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    Biden Adopts Recommendations for Promoting Union Membership

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    The White House on Monday released a report outlining several dozen steps it intends to take to promote union membership and collective bargaining among both public and private sector employees.The report is the product of a task force that President Biden created through an executive order in April. A White House statement said the president had accepted the task force’s nearly 70 recommendations.Many of the steps would make it easier for federal workers and employees of contractors to unionize, including ensuring that union organizers have access to employees on federal property, which does not always happen today.The report also recommends creating preferences in federal grant and loan programs for employers who have strong labor standards, preventing employers from spending federal contract money on anti-union campaigns and making employees aware of their organizing rights.When the task force was created, some White House officials indicated that they supported considering labor union membership as a factor in awarding government contracts, but the task force recommendations generally did not emphasize this approach.Under federal procurement law, the government generally cannot deny contracts to companies it deems hostile to labor unions. But it may be able to consider a company’s posture toward unions as a factor in certain narrow cases — for example, when labor strife resulting from an aggressive anti-union campaign could substantially delay the provision of some important good or service.The executive order Mr. Biden signed creating the task force required it to submit recommendations within 180 days, at which point the president would review them.One key premise of the task force was that the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that protects federal labor rights, explicitly encourage collective bargaining, and yet, according to the Biden White House, no previous administration had explored ways that the executive branch could do so systematically.The ambition of the task force was twofold: to enact policies for federal agencies and contractors that encourage unionization and to model best practices for employers in the public and private sectors.The president’s task force will submit a second report describing progress on its recommendations and proposing additional ones in six months.Union officials and labor experts consider Mr. Biden to be among the most pro-labor presidents ever. He moved quickly to oust Trump appointees viewed as unsympathetic to labor and to undo Trump-era rules that weakened protections for workers, and signed legislation that secured tens of billions of dollars to stabilize union pension plans.Mr. Biden has occasionally used his bully pulpit to urge employers not to undermine workers’ labor rights or bargaining positions, as when he warned against coercing workers who were weighing unionizing during a prominent union election at Amazon last year. He later called Kellogg’s plan to permanently replace striking workers “an existential attack” on its union members.Last week, Mr. Biden signed an executive order requiring so-called project labor agreements — agreements between construction unions and contractors that set wages and working conditions — on federal construction projects worth more than $35 million, a move that the White House estimates could affect nearly 200,000 workers. He had previously signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 per hour from $10.95.But despite Mr. Biden’s backing, and polls showing widespread public support for unions, the rate of union membership nationwide remains stuck at a mere 10 percent, its lowest in decades.The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which Mr. Biden supports, would make it easier to unionize by preventing companies from holding mandatory anti-union meetings and imposing financial penalties on employers that retaliate against workers seeking to unionize. It passed the House in March but remains a long shot in the Senate. Democrats may seek to pass some of its provisions along party lines this year. More

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    Architects at a prominent New York firm drop their unionization bid.

