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Trump’s Attacks on DEI Get Approval From Some in the Left Wing

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Many Democrats and activists are rallying to defend diversity programs, but others say they distract from deeper efforts to address inequality.A few days after President Trump issued an order urging the private sector to end “Illegal D.E.I. Discrimination and Preferences,” the Rev. Al Sharpton led about 100 people into a Costco in East Harlem for a so-called buy-cott. The idea was to shop and support the company for maintaining its diversity, equity and inclusion policies amid pressure from the new administration.But the gesture by the civil rights activist did not win universal acclaim on the political left. In interviews, self-identified socialists and other leftists worried that Mr. Sharpton’s action helped bolster the company at a moment when it faced pressure from unionized workers, who had threatened to strike beginning Feb. 1.“Al Sharpton making Costco into a titan of progress that needs mass support days before a potential strike,” Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of the progressive magazine The Nation, grumbled on the platform X.The episode at Costco, which did not respond to a request for comment, illustrates an underappreciated tension on the left at a time when Mr. Trump has targeted diversity initiatives: Some on the left have expressed skepticism of such programs, portraying them as a diversion from attacking economic inequality — and even an obstacle to doing so.“I am definitely happy this stuff is buried for now,” Mr. Sunkara said in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t come back.”Corporate-backed initiatives promoting diversity can take various forms. Starbucks, for instance, pledges to “work hard to ensure our hiring practices are competitive, fair and inclusive” and says it is “committed to consistently achieving 100 percent gender and race pay equity.” It also offers anti-bias training.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Starbucks Workers Say They Will Begin a Strike in 3 Cities on Friday

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    The planned walkout in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle comes after talks between the company and the workers’ union failed to produce an agreement on raises.A union representing Starbucks workers said Thursday that baristas in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle would walk off the job Friday morning and that the strikes would spread to hundreds of stores by Christmas Eve unless the company improved its wage offer in contract negotiations.The union, which represents baristas at more than 500 company-owned stores in the United States — about 5 percent of the U.S. total — said it called the strike after a bargaining session with the company this week failed to produce better wage gains.The strike is expected to begin in about 15 stores across the three metropolitan areas, according to a union member familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.“Starbucks proposed an economic package with no new wage increases for union baristas now and a guarantee of only 1.5 percent in future years,” the union, Workers United, said in a statement.The guarantee would entitle unionized Starbucks workers to receive a wage increase of 1.5 percent even if the company raises wages nationwide by less than that amount in future years. If the company raised wages by more than that — as it did this year, with a recently announced increase of 2 percent — unionized workers would get the higher amount.Andrew Trull, a Starbucks spokesman, said union delegates “prematurely ended” this week’s negotiations. “It is disappointing they didn’t return to the table given the progress we’ve made to date,” he added.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NLRB Bars Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings After Amazon Draws Complaint

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    The ruling, stemming from a complaint against Amazon, bars companies from compelling workers to attend meetings on unionization’s downsides.The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Wednesday that companies may not compel workers to attend meetings on the downsides of unionization, a tactic that unions say stifles worker organizing.The decision, the latest in a slew of labor board rulings under the Biden administration aimed at supporting workers’ right to unionize, stems from a complaint over Amazon’s conduct before a successful union election in 2022 at a Staten Island warehouse, the first Amazon warehouse in the nation to unionize. The company held hundreds of meetings there and at another location to discourage workers from supporting a union.The N.L.R.B.’s ban on so-called captive audience meetings is a precedent with potential impact beyond Amazon, though it could be reversed after President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office. Facing a wave of union campaigns since the onset of the pandemic, large employers including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI have held such meetings in what labor regulators and unions have described as an effort to clamp down on organizing. The companies have denied accusations of anti-union campaigns.These meetings, which employees are often required to attend, give employers “near-unfettered freedom to force their message about unionization on workers,” Lauren McFerran, the Democratic chairman of the labor board, said in a statement. She added that they undermine employees’ ability to choose whether they want union representation, a right guaranteed under federal law.“Today’s decision better protects workers’ freedom to make their own choices in exercising their rights,” Ms. McFerran said, “while ensuring that employers can convey their views about unionization in a noncoercive manner.”Amazon intends to appeal the decision, said Mary Kate Paradis, a company spokeswoman, calling the ruling a violation of the First Amendment and adding that it “contradicts the express language” of the National Labor Relations Act. Meetings are often held “because the decision about whether or not to join a union is an important one, and employees deserve to understand the facts so they can make an informed choice,” she said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Supreme Court Backs Starbucks Over ‘Memphis 7’ Union Case

