DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Tesla reportedly laid off dozens of workers after union announcement, NLRB complaint alleges
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Kate Duffy | Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tesla terminated dozens of employees at a site that had just announced a union campaign, an NLRB complaint alleges. Workers United claims Tesla is attempting to "discourage union activity," Bloomberg first reported. Spokespeople for Tesla and Workers United did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication. In 2017, some Tesla workers sought to unionize with the help of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), but the initiative was unsuccessful. More recently, the NLRB ruled in August that Tesla's policy that restricts workers from wearing a union insignia is "unlawful."

☆ Howard Schultz declined Bernie Sanders’ request to testify before Congress
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Dayun Park | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Howard Schultz has declined Bernie Sanders’ request to testify before Congress. While Starbucks Workers United has sought better pay and benefits, the company has apparently put efforts into retaliating against workers who tried to unionize. About 100 Starbucks stores across the U.S staged a three-day strike in December, following a one-day strike in November, to protest unfair labor practices. One of the main reasons Starbucks workers organized is to hold billionaire executives, like Schultz, accountable for their actions,” Starbucks Workers United said in a statement to CNN. A total of 338 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since 2021, 282 have been certified across 36 states and 56 didn’t get certified.

☆ Bernie Sanders hints at subpoena for Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Amelia Lucas | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Sen. Bernie Sanders hinted that lawmakers could subpoena Howard Schultz to compel the outgoing Starbucks CEO to testify in front of a Senate panel about how the coffee chain is handling its baristas' push to unionize. "One way or another, he will be there," Sanders, a pro-union Vermont independent, told reporters on Capitol Hill. Sanders, who chairs the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that he intends to hold Schultz and Starbucks accountable and looks forward to seeing Schultz appear before the committee. Schultz declined an invitation from 11 senators to appear at the March 9 hearing, Reuters first reported Tuesday evening. To date, regional offices of the federal labor board have issued 76 complaints against Starbucks, alleging illegal labor practices.

☆ Tesla employees launch New York union campaign
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Tesla employees in New York have launched a campaign to organize a union with Workers United Upstate New York, according to a release posted to Twitter Tuesday. The union, Tesla Workers United, would be the first for Tesla if it is formed. "We want Tesla to be the company we know it can be," the workers wrote in the release. In 2018, Musk shared a tweet that said employees would lose stock options if they formed a union. The next step for organizers is to collect signatures from employees saying they want a union.

☆ Tesla workers trying to form union at Buffalo facility
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Tesla workers in New York said on Tuesday they will launch a campaign to form a union, setting stage for the latest labor challenge for Chief Executive Elon Musk. In a letter to Tesla management, the employees announced their plan to unionize with the Workers United Upstate New York. If formed, the union would be the first for Tesla, which unlike some other US-based automakers has managed to avoid unionization at its US facilities. "We believe unionizing will give us a voice in our workplace that we feel has been ignored to this point," the workers said in a press release on Tuesday. "We are only asking for a seat in the car that we helped build."

☆ Tesla workers launch union campaign in New York
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) workers in New York said on Tuesday they will launch a campaign to form a union, setting stage for the latest labor challenge for Chief Executive Elon Musk. In a letter to Tesla management, the employees announced their plan to unionize with the Workers United Upstate New York. The union, if formed, would be the first for Tesla, which up until now has managed to avoid unionization at its U.S. facilities unlike some other major automakers. Employees said the right to organize a union is a fundamental civil right and the principles would prevent Tesla from threatening or retaliating against workers for organizing a union. Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-PhillipsOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Google contractors who rate how effective its search is will visit its headquarters this week to protest 'poverty wages'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google "raters" who test and evaluate search quality say they aren't fairly compensated. This means the raters are not technically Google employees, even though they are tasked with improving its services. In this latest action, workers in the Alphabet Workers Union have organized a visit to Google's headquarters to deliver a petition addressed to Prabhakar Raghavan, the senior vice president at Google overseeing search. Now many tech workers have considered joining unions as mass layoffs have swept the industry in recent months. In 2021, tech workers at The New York Times formed a union.

