole is wrestling with how to approach policy at a moment of intense uncertainty.The Fed’s top officials, including Chair Jerome H. Powell, acknowledge that a lasting period of uncomfortably high inflation is a possibility. But they have said it is more likely that recent price increases, which have come as the economy reopens from its coronavirus slumber, will fade.Other officials, like James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, have voiced more pointed concern that the pickup in prices might persist and have suggested that the Fed may need to slow its support for the economy more quickly as a result.Unwanted and persistent inflation seemed like a fringe possibility earlier this year, but it is becoming a central feature of economic policy debates as prices rise for used cars, airline tickets and restaurant meals. For the Fed, the risk that some of the current jump could last is helping to drive the discussion about how soon and how quickly officials should slow down their enormous government-backed bond-buying program — the first step in the central bank’s plan to reduce its emergency support for the economy.Fed officials have said for months that they want to achieve “substantial further progress” toward their goals of full employment and stable inflation before slowing the purchases, and they are just beginning to discuss a plan for that so-called taper. They are now wrestling with the reality that the nation is still missing 7.6 million jobs while the housing market is booming and prices have moved up faster than expected, prompting a range of views to surface in public and private.The bubbling debate reinforces that the central bank’s easy money policies won’t last forever, and sends a signal to markets that officials are closely attuned to inflationary pressures.“A pretty substantial part — or perhaps all — of the overshoot in inflation comes from categories that are directly affected by the reopening of the economy,” said Jerome Powell, the Fed chair.Al Drago/The New York Times“I see the debate and disagreement as the Fed at its best,” said Robert S. Kaplan, who is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and is one of the people pushing for the Fed to soon begin to pull back support. “In a situation this complex and this dynamic, if I weren’t seeing debate and disagreement, and there were unanimity, it would make me nervous.”The central bank’s 18 policy officials roundly say that the economy’s path is extremely hard to predict as it reopens from a once-in-a-century pandemic. But how they think about inflation after a string of strong recent price reports — and how they feel the Fed should react — varies.Inflation has spiked because of statistical quirks, but also because consumer demand is outstripping supply as the economy reopens and families open their wallets for dinners out and long-delayed vacations. Bottlenecks that have held up computer chip production and home-building should eventually fade. Some prices that had previously shot up, like those for lumber, are already starting to moderate.But if the reopening weirdness lasts long enough, it could cause businesses and consumers to anticipate higher inflation permanently, and act accordingly. Should that happen, or if workers begin to negotiate higher wages to cover the pop in living costs, faster price gains could stick around.“A new risk is that inflation may surprise still further to the upside as the reopening process continues, beyond the level necessary to simply make up for past misses to the low side,” Mr. Bullard said in a presentation last week. The Fed aims for 2 percent inflation as an average goal over time, without specifying the time frame.Other Fed officials have said today’s price pressures are likely to ease with time, but have not sounded confident that they will entirely disappear.“These upward price pressures may ease as the bottlenecks are worked out, but it could take some time,” Michelle Bowman, one of the Fed’s Washington-based governors, said in a recent speech.The Fed’s top leadership has offered a less alarmed take on the price trajectory. Mr. Powell and John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have said it is possible that prices could stay higher, but they have also said there’s little evidence so far to suggest that they will.“A pretty substantial part — or perhaps all — of the overshoot in inflation comes from categories that are directly affected by the reopening of the economy,” Mr. Powell said during congressional testimony on June 22.Mr. Williams has said there is even a risk that inflation could slow. The one-off factors pushing up prices now, like a surge in car prices, could reverse once supply recovers, dragging down future price gains.