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    Amazon Labor Union Loses Election at Warehouse Near Albany

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    By a 2-to-1 ratio, the group had its second defeat since a surprise victory in April on Staten Island.Workers at an Amazon facility near Albany, N.Y., have voted decisively against being represented by the upstart Amazon Labor Union, denting efforts to expand unionization across the giant e-commerce company.Employees at the warehouse cast 206 votes to be represented by the union and 406 against, according to a count released on Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board. Almost 950 workers were eligible to vote.The vote was the Amazon Labor Union’s second unsuccessful election since a surprise victory in April, when workers at an Amazon facility on Staten Island voted to form the first union of the company’s warehouse employees in the United States.“We’re glad that our team in Albany was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep the direct relationship with Amazon,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement.In recent months, the Amazon Labor Union has debated whether to focus on winning a contract at the Staten Island facility, known as JFK8, or on expanding its reach to other warehouses around the country through additional elections.Christian Smalls, the union’s president, “is very much in favor of trying to create opportunities for as many workers as possible to vote,” said Cassio Mendoza, a JFK8 worker and the union’s communications director. At the same time, the union has felt pressure to demonstrate progress to workers on Staten Island, and has recently stepped up its internal organizing there after months of minimal public activity.The result on Tuesday from the ALB1 warehouse in Castleton-on-Hudson, N.Y., about 10 miles south of Albany, did not appear to dissuade the union from reaching beyond JFK8.More on Big TechIn Australia: Dozens of workers at Apple walked off the job after negotiations over pay and working conditions stalled. This is why the action is significant.Inside Meta’s Struggles: After a rocky year, employees at Meta are expressing skepticism, confusion and frustration over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse.A Deal for Twitter?: In a surprise move, Elon Musk has offered to acquire Twitter at his original price of $44 billion, which could bring to an end the acrimonious legal fight between the billionaire and the company.Hiring Freezes: Amazon is halting corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, joining Meta as the latest tech companies to pull back amid the economic uncertainty.“We are filled with resolve to continue and expand our campaign for fair treatment for all Amazon workers,” Mr. Smalls said in a statement. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”About 80 percent of the union’s budget of more than half a million dollars has been focused on Staten Island, union officials have said. The rest has been set aside for expansion efforts, including at ALB1 and a facility in Southern California that submitted a petition for an election last week.Mr. Smalls said the election “wasn’t free and fair.” Even before the ballots were tallied on Tuesday, the union expressed concern that Amazon had improperly interfered with the vote, potentially laying the groundwork for a legal objection to the result.Labor board staff members have been investigating 27 charges of unfair labor practices that the union filed against Amazon before the voting began, the agency said last week. The union has since lodged additional concerns.One included an accusation that a worker had been suspended for complaining that one of Amazon’s anti-union consultants followed him around and harassed him during the voting period, according to Retu Singla, a lawyer representing the union.“They try to whip votes during the election,” said Mr. Mendoza, who added that the consultant appeared to be wearing worker clothes and an Amazon vest.Another employee, who was not directly involved with the union campaign and requested anonymity, said on the first day of voting that he had seen what appeared to be “fake employees” who were wearing Amazon vests but did not know the basics of the jobs and cast doubt on the union’s ability to negotiate a contract.Matthew Bodie, a former N.L.R.B. lawyer now at the University of Minnesota Law School, said that while one-on-one conversations with workers during the voting period were allowed, seeking to deceive employees by misrepresenting the identity of company agents could amount to interference in the election.Amazon declined to comment on the accusations.The ALB1 warehouse handles oversize items like outdoor equipment and televisions. A recent report by a worker advocacy group found that the facility had the highest rate of serious injuries of any Amazon warehouse in New York for which the group was able to obtain government data.Amazon has emphasized its minimum starting wage and benefits, and has said it has improved its safety record more than other retailers in recent years. In its messaging to workers, it has questioned the Amazon Labor Union’s experience and has said workers could be worse off if they voted for a union.In interviews outside the warehouse in September, some Amazon workers said they were supporting the union because pay was too low, especially in light of how physically taxing the work could be. The company recently raised its starting base wage at the warehouse to $17 an hour, from $15.70.“I think we need a union — we need more pay,” said Masud Abdullah, an employee at the warehouse. He said he had made about $22 an hour at an industrial bakery, but left that job because the hours did not fit with his parenting responsibilities.He and other workers also said they felt Amazon’s disciplinary policies were sometimes arbitrary. “It’s like you don’t have nobody representing you,” Mr. Abdullah said. “They could get you in and out for anything.”Other workers said they didn’t believe a union was necessary because Amazon already provided solid pay and benefits, such as health care and college tuition subsidies. Even some union supporters acknowledged that the company often treated workers well.Some workers expressed skepticism that the Amazon Labor Union would deliver on its promises, such as improving pay. “I feel like I haven’t seen any evidence,” said Jacob Carpenter, who works at the warehouse. He added that he planned to vote no.Amazon has been fighting the union’s successful vote on Staten Island. After a lengthy hearing on the company’s objections to that election, a labor board official recently endorsed the union’s victory. A regional official must still weigh in, but Amazon told workers at JFK8 that it intended to appeal. The union has recently pushed a petition to pressure Amazon to negotiate a contract. More

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    Apple Store in Oklahoma City Becomes Second to Unionize