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    Less than two months after seeking to form the only union at a prominent U.S. architecture firm, workers at SHoP Architects, in New York, have formally ended their effort.“We never imagined we would have to write this statement, but after a difficult unionizing attempt that was met with a powerful anti-union campaign, we have decided to withdraw our petition,” the group, which calls itself Architectural Workers United, said in a statement on Thursday.The statement did not provide examples of anti-union activity, but added: “We have seen how the fear of the unknown, along with misinformation, can quickly overpower individual imaginations of something greater than the status quo.”SHoP, in a statement, said the group’s decision to withdraw an election petition filed with the National Labor Relations Board “reflects our staff’s clear desire to determine our collective future together as an employee-owned firm.” The company said that “any allegations of bad faith campaigning are unfounded and an attempt to undermine the strong majority of SHoP employees who made their views known.”The organizing campaign was a response to long-simmering tensions in the architecture profession, where workers often accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in debt in college and graduate school but earn modest salaries while working long hours.The campaign also appeared to reflect a growing interest in unionizing among white-collar professionals, such as tech workers, doctors, journalists and academics, who have formed unions during the past decade as a way to address a loss of professional autonomy in addition to low wage growth and job security.At SHoP, a high-profile firm of about 135 employees that is known for work on such projects as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and a Manhattan luxury building once known as the Steinway Tower, several employees said they worked 50 hours a week on average and 60 or 70 hours a week every month or two when a big deadline loomed.Typical of the industry, many who worked these hours over the past few years were junior architects earning $50,000 to $80,000 a year — higher than average for all workers, but low given the profession’s schooling requirements. According to a report last year from the American Institute of Architects, an industry group, few architects have annual salaries above the $100,000-to-$120,000 range, and many make less, a decade or more into their careers.The organizing campaign at SHoP appears to have been touched off by the economic uncertainty introduced by the pandemic, as well as the toll on employees of working long hours remotely. “Many of us feel pushed to the limits of our productivity and mental health,” employees wrote in a letter to the firm’s leadership announcing the union in December.Among other changes, supporters had hoped that a union could help rein in the practice of uncompensated or undercompensated overtime, which is common in the industry. But skeptics within the profession warned that such changes could backfire, raising labor costs that rival firms could undercut when bidding on a project.In response to the initial union announcement, SHoP indicated that it was sensitive to workers’ concerns about pay and hours, saying it had recently turned down several projects that it did not believe would generate enough revenue to staff appropriately. The firm also said it preferred to employ architects on a long-term basis rather than to staff up and down as projects came and went, as some competitors seek to do.Even employees favoring unionization said the firm’s labor practices were better than average for the industry — noting that the firm pays its interns, for example.The effort to organize prominent architecture firms does not appear to have died with the union drive at SHoP. Workers at two other prominent architecture firms were in the process of organizing when workers at SHoP went public in December, said David DiMaria, an organizer with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, with which the SHoP architects had hoped to affiliate.In an interview this week, Mr. DiMaria said that those efforts were continuing, and that workers at five other firms had reached out to the union and begun organizing since then.“This has started a conversation around the value of architectural work, and the realization that without leverage, there will never be value,” Mr. DiMaria said of the SHoP campaign. “The organizing is going to continue because it’s the only way to fix these problems.” More

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    Workers at REI Store in Manhattan Seek to Form Retailer’s Only Union

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    In filing for a union election, employees of the outdoor equipment retailer cited safety during the pandemic, among other concerns.Employees at an REI store in Manhattan filed for a union election on Friday, making the outdoor equipment and apparel retailer the latest prominent service-industry employer whose workers have sought to unionize.Amazon employees in Bessemer, Ala., rejected a union in an election last year, though the National Labor Relations Board later threw out the result, citing improprieties on the part of the company, and ordered a new election to begin next month.In December, workers at two Starbucks stores in Buffalo voted to unionize, making them the only company-owned Starbucks locations in the country with a union. Employees at about 20 other Starbucks have since filed for union elections.The filing at the REI store in SoHo asked the labor board for an election involving about 115 employees, who are seeking to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the same union that has overseen the union campaign at the Amazon warehouse in Alabama.In addition to filing for the election, the REI employees have asked for voluntary recognition of their union, which would make a vote unnecessary.Like Starbucks, REI, a consumer cooperative made up of customers who buy lifetime memberships for $20, cultivates a progressive image. REI’s website says that the cooperative believes in “putting purpose before profits” and that it invests more than 70 percent of its profits “back into the outdoor community” through initiatives like dividends to members and employee profit-sharing.The site also says that REI closes all of its roughly 170 stores, none of which are currently unionized, on Black Friday to allow employees to spend the day with family and friends.The retailer has more than 15,000 employees in the United States, compared with more than 230,000 at roughly 9,000 U.S. Starbucks locations that are owned by the company.In a statement, Graham Gale, an employee involved in union organizing at the SoHo REI store, said the campaign was partly a response to “a tangible shift in the culture at work that doesn’t seem to align with the values that brought most of us here.” The statement also pointed to “the new struggle of facing unsafe working conditions during a global pandemic.”In a follow-up text, Mx. Gale, who prefers gender-neutral courtesy titles and pronouns, said REI declined to bring back some long-tenured employees who had been outspoken about workplace concerns after the retailer temporarily closed its stores in 2020.Since the beginning of the pandemic, some REI employees have criticized the retailer over what they say are insufficient safety protocols, including a lack of transparency over which employees have tested positive for Covid and a decision to relax its masking policy. The retailer has said that it follows relevant guidance from state and federal health authorities, but it has adjusted some policies as it faced criticism.Responding to the union campaign in Manhattan, REI said in a statement: “We respect the rights of our employees to speak and act for what they believe — and that includes the rights of employees to choose or refuse union representation. However, we do not believe placing a union between the co-op and its employees is needed or beneficial.”The statement went on to say that the co-op was committed to working with employees at the SoHo store to resolve their concerns.Despite the organizing efforts at companies like Amazon and Starbucks last year, membership in unions declined to 10.3 percent of the work force, matching its lowest figure in Labor Department records that date back to 1983. More

