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VW Workers in Tennessee Start Vote on U.A.W., Testing Union Ambitions

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The United Automobile Workers hopes contract gains at the Big Three carmakers will provide momentum in a broad effort to organize nonunion plants.Last fall the United Automobile Workers union won big pay increases from the Detroit automakers, and the impact rippled quickly through the nonunion auto plants scattered across the South.Afterward, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai and Tesla raised wages for their own hourly workers in the United States, none of whom are unionized. On production lines in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, those pay increases have been referred to as the “U.A.W. bump.”Now 4,300 workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will test whether the union can achieve an even greater bump. On Wednesday, they begin voting on whether to join the U.A.W., and the prospects of a union victory appear high. About 70 percent of the workers pledged to vote yes before the union asked for a vote, according to the U.A.W.“I think our chances are excellent,” said Kelcey Smith, 48, who has worked in the VW plant’s paint department for a year and is a member of a committee working to build support for the U.A.W. “The energy is high. I think we are going to nail it.”Volkswagen has presented reasons it believes a union is not needed at the plant, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga region. But it has also said it encourages all workers to vote in the election, which is to conclude on Friday, and decide for themselves. “No one will lose their job for voting for or against the union,” a company spokesman said.The stakes go beyond the Tennessee plant, Volkswagen’s only U.S. factory. A victory there would add fuel to the U.A.W.’s push to extend its presence to the more than two dozen nonunion auto plants in the United States, mostly clustered in Southern states where union resistance has been strong historically, and where right-to-work laws make it hard for unions to organize workers.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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    U.S. Employers Added 303,000 Jobs in 39th Straight Month of Growth

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    The March data increased confidence among economists and investors that robust hiring and rising wages can continue to coexist while inflation eases.Another month, another burst of better-than-expected job gains.Employers added 303,000 jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 3.9 percent in February. Expectations of a recession among experts, once widespread, are now increasingly rare.It was the 39th straight month of job growth. And employment levels are now more than three million greater than forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just before the pandemic shock.The resilient data generally increased confidence among economists and market investors that the U.S. economy has reached a healthy equilibrium in which a steady roll of commercial activity, growing employment and rising wages can coexist, despite the high interest rate levels of the last two years.From late 2021 to early 2023, inflation was outstripping wage gains, but that also now appears to have firmly shifted, even as wage increases decelerate from their roaring rates of growth in 2022. Average hourly earnings for workers rose 0.3 percent in March from the previous month and were up 4.1 percent from March 2023.Wage growth continues to slowYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    in Economy

    California $20 Fast-Food Minimum Wage Is Coming April 1

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    The nation’s highest state minimum wage for fast-food workers takes effect on Monday. Owners and employees are sizing up the potential impact.A decade ago, Jamie Bynum poured his life savings into a barbecue restaurant now tucked between a Thai eatery and a nutrition store in a Southern California strip mall.As a franchise owner of a Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Mr. Bynum is pridefully particular about the details of his establishment — the size of the hickory wood pile on display near the entrance, the positioning of paper towel rolls on each table, the careful calibration it takes to keep his restaurant staffed 10 hours a day with a small crew.The staffing, he said, has become harder in recent years, as the state’s minimum wage has steadily increased since 2017, often rising by a dollar per year. Today, it’s $16 an hour.But on Monday, it will jump to $20 an hour for most fast-food workers in California, propelling them to the top of what minimum-wage earners make anywhere in the country. (Only Tukwila, Wash., a small city outside Seattle, sets the bar higher, with a minimum wage of $20.29 for many employees.)The ambitious law, which supporters hope to see replicated nationwide, has been characterized by opposing sides in stark terms. To backers, it is a step toward fair compensation for low-wage workers who faced significant risk during the pandemic. To opponents, it is a cataclysmic move that will raise food prices, lead to job losses and force some franchisees to consider closing.“People don’t understand that when wages rise, so do the prices,” Mr. Bynum said.Mr. Bynum has, in recent years, raised prices to try to maintain profit margins — and each time, he said, he has noticed a drop in customers. That, in turn, forced painful decisions about cutting staffing and trimming hours.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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    ‘Strike Madness’ Hits Germany While Its Economy Stumbles

