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    How Amazon Crushes Unions

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    Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesHow Amazon Crushes UnionsIn a secret settlement in Virginia, Amazon swore off threatening and intimidating workers. As the company confronts increased labor unrest, its tactics are under scrutiny.Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRICHMOND, Va. — Five years ago, Amazon was compelled to post a “notice to employees” on the break-room walls of a warehouse in east-central Virginia.The notice was printed simply, in just two colors, and crammed with words. But for any worker who bothered to look closely, it was a remarkable declaration. Amazon listed 22 forms of behavior it said it would disavow, each beginning in capital letters: “WE WILL NOT.”“We will not threaten you with the loss of your job” if you are a union supporter, Amazon wrote, according to a photo of the notice reviewed by The New York Times. “We will not interrogate you” about the union or “engage in surveillance of you” while you participate in union activities. “We will not threaten you with unspecified reprisals” because you are a union supporter. We will not threaten to “get” union supporters.Amazon posted the list after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accused it of doing those very things during a two-year-long push to unionize 30 facilities technicians at the warehouse in Chester, just south of Richmond. While Amazon did not admit to violations of labor laws, the company promised in a settlement with federal regulators to tell workers that it would rigorously obey the rules in the future.The employee notice and failed union effort, which have not previously been reported, are suddenly relevant as Amazon confronts increasing labor unrest in the United States. Over two decades, as the internet retailer mushroomed from a virtual bookstore into a $1.5 trillion behemoth, it forcefully — and successfully — resisted employee efforts to organize. Some workers in recent years agitated for change in Staten Island, Chicago, Sacramento and Minnesota, but the impact was negligible.Bill Hough Jr., a machinist at the Chester warehouse who led the union drive. Amazon fired him in 2016.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesIn an employee notice, Amazon listed behavior it said it would disavow.The arrival of the coronavirus last year changed that. It turned Amazon into an essential resource for millions stuck at home and redefined the company’s relationship with its warehouse workers. Like many service industry employees, they were vulnerable to the virus. As society locked down, they were also less able to simply move on if they had issues with the job.Now Amazon faces a union vote at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. — the largest and most viable U.S. labor challenge in its history. Nearly 6,000 workers have until March 29 to decide whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. A labor victory could energize workers in other U.S. communities, where Amazon has more than 800 warehouses employing more than 500,000 people.“This is happening in the toughest state, with the toughest company, at the toughest moment,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “If the union can prevail given those three facts, it will send a message that Amazon is organizable everywhere.”Even if the union does not prevail, “the history of unions is always about failing forward,” she said. “Workers trying, workers losing, workers trying again.”The effort in Chester, which The Times reconstructed with documents from regulators and the machinists’ union, as well as interviews with former facilities technicians at the warehouse and union officials, offers one of the fullest pictures of what encourages Amazon workers to open the door to a union — and what techniques the company uses to slam the door and nail it shut.The employee notice was a hollow victory for workers. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that negotiated the settlement with Amazon, has no power to impose monetary penalties. Its enforcement remedies are few and weak, which means its ability to restrain anti-union employers from breaking the law is limited. The settlement was not publicized, so there were not even any public relations benefits.Amazon was the real winner. There have been no further attempts at a union in Chester.The tactics that Amazon used in Chester are surfacing elsewhere. The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.Amazon declined to say whether it had complied with labor laws during the union drive in Chester in 2014 and 2015. In a statement, it said it was “compliant with the National Labor Relations Act in 2016” when it issued the employee notice, and “we continue to be compliant today.” It added in a different statement that it didn’t believe the union push in Alabama “represents the majority of our employees’ views.”The labor board declined to comment.The Chester settlement notice mentions one worker by name: Bill Hough Jr., a machinist who led the union drive. The notice said Amazon had issued a warning to Mr. Hough that he was on the verge of being fired. Amazon said it would rescind the warning.Six months later, in August 2016, Amazon fired him anyway.Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. Since he couldn’t do his job, he said he was told, this was the end of the line.“There was no mercy, even after what they had done to me,” Mr. Hough, now 56, said. “That’s Amazon. If you can’t give 110 percent, you’re done.”Amazon declined to comment on Mr. Hough.No ConstraintsA truck at the warehouse in Chester. Amazon has been fending off attempts to unionize since at least 1999. Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesAmazon was founded on notions of speed, efficiency and hard work — lots of hard work. Placing his first help wanted ad in 1994, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said he wanted engineers who could do their job “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible.”Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.”In 1999, the reps, who numbered about 400, were targeted by a grass-roots group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Amazon mounted an all-out defense.If workers became anything less than docile, managers were told, it was a sign there could be union activity. Tipoffs included “hushed conversations” and “small group huddles breaking up in silence on the approach of the supervisor,” as well as increased complaints, growing aggressiveness and dawdling in the bathroom.Amazon was in sync with the larger culture. Unions were considered relics of the industrial past. Disruption was a virtue.“Twenty years ago, if you asked whether the government or workers should be able to put any constraints on companies, the answer always was ‘No constraints,’” said Marcus Courtney, a labor organizer on the 1999 Amazon campaign. “If companies wanted to push people 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, hats off to them.”When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Amazon lost some of its glow. For a time, its very existence was in question.This caused problems for the activists as well. The company reorganized and closed the customer service center, though Amazon said there was no connection with the union drive. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Prewitt Organizing Fund, an independent group, made no inroads organizing Amazon’s 5,000 warehouse workers.A decade later, in 2011, came a low point in Amazon’s labor history. The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., revealed that Amazon was hiring paramedics and ambulances during summer heat waves at a local warehouse. Workers who collapsed were removed with stretchers and wheelchairs and taken to hospitals.Amazon installed air conditioning but otherwise was undaunted. After the Great Recession in 2008, there was no lack of demand for its jobs — and no united protest about working conditions. In Europe, where unions are stronger, there were sporadic strikes. In the United States, isolated warehouse walkouts drew no more than a handful of workers.The MachinistMr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep conveyor belts running.Credit…Ruth Fremson for The New York TimesMr. Hough worked as an industrial machinist at a Reynolds aluminum mill in Richmond for 24 years. He once saw a worker lose four fingers when a steel roller fell unexpectedly. Incidents like that made a deep impression on him: Never approach equipment casually.Reynolds closed the plant in the Great Recession, when Mr. Hough was in his mid-40s. Being in the machinists guild cushioned the blow, but he needed another job. After a long spell of unemployment, he joined Amazon in 2013.The Chester warehouse, the size of several aircraft carriers, had opened a year earlier, part of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar push to put fulfillment centers everywhere. Mr. Hough worked on the conveyor belts bringing in the goods.At first, he received generally good marks. “He has a great attitude and does not participate in negative comments or situations,” Amazon said in a March 2014 performance review. “He gets along with all the other technicians.”But Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep the belts running. Amazon prided itself on getting purchases to customers quickly, and when conveyor belts were down that mission was in jeopardy. He once protested restarting a belt while he was still working on it.