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    Unionizing Starbucks, Inspired by Bernie Sanders

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    The liberal workers the company has long attracted are expanding a union campaign to other cities after a landmark victory in Buffalo.Maggie Carter, a Starbucks barista in Knoxville, Tenn., is a warm and reassuring presence who says she is keen to “go the extra mile” for customers.She may also be a nightmare for Starbucks executives.As a union organizing campaign that began in Buffalo and produced the company’s only two unionized U.S. stores spreads to other cities, it is being driven by workers like Ms. Carter: young, well educated, politically liberal.Ms. Carter, who began circulating union cards at her store not long after the results of the Buffalo elections were announced last month, studies broadcast journalism at the University of Tennessee. She is passionate about climate change, fighting racism and labor rights. And her political hero is Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent.“Bernie Sanders is my everything,” Ms. Carter said. “I love him more than anything.”Perhaps more disconcertingly for Starbucks as it tries to contain the union campaign, Ms. Carter appears to be representative of the kinds of people the company has hired over the years to reinforce its progressive branding.Labor experts say that in seeking such employees Starbucks may have built a work force that is more inclined to unionize and to be energized by the Buffalo campaign.“If you think about the kinds of employees they have, the stereotype of people that work there seems to be true — a lot of young people, Bernie supporters, D.S.A. types,” said John Logan, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America. “These are the kinds of people who can take this and run with it. It could be in Knoxville and Arizona just as easily as in San Francisco and Manhattan.”A Starbucks spokesman, Reggie Borges, said that the company was not anti-union but “pro-partner,” as it refers to employees, and that it had historically made changes in response to input from workers, making a union unnecessary.With more than 230,000 employees at roughly 9,000 company-operated stores across the country, Starbucks employs plenty of older workers, conservative-leaning workers and those with a high school diploma or less. Some who were heavily involved in the Buffalo campaign had never been to college.But at least compared with other food and retail establishments, Starbucks customers tend to be liberal and well educated, and the company’s hiring appears to reflect those demographics. The company’s annual report plays up its employees as “significant contributors to our success as a global brand that leads with purpose.”Starbucks allows employees who work at least 20 hours a week to obtain health coverage, more generous than most competitors, and has said it will increase average pay for hourly employees to nearly $17 an hour by this summer, well above the industry norm. The company also offers to pay the tuition of employees admitted to pursue an online bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University, helping it attract workers with college aspirations.The Status of U.S. JobsMore Workers Quit Than Ever: A record number of Americans — more than 4.5 million people — ​​voluntarily left their jobs in November.Jobs Report: The American economy added 210,000 jobs in November, a slowdown from the prior month.Analysis: The number of new jobs added in November was below expectations, but the report shows that the economy is on the right track.Jobless Claims Plunge: Initial unemployment claims for the week ending Nov. 20 fell to 199,000, their lowest point since 1969.Such people, in turn, tend to be sympathetic to unions and a variety of social activism. A recent Gallup poll found that people under 35 or who are liberal are substantially more likely than others to support unions.Several Starbucks workers seeking to organize unions in Buffalo; Boston; Chicago; Seattle; Knoxville, Tenn.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and the Denver area appeared to fit this profile, saying they were either strong supporters of Mr. Sanders and other progressive politicians, had attended college or both. Most were under 30.“I’ve been involved in political organizing, the Bernie Sanders campaign,” said Brick Zurek, a leader of a union campaign at a Starbucks in Chicago. “That gave me a lot of skill.” Mx. Zurek, who uses gender-neutral courtesy titles and pronouns, also said they had a bachelor’s degree.Len Harris, who has helped lead a campaign at a Starbucks near Denver, said that “I admire the progressivism, the sense of community” of politicians like Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. She said that she had graduated from college and that she was awaiting admissions decisions for graduate school.And most union supporters have drawn inspiration from their colleagues in Buffalo. Sydney Durkin and Rachel Ybarra, who are helping to organize a Starbucks in Seattle, said workers at their store discussed the Buffalo campaign almost daily as it unfolded and that one reached out to the union after the National Labor Relations Board announced the initial results of the Buffalo elections in December. (The union’s second victory was announced Monday, after the labor board resolved ballot challenges.)Ms. Ybarra said the victory showed workers it was possible to unionize despite company opposition. “The Buffalo folks became superheroes,” she said. “A lot of us spent so much time being afraid of retaliation — none of us could afford to lose our jobs, have our hours cut.”Since three Buffalo-area stores filed for union elections in late August, workers have filed for elections in at least 15 Starbucks stores nationwide. At least 10 of the filings came after the union victory in Buffalo. “It was the day Buffalo announced they had a won a union that I said, ‘I’m going to try to unionize my store,’” Ms. Harris recalled.More than 15 stores in 10 cities have filed for union elections.