“You could see inflation coming in lower than expected,” he said last week.Which take on inflation prevails — risk-focused, watchful, or less fretful — will have implications for the economy. Officials are beginning to talk about when and how to slow down their $120 billion in monthly bond-buying, which is split between $80 billion in Treasury securities and $40 billion in government-backed mortgage debt.The Fed has held a discussion about slowing bond-buying before, after the global financial crisis, but that came during the rebound from a deep but otherwise more standard downturn: Demand was weak and the labor market climbed slowly back. This time, conditions are much more volatile since the recession was an anomaly, driven by a pandemic instead of a financial or business shock.In the current setting, officials who are more worried about prices getting out of hand may feel more urgency to dial back their economic stimulus, which stokes demand.“This is a volatile environment; we’ve got upside inflation risk here,” Mr. Bullard said at a separate event last week. “Creating some optionality for the committee might be really useful here, and that will be part of the taper debate going forward.”Mr. Kaplan said he had been vocal about his preferences on when tapering should start during private Fed discussions, though publicly he will say only that he would prefer to start cutting policy support “sooner rather than later.”“I see the debate and disagreement as the Fed at its best,” said Robert S. Kaplan, a Fed official who is pushing to start easing support.Edgard Garrido/ReutersHe thinks moving more quickly to slow bond purchases would take a “risk management” approach to both price gains and asset market excess: reducing the chances of a bad outcome now, which might mean the Fed doesn’t have to raise interest rates as early down the road.Several officials, including Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Bullard, have said it might be wise for the Fed to slow its purchases of mortgage debt more rapidly than they slow bond-buying overall, concerned that the Fed’s buying might be contributing to a hot housing market.But even that conclusion isn’t uniform. Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, and Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, have suggested that the mortgage-backed purchases affect financial conditions as a whole — suggesting they may be less keen on cutting them back faster.The price outlook will also inform when the Fed first raises interest rates. The Fed has said that it wants to achieve 2 percent inflation on average over time and maximum employment before lifting borrowing costs away from rock bottom.Rate increases are not yet up for discussion, but Fed officials’ published forecasts show that the policy-setting committee is increasingly divided on when that liftoff will happen. While five expect rates to remain unchanged through late 2023, opinions are otherwise all over the place. Two officials see one increase by the end of that year, three see two, three see three and another three see four. Two think the Fed will have raised rates six times.Both Fed policy debates will affect financial markets. Bond-buying and low rates tend to pump up prices on houses, stocks and other assets, so the Fed’s pullback could cause them to cool off. And they matter for the economy: If the Fed removes support too late and inflation gets out of control, it could take a recession to rein it in again. If it removes its help prematurely, the slowdown in demand could leave output and the labor market weak.The Fed will be working against a changing backdrop as it tries to decide what full employment and stable prices mean in a post-pandemic world. More money from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic aid bill will soon begin to flow into the economy. For example, the Treasury Department in July will begin depositing direct monthly payments into the accounts of millions of parents who qualify for an expanded child tax credit.But expanded unemployment insurance benefits are ending in many states. That could leave consumers with less money and slow down demand if it takes would-be workers time to find new jobs.As the trends play out, White House officials will also be watching to see whether the economy is hot or not. The administration is trying to pass a follow-up fiscal package that would focus on longer-term investments, and Republican opposition has centered partly on inflation risks.For Mr. Kaplan at the Fed, the point is to be watchful. He said it was important to learn from the lessons of the post-2008 crisis recovery, when monetary policy support was removed before inflation had meaningfully accelerated — but also to understand that this rebound is unique.“Realizing that this is a different situation is a wise thing,” Mr. Kaplan said. More

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    Bruce Springsteen Is Back on Broadway. The Workers Are Coming Back, Too.