“Quit your bitching,” Mr. Hough said his manager, Bryon Frye, had told him, twice.“That sent me down the wrong road,” Mr. Hough said.Bryon Frye’s tweet about Amazon union campaigns.Credit…TwitterMr. Frye, who declined to comment, no longer works for Amazon. On Twitter last month, he responded to a news story that said Amazon was hiring former F.B.I. agents to deal with worker activism, counterfeiting and antitrust issues.“This doesn’t shock me,” he wrote. “They do some wild things.”The Union DriveMembers of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union distributed literature outside the Alabama warehouse where Amazon workers are voting on whether to join the union.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesIn 2014, Mr. Hough and five other technicians approached the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A unionization effort was already taking place with the technicians at an Amazon warehouse in Middletown, Del. If either succeeded, it would be the first for Amazon.The elections for a union would be conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The first step was to measure interest. At least 18 of the 30 technicians in Chester returned cards indicating their willingness to be represented by the union.“It was not too difficult to sign people up,” said Russell Wade, a union organizer there. “But once the word leaked out to Amazon, they put the afterburners on, as employers do. Then the workers started losing interest. Amazon spent oodles of money to scare the hell out of employees.”The board scheduled an election for March 4, 2015. A simple majority of votes cast would establish union representation.Amazon brought in an Employee Resource Center team — basically, its human resources department — to reverse any momentum. A former technician at the warehouse, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, said the reps on the team followed workers around, pretending to be friendly but only seeking to know their position on the union drive.If safety was the biggest issue for the technicians, there were also concerns over pay equity — machinists said they were paid different amounts for doing the same job — and about their lack of control over their fate. Part of Mr. Hough’s pitch was that a union would make management less arbitrary.“One guy, all I remember is his name was Bob,” he said. “They paged Bob to the control room, and the next thing I saw was Bob coming down the steps. He had taken off his work vest. I said, ‘Bob, where are you going?’ He said, ‘They terminated me.’ I didn’t ask why. That’s the way it was.”Several technicians said they recalled being told at a meeting, “You vote for a union, every one of you will be looking for a job tomorrow.” At another, the most outspoken union supporters were described as “a cancer and a disease to Amazon and the facility,” according to Mr. Hough and a union memo. (In a filing to the labor board, Amazon said it had investigated the incident and “concluded that it could not be substantiated.”)Mr. Hough, a cancer survivor, said the reference had offended him. He declined to attend another meeting run by that manager. He said he had known in any case what she was going to say: that the union was canceling the election because it thought it would lose. Amazon had triumphed.On March 30, 2015, Mr. Hough received a written warning from Mr. Frye, his manager.“Your behavior has been called out by peers/leaders as having a negative impact,” it said. Included under “insubordination” was a refusal to attend the Amazon victory announcement. Another incident, Amazon said, could result in termination.The machinists union filed a complaint with the labor board in July 2015 alleging unfair labor practices by Amazon, including surveilling, threatening and “informing employees that it would be futile to vote for union representation.” Mr. Hough spent eight hours that summer giving his testimony. While labor activists and unions generally consider the board to be heavily tilted in favor of employers, union officials said a formal protest would at least show Chester technicians that someone was fighting for them.In early 2016, Amazon settled with the board. The main thrust of the two-page settlement was that Amazon would post an employee notice promising good behavior while admitting nothing.Wilma Liebman, a member of the labor board from 1997 to 2011, examined the employee notice at the request of The Times. “What is unusual to my eye is how extensive Amazon’s pledges were, and how specific,” she said. “While the company did not have to admit guilt, this list offers a picture of what likely was going on.”Amazon was required to post the notice “in all places where notices to employees are customarily posted” in Chester for 60 days, the labor board said.From the machinists union’s point of view, it wasn’t much of a punishment.“This posting was basically a slap on the wrist for the violations that Amazon committed, which included lies, coercion, threats and intimidation,” said Vinny Addeo, the union’s director of organizing.Another reason for filing an unfair labor practices claim was that the union hoped to restart its efforts with a potentially chastened company. But most of the employees who supported the Chester drive quit.“They were intimidated,” Mr. Wade, the union organizer, said.Mr. Hough was beset by ill health during his years at Amazon. Radiation treatment for his cancer prompted several strokes. His wife, Susan, had health problems, too. Mr. Hough said he wondered how much the unionization struggle contributed to their problems. He added that he didn’t know whom to trust.After leaving Amazon, Mr. Hough began driving trucks, at first long haul and later a dump truck. It paid less, but he said he was at peace.Maximum Green TimesNearly 6,000 workers in Bessemer have until March 29 to decide whether to join the union.Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York TimesWhen Amazon vanquished the 2014 union drive in Delaware, the retailer said it was a victory for “open lines of direct communication between managers and associates.”One place Amazon developed that direct communication was in its warehouse bathrooms under what it called its “inSTALLments” program. The inSTALLments were informational sheets that offered, for instance, factoids about Mr. Bezos, the timing of meetings and random warnings, such as this one about unpaid time off: “If you go negative, your employment status will be reviewed for termination.”Amazon’s “inSTALLments” program used postings in warehouse bathrooms to communicate with workers.Credit…The New York TimesAs the union drive heated up in Bessemer, the direct communication naturally was about that. “Where will your dues go?” Amazon asked in one stall posting, which circulated on social media. Another proclaimed: “Unions can’t. We can.”Amazon also set up a website to tell workers that they would have to skip dinner and school supplies to pay their union dues.In December, a pro-union group discovered, Amazon asked county officials to increase “maximum green times” on the warehouse stoplight to clear the parking lot faster. This made it difficult for union canvassers to approach potential voters as they left work. Amazon declined to comment.Last month, President Biden weighed in.“There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” he said in a video that never mentioned Amazon but referred to “workers in Alabama” deciding whether to organize a union. “You know, every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”Owning 25 HatsMr. Hough, in an interview before the pandemic, said part of him wanted to forget what had happened at Amazon. Why dwell on defeat? He threw away all the papers from the union drive. He never saw the employee notice because he was recovering from a stroke.But he has not forgiven the retailer.“You’re only going to step on me one time,” he said, sitting in his home in the outskirts of Richmond.Amazon’s customers just don’t know how miserable a job there can be, he suggested.