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMr. Logan, the labor studies professor, said this pattern might be turning the conventional wisdom about labor organizing on its head. Unions have traditionally preferred to aim at companies with a relatively small number of large workplaces because unionizing these sites creates economic leverage: Striking at one of a dozen large factories can disrupt a company’s operations, while striking at one out of 9,000 stores makes no difference to a company’s bottom line.But over the past few decades, victories at large, high-profile job sites have been less common — unions have lost elections at Boeing, Nissan, Volkswagen and Amazon facilities, though the labor board later overturned the Amazon result and called a new election. The Starbucks campaign shows that focusing on small workplaces at a high-profile company may be more effective, because a victory can build momentum nationwide.“In terms of creating a moment for unions, if you organized 100 stores it would be the biggest thing that happened in 50 years,” Mr. Logan said. Even if the direct economic impact on Starbucks is minor, he added, the media attention and political pressure on the company could be enormous.Richard Bensinger, who oversees Starbucks organizing for the union representing its employees, Workers United, said in an interview that the goal of the campaign was to build support among workers nationally, to rally public opinion and ultimately to pressure the company to stay neutral so that any store whose employees wanted a union could easily get one.“The real question is getting the country to stand up for David, not Goliath,” Mr. Bensinger said. “Every day we’re getting more people — it’s getting stronger.”Further benefiting the union are the economics of organizing workers versus the economics of persuading workers not to unionize. The costs of seeking an election at another store — like legal filings whose arguments the union’s lawyers have already refined — are relatively modest. Starbucks workers themselves are the boots on the ground.By contrast, if the company were to replicate its Buffalo approach, that could mean bringing in 10 or more out-of-town officials over a period of months. Starbucks has dispatched a few out-of-town officials and area managers to a store in Mesa, Ariz., the only city beyond Buffalo where the labor board has set an election date. The company said that some officials there were addressing operational issues and that others were educating employees about what unionizing would entail, as in Buffalo. Some workers in both cities said they found the presence of these officials intimidating.Len Harris has helped lead a campaign at a Starbucks in the Denver area.Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York TimesStarbucks has no shortage of cards to play in resisting unionization. While companies must bargain in good faith with N.L.R.B.-certified unions, they are not required to agree to a contract, and negotiations could drag on for years. The company can also afford to spend large sums to discourage union organizing.But the image-conscious company could eventually decide that risking an anti-union reputation is costlier than a more accommodating posture. “You don’t want to antagonize your customer base,” said Steven M. Swirsky, a management-side lawyer at Epstein Becker & Green. “They have created a brand with certain mystiques around it. You have to be sensitive to how to maintain that, not undermine it.”Starbucks may also conclude that what it spends opposing unions is not money well spent. “When you’re making a resource commitment at some point you have to realize there is a reason this is happening, and it may not be a reason you’re going to be able to fix soon enough to make a difference,” said Brian West Easley, a management-side lawyer at Jones Day.Complicating the challenge is that the workers involved in organizing appear to be less interested in addressing specific problems like staffing and pay — though those are certainly concerns — than in having more input at work. David Pryzbylski, a management-side lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg, said that of over 100 campaigns he has handled, the union typically failed to even qualify for a vote when there was a specific economic issue driving the organizing, but tended to get much further when “employees don’t feel like they have a voice.”Several Starbucks workers said that unionizing was not merely a means to improve their work lives but a goal in itself and that they supported a union as a matter of principle. “One of the main things we want to have a union for is to establish the right to have a union — it’s a little circular,” said Ms. Ybarra, in Seattle. “They’re trying to discourage folks from creating any communal organization.” More

