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    Amazon Union Group, Challenging Christian Smalls, Seeks Vote

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

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    Los Angeles Hotel Workers Go on Strike

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    The NewsThousands of hotel workers in Southern California walked off the job on Sunday demanding higher pay and better benefits, just as hordes of tourists descended on the region for the Fourth of July holiday.“Workers have been pent up and frustrated and angry about what’s happened during the pandemic combined with the inability to pay their rent and stay in Los Angeles,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, the union representing the workers. “So people feel liberated, it’s Fourth of July, freedom is reigning in Los Angeles and hotel workers are leading that fight.”Representatives for the hotels have said that the union had not been bargaining in good faith, and that leaders were determined to disrupt operations.“The hotels want to continue to provide strong wages, affordable quality family health care and a pension,” Keith Grossman, a spokesman for the coordinated bargaining group consisting of more than 40 Los Angeles and Orange County hotels, said in a statement.The strike is part of a wave of recent labor actions in the nation’s second-largest metropolis, where high costs of living have made it difficult for many workers — from housekeepers to Hollywood writers — to stay afloat.Thousands of hotel workers in Southern California walked off the job, demanding higher pay and better benefits.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesWhy It MattersWorkers across Southern California in a range of industries have threatened to strike or walked off the job in recent months, displaying unusual levels of solidarity with other unions as they push for higher pay and better working conditions.Dockworkers disrupted operations for weeks at the colossal ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach until they reached a tentative deal in June. And screenwriters have been picketing outside the gates of Hollywood studios for about two months.Hugo Soto-Martinez, a Los Angeles City Council member who worked as an organizer for Unite Here Local 11, said that the breadth of industries locked in labor fights demonstrated frustration especially among younger workers, who have seen inequality widen and opportunities evaporate.“It’s homelessness, it’s the cost of housing,” he said. “I think people are understanding those issues in a much more palpable way.”The hotel workers’ strike comes just as the summer tourism season ramps up, and labor leaders say they are hoping to capitalize on that momentum.Last year, tourism in the city reached its highest levels since the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board. Roughly 46 million people visited, and there was $34.5 billion in total business sales in 2022, reaching 91 percent of the record set in 2019.But for many workers like Diana Rios-Sanchez, who works as a housekeeping supervisor at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, the pay has not helped to keep up with inflation.She often wonders how long she and her three children, who live in a one-bedroom apartment in El Sereno, a neighborhood on the Eastside of Los Angeles, can afford to stay in the city.“All we do in hotels is work and work and get by with very little,” Ms. Rios-Sanchez said. “We take care of the tourists, but no one takes care of us.”Business groups say that simply demanding that employers pay workers more does not address the much-deeper problems that have led to sky-high costs of living in California.BackgroundThe union has been negotiating since April for a new contract. In June, members approved a strike.The group has asked that hourly wages, now $20 and $25 for housekeepers, immediately increase by $5, followed by $3 bumps in each subsequent year of a three-year contract.By contrast, Mr. Grossman said in the statement that the hotels had offered to increase pay for housekeepers currently making $25 an hour in Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles to more than $31 per hour by January 2027.On Thursday, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, a large hotel in downtown Los Angeles, announced that it had staved off a walkout of its workers with a contract deal.Agreements made this year will set pay levels ahead of the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics, which are expected to be enormous tourist draws to the region.What’s NextMr. Petersen said on Sunday that the strike would go on for “multiple days.” The Hotel Association of Los Angeles had said in a statement that the hotels would be able to continue serving visitors.Anna Betts More

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    L.A. Workers Are Feeling Emboldened as Unions Pressure Employers in California