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    Workers said pay was adequate and benefits were good, but complained that managers’ practices often seemed arbitrary.Apple employees at a store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize, becoming the second of the company’s roughly 270 U.S. retail stores to do so.The result, announced by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday night, suggests that an initial victory by a union at a store in Towson, Md., in June was not an isolated development in an organizing campaign that dates back to last year.According to the labor board, 56 employees voted in favor of the union and 32 voted against. The workers will be represented by the Communications Workers of America, which has members at AT&T Mobility, Verizon and media companies like The New York Times, and has sought to represent tech-industry workers in recent years.Sara Steffens, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said in a statement that workers at the store, known as the Penn Square location, had faced an aggressive anti-union campaign, but she predicted that “Apple retail workers across the country will continue to organize, especially after this momentous victory.”Apple said in a statement that “we believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams.”More on Big TechInside Meta’s Struggles: After a rocky year, employees at Meta are expressing skepticism, confusion and frustration over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse.A Deal for Twitter?: In a surprise move, Elon Musk has offered to acquire Twitter at his original price of $44 billion, which could bring to an end the acrimonious legal fight between the billionaire and the company.Hiring Freezes: Amazon is halting corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, joining Meta as the latest tech companies to pull back amid the economic uncertainty.TikTok Nears Deal with U.S.: The Biden administration and the Chinese-owned video app have drafted a preliminary agreement to resolve national security concerns over the platform, but hurdles remain over the terms.In interviews, employees at the store said that they received solid benefits, like health care, stock grants and paid family leave, and that their pay had improved over the past several months. The company recently raised the minimum starting wage at its stores to $22 an hour and said it had increased starting wages by 45 percent in the United States since 2018.But workers complained that supervisors’ decisions about hiring, pay and job assignments were often opaque and said a union would bring greater transparency to their store.Leigha Briscoe, an employee involved in the organizing who works in sales, said employees were given very different tasks during the first year of the pandemic, when they often worked from home, with little explanation for the disparities.“Some people were at home making posters, doing drawing projects, and others were on the phone taking calls eight hours a day,” Ms. Briscoe said. “There was a lack of clarity as to what the plan was.”Workers also cited confusion over how to earn promotions at the store.“Some people have been in their current roles for years trying to get promoted and are not really getting anywhere, but whenever they get feedback on an interview for a promotion what they get is very subjective goals,” said Michael Forsythe, another employee involved in the organizing, who helps oversee the repair room at the store.Mr. Forsythe said workers were sometimes told to work on their “customer focus,” but were not given more concrete suggestions like “I want you to have a three-week average of 80 percent customer satisfaction score.”Mr. Forsythe said the idea of unionizing first occurred to him late last year, after employees across the company had begun to protest management’s plans to bring them back to the office. The protest ballooned into a broader campaign, known as #AppleToo, that sought to highlight a variety of workplace problems, including harassment and pay disparities, and caught Mr. Forsythe’s attention.In April, a store in Atlanta filed a petition for a union election, and Mr. Forsythe and other employees at the Oklahoma City store began to discuss unionization.The Atlanta store later withdrew its petition, as the company announced a raise and highlighted the benefits it offered and the potential costs of unionizing, denting support for the union.But by then, the Oklahoma City store had formed an organizing committee and more employees were expressing interest in a union. The Oklahoma City workers filed their petition in early September.Employees said supervisors had responded to their campaign by holding round-table discussions and one-on-one conversations in which they emphasized the downsides of a union, including the dues that workers would have to pay and the possibility that they could lose benefits during the bargaining process. Supervisors also said having a union would make it harder to change workplace arrangements when they were in need of updating, like during the pandemic, according to these employees.Workers at the Oklahoma City store said their market leader, a manager who oversees several locations, was in their store regularly during the campaign, even though they would typically see him no more than a few times a year.Patrick Hart, an employee at the store who helps customers resolve issues with products, said the impact of the company’s response was limited because many employees did their own research about how joining a union would affect them.“We are all extremely educated people — Apple hires a certain kind of person,” Mr. Hart said. “We know how to look into things.” More

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    Reno Is Booming. Some Workers Feel Left Behind.