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    In a blow to the National Labor Relations Board, the justices made it more difficult to order employers to reinstate fired workers.The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks on Thursday in a challenge against a labor ruling by a federal judge, making it more difficult for a key federal agency to intervene when a company is accused of illegally suppressing labor organizing.Eight justices backed the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a separate opinion that concurred with the overall judgment but dissented on certain points.The ruling came in a case brought by Starbucks over the firing of seven workers in Memphis who were trying to unionize a store in 2022. The company said it had fired them for allowing a television crew into a closed store. The workers, who called themselves the Memphis Seven, said that they were fired for their unionization efforts and that the company didn’t typically enforce the rules they were accused of violating.After the firings, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint saying that Starbucks had acted because the workers had “joined or assisted the union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.” Separately, lawyers for the board asked a federal judge in Tennessee for an injunction reinstating the workers, and the judge issued the order in August 2022.The agency asks judges to reinstate workers in such cases because resolving the underlying legal issues can take years, during which time other workers may become discouraged from organizing even if the fired workers ultimately prevail.In its petition to the Supreme Court, the company argued that federal courts had differing standards when deciding whether to grant injunctions that reinstate workers, which the N.L.R.B. has the authority to seek under the National Labor Relations Act.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Starbucks and Union Agree to Work Out Framework for Contract Talks

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    In an initial move, the coffeehouse chain said Workers United members would get improved benefits that other employees received in 2022.Starbucks and the union that represents employees in roughly 400 of its U.S. stores announced Tuesday that they were beginning discussions on a “foundational framework” that would help the company reach labor agreements with unionized workers and resolve litigation between the two sides.The union greeted the development as a major shift in strategy for Starbucks, which has taken steps to resist union organizing at the company since the campaign began in 2021, moves that federal labor regulators have said violated labor law hundreds of times.Starbucks, which has denied the accusations, said in a statement that it hoped to have contracts negotiated and ratified by the end of the year and would agree to a “fair process for organizing” — something the union has demanded for years. It said that, as a gesture of good faith, it was providing unionized workers with benefits it introduced in 2022 but withheld from union stores, like an option for customers to tip via credit card.Representatives of both Starbucks and the union, Workers United, said that while details must be worked out, they hoped to be back at the bargaining table in the coming weeks. Negotiations between the two sides had largely lapsed over the past several months.Workers who have helped lead the organizing said the development had surprised them. “It still feels pretty surreal right now,” said Michelle Eisen, a longtime barista at a Starbucks in Buffalo that was the first company-owned store to unionize during the current campaign. “There has not been a single call I’ve been on today where either I wasn’t crying or everyone else wasn’t crying.”If a framework is agreed to and quickly leads to contracts, experts said, it could be a major development in labor relations in corporate America, where companies like Amazon and Apple have resisted union organizing to varying degrees.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can a Tech Giant Be Woke?

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    The December day in 2021 that set off a revolution across the videogame industry appeared to start innocuously enough. Managers at a Wisconsin studio called Raven began meeting one by one with quality assurance testers, who vet video games for bugs, to announce that the company was overhauling their department. Going forward, managers said, the lucky testers would be permanent employees, not temps. They would earn an extra $1.50 an hour.It was only later in the morning, a Friday, that the catch became apparent: One-third of the studio’s roughly 35 testers were being let go as part of the overhaul. The workers were stunned. Raven was owned by Activision Blizzard, one of the industry’s largest companies, and there appeared to be plenty of work to go around. Several testers had just worked late into the night to meet a looming deadline.“My friend called me crying, saying, ‘I just lost my job,’” recalled Erin Hall, one of the testers who stayed on. “None of us saw that coming.”The testers conferred with one another over the weekend and announced a strike on Monday. Just after they returned to work seven weeks later, they filed paperwork to hold a union election. Raven never rehired the laid-off workers, but the other testers won their election in May 2022, forming the first union at a major U.S. video game company.It was at this point that the rebellion took a truly unusual turn. Large American companies typically challenge union campaigns, as Activision had at Raven. But in this case, Activision’s days as the sole decision maker were numbered. In January 2022, Microsoft had announced a nearly $70 billion deal to purchase the video game maker, and the would-be owners seemed to take a more permissive view of labor organizing.The month after the union election, Microsoft announced that it would stay neutral if any of Activision’s roughly 7,000 eligible employees sought to unionize with the Communications Workers of America — meaning the company would not try to stop the organizing, unlike most employers. Microsoft later said that it would extend the deal to studios it already owned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Supreme Court to Hear Starbucks Bid to Overturn Labor Ruling