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    California union members are pressuring employers over wages in one of the nation’s most labor-friendly states.In the two months since they went on strike, screenwriters have become a fixture outside studios in Southern California, signs aloft as the traffic roars past. In many parts of America, theirs would be a lonely vigil.Not in Los Angeles.At the behemoth ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, operations were disrupted for weeks until West Coast dockworkers reached a tentative contract deal in mid-June. Across the city, schools shut down for three days this spring when bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers walked out.Now, the union representing some 15,000 hotel workers in Los Angeles is threatening to strike this Fourth of July weekend, just as the summer tourism season ramps up. And more than 160,000 actors are poised to shut down Hollywood productions if they cannot reach a new contract deal later this month.Unions have been embattled nationally, but in California they are having a moment.“We’re calling it the ‘hot labor summer,’” said Lorena Gonzalez, the chief officer of the California Labor Federation, which represents more than 2.1 million union members statewide. “We have sparks and fires everywhere, and we’re not letting it die down in California. We’re fanning the flames.”California has long been a labor stronghold, with Democrats in control of state government and most large cities. Despite a string of labor wins in recent years — including a minimum wage of $15.50 an hour, more than double the federal rate — workers say they are feeling ever more pressure from inflation, housing shortages and technological disruptions.The Unite Here Local 11 union is seeking higher wages and better benefits. Some 15,000 members are threatening to strike at dozens of hotels in Los Angeles.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe unemployment rate remains below 5 percent in California, so workers know they have leverage. And numerous contracts are expiring this year, forcing California employers to negotiate with unions as they watch picket lines form daily in Los Angeles. Roughly half of the large work stoppages in 2023 have taken place in the state.On Friday, a major contract for the hotel workers ran out, while the actors’ union said that it would extend its expiring contract through July 12, buying more time to continue negotiations.Hotel workers could walk out as soon as this weekend, however. Operators of hotels might be able to muddle through a short-term walkout, but a longer one could deter tourists from visiting Los Angeles in the busy summer months, and erode the convention business that has rebounded since the beginning of the pandemic, said Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist with the Milken Institute, an economic think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif.Simultaneous strikes of hotel workers, screenwriters and actors would ripple first through Los Angeles businesses that rely on the region’s signature tourism and Hollywood industries. And they could have a broader effect beyond Los Angeles; during the 2007 screenwriters strike, the California economy lost $2.1 billion, according to one estimate.The Hotel Association of Los Angeles said in a statement that it had bargained in good faith and would continue to serve tourists during a walkout. Keith Grossman, a spokesman for the coordinated bargaining group consisting of more than 40 Los Angeles and Orange County hotels, said in a statement that it had offered to increase pay for housekeepers currently making $25 an hour in Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles to more than $31 per hour by January 2027.“If there is a strike, it will occur because the union is determined to have one,” Mr. Grossman said. “The hotels want to continue to provide strong wages, affordable quality family health care and a pension.”A recurring theme this year among striking workers has been the unbearable cost of living in Southern California. School employees said in March that they had to take two or three side gigs to afford their bills. Screenwriters have echoed that lament. A University of Southern California survey recently found that 60 percent of local tenants said they were “rent-burdened,” spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing.“How can anyone keep living here?” asked Lucero Ramirez, 37, who has worked as a housekeeper at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills since 2018. On Thursday, Ms. Ramirez gathered inside an office space near downtown Los Angeles with dozens of other hotel workers represented by Unite Here Local 11 to decorate poster boards and staple together fliers ahead of a planned strike. Earlier that day, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites announced that it had staved off a walkout with a contract deal.The union has asked that the hourly wage, now $20 to $25 for housekeepers, immediately increase by $5, followed by $3 bumps in each subsequent year of a three-year contract. Hotel workers — and their employers — are well aware that this deal will set pay levels ahead of the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics, when tourists will flood the region.Ms. Ramirez, who earns $25 an hour, has lived in a rent-controlled, one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood for the past decade, where she pays $1,100 a month. The hot water often goes out, and the flooring in her unit is cracked and decaying, she said.Lucero Ramirez, a housekeeper who’s been working at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills since 2018.Philip Cheung for The New York Times“The landlord wants me to leave so they can boost the rent,” she said. “They want me out, but I cannot afford to go anywhere else, I would have to leave the city.”Labor power is a function of the electorate in California, where Democrats have nearly a 2-to-1 edge over Republicans, supermajority control of the state Legislature, a lock on state offices — and owe a debt to unions, whose members routinely knock on doors and contribute money to liberal candidates.Next year, voters in California will consider an initiative that would raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour. In Los Angeles, members of the City Council are weighing a plan that would raise the minimum wage for tourism workers to $25 an hour. Maria Elena Durazo, a Democratic state senator and former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, is carrying legislation that would give all health care workers a $25 minimum hourly wage.Tens of thousands of unionized teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other employees at the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest district, won major raises this year after their high-profile walkout in March. Smaller labor actions have proliferated as well, including strippers organizing in May at a North Hollywood club, and Amazon drivers walking out in June at a warehouse in Palmdale, Calif. The Los Angeles Dodgers averted a strike by giving ushers, groundskeepers and other workers significant raises.Across the country, union membership as a percentage of the labor force has dropped to a record low of 10.1 percent of employed wage and salary workers. In California, however, such membership rose last year to 16.1 percent of wage and salary workers, compared with 15.9 percent in 2021.“This is a tug of war between inflation and wages,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “Inflation has been winning and workers are trying to catch up with inflation that’s been persistent.”Nancy Hoffman Vanyek, the chief executive of the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce, which represents about 400 businesses from one-person operations to Hollywood studios, said that workers should be able to afford to live in Los Angeles. But she said simply forcing employers to pay more was a Band-Aid for a much deeper problem in California.“It’s business that always has to bear the brunt of fixing these issues, when we’re not looking at what’s causing them,” she said. “What’s causing the high cost of living in our state? What’s causing the high cost of housing?”Workers nationally are trying to lock in gains from a job market that has remained tight, as employers brace for a possible recession. Rail workers were on the brink of a strike last year, while employees at manufacturing companies like John Deere and Kellogg went on strike in late 2021.In California, the activism has been further driven by white-collar workers, whose jobs have been threatened by the rise of artificial intelligence and the gig economy.“It’s remarkable, the degree to which they are getting support from other unions,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, who directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “There’s a new sense of commonality between the retail clerk who is being told to come in every other day from 3 to 7 p.m. and the screenwriter who is suddenly being offered seven episodes to write and then, goodbye.”Writers and supporters were on strike outside the Paramount Pictures studio in Los Angeles on Wednesday.Morgan Lieberman for The New York Times More