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    Companies are flocking to the Nevada city, but the rising cost of housing, gas and groceries is making daily life a struggle for many who work there.As an employee at a UPS warehouse outside Reno, Nev., Christina Pixton spends her nights moving thousands of heavy packages on their way to far-flung locales like San Francisco, Phoenix and Chicago.But the warehouse is not air-conditioned, and one night last month, there was no relief outside, either, with smoke from a California wildfire more than 100 miles away causing hazardous air quality. For Ms. Pixton, who has asthma, the irritation to her lungs was the latest challenge she had to learn to navigate in Reno.These are boom times in and around Reno. Warehousing and casinos have long been the city’s main businesses, and the surge in e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has companies snapping up facilities as fast as they can be built.Yet Reno and the surrounding area have also seen the cost of things like housing, gas and groceries rise, making daily existence in this growing metropolis increasingly difficult for many of the people who live here, like Ms. Pixton.Christina Pixton, a UPS worker, and her husband make six figures combined, but struggle with the daily costs of living. While gas prices have fallen to an average of $3.91 a gallon across the United States and $5.34 in Nevada, the average in Reno is $5.75, according to data from AAA. It costs Ms. Pixton $70 to $80 a week to fill up her Toyota Highlander, she said.In the past five years, home prices in the area have risen 70 percent, according to Zillow. That’s good news for homeowners like Ms. Pixton. The typical home in Reno is worth $568,103, up 10.2 percent over the past year. But average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Reno has increased 10 percent compared with last year and 40 percent from three years ago, according to data from Zumper, which tracks housing data.And while homes and planned communities are being developed where farmland once was, affordable housing has become a much-discussed issue among residents and policymakers. Reno’s City Council approved additional affordable housing projects in March. In neighboring Sparks, Mayor Ed Lawson has pushed for denser development — building up and not just out — and more development on federal lands.Housing developments are popping up all over Reno and the surrounding area.Other changes are affecting the way of life in Reno. By the time Ms. Pixton, 37, wants to go shopping after her shift ends around 11 p.m., stores that were once open are now closed after scaling back their hours during the pandemic. When she does make it to Walmart or Target, she often finds scant offerings on the shelves because of continuing supply chain issues and the fact that the Walmart, one of the few locations for miles, draws people from neighboring cities.In a city whose economy is partly driven by getting goods to people across the country expeditiously, Ms. Pixton is left scrambling to find Uncrustables frozen sandwiches for her two sons and the right brand of dog food for the family’s Labrador retriever.“This isn’t a sustainable pattern,” said Ms. Pixton, whose husband works as a foreman at an HVAC company. “We make six figures, and we’re still stuck in this struggling pattern.”In May 2021, Ms. Pixton received a raise to $19 an hour, up from $16. It was a market-rate adjustment that UPS put in place across the country to stay competitive when hiring and retaining workers.But in January, it went back down to $16. As a union steward, Ms. Pixton found herself telling other workers the bad news. Fifteen people quit that week, she said.“It’s been quite hellish,” Ms. Pixton said. “It was not a completely livable salary, but it was something where we could struggle and not have to get a second job.”A spokesman for UPS said that, starting on Oct. 2, another market-rate adjustment brought hourly pay for part-time workers back to $19 an hour.The area offers plenty of affordable land for warehouses, along with access to an interstate and an international airport.In recent years, e-commerce companies have flooded the market. The Reno-Sparks area, with a population of about half a million, ticks a lot of boxes for companies seeking to expand back-end operations. There’s no state income tax, cheap land is available, there’s access to a main interstate and an international airport, and it’s close to California, whose huge economy and millions of people are significant draws for consumer companies looking to easily connect with their customers.In 2014, when Elon Musk came to Nevada to celebrate the opening of Tesla’s giant Gigafactory warehouse, meant to build batteries for his company’s electric vehicles, he encouraged other executives to follow.“What the people of Nevada have created is a state where you can be very agile, where you can do things quickly and get things done,” Mr. Musk said at the time, standing among the state’s legislators.And follow they did. Chewy, Amazon, Thrive Market and Apple have opened or expanded warehouses in the area over the past decade. Third-party logistics companies like OnTrac and Stord have also propped up new facilities in town.Reno’s highways and back roads are dotted with “Now Hiring” billboards.Reno has just a 0.5 percent vacancy rate for warehouses, according to data from the real estate service firm CBRE. About 8.8 million square feet is under construction in the Reno-Sparks area, according to CBRE, and about 80 percent of it is already leased.“We were a good market on a great trajectory averaging four million square feet, probably going to five,” said Eric Bennett, senior vice president of CBRE, which helps lease space to companies. “The pandemic obviously increased the absorption.”Some of these companies have set up their own distribution channels to get their products where they need to go. Others use UPS. All of them need hundreds of people to complete the strenuous work of moving their goods through the facilities and getting them to consumers.“Now Hiring” billboards dot Reno’s interstate and back roads. A chocolate factory was willing to pay as much as $25 an hour. A sign outside a Petco warehouse says a starting salary could be as high as $22 an hour. Hidden Valley Ranch’s plant says its starting hourly wage is $21, with other benefits including a 401(k), paid time off, and health care with dental and vision. Many retailers like Walmart are also trying to attract seasonal workers.Those opportunities are siphoning off potential UPS workers and creating more manual labor for those who remain, said Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters.Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters, said the increased competition for workers had left some UPS shifts short staffed.Workers like Ms. Pixton.Like many in Reno, she is a California transplant. She moved from Chico with her now-husband, John, in 2008, when Reno was reeling from the housing crisis. Casinos filed for bankruptcy. New construction ground to a halt. She worked in the medical and fast food industries before turning to warehouses.She started at UPS in 2018, attracted by the health care benefits and pension package, and initially made about $13 an hour. She works part time, usually 28 to 32 hours per week. Even though other companies have offered higher wages, she has stayed at UPS because the health benefits cover her children and her pension will vest in about a year.Ms. Pixton has stayed with UPS because of the health care benefits that cover her sons.When the pandemic hit, she felt the impact of millions of stuck-at-home shoppers buying all kinds of merchandise. Before Covid, about 70,000 packages would flow through her hub on a normal summer evening. During the pandemic summer of 2020, that number rose as high as 240,000, though it’s now around 115,000 to 140,000 packages a night.“We’re handling the most amount of packages of any shift because we are getting all of the inbound local businesses. We’re getting the transfers from Sacramento and Oakland and Salt Lake City,” she said. “We’ll get all inbound stuff from other states and have our outbound stuff as well.”Six people are considered a skeleton crew in her department, but Ms. Pixton said that often only three or four were working.As the holiday season approaches, UPS says it plans to hire about 100,000 workers, and is speeding up the process by eliminating interviews and allowing candidates to apply online. At the hub where Ms. Pixton works, UPS is looking to add 400 workers.UPS plans to add seasonal workers for the holidays and has been advertising on online job boards.The current contract that UPS has with the Teamsters went into place in 2018 and expires in 2023. Mr. Kinson said the union would push to formalize language regarding the market-rate wage adjustment for part-time workers for the next contract.“We’d negotiate on good faith,” a UPS spokesman, Glenn Zaccara, said. “The wages they are receiving is industry-leading.”Reno is known for its casinos, but warehouses have long been an economic engine as well.But in a city like Reno that has seen rapid growth, workers argue that the terms of the contract haven’t kept up with reality.“In this area it’s got to be $19 an hour,” Mr. Kinson said. “It has to be or it won’t work.”Loni Goddard works at Kerala Ayurveda, a wellness company, and rents an apartment in Reno. In 2020, her one-bedroom apartment cost $950 with internet and cable. When she re-signed her lease in April, the rent rose to $1,490 — not including internet and cable.“During the pandemic, everyone was getting temporary raises in Reno,” Ms. Goddard said. “At the beginning of 2022, most or all of the raises disappeared and so did the people.”At her UPS job, Ms. Pixton is bracing for the holiday rush. But, she noted, every day has essentially become peak season, considering how much work there is and how few people there are to do it. And while she wishes that more people would join UPS to alleviate some of her workload, she understands why some look elsewhere for employment.“If you’re making less than what you’re paying in gas,” she said, “what’s the point of going?” More