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    Amazon Reaches Labor Deal, Giving Workers More Power to Organize

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    The agreement’s national scope and its concessions to organizing go further than any previous settlement that the e-commerce giant has made.SEATTLE — Amazon, which faces mounting scrutiny over worker rights, agreed to let its warehouse employees more easily organize in the workplace as part of a nationwide settlement with the National Labor Relations Board this month.Under the settlement, made final on Wednesday, Amazon said it would email past and current warehouse workers — likely more than one million people — with notifications of their rights and give them greater flexibility to organize in its buildings. The agreement also makes it easier and faster for the N.L.R.B., which investigates claims of unfair labor practices, to sue Amazon if it believes the company violated the terms.Amazon has previously settled individual cases with the labor agency, but the new settlement’s national scope and its concessions to organizing go further than any previous agreement.Because of Amazon’s sheer size — more than 750,000 people work in its operations in the United States alone — the agency said the settlement would reach one of the largest groups of workers in its history. The tech giant also agreed to terms that would let the N.L.R.B. bypass an administrative hearing process, a lengthy and cumbersome undertaking, if the agency found that the company had not abided by the settlement.The agreement stemmed from six cases of Amazon workers who said the company limited their ability to organize colleagues. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.It is a “big deal given the magnitude of the size of Amazon,” said Wilma B. Liebman, who was the chair of the N.L.R.B. under President Barack Obama.Amazon, which has been on a hiring frenzy in the pandemic and is the nation’s second-largest private employer after Walmart, has faced increased labor pressure as its work force has soared to nearly 1.5 million globally. The company has become a leading example of a rising tide of worker organizing as the pandemic reshapes what employees expect from their employers.This year, Amazon has grappled with organizing efforts at warehouses in Alabama and New York, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters formally committed to support organizing at the company. Other companies, such as Starbucks, Kellogg and Deere & Company, have faced rising union activity as well.Compounding the problem, Amazon is struggling to find enough employees to satiate its growth. The company was built on a model of high-turnover employment, which has now crashed into a phenomenon known as the Great Resignation, with workers in many industries quitting their jobs in search of a better deal for themselves.Amazon has responded by raising wages and pledging to improve its workplace. It has said it would spend $4 billion to deal with labor shortages this quarter alone.“This settlement agreement provides a crucial commitment from Amazon to millions of its workers across the United States that it will not interfere with their right to act collectively to improve their workplace by forming a union or taking other collective action,” Jennifer Abruzzo, the N.L.R.B.’s new general counsel appointed by President Biden, said in a statement on Thursday.Amazon declined to comment. The company has said it supports workers’ rights to organize but believes employees are better served without a union.Amazon and the labor agency have been in growing contact, and at times conflict. More than 75 cases alleging unfair labor practices have been brought against Amazon since the start of the pandemic, according to the N.L.R.B.’s database. Ms. Abruzzo has also issued several memos directing the agency’s staff to enforce labor laws against employers more aggressively.A sign encouraging workers to cast a ballot in a union vote at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Ala., in March.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesLast month, the agency threw out the results of a failed, prominent union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, saying the company had inappropriately interfered with the voting. The agency ordered another election. Amazon has not appealed the finding, though it can still do so.Other employers, from beauty salons to retirement communities, have made nationwide settlements with the N.L.R.B. in the past when changing policies.With the new settlement, Amazon agreed to change a policy that limited employee access to its facilities and notify employees that it had done so, as well as informing them of other labor rights. The settlement requires Amazon to post notices in all of its U.S. operations and on the employee app, called A to Z. Amazon must also email every person who has worked in its operations since March.In past cases, Amazon explicitly said a settlement did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing. No similar language was included in the new settlement. In September, Ms. Abruzzo directed N.L.R.B. staff to accept these “non-admission clauses” only rarely.The combination of terms, including the “unusual” commitment to email past and current employees, made Amazon’s settlement stand out, Ms. Liebman said, adding that other large employers were likely to take notice.“It sends a signal that this general counsel is really serious about enforcing the law and what they will accept,” she said.The six cases that led to Amazon’s settlement with the agency involved its workers in Chicago and Staten Island, N.Y. They had said Amazon prohibited them from being in areas like a break room or parking lot until within 15 minutes before or after their shifts, hampering any organizing.One case was brought by Ted Miin, who works at an Amazon delivery station in Chicago. In an interview, Mr. Miin said a manager had told him, “It is more than 15 minutes past your shift, and you are not allowed to be here,” when he passed out newsletters at a protest in April.“Co-workers were upset about being understaffed and overworked and staged a walkout,” he said, adding that a security guard also pressured him to leave the site while handing out leaflets.In another case on Staten Island, Amazon threatened to call the police on an employee who handed out union literature on site, said Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who represents the company’s workers in Staten Island.The right for workers to organize on-site during non-working time is well established, said Matthew Bodie, a former lawyer for the N.L.R.B. who teaches labor law at Saint Louis University.“The fact that you can hang around and chat — that is prime, protected concerted activity periods, and the board has always been very protective of that,” he said.Mr. Miin, who is part of an organizing group called Amazonians United Chicagoland, and other workers in Chicago reached a settlement with Amazon in the spring over the 15-minute rule at a different delivery station where they had worked last year. Two corporate employees also settled privately with Amazon in an agreement that included a nationwide notification of worker rights, but the agency does not police it.Mr. Goldstein said he was “impressed” that the N.L.R.B. had pressed Amazon to agree to terms that would let the agency bypass its administrative hearing process, which happens before a judge and in which parties prepare arguments and present evidence, if it found the company had broken the agreement’s terms.“They can get a court order to make Amazon obey federal labor law,” he said. More