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    Starbucks Union Raises Pressure With Plan to Strike Over Pride Décor

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    Walkouts were called at more than 150 stores in the next week after workers said Pride Month decorations had been banned in some, a claim the company denied.Thousands of workers at organized Starbucks stores across the nation will stage strikes over the next week, their union said on Friday, after workers in some states said management prohibited them from putting up decorations for Pride Month.The company denied the accusations and issued a statement declaring that it “has been and will continue to be at the forefront of supporting the LGBTQIA2+ community.”Starbucks Workers United said employees at more than 150 stores would strike over the company’s labor practices and its “hypocritical treatment of LGBTQIA+ workers.”The union represents about 8,000 of the company’s workers in more than 300 stores.Starbucks workers in a number of stores said this month that they had been told that no decorations for the annual L.G.B.T.Q. celebration, such as rainbow flags, were allowed this year, a shift from previous years. In interviews arranged through their union, workers said the given reasons varied.Starbucks, which has roughly 9,300 corporate-owned stores in the United States, has said decoration policies are often specific to each store.A Starbucks official involved in the response to the union campaign said the company decided last year, after the union campaign began to spread across the country, to be more aggressive in enforcing dress codes and policies on what could be posted in stores. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, attributed the change to concern that many stores would otherwise become inundated with union paraphernalia.But a Starbucks spokeswoman on Friday called the claim “false” and said there had been no change in the company’s guidance on displays and decorations in the past nine years.A corporate statement — over the names of Laxman Narasimhan, the chief executive, and Sara Trilling, executive vice president and president, North America — did not address store-by-store practices. But it noted that for Pride Month, the rainbow flag was being flown over the company’s Seattle headquarters and in thousands of Starbucks stores.“We continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities including for U.S. Pride Month in June,” it said.Casey Moore, a union spokeswoman, derided the corporate statement, saying, “Instead of apologizing for there being upper management across the country who made the decision to not allow Pride decorations, they’ve doubled down that it didn’t happen.”In addition to its complaints over the Pride decoration issue, the union said it was striking over the company’s broader response to the organizing campaign, including widespread retaliation against union supporters. The union said in its statement that workers were “demanding that Starbucks negotiate a fair contract with union stores and stop their illegal union-busting campaign.”The company has consistently denied accusations of illegality.Starbucks workers and the union say rules on employee conduct have been enforced more aggressively as a way to intimidate and retaliate against union supporters.“They’re trying to make people feel unwelcome in whatever way possible — through more strict enforcement of the dress code or anything,” said Ms. Moore, the union spokeswoman. “The Pride decorations are another level of that.”In a sweeping ruling in March, a federal administrative law judge found that Starbucks had repeatedly violated labor law by “more strictly enforcing the dress code and personal appearance policy in response to union activity.” The judge also found that the company had more strictly enforced its attendance policy and its policy on soliciting and distributing notices within stores.Starbucks has disputed the findings and is appealing the decision to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington.Unionized Starbucks workers have staged waves of strikes in the last several months over what they say are the company’s delay tactics at the bargaining table and other anti-union tactics like retaliatory firings and store closings. The administrative judge’s ruling in March also found that Starbucks had illegally dismissed seven Buffalo-area workers last year in response to union activity.In April, the labor board issued a complaint accusing the company of failing to bargain in good faith at more than 100 stores. It was one of dozens of complaints tied to labor law violations that the board has issued since the union first filed petitions seeking votes in three Buffalo-area stores in August 2021.The company has denied the accusations and blames the union for bargaining delays, citing the union’s insistence on using video-chat software to broadcast sessions to employees not at the bargaining table.Howard Schultz, shortly after stepping down as Starbucks’ chief executive in March, denied allegations of anti-union conduct in testimony before a Senate committee. More

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    UPS Workers Authorize Teamsters Union to Call Strike