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    The coffee chain has challenged a federal judge’s order to reinstate a group of union activists who were fired at a store in Memphis.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case brought by Starbucks challenging a federal judge’s order to reinstate seven employees who were fired at a store in Memphis amid a union campaign there.Starbucks argued that the criteria for such intervention by judges in labor cases, which can also include measures like reopening shuttered stores, vary across regions of the country because federal appeals courts may adhere to different standards.A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board, the company’s opponent in the case, argued that the apparent differences in criteria among appeals courts were semantic rather than substantive, and that a single effective standard was already in place nationwide.The labor board had urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the case, whose outcome could affect union organizing across the country.The agency asks federal judges for temporary relief, like reinstatement of fired workers, because litigating charges of unfair labor practices can take years. The agency argues that retaliation against workers can have a chilling effect on organizing in the meantime, even if the workers ultimately win their case.In a statement on Friday, Starbucks said, “We are pleased the Supreme Court has decided to consider our request to level the playing field for all U.S. employers by ensuring that a single standard is applied as federal district courts.”The labor board declined to comment.The union organizing campaign at Starbucks began in the Buffalo area in 2021 and quickly spread to other states. The union, Workers United, represents workers at more than 370 Starbucks stores, out of roughly 9,600 company-owned stores in the United States.The labor board has issued dozens of complaints against the company based on hundreds of accusations of labor law violations, including threats and retaliation against workers who are seeking to unionize and a failure to bargain in good faith. This week, the agency issued a complaint accusing the company of unilaterally changing work hours and schedules in unionized stores around the country.The company has denied violating labor law and said in a statement that it contested the latest complaint and planned “to defend our lawful business decisions” before a judge.The case that led to the dispute before the Supreme Court involves seven workers who were fired in February 2022 after they let local journalists into a closed store to conduct interviews. Starbucks said the incident violated company rules; the workers and the union said the company did not enforce such rules against workers who were not involved in union organizing.The labor board found merit in the workers’ accusations and issued a complaint two months later. A federal judge granted the labor board’s request for an order reinstating the workers that August, and a federal appeals court upheld the order.“Starbucks is seeking a bailout for its illegal union-busting from Trump’s Supreme Court,” Workers United said in a statement on Friday. “There’s no doubt that Starbucks broke federal law by firing workers in Memphis for joining together in a union.”Starbucks said it was critical for the Supreme Court to wade into the case because the labor board was becoming more ambitious in asking judges to order remedies like reinstatement of fired workers.The labor board noted in its filing with the Supreme Court that it was bringing fewer injunctions overall than in some recent years — only 21 were authorized in 2022, down from more than 35 in 2014 and 2015.A Supreme Court decision could in principle raise the bar for judges to issue orders reinstating workers, effectively limiting the labor board’s ability to win temporary relief for workers during a union campaign.The case is not the only recent challenge to the labor board’s authority. After the board issued a complaint accusing the rocket company SpaceX of illegally firing eight employees for criticizing its chief executive, Elon Musk, the company filed a lawsuit this month arguing that the agency’s setup for adjudicating complaints is unconstitutional.The company said in its lawsuit that the agency’s structure violated its right to a trial by jury. More

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    Federal Regulators Seek to Force Starbucks to Reopen 23 Stores