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    2023 COLA Could Strain Social Security Program

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    The Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund could be depleted a year or two earlier than expected as a result of larger payouts.The 8.7 percent Social Security cost-of-living increase that was announced on Thursday is welcome news for retirees who are struggling to cope with surging inflation. But it could bring the social safety net program a step closer to insolvency.Annual government reports in June showed that the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays out retiree benefits, would be depleted in 2034. At that time, the fund’s reserves will run out, leaving the system reliant on incoming tax revenue. Those funds will provide enough money to cover only 77 percent of scheduled benefits unless Congress intervenes.Social Security is largely funded through payroll taxes, taxes levied on Social Security benefits and interest on money that the trust funds invest.Now that the program will be paying out more to help retirees keep up with rising prices, the program will be under even more pressure to sustain itself. Budget experts warn that the reserves could run out before 2034 as a result of the larger benefits.“This very large COLA increase is likely to bring the year of insolvency forward by a full year,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, referring to the cost-of-living adjustment. “It is just another reminder that procrastinating on addressing these imbalances leaves the people who depend on Social Security particularly vulnerable to a further deterioration in its finances.”The increased outlays for retirees will be partly offset by higher taxes on Americans. Along with the bigger benefits, the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax will increase to $160,200 from $147,000. Employers and employees each contribute 6.2 percent of wages up to that salary threshold, which is adjusted every year based on average wage growth.Because wages are rising, the amount of earnings subject to the tax is rising as well.Ms. MacGuineas estimated that the Social Security Trust Fund could have been depleted as much as two years earlier without the offsetting effect of the higher tax threshold.Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the depletion date could be accelerated by as much as two years. But she added that a couple of years of high inflation probably would not fundamentally change Social Security’s long-term financing outlook.“It’s normal for Social Security’s trustees to update the expected reserve depletion date as circumstances change,” Ms. Romig said.Ms. Romig noted that more than 65 million retirees count on Social Security for most of their income and that the cost-of-living increase would ensure that older Americans did not fall into poverty as they aged.The June projections actually showed the depletion date of the fund being delayed by a year, from an earlier projection of 2033, the result of a stronger-than-expected economic recovery in 2021.Anqi Chen, assistant director of savings research at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said the impact of the cost-of-living adjustment on the Social Security Trust Fund would depend on a combination of wage growth and labor force participation in the U.S. economy.“Higher wage growth would mean higher revenue for Social Security and a higher labor force participation would mean more workers contributing to the program, which also means higher revenue,” said Ms. Chen, who is also a senior research economist at the center.The future of Social Security has emerged as a major issue in the midterm elections this year. Republicans have argued that their proposals are intended to protect the long-term viability of Social Security, but Democrats and President Biden have warned that if Republicans take control of Congress they will scale back the program and curb benefits for retirees.“MAGA Republicans in Congress continue to threaten Social Security and Medicare — proposing to put them on the chopping block every five years, threatening benefits, and to change eligibility,” Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, said in a statement on Wednesday. “If Republicans in Congress have their way, seniors will pay more for prescription drugs and their Social Security benefits will never be secure.” More

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    Battle Over Wage Rules for Tipped Workers Is Heating Up