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    A walkout is possible after the contract for more than 325,000 workers expires this summer. Negotiations began in April but have yet to resolve pay.United Parcel Service workers have authorized their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to call a strike as soon as Aug. 1, after the current contract expires, the Teamsters announced Friday.The Teamsters represent more than 325,000 UPS employees in the United States, where the company has nearly 450,000 employees overall. The union said 97 percent had voted in favor of strike authorization.Many unions hold such votes to create leverage at the bargaining table, but a much smaller percentage end up following through. “The results do not mean a strike is imminent and do not impact our current business operations in any way,” UPS said in a statement, adding that it was “confident that we will reach an agreement.”A UPS strike could have significant economic fallout. The company handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of parcels shipped each day in the United States, according to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index. And while UPS’s competition has grown in recent years, rivals would be hard-pressed to replace that lost capacity quickly, leaving some customers in the lurch and others facing higher costs.“What happens when you try to stuff 25 percent more food into a stomach that’s 90 percent full?” said Alan Amling, a fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute and a former UPS executive.The two sides have reached tentative agreements on a number of issues since they began negotiating a national contract in April, most recently on heat safety, including a requirement for air conditioning in new trucks beginning in January and additional fans and venting for existing trucks.But the negotiators have yet to tackle pay increases, which the Teamsters say are overdue amid the company’s strong pandemic-era performance. The company’s adjusted net income increased by more than 70 percent from 2019 to last year.The union has also focused on revisiting pay disparities for a category of driver who typically works on weekends.The UPS chief executive, Carol Tomé, who started in that position in 2020, said on a recent earnings call that UPS was aligned with the union on “several key issues.” She added that outsiders should not put too much stock in the “great deal of noise” that was likely to arise during the negotiation.Looming over the talks is the political standing of the Teamsters’ leader, Sean O’Brien, who during his campaign for the union’s presidency in 2021 repeatedly accused his predecessor, James P. Hoffa, of being overly conciliatory toward employers.Mr. O’Brien complained that Mr. Hoffa had essentially forced a concessionary contract onto UPS workers in 2018 after union members voted down the deal. He criticized his opponent for the presidency, a Hoffa-aligned candidate, for being unlikely to strike.“You already conceded that in your 25-year career, you only struck six times, so UPS knows you’re not going to strike,” Mr. O’Brien said at a candidates’ debate.Mr. O’Brien has largely maintained his aggressive stance on UPS since taking over as president last year. Speaking in October to activists with Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reformist group that backed his candidacy, Mr. O’Brien vowed that “this UPS agreement is going to be the defining moment in organized labor.”Compensation for UPS drivers is generally higher than pay at the company’s competitors. UPS said that the average full-time delivery driver with four years’ experience makes $42 an hour, and that part-time workers who sort packages make $20 an hour on average after 30 days.The groups receive the same benefits package, which includes health care and pension contributions and is worth about $50,000 a year for full-time drivers, the company says.Beyond overall pay levels, the union has said it wants to eliminate a category of driver created under the 2018 contract.The company said the category was intended for hybrid workers who performed jobs like sorting packages on some days while driving on other days, especially Saturdays, to address the growing demand for weekend delivery.But the Teamsters said these workers never followed the hybrid arrangement and simply drove full time from Tuesday to Saturday, for less pay than other full-time drivers. The company says