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    Kellogg Workers Ratify Contract After Being on Strike Since October

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    About 1,400 striking Kellogg workers have ratified a new contract, their union said Tuesday, ending a strike that began in early October and affected four of the company’s U.S. cereal plants.“Our striking members at Kellogg’s ready-to-eat cereal production facilities courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract,” Anthony Shelton, the president of the workers’ union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, said in a statement. “This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions.”Steve Cahillane, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement that he was pleased that the workers approved the deal. “We look forward to their return and continuing to produce our beloved cereal brands for our customers and consumers,” he added.The strike had become especially contentious after workers rejected an agreement on a five-year contract between their union and the company in early December, and the company announced that it would move ahead with hiring permanent replacement workers.President Biden waded into the dispute a few days later, saying in a statement that the plan to replace workers was “deeply troubling” and calling it “an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”The company and the union announced the second tentative agreement the next week, just before Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, was scheduled to hold a rally on behalf of workers in Battle Creek, Mich., home of the company’s headquarters and one of the cereal plants where workers had walked off the job.The contract dispute revolved partly around the company’s two-tier compensation system, in which workers hired after 2015 typically received lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. The company has said that the longer-tenured workers make more than $35 an hour on average, while the more recent workers average just under $22 per hour.Veteran workers had complained that the two-tier system put downward pressure on their wages and benefits because they could effectively be outvoted or replaced with newer, cheaper workers.Under the agreement that workers rejected in early December, the company would have immediately granted veteran pay and benefit status to all workers with four or more years’ experience at Kellogg. It would have also granted veteran status to a number equal to 3 percent of a plant’s head count in each year of the contract.The initial agreement would have given veteran workers a 3 percent wage increase in the first year and cost-of-living adjustments.In the agreement that workers just approved, the proposal for converting newer workers to veteran status remained unchanged, but the company expanded cost-of-living wage adjustments to cover all employees in each year of the contract, according to a Kellogg spokeswoman.Newer workers will see their wages immediately rise to just over $24 an hour and veteran workers will immediately receive a wage increase of $1.10 per hour. More

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    Workers in Europe Are Demanding Higher Pay as Inflation Soars