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    A system counting tips toward the minimum wage is being fought in many places. Critics say it’s often abused. Defenders say workers benefit overall.With Americans resuming prepandemic habits of going out, eating out and traveling, leisure and hospitality businesses have scrambled to hire, sometimes offering pay increases that outpace inflation.But for many whose pay is linked to tips, like restaurant servers and bartenders, base wages remain low, and collecting what is owed under the law can be a struggle.In all but eight states, employers can legally choose to pay workers who receive tips a “subminimum” wage — in some places as low as $2.13 an hour — as long as tips bring their earnings to the equivalent of the minimum wage in a pay period. Economists estimate that at least 5.5 million workers are paid on that basis.The provision, known as the tip credit, is a unique industry subsidy that lets employers meet pay requirements more cheaply. And even in a tight labor market, it is often abused at the employees’ expense, according to workers, labor lawyers, many regulators and economists.“It’s baked into the model,” said David Weil, the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department under President Barack Obama, referring to the frequency of violations. “And it’s very problematic.”Terrence Rice, a bartender from Cleveland who has worked in the bar and restaurant industry since 1999, chuckled at the notion that the law is consistently followed.“As long as I’ve been doing this, I have never, ever — not one time — met anyone that’s been compensated” for a below-minimum pay period, he said, adding that slow weeks with inadequate pay are viewed as the “feast or famine” norm in the industry. Busier seasons, weekends or shifts can bring a rush of a cash followed by slow weekdays, bad-weather weeks or economic turbulence.Now the yearslong arrangement is coming under increasing challenge.In the District of Columbia, a measure on the November ballot would ban the subminimum wage by 2027. A ballot proposal in Portland, Maine, would ban subminimum base pay and bring the regular minimum wage to $18 an hour over three years.Employers in Michigan are bracing for increased expenses in February, when the state tipped minimum of $3.75 an hour is set to be discontinued and the regular state minimum wage will rise to $12 from $9.87.Xander Gudejko, a district manager for Mainstreet Ventures Restaurant Group, which owns spots throughout Michigan, offered a common view in the local business community: “When I think of the potential positives for us, I can’t really think of anything.”Though tipped employees can include hotel housekeepers, bellhops, car washers and airport wheelchair escorts, most are in food and beverage service jobs. Perfect compliance may involve a complex dance of having workers clock in at the minimum-wage rate for setup work until opening, clock out, then clock back in at a tipped wage.Businesses using the two-tier system are prohibited from having tipped employees spend more than 20 percent of their shifts on side work like rolling silverware or cleaning. They also cannot include back-of-house employees, like kitchen workers, in tip pooling — the collection and redistribution of all gratuities at a certain rate, usually set by the employer.The last robust compliance investigation of full-service restaurants by the Labor Department is somewhat dated, having ended in 2012, but it found that 83.8 percent of the examined firms were in violation of labor law, with a large share of the infractions related to tips.The National Restaurant Association, which represents over 500,000 small and larger restaurants, argues that instances of illegal underpayment of tipped workers are overstated and that workers, customers and employers, in general, find the system workable.“There’s a reason people choose tipped restaurant jobs — they know the economics are in their favor,” said Sean Kennedy, the group’s executive vice president of public affairs. “For many servers, they’ve chosen restaurants as a career because their industry skills and knowledge mean high earning potential in a job that’s flexible to their needs.”Ryan Stygar, a labor lawyer and a managing partner at Centurion Trial Attorneys, whose practice mostly represents workers in wage-theft cases but also defends businesses accused of violations, called the network of laws surrounding tipped workers “so bizarre and obscure” that employers acting in good faith can still make legal mistakes.Even when the law is followed to the letter, Mr. Stygar said, the system is unfair to workers. “You are sacrificing your tips to meet the employers’ minimum-wage obligations,” he said.Employers are required to keep records of tips and usually do so through a mix of their own accounting, credit card receipts and self-reporting from staff members. Most involved in the system say the tracking works in murky ways.“In reality, who’s monitoring this complex two-tier system?” said Sylvia Allegretto, a former chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley.“The onus is on you, the worker, to possibly enrage, or at least annoy, your boss, who also, coincidentally, controls your schedule,” she said.Talia Cella, a training manager at Illegal Pete’s, a fast-casual burrito spot in Boulder, Colo. The restaurant offers starting pay of $15 plus tips as well as health care coverage.Andrew Miller for The New York TimesIn many civil disputes, employment attorneys have successfully argued before courts that managers implicitly wield opportunities to work more lucrative shifts as a carrot for not rocking the boat on workplace abuse and as a stick to prevent retaliation.Sylvia Gaston, a waitress at a restaurant in Astoria, Queens, said her base wage is $7.50 an hour — even though New York City’s legal subminimum is $10, which must come to at least $15 after tips. Ms. Gaston, 40, who is from Mexico, feels that undocumented workers like her have a harder time fighting back when they are shortchanged.“It doesn’t really matter if you have documents or not — I think folks are still getting underpaid in general,” she said. “However, when it comes to uplifting your voices and speaking about it, the folks who can get a little bit more harsh repercussions are people who are undocumented.”Subminimum base pay for some tipped workers in the state, such as car washers, hairdressers and nail salon employees, was abolished in 2019 under an executive order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, but workers in the food and drinks industry were left out.Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mr. Cuomo’s successor, said while lieutenant governor in 2020 that she supported “a solid, full wage for restaurant workers.” And progressive legislators plan a bill in January that would eliminate the two-tier wage system by the end of 2025.When The New York Times asked if she would support such changes, Ms. Hochul’s office did not answer directly. “We are always exploring the best ways to provide support” to service workers, it said.Proponents of abandoning subminimum wages say there could be advantages for employers, including less turnover, better service and higher morale.David Cooper, the director of the economic analysis and research network at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, contends that when wage laws are changed to a single-tier system, business owners can have the assurance that “every single person they compete with is making the same exact adjustment,” reducing the specter of a competitive disadvantage.Still, he acknowledged, there would downsides. Restaurants and bars with less popularity and lower productivity could lose out in a substantially higher-wage environment, leading to higher prices and potentially closings.“This is not costless,” Mr. Cooper said. “But for a long time, we haven’t been internalizing the costs of paying workers less than they can live on.”Some employers who could use the two-tier wage system are taking a different approach.Talia Cella, 33, is a training manager at Illegal Pete’s, a burrito spot founded in Boulder, Colo., with locations throughout Arizona and Colorado. Those states have a subminimum wage under $10 an hour for tipped workers, and a regular minimum under $13. Illegal Pete’s offers starting pay of $15 plus tips as well as health care coverage.Before rising to her current position, Ms. Cella was hired as a server and trained as a bartender in 2016. She was previously making base pay of $5 an hour elsewhere as a waitress and hostess, unable to afford a car and biking to the bus stop in snow to make winter shifts.Even at what her company is paying, Ms. Cella said, recruiting and hiring are “more challenging than ever” because of labor shortages. But she said the business, with the help of a recent 10 percent price increase, remained profitable and was able to expand despite soaring food costs.She attributes this, in part, to “out-vibing” the competition.“Having work be a stable part of your life — where it’s like you go there, you’re getting paid a living wage, you have health insurance, you know this place cares about you — then you’re more likely to show up to work and give your best,” Ms. Cella said. “If you want people to give you more of themselves, more of their time, more of their effort, then you have to be willing to invest more of your company into the individual people as well.” More

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    Have You Been Shortchanged on Tipped Wages? We Want to Hear From You.