“I guarantee you, if their child had to work there, they’d think twice before purchasing things,” he said.Ms. Hough, sitting next to him, had a bleaker view.“The customers don’t care about unions. They don’t care about the workers. They just want their packages,” she said.As if on cue, their son, Brody, came in. He was 20, an appliance technician. His mother told him there was a package for him on his bed. It was from Amazon, a fishing hat. It cost $25, Brody said, half the price on the manufacturer’s website.“I order from Amazon anything I can find that is cheaper,” Brody said. That adds up to a lot of hats, about 25. “I’ve never worked for Amazon. I can’t hate them,” he said.Ms. Hough looked at her husband. “If your own son doesn’t care,” she asked, not unkindly, “how are you going to get the American public to care?”The pandemic helped change that, bringing safety issues at Amazon to the forefront. In a Feb. 16 suit against Amazon, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the company continued last year to track and discipline employees based on their productivity rates. That meant workers had limited time to protect themselves from the virus. The suit said Amazon retaliated against those who complained, sending a “chilling message” to all its workers. Amazon has denied the allegations.Last week, regional Canadian authorities also ordered thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Toronto to quarantine themselves, effectively closing the facility. Some 240 workers recently tested positive for the virus there, a government spokeswoman said, even as the rate of infection in the area fell. Amazon said it was appealing the decision.Alabama is now the big test. Mr. Hough worries the union supporters will be crushed.“They will fall to threats or think, ‘I won’t have a job, Amazon will replace me,’” he said by phone this month. “When a company can do things to you in secret, it’s real hard to withstand.”Still, he added, “I’m hoping for the best. More power to them.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Paper Source Files for Bankruptcy, Frustrating Cardmakers

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    The dispute between Paper Source and its vendors has turned a typically friendly industry sour at the moment.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexPaper Source’s Bankruptcy Leaves Female Cardmakers Feeling BurnedThe chain’s vendors, most of them small-business owners, say they are worried they won’t be paid for orders delivered in the weeks just before the filing.The dispute between Paper Source and its vendors has turned a typically friendly industry sour at the moment.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 10, 2021Updated 5:59 p.m. ET“Hell hath no fury like a stationer scorned.”That was the opening salvo of an Instagram post last week from Lisa Krowinski, founder of Sapling Press, a letterpress design and print shop in Pittsburgh. Ms. Krowinski was reeling after Paper Source, the stationery chain with 158 stores, abruptly filed for bankruptcy on March 2. Her five-person business had fulfilled big orders from the chain in January and February, and was owed more than $20,000 for items like Father’s Day cards and tea towels.The post attracted a slew of comments from other frustrated cardmakers — a niche industry dominated by female entrepreneurs — who were also concerned about whether they would get paid. Paper Source sent an email to vendors a day after it filed for bankruptcy, saying they would be paid in full for goods provided on or after March 2, and to file claims to retrieve the rest.“As a community, we feel that we’ve been taken advantage of in a way that no small business should have been, especially coming off a pandemic,” said Ms. Krowinski, 46, who sold goods to Paper Source for nine years. “It hurt extra hard.”Paper Source, founded in 1983, is the latest national retailer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection during the pandemic, a process that companies from J.C. Penney to J.Crew have used to keep their brands alive while getting out of store leases and cutting debt.The difference with Paper Source is that vendors say that the company placed significant new orders for cards and gifts in the run-up to the filing, even pushing to expedite deliveries. Now, it is unclear how much money vendors will recoup. The vendors are largely creative women who run small businesses on their own or with a handful of employees.“Women have already been so hurt in this pandemic disproportionately to men just in terms of the types of jobs we do and having families to take care of,” said Janie Velencia, the 30-year-old owner of the Card Bureau in Lorton, Va., which is owed $15,000 from Paper Source. “They did this to a bunch of female-owned companies during Women’s History Month and just before International Women’s Day.” (Paper Source is currently selling products celebrating those events.)Paper Source is now dealing with the unusually public fallout with its vendors, who happen to be in the trade of sharp and skilled communication, as it aims to keep operating. The company, based in Chicago, made its January and February orders “with the thought process at the time that we actually avoid Chapter 11 and potentially have an investor come into the business,” Winnie Park, Paper Source’s chief executive, said in an interview. “Unfortunately, those options didn’t materialize.”Ms. Park said that she was concerned about online “misinformation” about the bankruptcy, and that the company planned to create a webinar to help its more than 1,200 vendors understand how to file claims. She said that she hoped suppliers, roughly 250 of whom are cardmakers, would receive “normal or nearly full payments” through special financing for “critical vendors” and a court ruling that prioritizes suppliers whose goods were received in the 20 days before the filing.“Our intention was never to hurt women and female entrepreneurs,” Ms. Park, 49, said. “We have gone through a pandemic that was longer and deeper than any of us anticipated, and we have a path forward that we want to engage these women entrepreneurs in.”Still, three vendors shared emails from Paper Source in which the company offered them payments from the critical vendor fund that were between 10 percent and 30 percent of what they were owed. In exchange for the money, Paper Source said it needed confirmation that vendors would continue to provide goods to the chain, according to the emails, which were shared on the condition of anonymity because they were confidential.Among the biggest sticking points with vendors are the January and February orders. They question whether Paper Source knew it was making purchases that it could not pay for — at least not on time. Paper Source typically pays for goods 30 to 60 days after they are received. According to court documents, the company started preparing for a Chapter 11 filing in early February after failing to obtain a capital infusion or interest from 138 potential buyers last year.Alex Gagné Glover, the founder and chief executive of Chez Gagné, a seller of cards and drinkware in Los Angeles, said that Paper Source placed big new orders with her four-person company in December, January and February for letterpress-printed cards for anniversaries (“Doing this life thing with you is pretty awesome”) and friends (“you’re my soul sister”) and pushed for them to be delivered by the end of February. She thought the orders represented a glimmer of hope for post-pandemic sales. She said the chain now owed her more than $20,000.“It’s just really shady they would place so many orders with so many small businesses before the bankruptcy filing,” Ms. Gagné Glover, 33, said. Alex Gagné Glover, owner of Chez Gagné, which specializes in letterpress greeting cards and drinkware, said Paper Source owed her more than $20,000. Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesMs. Velencia said most of what she was owed came from orders this year. Sapling Press said it received its biggest order in months from Paper Source at the start of February. Steel Petal Press, a Chicago stationery and gift shop, said that it was waiting on five outstanding payments from Paper Source, including three orders made before the bankruptcy that it was asked to rush out.