that the weekend drivers make about 87 percent of the base pay of regular full-time drivers, and that some employees have worked under a hybrid arrangement.In the event of a strike, deliveries to consumers, such as e-commerce orders, would probably be among the first to be disrupted. But experts said the supply chain could suffer, too. Some suppliers would struggle to quickly ship goods like automotive parts to manufacturers, potentially causing production slowdowns.Even a short strike could take a toll on UPS. Many customers long relied exclusively on the company, but that started to change after the Teamsters last went on strike in 1997, Mr. Amling said. After that strike, which lasted just over two weeks, more customers began to work with multiple carriers. The consequences were masked by gains from the rise of e-commerce and fewer competitors to choose from, but the company may not be so fortunate today.Niraj Chokshi More

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    West Coast Dockworkers Reach Contract Deal With Port Operators

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    After a year of prolonged negotiations that have led to delays and declines in cargo, the two sides agreed to a new contract with help from the Biden administration.After a year of contract negotiations that resulted in numerous delays and a decline in the movement of cargo at ports along the West Coast, union dockworkers and port operators have reached a tentative deal set to last for six years.In a joint statement released late Wednesday, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association announced a tentative agreement on a new contract that covers 22,000 workers at 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle, some of the busiest in the world.Details about the agreement, which is expected to be formally ratified by both sides, were not immediately released.President Biden, who stepped in last year to urge a swift resolution, released a statement congratulating both parties for reaching an agreement “after a long and sometimes acrimonious negotiation.”“As I have always said, collective bargaining works,” Mr. Biden said. “Above all I congratulate the port workers, who have served heroically through the pandemic and the countless challenges it brought and will finally get the pay, benefits, and quality of life they deserve.”Mr. Biden also thanked Julie Su, the acting U.S. labor secretary, for assistance in finalizing the deal.The outcome on Wednesday somewhat mirrored past negotiations between the two sides. In 2015, as negotiations went on for nine months, officials in the Obama administration intervened amid work slowdowns and increased congestion at ports.The protracted negotiations between the union and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents the shipping terminals, have focused on disagreements over wages and the expanding role of automation.In recent weeks the Longshore and Warehouse Union, or the I.L.W.U., has staged a series of work slowdowns at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which in recent months have lost sizable business to ports along the Gulf and East Coasts. Cargo processing at the Port of Los Angeles, a key entry point for shipments from Asia, was down roughly 40 percent in February, compared with the year before.Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter to Mr. Biden urging the administration to intervene immediately in the negotiations and appoint an independent mediator to help the two parties reach an agreement.Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, said the ongoing delays and disruptions have had a negative impact on retailers and other stakeholders who rely on the West Coast ports for business operations.“As we enter the all-important peak shipping season for holiday merchandise, retailers need a seamless flow of containers through the ports and to their distribution centers,” Mr. Shay said.On Wednesday, Gene Seroka, head of the Port of Los Angeles, said in a statement that the tentative agreement between the I.L.W.U. and the Pacific Maritime “brings the stability and confidence that customers have been seeking.”Matt Schrap, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, a trade group for transportation companies serving West Coast ports, said his organization is eager for cargo traffic to return to normal soon.“We need the certainty,” he said. “This has been a long, hard process.” More