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    Most states allow workers to be paid less than the usual minimum wage if they get tips. Experts say the system is often abused at employees’ expense.In most states, employees who receive tips can be paid a subminimum wage as long as tips bring their earnings to the equivalent of the minimum wage in a given pay period. Many experts say the system is often abused at employees’ expense.Do you work for tips in the hospitality industry, make base pay that is below the minimum wage and feel that you’ve illegally lost income recently? If so, The New York Times would like to hear about your experiences.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you.We’d like to know about problems you’ve had collecting your pay as a tipped worker. More

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    Labor Hoarding Could be Good News for the Economy

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    PROVO, Utah — Chad Pritchard and his colleagues are trying everything to staff their pizza shop and bistro, and as they do, they have turned to a new tactic: They avoid firing employees at all costs.Infractions that previously would have led to a quick dismissal no longer do at the chef’s two places, Fat Daddy’s Pizzeria and Bistro Provenance. Consistent transportation issues have ceased to be a deal breaker. Workers who show up drunk these days are sent home to sober up.Employers in Provo, a college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains where unemployment is near the lowest in the nation at 1.9 percent, have no room to lose workers. Bistro Provenance, which opened in September, has been unable to hire enough employees to open for lunch at all, or for dinner on Sundays and Mondays. The workers it has are often new to the industry, or young: On a recent Wednesday night, a 17-year-old could be found torching a crème brûlée.Down the street, Mr. Pritchard’s pizza shop is now relying on an outside cleaner to help his thin staff tidy up. And up and down the wide avenue that separates the two restaurants, storefronts display “Help Wanted” signs or announce that the businesses have had to temporarily reduce their hours.Provo’s desperation for workers is an intense version of the labor crunch that has plagued employers nationwide over the past two years — one that has prompted changes in hiring and layoff practices that could have big implications for the U.S. economy. Policymakers are hoping that after struggling through the worst labor shortages America has experienced in at least several decades, employers will be hesitant to lay off workers even when the economy cools.Mr. Pritchard cannot hire enough employees to open the bistro for lunch at all, or for dinner on Sundays or Mondays.That may help prevent the kind of painful recession the Federal Reserve is hoping to avoid as it tries to combat persistent inflation. America’s economy is facing a marked — and intentional — slowdown as the Fed raises interest rates to chill demand and drive down price increases, the kind of pullback that would usually result in notably higher unemployment. But officials are still hoping to achieve a soft landing in which growth moderates without causing widespread job losses. A few have speculated that today’s staffing woes will help them to pull it off, as companies try harder than they have in the past to weather a slowdown without cutting staff.“Businesses that experienced unprecedented challenges restoring or expanding their work forces following the pandemic may be more inclined to make greater efforts to retain their employees than they normally would when facing a slowdown in economic activity,” Lael Brainard, the Fed’s vice chair, said in a recent speech. “This may mean that slowing aggregate demand will lead to a smaller increase in unemployment than we have seen in previous recessions.”For now, the job market remains strong. Employers added 263,000 workers in September, fewer than in recent months but more than was normal before the pandemic. Unemployment is at 3.5 percent, matching the lowest level in 50 years, and average hourly earnings picked up at a solid 5 percent clip compared with a year earlier.But that is expected to change. When the Fed raises interest rates and slows down the economy, it also weakens the labor market. Wage gains slow, paving the way for inflation to cool down, and in the process, unemployment rises — potentially, significantly.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.September Jobs Report: Job growth eased slightly in September but remained robust, indicating that the economy was maintaining momentum despite higher interest rates.A Cooling Market?: Unemployment is low and hiring is strong, but there are signs that the red-hot labor market may be coming off its boiling point.Factory Jobs: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed during the pandemic — and then some.Missing Workers: The labor market appears hot, but the supply of labor has fallen short, holding back the economy. Here is why.In the 1980s, when inflation was faster than it is now and entrenched, the Fed lifted rates drastically to roughly 20 percent and sent unemployment to above 10 percent. Few economists expect an outcome that severe this time since today’s inflation burst has been shorter-lived and rates are not expected to climb nearly as much.Mr. Pritchard demonstrated how to stretch pizza dough in Fat Daddy’s Pizzeria, his other restaurant in Provo.Many of the workers Mr. Pritchard and his business partner, Janine Coons, have hired are new to the industry or young.Still, Fed officials themselves expect unemployment to rise nearly a full percentage point to 4.4 percent next year — and policymakers have admitted that is a mild estimate, given how much they are trying to slow down the economy. Some economists have penciled in worse outcomes. Deutsche Bank, for instance, predicts 5.6 percent joblessness by the end of 2023.Labor hoarding offers a glimmer of hope that could help the Fed’s more benign unemployment forecast to become reality: Employers who are loath to jettison workers may help the labor market to slow down and wage growth to moderate without a spike in joblessness.