“There was no reason to rush through a $7,000 Father’s Day order — those cards were not going on the shelf in the middle of February,” Ms. Krowinski of Sapling Press said.Ms. Park said that the orders were not connected to the company’s bankruptcy. Paper Source has been trying to revive its inventory for months, she said, especially because it had to stock about 27 new locations that it acquired just before for the pandemic hit through the bankruptcy of Papyrus, its former rival. “We have been trying to get our inventory in greeting cards in a healthy position since last October when it was very clear we were really low in stock,” she said.But the move amplified the vendors’ confusion. “The fact that January came and brands started getting these big orders, they were happy and excited thinking this was great, things are on the upswing again and then it was not the case,” said Katie Hunt, a business coach who works with stationery vendors through her company, Proof to Product. “The optics are bad.”Paper Source, which has been privately held for years, is a relatively small retailer but a behemoth among stationery-makers, a friendly industry with regular trade shows and even “paper camps,” where aspiring cardmakers network and learn how to get their goods in bookshops and other chains, like Nordstrom. Because of its size, Paper Source is able to command concessions like longer payment deadlines. It has even solicited credits of up to $250 from vendors to help build new stores, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.Paper Source has about 1,700 employees, the vast majority of whom are hourly, and it posted gross sales of $104 million last year, down from $153 million in 2019, according to court documents.Like many retailers, Paper Source’s sales plummeted last year as it grappled with shutdowns, capacity restrictions and “the wave of canceled weddings,” according to filings. It closed stores, eliminated jobs and cut the pay of senior managers. The company estimated that 30 percent of its formerly loyal shoppers have not visited a store or purchased from its website since the pandemic started.Paper Source has more than 1,200 vendors, some of whom are taking their frustrations public on social media.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesCourt documents show that it has more than $100 million in debt and leases that cost $36 million annually. The company, which was majority-owned by Investcorp, secured short-term financing as part of the filing and plans to sell itself to lenders by the end of May. Paper Source declined to comment on specific costs tied to its debt.Many vendors said they understood that Paper Source was challenged by the pandemic. But while Paper Source can restructure, there is no guarantee of when or how much its suppliers will get paid.“I don’t think anyone’s mad at Paper Source for filing for bankruptcy,” said Kyle Durrie, who owns Power and Light Press in Silver City, N.M., and is owed about $8,000 from Paper Source. “Where I think this is really hitting a lot of us hard is just feeling like we’re being taken advantage of, and we have no rights or recourse because of how small we are.”While some vendors said that they would not work with Paper Source anymore, Ms. Park said she was optimistic that relations would improve with more education.“Bankruptcy is a well-worn path for those professionals who engage in it and do it every day,” she said. “For a community like Paper Source that’s never been through it, or our makers who have never been through it, it is confusing.”Gillian Friedman More

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    Photos: How Covid Changed New York’s Economy

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    Aug. 23, 2020 Times Square Oct. 1, 2020 Inside the Astoria, Queens, home of a couple while they worked alongside their two small children As the virus marched across the United States last year,over 20 million jobs vanished in just one month, the worst toll since the Great Depression. In New York, where cases peaked […] More

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    Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond AlabamaA vote on whether to form a union at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., has become a labor showdown, drawing the attention of N.F.L. players, and the White House.The votes on whether to form a union at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., need to be in by the end of the month.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMichael Corkery and March 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETPlayers from the National Football League were among the first to voice their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 election. The actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Ala., for a news conference last week, where he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-union leanings in urging workers at Amazon’s warehouse there to organize. Tina Fey has weighed in, and so has Senator Bernie Sanders.Then on Sunday, President Biden issued a resounding declaration of solidarity with the workers now voting on whether to form a union at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, without mentioning the company by name. Posted to his official Twitter account, his video was one of the most forceful statements in support of unionizing by an American president in recent memory.“Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union,” Mr. Biden said.A unionizing campaign that had deliberately stayed under the radar for months has in recent days blossomed into a star-studded showdown to influence the workers. On one side is the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and its many pro-labor allies in the worlds of politics, sports and Hollywood. On the other is one of the world’s dominant companies, an e-commerce behemoth that has warded off previous unionizing efforts at its U.S. facilities over its more than 25-year history.The attention is turning this union vote into a referendum not just on working conditions at the Bessemer warehouse, which employs 5,800, but on the plight of low-wage employees and workers of color in particular. Many of the employees in the Alabama warehouse are Black, a fact that the union organizers have highlighted in their campaign seeking to link the vote to the struggle for civil rights in the South.The retail workers union has a long history of organizing Black workers in the poultry and food production industries, helping them gain basic benefits like paid time off and safety protections and a means to economic security. The union is portraying its efforts in Bessemer as part of that legacy.“This is an organizing campaign in the right-to-work South during the pandemic at one of the largest companies in the world,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. “The significance of a union victory there really couldn’t be overstated.”The warehouse workers began voting by mail on Feb. 8 and the ballots are due at the end of this month. A union can form if a majority of the votes cast favor such a move.Amazon has posted signs in the facility and held meetings with workers, urging them not to unionize.Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York TimesAmazon’s countercampaign, both inside the warehouse and on a national stage, has zeroed in on pure economics: that its starting wage is $15 an hour, plus benefits. That is far more than its competitors in Alabama, where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.“It’s important that employees understand the facts of joining a union,” Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will provide education about that and the election process so they can make an informed decision. If the union vote passes, it will impact everyone at the site and it’s important associates understand what that means for them and their day-to-day life working at Amazon.” The company, which went on a huge hiring spree last year as homebound customers sent its sales to a record $386 billion, recorded more than $22 billion in profit.In Alabama, some workers are growing weary of the process. One employee recently posted on Facebook: “This union stuff getting on my nerves. Let it be March 30th already!!!”The situation is getting testy, with union leaders accusing Amazon of a series of “union-busting” tactics.The company has posted signs across the warehouse, next to hand sanitizing stations and even in bathroom stalls. It sends regular texts and emails, pointing out the problems with unions. It posts photos of workers in Bessemer on the internal company app saying how much they love Amazon.At certain training sessions, company representatives have pointed out the cost of union dues. When some workers have asked pointed questions in the meetings, the Amazon representatives followed up with them at their work stations re-emphasizing the downsides of unions, employees and organizers say. The meetings stopped once the voting started, but the signs are still up, said Jennifer Bates, a pro-union worker in the warehouse.In this charged atmosphere, even routine things have become suspect. The union has raised questions about the changing of the timing of a traffic light near the warehouse where labor organizers try to talk to the workers as they are stopped in their vehicles while leaving the facility.Amazon did ask county officials in mid-December to change the light’s timing, though there is no evidence in the county records that the change was made to thwart the union. “Traffic for Amazon is backing up around shift change,” the public records stated as the reason the county altered the light.Amazon regularly navigates traffic concerns around its facilities, and wasting unpaid time in congested parking lots is a frequent gripe of Amazon workers in Facebook groups.But the retail workers’ union president, Stuart Appelbaum, questioned the timing of the request in Bessemer, coming as it did at the height of the organizing. “When the light was red we could answer questions and have a brief conversation with workers,” he said.Last week, the union questioned an offer the company made to the Alabama warehouse workers to pay them at least $1,000 if they quit by late March. Mr. Appelbaum accused the company of trying to entice employees to leave before the vote ended.