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    Supreme Court Backs Employer in Suit Over Strike Losses

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    The justices ruled that federal labor law did not block state courts from ruling on a case regarding damage caused when workers walked off the job.The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that federal labor law did not protect a union from potential liability for damage that arose during a strike, and that a state court should resolve questions of liability.The majority found that if accusations by an employer are true, actions during a strike by a local Teamsters union were not even arguably protected by federal law because the union took “affirmative steps to endanger” the employer’s property “rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk.” It asked the state court to decide the merits of the accusations.The opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Brett M. Kavanaugh.Three conservative justices backed more sweeping concurring opinions. A single justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.Some legal experts had said a union setback in the case would discourage workers from striking by making the union potentially liable for losses that an employer incurred during a work stoppage.“It will definitely lead to more expensive-to-resolve lawsuits against labor unions,” said Charlotte Garden, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who was an author of a brief in support of the union. Professor Garden did note, however, that the decision was less far-reaching in discouraging strike activity than it could have been.Others have argued that the ruling was necessary to prevent workers from intentionally harming an employer’s property, an act not protected by federal labor law, and that such restrictions do not jeopardize the right to strike.“Damages from intentional destruction of property are not inherent to the act of striking,” said Michael O’Neill of the Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy group that submitted a brief in the case. As a result, Mr. O’Neill said, the law does not shield workers or unions from liability for such damage.The case, Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, No. 21-1449, involved unionized employees of a concrete mixing and pouring company who walked off the job during contract negotiations, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. The employer argued that it suffered substantial monetary losses because the abandoned concrete was unusable.The union argued that it had taken reasonable steps to avoid harming the employer’s property, as federal law requires, because workers kept their trucks running as they walked off the job. That allowed the company to dispose of the concrete without damage to the trucks. The union said the lost concrete amounted to the spoilage of a product, for which unions were not typically held liable.At issue were two key questions. The first was procedural: whether the case should be allowed to go forward in state court, as employers generally prefer. The alternative is that the state court — in this case, Washington — should step aside in favor of the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency responsible for resolving labor disputes.The second question was about what economic damage is acceptable during a strike, and what amounts to vandalism — which federal labor law does not protect — of property or equipment.The two issues are linked because under legal precedent, the labor board is supposed to elbow aside state courts when the alleged actions during the strike are at least “arguably protected” by federal law.The Supreme Court ruled that the union’s actions, as alleged by the employer, were not arguably protected because the spoilage of the product was not merely an indirect result of the strike. Instead, the employer contended in a lawsuit, “the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product” and then waited until the concrete was inside the trucks before walking off the job.“In so doing, they not only destroyed the concrete but also put Glacier’s trucks in harm’s way,” the majority opinion said. It sent the case back to Washington State court to be litigated.Sean M. O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, issued a defiant statement after the decision was announced. “The Teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter their size or the depth of their pockets,” he said.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the court “got it right” in ruling that federal law “does not pre-empt state tort claims against a union for intentional destruction of an employer’s property during a labor dispute.”In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed that the Washington State court should be allowed to take up the case. He wrote that in a future case, the Supreme Court should reconsider whether the National Labor Relations Board should have such wide latitude to take the first pass in such cases.Justice Jackson noted in her dissent that the labor board had issued its own complaint since the case was first filed in Washington State. In issuing its complaint, the labor board’s general counsel found that the strike activity was in fact protected. This by definition meant that the activity was “arguably protected,” Justice Jackson wrote, requiring the state court to stand down.The decision, which some experts said could cause unions to reconsider striking or take a more cautious approach when a perishable product could be harmed, followed a series of rulings that appeared to scale back the power of unions and workers.The court ruled in 2018 that companies could prohibit workers from collectively bringing legal actions against their employers, even though the National Labor Relations Act protects workers’ rights to engage in so-called concerted activities.In the same year, the court ruled that public-sector unions could no longer require nonmembers to pay fees that help fund bargaining and other activities that unions do on their behalf.In 2021, the court deemed unconstitutional a California regulation that gave unions access to agricultural employers’ property for recruitment.In interviews, union leaders said that the ruling on Thursday would further tilt an already uneven playing field toward employers, and that it was often not a strike itself but the threat of a strike that helped unions win concessions.“Without the threat of a strike, you have little leverage in negotiations,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has organized successful strikes.Mr. O’Neill’s group, the Landmark Legal Foundation, argued that a ruling against the employer could have jeopardized the labor peace that the National Labor Relations Act was enacted to assure, “placing workers and the public at risk” by essentially blessing acts of vandalism and sabotage.Unions and workers often deliberately plan strikes to exploit employers’ vulnerability — for example, Amazon workers walked out during the holiday season — and rely on an element of surprise to maximize the economic harm they inflict, and therefore the leverage the union gains.In the near term, unions that are contemplating strikes or already striking, such as unions representing Hollywood writers or United Parcel Service employees whose contract expires this summer, may have to take greater precautions to insulate themselves from legal liability.Such precautions will typically weaken the impact of strikes, said Ms. Garden, the University of Minnesota professor. “You could get unions prophylactically adopting less effective tactics — things like giving advance warning about strike, which gives the employer a lot more time to hire replacement workers,” she said.Other unions may simply decide not to strike at all out of fear of heightened legal exposure, she said.Further out, unions and their political allies may seek to enact legislation that explicitly exempts workers from liability for certain types of economic damage that arise during a strike.“There will be efforts in blue states to make the best of it, to do something protective,” said Sharon Block, a former Biden and Obama administration official who is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School.But even these laws could wind up being challenged before the Supreme Court, experts said.Adam Liptak More