“Companies are still confronting this enormous churn and losing people, and they don’t know what to do to hang on to people,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at the career site ZipRecruiter. “They’re definitely hanging on to workers for dear life just because they’re so scarce.”When the job market slows, employers will have recent, firsthand memories of how expensive it can be to recruit, and train, workers. Many employers may enter the slowdown still severely understaffed, particularly in industries like leisure and hospitality that have struggled to hire and retain workers since the start of the pandemic. Those factors may make them less likely to institute layoffs.And after long months of very tight labor markets — there are still nearly two open jobs for every unemployed worker — companies may be hesitant to believe that any uptick in worker availability will last.“There’s a lot of uncertainty about how big of a downturn are we facing,” said Benjamin Friedrich, an associate professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “You kind of want to be ready when opportunities arise. The way I think about labor hoarding is, it has option value.”Employers in Provo, where unemployment is near the lowest in the nation at 1.9 percent, have no room to lose workers.Instead of firing, businesses may look for other ways to trim costs. Mr. Pritchard in Provo and his business partner, Janine Coons, said that if business fell off, their first resort would be to cut hours. Their second would be taking pay cuts themselves. Firing would be a last resort.The pizzeria didn’t lay off workers during the pandemic, but Mr. Pritchard and Ms. Coons witnessed how punishing it can be to hire — and since all of their competitors have been learning the same lesson, they do not expect them to let go of their employees easily even if demand pulls back.“People aren’t going to fire people,” Mr. Pritchard said.But economists warned that what employers think they will do before a slowdown and what they actually do when they start to experience financial pain could be two different things.The idea that a tight labor market may leave businesses gun-shy about layoffs is untested. Some economists said that they could not recall any other downturn where employers broadly resisted culling their work force.“It would be a pretty notable change to how employers responded in the past,” said Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research for the career site Indeed.And even if they do not fire their full-time employees, companies have been making increased use of temporary or just-in-time help in recent months. Gusto, a small-business payroll and benefits platform, conducted an analysis of its clients and found that the ratio of contractors per employee had increased more than 60 percent since 2019.If the economy slows, gigs for those temporary workers could dry up, prompting them to begin searching for full-time jobs — possibly causing unemployment or underemployment to rise even if nobody is officially fired.Policymakers know a soft landing is a long shot. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged during his last news conference that the Fed’s own estimate of how much unemployment might rise in a downturn was a “modest increase in the unemployment rate from a historical perspective, given the expected decline in inflation.”But he also added that “we see the current situation as outside of historical experience.”Bistro Provenance opened in September.Dinner service at the restaurant.The reasons for hope extend beyond labor hoarding. Because job openings are so unusually high right now, policymakers hope that workers can move into available positions even if some firms do begin layoffs as the labor market slows. Companies that have been desperate to hire for months — like Utah State Hospital in Provo — may swoop in to pick up anyone who is displaced.Dallas Earnshaw and his colleagues at the psychiatric hospital have been struggling mightily to hire enough nurse’s aides and other workers, though raising pay and loosening recruitment standards have helped around the edges. Because he cannot hire enough people to expand in needed ways, Mr. Earnshaw is poised to snap up employees if the labor market cools.“We’re desperate,” Mr. Earnshaw said.But for the moment, workers remain hard to find. At the bistro and pizza shop in downtown Provo, what worries Mr. Pritchard is that labor will become so expensive that — combined with rapid ingredient inflation — it will be hard or impossible to make a profit without lifting prices on pizzas or prime rib so much that consumers cannot bear the change.“What scares me most is not the economic slowdown,” he said. “It’s the hiring shortage that we have.” More