“They are trying to remove the most likely union supporters from their work force by bribing them to leave and give up their vote,” he said in an interview.But “The Offer,” as it’s known among employees, was the same that Amazon made to workers at all of its warehouses around the country. It is an annual program that lets the company reduce its head count after the peak holiday shopping season without layoffs. It has been in place since at least 2014, when Jeff Bezos wrote about it in a shareholder letter.“Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit,” Mr. Bezos said at the time. “In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”Mr. Appelbaum was not swayed. He said he believed that Amazon had chosen to make the offer across all of its warehouses when it did in order to help eliminate possible “yes” votes in Bessemer.President Biden stopped short of urging the Amazon workers to unionize, but his statement instantly raised the stakes of an already momentous campaign.“Let me be really clear,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that, either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers. Full stop.”He added, “Workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important — a vitally important choice.” And it is one, he said, that should be made without intimidation or threats.Workers around the country, including Seattle, have expressed support for the union vote in Alabama.Credit…Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDespite the union’s suspicions, it has not filed any formal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, Mr. Appelbaum said. Typically, unions can raise objections to a company’s tactics before an election and the labor board can step in.If a complaint were to be filed, the labor board could potentially determine that the election is invalid because of Amazon’s actions. But after working for months to build support inside and outside the Amazon warehouse, the last thing the union wants is for the labor board to intervene and rule that the election must be held again. The voting has already been taking place in Bessemer for nearly a month.Mr. Sachs, of Harvard Law School, said that despite Mr. Biden’s admonishments of companies’ interfering in elections, the current labor law does allow Amazon to hold certain mandatory meetings with workers to discuss why they shouldn’t unionize and enables the company to post anti-union messages around the workplace.“It is very helpful that the president is calling out these tactics, but what we need is a new labor law to stop companies from interfering,” he said.It is rare for such a large union election to be held by mail. Over Amazon’s objections, the labor board required a mail-in vote after determining that federal election monitors would be at risk of contracting Covid-19 if they had to travel to Bessemer to oversee in-person voting.By pushing back aggressively against the union, Amazon risks angering Democrats in Washington, many of whom are already calling for more antitrust scrutiny of big tech companies, whose businesses have grown even larger in the pandemic. Amazon has mounted a public campaign supporting legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, buying prominent ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.In his video on Sunday, President Biden specifically mentioned how unions can help “Black and brown workers” and vulnerable workers struggling during the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.Ms. Bates, 48, one of the leaders of the union drive, started working at the Bessemer warehouse in May.She said she felt insulted by some of Amazon’s anti-union efforts, particularly the company’s statements to the staff that they would be required to pay nearly $500 in union dues every year. Because Alabama is a right-to-work state, there is no such requirement that a union member pay dues.“It angers me a little bit because I feel like they know the truth and they won’t tell the truth and are taking advantage because they know employees come from a community that is looked on as Black and low income,” said Ms. Bates, who is Black. “It felt really horrible that you would stand there and mislead people intentionally. Give them the facts and let them decide.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Retail Sales Jumped 5.3% in January, Far Higher Than Expected

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRetail Sales Jumped 5.3% in January, Far Higher Than ExpectedStimulus money sent at the end of 2020 appeared to translate into spending, rather than saving, reversing three consecutive months of declines.The mall at Hudson Yards in Manhattan in January, when retail sales rose after dropping for three straight months.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2021Updated 4:06 p.m. ETRetail sales surged 5.3 percent in January, far higher than analysts and economists expected, providing a needed jolt to an economy that showed signs of weakening at the end of last year.The large jump in sales, reflected in data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, was most likely fueled by the latest round of stimulus checks, which were mailed out at the end of last year. The $600 checks, some easing in virus outbreaks and the increased distribution of vaccines helped send customers back into stores and restaurants last month.Monthly Retail Sales
    [embedded content]Seasonally adjusted advance monthly sales for retail and food services.Source: Commerce DepartmentThe New York TimesIan Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, called the January increase “remarkable” and predicted that spending would keep growing in the coming months as the country began making progress against the coronavirus and consumer sentiment continued to improve.“The overall strength in the numbers cannot be overstated, as every retail category was up over December,” Mickey Chadha, a retail analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said in an email.Businesses from auto dealers to department stores, which have struggled mightily to attract customers during the pandemic, showed strong sales growth. The positive figures followed three consecutive months of retail sale declines, which worried policymakers that efforts to soften the financial effects of the pandemic were falling short.The deep drop around the holidays — with sales falling 1 percent in the typically strong month of December — prompted some economists to predict that the economy was headed for a “double dip” recession unless the federal government provided more financial assistance to struggling consumers.After the latest round of stimulus was passed by Congress and signed by President Donald J. Trump at the end of 2020, economists expected that retail sales would increase 1.2 percent in January. But the stimulus money appeared to translate quickly into more spending, rather than savings.“At least half of the stimulus money sent to individuals has been spent already,” estimated Robert Frick, a corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The extension of unemployment benefits likely gave those without work the confidence to spend versus save.”Driving the larger-than-expected increase were strong sales of electronics, which increased 14.7 percent from December, and furniture and home furnishings, which rose 12 percent.Even restaurants, among the hardest hit by the pandemic, saw strong sales in January, increasing about 7 percent — though they remained nearly 17 percent below their levels from a year earlier.Department stores were another standout, with sales increasing 23.5 percent.The retailers’ trade group, the National Retail Federation, called the stimulus money a “lifeline,” but also urged the Biden administration to continue distributing vaccines as quickly as possible.Even with a few challenges ahead, many economists said on Wednesday that the rebound in consumer spending should be sustainable, helping buoy the overall economy as jobs grow again.Mr. Shepherdson, of Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that the winter storms crippling the Southwest could dampen sales this month, but that they could rebound again this spring if more financial assistance flowed from the Biden administration’s stimulus plan currently being hashed out with Congress.“Bigger increases should then follow in the second quarter as the approach of herd immunity allows more restrictions to be dropped and people’s fear of becoming seriously ill from Covid diminishes,” Mr. Shepherdson wrote in a research note.“Households, in aggregate, have more than enough cash — with more to come from the stimulus bill we expect will pass in March — to finance both a huge rebound in spending on services and continued increases in spending on goods,” he wrote.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How the Pandemic Left the $25 Billion Hudson Yards Eerily Deserted