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    The National Labor Relations Board says the locations were closed because of union organizing, violating federal law.Federal labor regulators accused Starbucks on Wednesday of illegally closing 23 stores to suppress organizing activity and sought to force the company to reopen them.A complaint issued by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board argued that Starbucks had closed the stores because its employees engaged in union activities or to discourage employees from doing so. At least seven of the 23 stores identified had unionized.The agency’s move is the latest in a series of accusations by federal officials that Starbucks has broken the law during a two-year labor campaign.The case is scheduled to go before an administrative judge next summer unless Starbucks settles it earlier. In addition to asking the judge to order the stores reopened, the complaint wants employees to be compensated for the loss of earnings or benefits and for other costs they incurred as a result of the closures.“This complaint is the latest confirmation of Starbucks’ determination to illegally oppose workers’ organizing,” Mari Cosgrove, a Starbucks employee, said in a statement issued through a spokesperson for the union, Workers United.A Starbucks spokesman said, “Each year as a standard course of business, we evaluate the store portfolio” and typically open, close or alter stores. The company said it opened hundreds of new stores last year and closed more than 100, of which about 3 percent were unionized.The union campaign began in 2021 in the Buffalo, N.Y., area, where two stores unionized that December, before spreading across the country. More than 350 of the company’s roughly 9,300 corporate-owned locations have unionized.The labor board has issued more than 100 complaints covering hundreds of accusations of illegal behavior by Starbucks, including threats or retaliation against workers involved in union activity and a failure to bargain in good faith. Administrative judges have ruled against the company on more than 30 occasions, though the company has appealed those decisions to the full labor board in Washington. Judges have dismissed fewer than five of the complaints.None of the unionized stores have negotiated a labor contract with the company, and bargaining has largely stalled. Last week, Starbucks wrote to Workers United saying it wanted to resume negotiations.According to Wednesday’s complaint, Starbucks managers announced the closing of 16 stores in July 2022, then announced several more closures over the next few months.An administrative judge previously ruled that Starbucks had illegally closed a unionized store in Ithaca, N.Y., and ordered workers reinstated with back pay, but the company has appealed that decision.The new complaint was issued on the same day that Starbucks released a nonconfidential version of an outside assessment of whether its practices align with its stated commitment to labor rights. The company’s shareholders had voted to back the assessment in a nonbinding vote whose results were announced in March.The author of the report, Thomas M. Mackall, a former management-side lawyer and labor relations official at the food and facilities management company Sodexo, wrote that he “found no evidence of an ‘anti-union playbook’ or instructions or training about how to violate U.S. laws.”But Mr. Mackall concluded that Starbucks officials involved in responding to the union campaign did not appear to understand how the company’s Global Human Rights Statement might constrain their response. The rights statement commits Starbucks to respecting employees’ freedom of association and participation in collective bargaining.Mr. Mackall cited managers’ “allegedly unlawful promises and threats” and “allegedly discriminatory or retaliatory discipline and discharge” as areas where Starbucks could improve.In a letter tied to the report’s release, the chair of the company’s board and an independent director said the assessment was clear that “Starbucks has had no intention to deviate from the principles of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.” At the same time, the letter added, “there are things the company can, and should, do to improve its stated commitments and its adherence to these important principles.” More

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    Starbucks Tells Union It Wants to Resume Contract Talks

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    After the coffeehouse chain proposed terms for contract negotiations, Workers United, which represents 9,000 employees, said it was open to productive steps.Starbucks said Friday that it wanted to get back to the bargaining table after a deadlock of more than six months with the union that represents more than 9,000 of its workers.The company is proposing that bargaining continue with a set of organized stores in January, Sara Kelly, Starbucks’s vice president and chief partner officer, said in a letter to Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, the parent union of Starbucks Workers United.“We collectively agree, the current impasse should not be acceptable to either of us,” Ms. Kelly said in the letter. “It has not helped Starbucks, Workers United or, most importantly, our partners. In this spirit, we are asking for your support and agreement to restart bargaining.”Starbucks said it would like to conduct these meetings without audio or video recording “so that all participants are comfortable with open, honest discussions.” The union has previously fought for the negotiations to be conducted by videoconference so that more members could take part.Ms. Fox said in a statement that the union was reviewing the letter and still determining how to respond. “We’ve never said no to meeting with Starbucks,” she said. “Anything that moves bargaining forward in a positive way is most welcome.”Starbucks workers began organizing in 2021 with three Buffalo-area stores. Now more than 350 of the company’s roughly 9,300 corporate-owned stores in the United States are organized.In those two years, the coffee giant and its workers have sparred over issues ranging from Pride Month décor to accusations of company retaliation. The two sides have blamed each other for stalled talks since their last meeting on May 23.Most recently, workers at more than 200 stores walked out on Nov. 16, which fell on Starbucks’ promotional Red Cup Day.The union has filed hundreds of charges with the National Labor Relations Board complaining of unfair labor practices, with accusations including unjust firings and withholding certain health care benefits for organized workers. The agency itself has sided with workers in many of those disputes.The company has also sued the union over allegations of using the company’s intellectual property in pro-Palestinian messaging. More