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    Amazon Labor Union, With Renewed Momentum, Faces Next Test

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    The Amazon Labor Union has built momentum leading up to an election this week at an 800-person warehouse near Albany, N.Y.A federal labor official recently endorsed the union’s election victory at a Staten Island warehouse in April, which Amazon has challenged, while workers’ frustrations over pay and safety have created an opportunity to add supporters and pressure the company to bargain.But the union faces questions about whether it can translate such opportunities into lasting gains. For months after its victory at the 8,000-person warehouse on Staten Island, the union appeared to be out of its depths. It nearly buckled under a crush of international media attention and lost a vote at a second Staten Island warehouse in May.At times, it has neglected organizing inside the original warehouse, known as JFK8, where high turnover means the union must do constant outreach just to maintain support — to say nothing of expanding. Christian Smalls, the union’s president and a former JFK8 employee, seemed distracted as he traveled widely. There was burnout and infighting in the group, and several core members left or were pushed out.“It wasn’t clear what goal we should be working towards,” said Cassio Mendoza, a JFK8 worker and the union’s communications director, alluding to the sometimes competing priorities of pushing for a contract and organizing more warehouses.The election near Albany, to be spread out over four days between Wednesday and Monday in Castleton-on-Hudson, could help determine whether the earlier problems were natural growing pains or a sign of deeper dysfunction.Amazon employees at the barbecue signed a petition calling on the company to negotiate with the union. DeSean McClinton–Holland for The New York TimesAmazon has cast doubt on the Amazon Labor Union’s experience and says it doesn’t believe that the union represents workers’ views. The company said it was investing $1 billion over the next year to permanently raise hourly pay.Among the union’s biggest diversions in recent months was countering Amazon’s attempt to overturn its victory, which consumed time and resources, as supporters and leaders testified in hearings that dragged across 24 business days beginning in mid-June. The union delayed plans to train more workers as organizers. A national organizing call was put on hold.Just before Labor Day, the National Labor Relations Board official running the hearings recommended rejecting Amazon’s challenge and certifying the union. A regional official must still weigh in.More on Big TechInside Meta’s Struggles: After a rocky year, employees at Meta are expressing skepticism, confusion and frustration over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse.A Deal for Twitter?: In a surprise move, Elon Musk has offered to acquire Twitter at his original price of $44 billion, which could bring to an end the acrimonious legal fight between the billionaire and the company.Hiring Freezes: Amazon is halting corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, joining Meta as the latest tech companies to pull back amid the economic uncertainty.TikTok Nears Deal with U.S.: The Biden administration and the Chinese-owned video app have drafted a preliminary agreement to resolve national security concerns over the platform, but hurdles remain over the terms.The finding appeared to bolster the union within the Staten Island warehouse, though management responded by sending workers a message saying the company intended to appeal. “We believe a direct relationship with you is best,” the message said.Around the same time, the union began to refocus. It opened an office on Staten Island in late August, hired two full-time staff members and set up a database tracking worker support. “I feel we are in a better place than we have ever been,” Mr. Mendoza said.The union brought in prominent labor organizers to lead regular in-person training on how to push for a contract. It finally held two calls in an effort to recruit and train leaders for organizing drives nationwide.“Your building could be next, and that is why we are having this call,” Madeline Wesley, an Amazon employee who is a lead Amazon Labor Union organizer for the second Staten Island warehouse, said on one call. Workers who indicated they were from facilities in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio and Washington took part.The union, which says it has set aside about one-fifth of its more than half-million-dollar budget for expansion, is already backing other organizing campaigns, including the one in Castleton-on-Hudson and another at a warehouse east of Los Angeles. Nannette Plascencia, a self-described “soccer mom” who is the California facility’s lead organizer, met Mr. Smalls at a party in Hollywood and decided that the Amazon Labor Union “understood where we were coming from,” she recalled in an interview.On Tuesday, the union submitted a petition for an election to represent workers at Ms. Plascencia’s warehouse, according to the N.L.R.B. Officials have yet to verify whether the union demonstrated enough support to warrant an election.“Check out the Amazon 25-cent raise — we’re not falling for that,” Christian Smalls, the union’s president, said at the barbecue.DeSean McClinton–Holland for The New York TimesIn late September, Amazon told workers that it was increasing hourly wages to reflect local market conditions, pledging to raise them by more than $1 in many warehouses. But at JFK8, where pay started at $18.25 an hour, the raise was between 25 cents and 75 cents an hour, depending on level and tenure.“It’s not enough to buy groceries,” said Celia Camasca, an employee of the warehouse there. “It would be better if they would have said nothing.”The union emphasized the slim raise at a barbecue outside the warehouse that had been coincidentally planned for an afternoon shortly after workers learned about it. “Check out the Amazon 25-cent raise — we’re not falling for that,” said Mr. Smalls, the union’s president and the event’s M.C.Union officials circulated a petition demanding that Amazon come to the bargaining table and that it give workers on Staten Island an immediate cost-of-living wage increase. Brandon Wagner, a packer who said that he had worked at the warehouse for about a month and that he previously made $17 an hour at a Wendy’s, signed the petition while waiting in line for food because, he said, workers are underpaid.Paul Flaningan, an Amazon spokesman, said that the national average pay for most frontline jobs was more than $19 an hour and that the company offered “comprehensive benefits” for full-time employees, including health insurance from Day 1, paid parental leave and 401(k) matching.The union still faces numerous obstacles. Amazon could spend years appealing the election result on Staten Island, and the company still has enormous power over JFK8 workers. After workers protested Amazon’s response to a fire at the site last week, the company suspended more than 60 of them with pay while, it said, it investigated what had occurred. The union filed unfair-labor-practice charges over the suspensions; Amazon said most of the workers had returned to work.The voting near Albany presents the union with its most visible immediate test.In interviews outside the warehouse, which handles oversize items like lawn mowers and televisions, many workers cited safety concerns and said pay was too low given the difficulty of the work. New workers made a base wage of $15.70 an hour before an increase of $1.30 this month.Heather Goodall is a leader of the union effort at Amazon’s warehouse in Castleton-on-Hudson, N.Y.DeSean McClinton–Holland for The New York TimesSome also complained that Amazon was too quick to discipline workers for minor infractions.David Bornt, who scans in merchandise before placing it in bins, said a misunderstanding over a quota had recently led to his being written up. He argued that a union could ease such stresses.“It’s someone to have your back,” Mr. Bornt said. “I have four kids, one on the way. I can’t be worried about losing my job at any minute.”Other employees said they opposed the union because they were satisfied with their pay and benefits and didn’t see how a union could improve the situation.“There’s just no need for it,” said Anthony Hough, one of those workers. “We just got a raise.”According to government data, Albany is one of the most unionized metropolitan areas in the country, and many employees expressed positive views about unions. But some said past experience at unionized workplaces made them less eager to join another one. Some also said they distrusted the Amazon Labor Union in particular.“The A.L.U. is new,” said Jacob Carpenter, another employee. “They’re not giving us any information.”The election outcome is likely to shape perceptions of the union. Heather Goodall, the lead organizer at the warehouse, is a member of the Amazon Labor Union’s board, and leaders of the union like Connor Spence, its treasurer, have visited the Albany area regularly. Mr. Smalls has traveled there as well.Ms. Goodall said she was concerned about safety at the warehouse. An Amazon spokesman said the company had a better overall safety record than other retailers. DeSean McClinton–Holland for The New York TimesMs. Goodall said she joined Amazon in February to help unionize the warehouse because she was concerned about unusually high injury rates, among other safety issues. The facility was evacuated after a cardboard compactor caught fire last week, two days after the JFK8 fire, which was similar.“The timeline to fix things is before something tragic happens,” Ms. Goodall said.She accused Amazon of running an aggressive anti-union campaign, including regular meetings with employees in which it questions the union’s credibility and suggests that workers could end up worse off if they unionize.Mr. Flaningan, the company spokesman, said that while injuries increased as Amazon trained hundreds of thousands of new workers in 2021, the company believed that its safety record surpassed that of other retailers over a broader period.“Like many other companies, we hold these meetings because it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself,” he said, adding that the decision to unionize is up to employees. More