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    Prices are rising at the fastest rate on record, and unions want to keep up. Policymakers worry that might make inflation worse.PARIS — The European Central Bank’s top task is to keep inflation at bay. But as the cost of everything from gas to food has soared to record highs, the bank’s employees are joining workers across Europe in demanding something rarely seen in recent years: a hefty wage increase.“It seems like a paradox, but the E.C.B. isn’t protecting its own staff against inflation,” said Carlos Bowles, an economist at the central bank and vice president of IPSO, an employee trade union. Workers are pressing for a raise of at least 5 percent to keep up with a historic inflationary surge set off by the end of pandemic lockdowns. The bank says it won’t budge from a planned a 1.3 percent increase.That simply won’t offset inflation’s pain, said Mr. Bowles, whose union represents 20 percent of the bank’s employees. “Workers shouldn’t have to take a hit when prices rise so much,” he said.Inflation, relatively quiet for nearly a decade in Europe, has suddenly flared in labor contract talks as a run-up in prices that started in spring courses through the economy and everyday life.From Spain to Sweden, workers and organized labor are increasingly demanding wages that keep up with inflation, which last month reached 4.90 percent, a record high for the eurozone. Austrian metalworkers wrested a 3.6 percent pay raise for 2022. Irish employers said they expect to have to lift wages by at least 3 percent next year. Workers at Tesco supermarkets in Britain won a 5.5 percent raise after threatening to strike around Christmas. And in Germany, where the European Central Bank has its headquarters, the new government raised the minimum wage by a whopping 25 percent, to 12 euros (about $13.60) an hour.A market in Frankfurt. Inflation in the eurozone last month reached 4.90 percent, a record high.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesThe upturns follow a bout of anemic wage growth in Europe. Hourly wages fell for the first time in 10 years in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier, although economists say pandemic shutdowns and job furloughs make it hard to paint an accurate picture. In the decade before the pandemic, when inflation was low, wages in the euro area grew by an average of 1.9 percent a year, according to Eurostat.The increases are likely to be debated this week at meetings of the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. E.C.B. policymakers have insisted for months that the spike in inflation is temporary, touched off by the reopening of the global economy, labor shortages in some industries and supply-chain bottlenecks that can’t last forever. Energy prices, which jumped in November a staggering 27.4 percent from a year ago, are also expected to cool.The E.C.B., which aims to keep annual inflation at 2 percent, has refrained from raising interest rates to slow climbing prices, arguing that by the time such a policy takes effect, inflation would have eased anyway on its own.“We expect that this rise in inflation will not last,” Christine Lagarde, the E.C.B. president, said in an interview in November with the German daily F.A.Z., adding that it was likely to start fading as soon as January.In the United States, where the government on Friday reported that inflation jumped 6.8 percent in the year through November, the fastest pace in nearly 40 years, officials are not so sure. In congressional testimony last week, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, stopped using the word “transitory” to describe how long high inflation would last. The Omicron variant of the coronavirus could worsen supply bottlenecks and push up inflation, he said.In Europe, unions are also agitated after numerous companies reported bumper profits and dividends despite the pandemic. Companies listed on France’s CAC 40 stock index saw margins jump by an average of 35 percent in the first quarter of 2021, and half reported profits around 40 percent higher than the same period a year earlier.Justine Negoce, a cashier at Leroy Merlin, with her daughters. She joined a companywide walkout in Paris last month demanding a pay increase.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesWorkers say that they have not benefited from such gains, and that inflation has made things worse by abruptly slashing their purchasing power. Companies, for their part, are wary of linking salaries to inflation — a policy that also makes the European Central Bank nervous.Surging energy costs have been “a shock on incomes,” said James Watson, chief economist for Business Europe, the largest business trade association. “But if you try to compensate by raising wages, there’s a risk that it’s unsustainable and that we enter into a wage-price spiral,” he said.European policymakers are watching carefully for any signs that companies are passing the cost of higher wages on to consumers. If that happens, it could create a dangerous run-up of higher prices that might make inflation chronic.For now, that seems unlikely, in part because wage negotiations so far haven’t resulted in outsize pay increases, said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London.Negotiated wage increases have been averaging around 2.5 percent, below inflation’s current pace. “Will wage hikes be inflationary? Not really,” he said. “The eurozone is not at a severe risk.”But as climbing prices continue to unnerve consumers, labor organizations are unlikely to ease up. Gasoline prices recently hit €2 a liter in parts of Europe — equal to over $8 a gallon. Higher transportation costs and supply chain bottlenecks are also making supermarket basics more expensive.Ms. Negoce is facing a 25 percent jump in grocery and gas bills for her family. Even with a pay raise next year, “we’ll need to count every penny,” she said.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesJustine Negoce, a cashier at France’s largest home-improvement chain, joined an unprecedented companywide walkout in Paris last month to demand a hefty raise as rising prices gobbled up her modest paycheck.After employees blocked warehouses for 10 days and demonstrated in the cold, the company, Leroy Merlin, agreed to a 4 percent raise for its 23,000 workers in France — twice the amount that management originally offered. The company, owned by Adeo, Europe’s biggest DIY chain, saw revenue climb over 5 percent in 2020 to €8 billion as housebound consumers decorated their homes and people like Ms. Negoce worked the front lines to ring up sales.Her monthly take-home pay will rise in January to €1,300 from €1,250. The additional cash will help offset a 25 percent jump in grocery and gas bills for her two teenage children and husband — just barely.On a recent trip to the supermarket, her basket of food basics, including rice, coffee, sugar and pasta, jumped to €103 instead of the €70 to €80 she paid a few months back. Filling her gas tank now costs €75 instead of €60. And even with her husband’s modest salary, she said, the couple will still be in the red at the end of the month.“We’re happy with the raise, because every little bit helps,” Ms. Negoce said. “But things are still tight, and we’ll need to count every penny.”In a statement, Leroy Merlin said the agreement maintains employees’ purchasing power and puts its average salaries for next year at 15 percent above France’s gross monthly minimum wage, which the government raised in October by 2.2 percent.Crucially, executives also agreed to return to the bargaining table in April if a continued upward climb in prices hurts employees.At Sephora, the luxury cosmetics chain owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, some unions are seeking an approximately 10 percent pay increase of €180 a month to make up for what they say is stagnant or low pay for employees in France, many of whom earn minimum wage or a couple hundred euros a month more.Jenny Urbina, a representative of the union that is negotiating with Sephora for salary increases. “When we work for a wealthy group like LVMH no one should be earning so little,” she said.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesLVMH, which recorded revenue of €44.2 billion in the first nine months of 2021, up 11 percent from 2019, raised wages at Sephora by 0.5 percent this year and granted occasional work bonuses, said Jenny Urbina, a representative of the Confédération Générale du Travail, the union negotiating with the company.Sephora has offered a €30 monthly increase for minimum wage workers, and was not replacing many people who quit, straining the remaining employees, she said.“When we work for a wealthy group like LVMH no one should be earning so little,” said Ms. Urbina, who said she was hired at the minimum wage 18 years ago and now earns €1,819 a month before taxes. “Employees can’t live off of one-time bonuses,” she added. “We want a salary increase to make up for low pay.”Sephora said in a statement that workers demanding higher wages were in a minority, and that “the question of the purchasing power of our employees has always been at the heart” of the company’s concerns.At the European Central Bank, employees’ own worries about purchasing power have lingered despite the bank’s forecast that inflation will fade away.A spokeswoman for the central bank said the 1.3 percent wage increase planned for 2022 is a calculation based on salaries paid at national central banks, and would not change.But with inflation in Germany at 6 percent, the Frankfurt-based bank’s workers will take a big hit, Mr. Bowles said.“It’s not in the mentality of E.C.B. staff to go on strike,” he said. “But even if you have a good salary, you don’t want to see it cut by 4 percent.”Léontine Gallois More