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    A wave of strikes by German workers, feeling the sting of inflation and stagnant growth, is the latest sign of the bleak outlook for Europe’s economic powerhouse.For those striking at the gates of the SRW scrap metal plant, just outside Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig, time can be counted not just in days — 136 so far — but in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee imbibed and the armfuls of firewood burned.Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for two decades. Wearing his red union baseball cap and tending the blaze inside an oil drum, Mr. Bohne, 56, looks like a scruffy Santa Claus.The dozens of workers at the SRW recycling center say their strike has become the longest in postwar German history — a dubious honor in a nation with a history of harmonious labor relations. (The previous record, 114 days, was held by shipyard workers in the northern city of Kiel who struck in the 1950s.)Jonny Bohne has vowed not to shave while on strike. It’s been awhile.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesWhile monthslong strikes may be commonplace in some other European countries like Spain, Belgium or France, where workers’ protests are something of a national pastime, Germany has long prided itself on nondisruptive collective bargaining.A wave of strikes this year has Germans asking whether that is now changing. By some measures, the first three months of 2024 have had the most strikes in the country in 25 years.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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    U.S. Employers Add 275,000 Jobs in Another Strong Month

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    Economists are trying to gauge whether forecasts of a slowing labor market were mistaken or just premature. For now, gains are consistent and strong.If the economy is slowing down, nobody told the labor market.Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations even as the unemployment rate rose.It was the third straight month of gains above 200,000, and the 38th consecutive month of growth — fresh evidence that four years after going into pandemic shutdowns, America’s jobs engine still has plenty of steam.“We’ve been expecting a slowdown in the labor market, a more material loosening in conditions, but we’re just not seeing that,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.Previously reported figures for December and January were revised downward by a total of 167,000, reflecting the higher degree of statistical volatility in the winter months. That does not disrupt a picture of consistent, robust increases.At the same time, the unemployment rate, based on a survey of households rather than businesses, increased to a two-year high of 3.9 percent. The increase from 3.7 percent in January was driven by people losing or leaving jobs as well as those entering the labor force to look for work.A more expansive measure of slack labor market conditions, which includes people working part time who would rather work full time, has been steadily rising and now stands at 7.3 percent.Wage growth slowed slightly in FebruaryYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    in Economy

    Brighter Economic Mood Isn’t Translating Into Support for Biden

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    Voters feel slightly better about the economy as inflation recedes, but partisan divides remain deep, a Times/Siena poll found.Eight months before the election, Americans feel slightly better about the state of the economy as inflation recedes and the labor market remains stable, but President Biden doesn’t appear to be benefiting.Among registered voters nationwide, 26 percent believe the economy is good or excellent, according to polling in late February by The New York Times and Siena College. That share is up six percentage points since July. The movement occurred disproportionately among older Democrats, a constituency already likely to vote for Mr. Biden.And the share of voters saying they approve of the job Mr. Biden is doing in office has actually fallen, to 36 percent in the latest poll, from 39 percent in July.Inflation has pervaded economic sentiment since mid-2022, confronting voters daily with the price of everything from eggs to car insurance. Even as inflation has been falling since mid-2023 — and wage growth has lately outpaced the rate of price increases, at least on average — many Americans don’t yet see the problem as solved. Nearly two-thirds of registered voters in the Times/Siena poll rated the price of food and consumer goods as poor.Mr. Biden’s team has pointed to an array of indications that the economy has rebounded remarkably well since he assumed office, including an unemployment rate that has been under 4 percent for two years and a stock market that has set record after record.But in a persistent trend that has confounded pollsters and economists, those fundamentals largely haven’t been reflected in surveys. Forty percent of those surveyed said the economy was worse than it was a year earlier, compared with 23 percent who thought it was better — even though a narrow majority rated their personal financial situation as good or excellent.

    Source: New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters conducted Feb. 25 to 28, 2024By Christine Zhang

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    How would you rate each of the following aspects of the economy today?
    Source: New York Times/Siena College poll of 980 registered voters conducted Feb. 25 to 28, 2024By Christine ZhangWe 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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    After Gains at Big Three, U.A.W. Aims at Nonunion Plants

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    A looming union election at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga could determine the trajectory of union organizing at more than a dozen auto factories.When Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president, unveiled the deal that ended six weeks of strikes at Ford Motor in the fall, he framed it as part of a longer campaign. Next, he declared, would be the task of organizing nonunion plants across the country.“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” he said at the time. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”Four months later, the first test of that strategy has come into focus, and it features a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.According to the union, more than half of over 4,000 eligible workers have signed cards indicating support for a union. Workers say they have done so because they want higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits — and because the recent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis persuaded them that a union can help win these concessions.“The Big Three, they had their big campaign, and their big strike and vote, and new contracts — we paid attention to that very closely,” said Yolanda Peoples, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant for nearly 13 years.The Volkswagen plant announced an 11 percent pay increase shortly after the strikes at the Big Three. The raise brought the top hourly wage for production workers to $32.40, but the comparable wage for the Detroit automakers will exceed $40 by the end of the new contracts. (Volkswagen said the wage adjustment was part of a yearly review.)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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    in Economy

    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