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    The company that built Hudson Yards had said the entire project would be finished in 2024. It no longer offers an estimated completion date.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesHow the Pandemic Left the $25 Billion Hudson Yards Eerily DesertedThe largest private development in U.S. history has attracted marquee companies, but is struggling with unsold luxury condos and a mall barren of shoppers.The company that built Hudson Yards had said the entire project would be finished in 2024. It no longer offers an estimated completion date.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMatthew Haag and Feb. 6, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWhen Hudson Yards opened in 2019 as the largest private development in American history, it aspired to transform Manhattan’s Far West Side with a sleek spread of ultraluxury condominiums, office towers for powerhouse companies like Facebook, and a mall with coveted international brands and restaurants by celebrity chefs like José Andrés.All of it surrounded a copper-colored sculpture that would be to New York what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.But the pandemic has ravaged New York City’s real estate market and its premier, $25 billion development, raising significant questions about the future of Hudson Yards.Hundreds of condominiums remain unsold, and the mall is barren of customers. Its anchor tenant, Neiman Marcus, filed for bankruptcy and closed permanently, and at least four other stores, as well as several restaurants, have also gone out of business.The development’s centerpiece, the 150-foot-tall scalable structure known as the Vessel, closed to visitors in January after a third suicide in less than a year. The office buildings, whose workers sustained many of the shops and restaurants, have been largely empty since last spring.Even more perilous, the promised second phase of Hudson Yards — eight additional buildings, including a school, more luxury condos and office space — appears on indefinite hold as the developer, the Related Companies, seeks federal financing for a nearly 10-acre platform on which it will be built.Related, which had said the entire project would be finished in 2024, no longer offers an estimated completion date.The project’s woes are in many ways a microcosm of the broader challenges facing the city as it tries to recover.Related said it was counting on wealthy buyers filling its condos and deep-pocketed customers packing the mall to make Hudson Yards financially viable.But that was before the coronavirus arrived in New York.With the pandemic forcing white-collar workers to stay home — and keeping foreign buyers and tourists away — it is not clear when, or if, demand will reignite for the vast supply of upscale aeries and blue-chip office space crowding the city’s skyline.“The challenges facing Hudson Yards aren’t unique,” said Danny Ismail, an analyst and lead of office coverage for the real estate research firm Green Street Advisors. “All commercial real estate in New York City has been impacted by Covid-19. However, I would argue that post-pandemic, Hudson Yards and the area around it will be one of the better office markets in New York City.”The Vessel, left, a 150-foot-tall scalable structure at Hudson Yards, was closed to visitors in January.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe creation of Hudson Yards capped nearly 30 years of planning for the last large, undeveloped parcel in Manhattan, industrial land between Pennsylvania Station and the Hudson River.It is New York’s largest public-private venture and the city’s biggest development since Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, aided by roughly $6 billion in tax breaks and other government assistance, including the expansion of the subway to the West Side. Even with the subway expansion, Hudson Yards is still relatively isolated from the rest of Manhattan, off the beaten path from the busiest avenues for tourists, shoppers and workers.Related acknowledged that it was facing the same financial problems as the rest of the city, but said tenants were still moving into the project’s office buildings and that Hudson Yards would eventually rebound.Four office buildings at Hudson Yards — including 50 Hudson Yards, which is under construction — are 93 percent leased, a spokesman for Related said, though it is unclear how much of that occurred last year. Facebook signed a lease in late 2019 for roughly 1.5 million square feet.“Our strong office leasing, even during the pandemic, is why we’re well positioned to lead New York’s comeback from Covid and why the adjacent neighborhoods and the entire West Side will recover faster,” the spokesman, Jon Weinstein, said.The mall on a recent weekday. Last year, the main anchor, Neiman Marcus, filed for bankruptcy and closed permanently.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesStill, the troubles confronting Hudson Yards have caused Related to rethink its plans.Led by its billionaire founder Stephen M. Ross, the company set out to build Hudson Yards in two phases. The first phase, which opened in 2019, has four office towers, two residential buildings, a hotel and the mall.The second part was supposed to include 3,000 residences across eight buildings closer to the Hudson River, as well as a 750-seat public school and hundreds of low-cost rental units. At least 265 apartments are meant to be “permanently affordable,” according to a 2009 agreement between City Hall and Related.In total, Hudson Yards was expected to stretch 28 acres over existing rail yards and encompass 18 million square feet of space, roughly double the size of downtown Phoenix.The developer has considered an array of new options, including even a casino, though that idea is no longer front and center, according to Mr. Weinstein.Related cannot construct the second half until it builds a deck over the rail yard. The company, along with Amtrak, has been in discussions with the federal Department of Transportation about a low-interest loan to finance the platform and preserve the right of way for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson that Amtrak is planning to build.Related has been seeking more than $2 billion, according to two officials briefed on the proposal who were not permitted to discuss it publicly.“The residential is going to have to recover, or they switch it up and look at a different product mix over there,” said Robert Alexander, chairman of the tristate region for the real estate brokerage CBRE, which is marketing space at Hudson Yards. “To me, it’s a major development site and there’s very, very, very few major development sites in New York.”Related is also facing pressure from its investors to deliver a fuller accounting of the project’s finances. A group of 35 investors from China — a sliver of the roughly 2,400 who contributed $1.2 billion to Hudson Yards — sued the company last year, accusing it of refusing to open its books or say when it might repay their investments.The developer, the Related Companies, is seeking $2 billion in federal financing to build a 10-acre platform over an existing rail yard for the second phase of the project.