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    Broadway took its first steps back with the return of Bruce Springsteen’s show, and no one is happier than Jim Barry, an usher at the St. James Theater for 20 years.Jim Barry, masked and ready, perched at the top of the theater stairs, cupping his hands around the outstretched smartphones so he could more easily make out the seat numbers.“How you doing? Nice jacket.”“Go this way — it’s an easier walk.”“Do you need help sir? The bathroom’s right there.”It was Saturday night at the St. James Theater.Bruce Springsteen was back on the stage.Fans were back in the seats.And, 15 months after the pandemic had shut down Broadway, Barry, who has worked as an usher at the St. James for 20 years, was back at work, doling out compliments and reassurance as he steered people toward the mezzanine, the restroom, the bar.“Springsteen on Broadway” is essentially a one-man show, but its return has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James — not only Barry, but also another 30 ushers and ticket-takers, as well as merch sellers, bar staff, porters, cleaners, stagehands, box office workers, a pair of managers and an engineer.The return of “Springsteen on Broadway” has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore shows, and jobs, will return in August and September as Broadway’s 41 theaters slowly come back to life. Ultimately, a Broadway rebound promises to benefit not just theater workers but hotel clerks and bartenders and taxi drivers and workers in the many industries that rely on theater traffic, which can be considerable: in the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a Broadway show.Barry, a gregarious 65-year-old Staten Island grandfather, loves theater, for sure, but also depends on the job for income and basic health insurance.“This job is not for everybody, but I made it my own,” he said. Barry, a solidly built man with white hair who is often mistaken for a security officer, takes pride at being punctual, and jovial, and polite. “I can tell somebody tapping me on the back where the bathroom is, while telling somebody in front of me where their seats are, and also waving to somebody in the corner. It’s controlled insanity.”As he returned to work following the shutdown, there were a few changes to master. He had to wear a mask — they are required for employees, but not patrons — and struggled to feel comfortable making small talk through the fabric. And tickets were now all digital, which meant his signature move, which involved passing tickets behind his back as he accepted, scrutinized, and handed back the proffered stubs, was no longer useful; instead he needed to figure out how to quickly decipher all those different screen fonts.Still, he was thrilled to be back.“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” he said. “It’s where I want to be.”“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” Barry said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBarry, originally from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, took an unusual path to the theater industry. For 27 years, he had worked in banking, first as a teller, and then as a bank officer in Times Square.He saw theater, occasionally, and loved it. As a teenager he saw Danny Kaye in “Two by Two,” and later he saw “Jesus Christ Superstar.” (“I couldn’t believe it was so fantastic.”) But the production he most excitedly remembers seeing is “Grease,” at the Royale Theater; a friend got him access to walk onto the stage before the show. “It gave me the bug,” he said.So when he decided he needed to earn more money, and began looking for a second job, he reached out to one of his customers at the bank, a woman who worked in payroll at Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway theaters, including the St. James. She asked if he’d be open to ushering.That was in 2001. The first shift he worked was at a dress rehearsal for “The Producers,” which was about to open. “You know you belong when your body just gets enveloped in euphoria,” he said.He was hooked. For years, he continued working full-time at the bank, while also working nights and weekends at the theater; in 2016 he left the bank for good, and now he works six days a week at the theater (the shifts are short — a full usher shift is 4.5 hours, but at each show half the staff gets to leave 30 minutes after curtain, which is two hours after their start time).It’s a union job, for which standard pay is $83.78 per show; Barry has the higher rank of director, so he makes about $710 a week, and supplements his income with Social Security and a small bank pension. He was kept afloat during the pandemic by unemployment; although he missed the theater, he also was glad to have more time to spend with his girlfriend.He has a bear of a commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work, depending on whether he drives or takes a bus, and how bad the traffic is. He arrives early, changes into his Jujamcyn uniform (black suit, black shirt, black tie, with a red J on the chest), and sits in a theater doorway on West 44th Street that he calls “my stoop,” enjoying coffee and a roll and greeting passers-by, sometimes posing for a picture with a passing actor.Barry has a long commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough he loves the theater, seeing shows other than the ones he’s working is hard — he’s generally on duty when other shows are running. But he usually gets to the big ones.At his own theater, he’s seen a mix of hits and flops. With the latter, he said, “you just feel bad for everybody.” And what if he doesn’t like a show he’s working? “We have the luxury of lobbies.”There are, of course, headaches to manage — intoxicated patrons, and insistent videographers — but he prides himself on doing so with civility. For the cellphone scofflaws, whose ranks have swelled since he began, he will sometimes simply hover, which usually shames people into compliance; other times he will use a flashlight or a headshake to get someone’s attention, and once in a while he’ll say something like, “Please don’t do that. If they see you, I’m going to get in trouble.” (At “Springsteen on Broadway,” no photos or videos are allowed until the bows.)How much does Barry love being part of the business? In March, sad not to be at work for his 20th anniversary at the theater, he and his girlfriend drove into Times Square, and he posed for a photograph in front of each of the 41 Broadway theaters.“There’s that old adage — when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,” he said. “I am so lucky — I love to make people feel good about coming to our house.” More