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    Biden Assails Kellogg’s Plan to Replace Striking Workers

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    President Biden on Friday waded into a strike involving 1,400 employees at four Kellogg plants, whom the company said it planned to permanently replace after workers voted down a proposed contract this week.“I am deeply troubled by reports of Kellogg’s plans to permanently replace striking workers,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that “permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.”The strike began on Oct. 5 and has largely focused on the company’s two-tier compensation system, in which employees hired after 2015 typically receive lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. Many veteran Kellogg workers, who the company says earn about $35 per hour on average, believe that adding lower-paid workers puts downward pressure on their wages.Kellogg raised the possibility of hiring permanent replacements in November. The company and the union last week reached a tentative agreement in which the company would lift a cap on the number of workers in the lower tier, which was 30 percent under the previous contract. In exchange, the company agreed to move all workers with four or more years experience into the veteran tier, as well as an amount equivalent to 3 percent of workers at its plants in each of the five years of the contract.On Tuesday, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which represents the workers, said its members had “overwhelmingly voted” against the deal. In response to the result, Kellogg said that it would “hire permanent replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers.”A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Bahner, said Friday that the company had posted job listings for permanent replacement roles in each of its four locations and that its hiring process was “fully operational.” The statement added: “Interest in the roles has been strong at all four plants, as expected. We expect some of the new hires to start with the company very soon.”After Mr. Biden’s statement, Ms. Bahner said that the company was “ready, willing and able to negotiate with the union” and that it agreed with the president “that this needs to be solved at the bargaining table.” Ms. Bahner indicated that the company had moved ahead with permanent replacements out of an obligation to consumers and other employees.Permanently replacing workers who are striking over economic issues like wages and benefits is legal, but Democrats, including Mr. Biden, have sought to outlaw the practice through the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act. The House approved the bill in March but it has stalled in the Senate.“I have long opposed permanent striker replacements and I strongly support legislation that would ban that practice,” Mr. Biden said in his statement Friday. “Such action undermines the critical role collective bargaining plays in providing workers a voice and the opportunity to improve their lives.”The statement is not the first time Mr. Biden has appeared to weigh in on a prominent labor action. The president appeared in a video during a union campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year warning that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda” — an unusual interjection by a president during a union election.Mr. Biden has made no secret of his support for unions over the years. He quickly ousted government officials disliked by unions, reversed Trump-era rules that softened worker protections and signed legislation that allocated tens of billions of dollars to stabilize union pension plans.His $2 trillion climate and social policy bill, pending in the Senate, includes numerous pro-labor measures, including incentives for employers to offer union-scale wages on wind and solar projects. More