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAn arbitrator in the case recently denied the investors’ claims and ruled that Related was not required to disclose detailed financial information.The company’s lawyers said that Hudson Yards was facing “significant headwinds as a result of Covid-19” and that because of the economic downturn and lockdown restrictions, it may be unable to recoup its investment in at least one property there, 35 Hudson Yards, a mixed-use tower with a hotel, according to filings in the case obtained by The New York Times.Another group of Chinese investors, whose contributions of $500,000 per person were part of a United States visa program that can grant them a path to citizenship, are said to also be considering filing a similar lawsuit against Related, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.Related made it clear before the outbreak that it intended to earn the bulk of its money at Hudson Yards through its condos and mall since Mr. Ross said it had been leasing office space at cost, without taking a profit.The pandemic has laid bare the tough road Related faces. In 2020, 30 residential units sold at Hudson Yards, compared with 157 the year before, according to an analysis for The Times by the appraisal firm Miller Samuel.So far this year, several condos are under contract at Hudson Yards, according to Related, a possible sign that the market may be stabilizing.Still, Manhattan has a record number of condos for sale right now, especially luxury units like those at Hudson Yards, and it could take years for sales to truly bounce back, according to Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy.“Hudson Yards was built for a buyer that’s no longer there and maybe partly a tenant that’s no longer there, and that was someone who wanted to live in Manhattan but not live in the city per se,” said Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, referring to the development’s homogeneity and somewhat isolated location.Several stores at Hudson Yards have closed and customers have been in short supply.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe retail picture is also bleak. The vast space occupied by the failed Neiman Marcus store will no longer be taken by another retailer. Instead, Related will convert it into more offices.In the meantime, the company has intervened in Neiman Marcus’s bankruptcy case claiming that the department store owes $16 million for breaking its lease and an additional $129,000 for the removal of its signage throughout the mall, including a giant sign that hung in a five-story glass atrium.While the mall was closed by lockdown orders from mid-March to early September, shoppers are still largely absent.Related has battled its other beleaguered retail tenants, even threatening stores with $1,500 per day fines for failing to stay open after the mall reopened.Several stores, including Forty Five Ten, a luxury clothing store from Dallas that opened alongside Neiman Marcus, have shuttered permanently. The mall opened with 79 stores and now has 89, Related said.Related said the mall had added at least 11 stores since September, including Herman Miller, Levi’s and Sunglass Hut.In the weeks before Christmas, tourists and office workers were in short supply and some stores were still closed, while others like Rolex were open by appointment only. Mall employees far outnumbered shoppers inside the cavernous building, where the most crowded spot seemed to be the line at Blue Bottle Coffee.Weekday traffic at the Hudson Yards subway station, part of the No. 7 line extension the city paid for to help make the development possible, plunged to an average of 6,500 riders in December, a sharp drop from the 20,000 daily average in 2019, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway.The lack of shoppers at the mall has cut into Related’s revenue because the company structured some retail leases so that shops pay rent based on a percentage of their monthly sales. In addition, a number of leases were specifically tied to the fate of Neiman Marcus — if it closed, smaller stores would not have to pay rent or could break their leases without penalty.Hudson Yards was meant to transform the Far West Side into a bustling business district. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesRelated would not comment about its terms with tenants, including whether any were withholding rent payments.Mr. Weinstein, the company spokesman, said that retail would “always be a key element of our new neighborhood.”Despite the uncertainty, Hudson Yards has already helped turn the neighborhood into a key business district and part of a stretch of Manhattan along the West Side that is becoming a major tech corridor.The development has attracted a who’s who of companies, including HBO, CNN, L’Oréal USA, BlackRock and Tapestry, the parent company of Coach, Kate Spade New York and Stuart Weitzman.“I think New York City will be fine, and Hudson Yards will be fine,” Mr. Florida said. “Will Hudson Yards be the same as it is envisioned? That’s the open question.”The developer said three office towers and one under construction were 93 percent leased. Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times

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    What Giant Skeletons and Puppy Shortages Told Us About the 2020 Economy

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    Retailing’s Tumultuous Year Began Before the Pandemic

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRetailing’s Tumultuous Year Began Before the PandemicThe industry employs millions of people, and the upheaval it experienced played out in the lives of many Americans.Houston Premium Outlets, a mall in Cypress, Texas, on Black Friday.Credit…Go Nakamura for The New York TimesSapna Maheshwari and Dec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETThe retail industry was in the midst of a transformation before 2020. But the onset of the pandemic accelerated that change, fundamentally reordering how and where people shop, and rippling across the broader economy.Many stores closed for good, as chains cut physical locations or filed for bankruptcy, displacing everyone from highly paid executives to hourly workers. Amazon grew even more powerful and unavoidable as millions of people bought goods online during lockdowns. The divide between essential businesses allowed to stay open and nonessential ones forced to close drove shoppers to big-box chains like Walmart, Target and Dick’s and worsened struggling department stores’ woes. The apparel industry and a slew of malls were battered as millions of Americans stayed home and a litany of dress-up events, from proms to weddings, were canceled or postponed.This year’s civil unrest and its thorny issues for American society also hit retailers. Businesses closed because of protests over George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, and they reckoned with their own failings when it came to race. The challenges faced by working parents, including the cost and availability of basic child care during the pandemic, were keenly felt by women working at stores from CVS to Bloomingdale’s. And there were questions around the treatment of workers, as retailers and their backers treated employees shoddily during bankruptcies or failed to offer hazard pay or adequate notifications about workplace Covid-19 outbreaks.Many Americans felt the retail upheaval — the industry is the second-biggest private employment sector in the United States — and some shared their experiences this year with The New York Times.Joyce Bonaime of Cabazon, Calif., is collecting unemployment benefits for the first time after working in retailing since the 1970s.Credit…Maggie Shannon for The New York Times‘That’s what I did my whole life’Joyce Bonaime, a 63-year-old in Cabazon, Calif., has worked in retailing since the 1970s. In the past 14 months, she became one of many store employees whose lives were upended by bankruptcies — first at Barneys New York and more recently at Brooks Brothers.Ms. Bonaime had spent about 10 years as a full-time stock coordinator for a Barneys outlet at Desert Hills Premium Outlets near her home, overseeing the shipping and receiving of designer wares, when the retailer filed for bankruptcy and liquidated late last year.“Barneys treated people very badly at the end there,” Ms. Bonaime said. The retailer, she said, sent inconsistent messages about severance payments and the timing of store closures, which limited people from finding other jobs just before the holiday shopping season.After Barneys, Ms. Bonaime secured a full-time stockroom position at Brooks Brothers in the same outlet mall. But the pandemic forced the store to temporarily close in March, and she was furloughed. She anticipated returning once the store reopened this summer. But Ms. Bonaime’s job was terminated this month and lost her health benefits. She is now collecting unemployment checks for the first time in her life.When Ms. Bonaime started her career, working at shoe stores and completing a management training program at one chain, retailers had a different relationship with employees and communities, she said.