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    Remote Work Gives Amazon Workers a Common Cause

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    At Amazon, warehouse workers have shown support for corporate colleagues, noting they have nothing to gain if office workers lose flexibility that the pandemic proved possible.Eric Deshawn Lerma felt waves of anxiety when he sat down to tally the new costs in his routine since Amazon’s return to the office this spring. There’s parking. There’s fuel. There’s lunch. They add up to at least $200 extra a month, all to support a policy whose justification he can’t fully understand — after three years in which he and his teammates have been doing their jobs from home.Still, when Mr. Lerma heard that some of his colleagues were organizing a walkout to protest the return-to-office policy, which asks employees to come in at least three days a week, he initially wavered on whether to participate. After all, he realizes that thousands of Amazon workers have no flexibility to work from home. Their jobs require them to go into warehouses to do physically taxing labor each day.“It really provided me with a sense of internal conflict about working from home being a luxury or a right,” said Mr. Lerma, 27, who is an executive assistant in Seattle and joined the company, where he feels he has grown personally and professionally, in 2022. “There are different rights and amenities afforded to my role.”He ultimately decided, though, that he would probably join virtually. “While warehouse workers have much harsher working conditions than I do,” he said, “I should still be able to reserve the right to protect my autonomy as an employee.”Thousands of corporate employees, across industries, who remain adamant that they do not want to return to the office are now confronting a tension: How do their demands compare with those of the millions of workers whose jobs have never permitted them the ease of remote work? And can a corporate employee’s advocacy be of use to workers, including those trying to unionize, outside the corporate sphere?This tension follows a pandemic that exacerbated the divide between white-collar workers who could do their jobs from the safety of their homes and workers who often could not and were exposed to higher Covid risks.Simultaneously, workers in both the corporate and noncorporate realms have re-evaluated their working conditions, quit their jobs in waves and called for higher wages, amid a tight labor market at one point called a “workers economy.” The unemployment rate this spring has remained low, at 3.4 percent, with wages rising.Most Amazon workers have been working at company facilities throughout the pandemic.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAt Amazon, hundreds of corporate employees plan to walk off the job on Wednesday, for one hour during lunchtime, in protest of the company’s return-to-office rule, among other issues including layoffs and the company’s impact on the climate. Weeks earlier, employees voiced their frustrations with the R.T.O. policy in a Remote Advocacy channel, with over 30,000 members, on the Slack workplace messaging system.The company has more than 350,000 corporate and tech employees globally. More than 800 in Seattle and 1,600 globally have pledged to participate in the walkout. Some employees, particularly working parents, pin some of their frustration to the financial toll of returning to the office, especially the cost and pressures of child care.The vast majority of Amazon’s more than one million workers, including those who formed a union at a Staten Island warehouse, have been working in person throughout the pandemic.Apple, where employees issued open letters protesting in-person work, and at the Gap have encountered a similar dynamic. At Starbucks, more than 70 named employees, along with others who remained anonymous, released a petition this year urging the company to permit them to keep working remotely. Members of the union representing Starbucks baristas have been supportive of these corporate workers, even though most of the company’s roughly 250,000 U.S. employees, including those across more than 300 unionized stores, cannot work from home.Indeed, many workers in warehouses and stores have been quick to show support for their corporate colleagues, noting that they have nothing to gain from seeing office workers lose out on the flexibility that the pandemic proved was possible.“The work that we’re doing is in two separate fields,” said Anna Ortega, 23, who is active in Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, a group of warehouse workers, and has been working at an Amazon facility in San Bernardino, Calif., for almost two years. “It’s just showing us that Amazon has a problem with workers and listening to us.”Ms. Ortega spends her days lifting 50-pound packages — a task she could never do from home. But she said she supported the Amazon workers who were asking for the flexibility to keep working remotely.“If your employees are happy and are able to work productively from home, I think they would be able to bring better results,” Ms. Ortega said.An Amazon spokesman, Brad Glasser, said that the company respected “employees’ rights to express their opinions and peacefully assemble,” but that it had felt “good energy” since more employees returned to the office.Members of a union representing Starbucks store staff have offered support to corporate employees who petitioned in favor of remote work.Audra Melton for The New York TimesAt Starbucks, members of the union representing store workers have corresponded with corporate employees on Discord and other platforms, offering their support. And when corporate employees released their petition, they asked the company both to reverse its return-to-office policy and to allow free and fair union elections across stores.Jake Sklarew, 34, a software engineer at Starbucks who signed the petition, was frustrated by the return-to-office policy because during the pandemic he had bought a home in an affordable area, 30 miles from the office, thinking he’d be able to keep working remotely. Earlier in his career, when he worked in restaurants, he commuted as much as three hours a day, and he sees his current calls for fairer company policies as connected to the struggles of baristas demanding workplace respect.“The people that are working in stores, when you talk to them, they’re not asking for other people to have to work in person,” he said, adding that it wouldn’t make sense for Starbucks to end remote work for some just because not everyone can do it. “It feels to me like kind of an eye-for-an-eye situation: You’re not helping anyone — you’re just hurting everyone.”Starbucks has suggested that its policy, which requires its 3,750 corporate workers to come in three days a week, contains an element of equity for its employees, or “partners,” because “many partners didn’t have the privilege of working remotely.” But some union members have rejected this logic.To Sarah Pappin, 32, a Starbucks shift supervisor in Seattle, what corporate employees are asking for is directly related to what store employees are demanding, such as increased Covid safety protections.“Even jobs that you might think of as dream jobs can be exploited,” she said. “I think there is a growing understanding that we’re all workers.”But that sense of solidarity doesn’t erase the guilt that some office workers feel as they ask to hold on to the freedom of a workday in their living room. Many office workers have realized, too, all the advantages they have even in their organizing efforts.“We’re so much closer to leadership,” Mr. Lerma said. “I have access to a work-issued laptop that has provided me with the complete address book of everyone within Amazon. I have access to Slack, which can give me any contact I want. A warehouse employee doesn’t have that luxury.” More