“We went through training on the bones in the foot and the muscles; we knew a lot about our industry,” she said. “We would reach out to local high schools and work with the cheerleading team and find a shoe they liked for outfits and give them a discount and make sure they had the right sizes.”Ms. Bonaime, who is getting by right now, feels stuck. She had planned to work a few more years before retiring, but her options are limited. Businesses at the outlet mall are struggling — and it was already hard to interview last year as a woman in her 60s, she said. Amazon is hiring, but she is concerned about the risk of accidents in a warehouse.“This pandemic just changes everything because I would have no problem getting a job otherwise,” she said. “I just don’t think there’s going to be anything in retail, and that’s what I did my whole life.”Jeffrey Kalinsky, the founder of Nordstrom’s Jeffrey boutiques, says he is not ready to retire from retailing.Credit…Maggie Steber for The New York Times‘I was collateral damage’Soon after the pandemic hit, Nordstrom said it would permanently close its three high-end Jeffrey boutiques, which were founded by Jeffrey Kalinsky and acquired by the retailer in 2005. Mr. Kalinsky, a Nordstrom executive who had focused on bringing designer apparel to the retailer, retired as part of the move.The Jeffrey stores, in New York, Atlanta and Palo Alto, Calif., had dressed the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and even been lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” The first location, in Atlanta, would have celebrated its 30th anniversary in August.Mr. Kalinsky, 58, said in an interview that he was recovering from Covid-19 at the end of March when he became aware that the stores might remain shut after a temporary closure.“It felt like I had a gun pointed at me,” he said. “The folks I always dealt with at Nordstrom were always very transparent, and I can only surmise that they were looking at how to position themselves to get through this period — and I was collateral damage.”He had once told the Jeffrey staff that it was like the original cast in a Broadway musical, performing at an “amazing level” for customers every day. The hardest part of this year was telling employees about the closing, he said.“That day was probably the most difficult, emotional day of my entire life,” he said. “I felt just gutted. It was indescribable.” Employees have told him that they “miss the merchandise, they miss the edit, they miss the specialness.”His goal was for Jeffrey to carry the best merchandise but “sell it an environment that was very democratic,” he said. “I wanted to showcase it all and wanted it all to be next to each other. I wanted the friction of Gucci next to Dries next to Comme des Garçons. I wanted to feel the tension in a good way because that, in my opinion, is how the perfect closet is.”Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ETExtension of federal jobless benefits may not prevent a brief lapse.Frustration rises at Britain’s ports over clearing a logjam of thousands of trucks.How the aid bill changes the food stamp program.Mr. Kalinsky hopes to find a job designing for an American brand, saying he is not prepared to retire from retailing. He wonders if Jeffrey could have survived the pandemic by working with vendors and landlords.“We had an impressive business, a wonderful clientele, and we would have been fine — but did we have a piggy bank for Covid? No,” he said.Trent Griffin-Braaf shifted his passenger van business in Albany, N.Y., to e-commerce deliveries.Credit…David Steinberg for The New York TimesA man with a vanTrent Griffin-Braaf started this year feeling more confident than ever. The transportation company he created to ferry guests from hotels in the Albany, N.Y., area to local attractions like the racetrack in Saratoga Springs was catching on.But when the coronavirus shut down tourism, weddings and conferences, Mr. Griffin-Braaf’s passenger vans were idled and his business was in jeopardy. “We were really in a rough place,” he said.In the late summer, his company became a carrier for Amazon and shifted to e-commerce deliveries. His team of 70 drivers and other staff include immigrants from Africa and India, workers laid off from restaurants, a struggling nail-salon owner and recent college grads “just trying to figure it out” during the pandemic.His drivers cover a 150-mile radius around Albany, including many rural areas where the number of Amazon shoppers is increasing, he said. “All you see around here is Amazon,” he said. “Come work for Amazon.”Many of his drivers were earning 10 hours of overtime a week during the peak holiday season. “I feel blessed to be busy, because so many people aren’t right now,” he said.Mr. Griffin-Braaf, 36, has not given up on passenger vans. He has started driving workers living in parts of Albany with limited public transportation to their jobs at distribution centers and other businesses far from bus lines.On the weekends, he volunteers the vans to drive families to visit loved ones in upstate prisons. Mr. Griffin-Braaf, who served time in prison years ago, said that long term, he hoped to have tractor-trailers to move e-commerce packages across the country, and to offer van service in other “transportation deserts” around the state so people could get to work.“I know how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have a car, and I have seen how hard it is when you don’t get visits in prison,” he said. “I have lived these things.”Lauren Jackson owns and runs the Hair Hive in Buffalo with her sisters.Credit…Mustafa Hussain for The New York Times‘We are glad you are here’Lauren Jackson and her two sisters inadvertently chose the wrong time to open the first Black-owned beauty supply store in their hometown, Buffalo: March 7, two weeks before the state ordered them to shut down.So the sisters reopened it as an “essential business,” stocking hand sanitizers, masks and other pandemic necessities. Their store, the Hair Hive, reopened in early April, which helped them build a customer base while competitors stayed closed.“Everything happens for a reason,” said Ms. Jackson, 28.She and her sisters, Danielle Jackson and Brianna Lannie, had talked about opening the store for several years. It is five minutes from their childhood home on the east side of Buffalo, a predominantly Black neighborhood where their parents still live.The sisters were initially intimidated about trying to break into the well-established industry.“We didn’t want to tell anyone so they wouldn’t say, ‘You can’t compete with them,’” Ms. Jackson said. “We didn’t even tell our parents.”The sisters got a loan from a family member and another from a Buffalo nonprofit. Lauren Jackson said she had watched other Black-owned businesses in her neighborhood come and go over the years, including salons, barbershops and restaurants that often closed because the younger generation didn’t want to take over after the founding family members retired. Ms. Jackson wants to break that trend.“A lot of people come into the store because we are Black-owned,” she said. “They feel comfortable knowing we can relate with what’s going on with their hair. They tell us, ‘We are glad you are here.’”Feisal Ahmed returned to his sales job at Macy’s in Manhattan after a four-month shutdown.Credit…Haruka Sakaguchi for The New York Times‘Scared of what might be coming’In June, as the first wave of the coronavirus was finally coming under control in New York, Feisal Ahmed got a call from his manager at Macy’s.Would he like to return to his job selling luxury watches when the store in Herald Square reopened? “I am already there,” he told his boss. “Put me first in line.”Mr. Ahmed was in his early 20s and a recent emigrant from Bangladesh when he started working at Macy’s in 1994. He met his wife in the store, was able to make a down payment on a house in Astoria, Queens, and saved up enough money to start his own laundry, which he eventually sold.“I owe a lot to this job,” he said.But after an initial feeling of relief and excitement to return to work after four months of lockdowns, reality set in for Mr. Ahmed. He has gone some days without selling a single watch, for which he would earn a commission.Last week, business picked up for a few days, driven by last-minute Christmas shopping, but it was nowhere near a normal holiday pace. “The pandemic, job security — people are scared to spend money,” he said.Still, Mr. Ahmed feels lucky. In New York City, retail jobs make up 9 percent of private-sector employment, and many have been slow to return. At stores selling clothing and clothing accessories, employment is down more than 40 percent from a year ago, according to a recent report by the state comptroller’s office.Mr. Ahmed said that as a member of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, he had certain job protections. But he worries about what the winter will bring, as the pandemic continues to keep many shoppers away.“Employees are scared of what might be coming,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More