☆ Apple executives including Tim Cook may have violated workers' rights, according to the national labor board
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A federal agency said it found evidence that Apple executives and company policy broke labor laws. The decision stems from cases filed by former employees who say Apple violated their rights. The NLRB will prosecute if Apple doesn't settle with former employees who have raised complaints. The federal agency confirmed to Insider that it found merit that charges concerning statements by high-level executives at Apple, as well as company policies, violated the National Labor Relations Act. According to Bloomberg, the federal agency's assessment stemmed from cases brought by two former Apple employees, Ashley Gjovik and Cher Scarlett.

In a decision issued on Monday, Administrative Law Judge Benjamin Green said Amazon supervisors told workers that they would miss out on regularly scheduled raises and improved benefits if the company was forced into lengthy union negotiations. U.S. labor law prohibits employers from making threats or promises in order to discourage unionizing. Workers at Amazon's JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island voted to join the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) last April, a first for the company in the United States. Green said Amazon also violated federal labor law in 2021 by removing a post from an internal message board asking workers to sign a union-backed petition to make Juneteenth a paid holiday. Amazon has faced dozens of complaints from workers and the ALU as the union attempts to organize warehouses across the country.

☆ Apple has infringed on worker rights, NLRB investigators say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Washington CNN —Apple has illegally imposed rules on its employees that prohibit them from discussing their wages and engaging in other protected activity, according to investigators at the National Labor Relations Board. The findings by NLRB agents determined that “various work rules, handbook rules, and confidentiality rules at Apple” are unlawful because they “reasonably tend to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees” who attempt to assert their labor rights, NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado told CNN Tuesday. The NLRB does not have the power to impose penalties, but can force employers to implement “make-whole remedies,” according to its website. According to Bloomberg, the cases in question were brought by two former Apple employees, one of whom cited an email from CEO Tim Cook vowing to crack down on information leaks at the company. Apple pushed back at those claims in a filing with the NLRB.

☆ YouTube Music contractors must move to and work from its Austin offices by February 6. Staffers say this is a retaliatory move after they voted to unionize.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

These staffers, many of whom work remotely and do not live in Austin, work for Cognizant, a major contractor for YouTube's parent company Alphabet. Employees who spoke to Insider say the firm's requirement that they return to its offices was retaliatory following the team's decision to unionize with the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) in October 2022. When Cognizant set the February deadline last November, it gave employees outside Austin only about three months to move. The employees in Austin were fully aware of the intention to return to the office prior to the filing of a petition. Moreover, all associates working on this project were hired with the understanding that the jobs were based in an Austin office location.

☆ Union ranks had a very good 2022. It’s not for the reason you think
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Chris Isidore | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

(Some workers at unionized workplaces choose not to belong to the union, accounting for the different totals.) Stephanie Keith/Getty ImagesBut there’s no denying 2022 was a very good year for union organizing. The attention that each company’s campaign is getting is important for generating “momentum” for union organizing activity. The other unionized jobs added in the leisure and hospitality sector were in hotels and other accommodations, as travel rebounded strongly during the year. Overall the public sector lost a combined 12,000 unionized jobs last year due to declines in unionized jobs at the federal and local government levels.

Jan 19 (Reuters) - A U.S. labor board official is seeking a rare order requiring Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) to collectively bargain with workers at a Florida store, even after they voted against unionizing by a nearly two-to-one margin. Workers at the Estero, Florida store voted 21-11 in May against forming a union amid a nationwide organizing campaign that has involved hundreds of Starbucks locations. The campaign, Starbucks Workers United, has won elections at more than 260 U.S. stores and has lost about 70 elections since late 2021. The regional director is asking the board to issue a "bargaining order" forcing Starbucks to recognize and bargain with the union at the Estero store. Starbucks is facing similar claims in a pending case involving a Buffalo, New York store where workers voted against unionizing in 2021.

☆ Union membership dropped yet again in 2022 to the lowest rate on record, showing that workers still face an uphill battle in organizing
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Juliana Kaplan | Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The union membership rate fell in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Union membership has been mostly declining for decades, even though union workers tend to make more money. At the same time, the union membership rate, which tracks the percentage of workers in a union, fell to 10.1% — the lowest rate on record, per BLS. The union membership rate of 10.1% in 2022 was just half the 20.1% in 1983, the first year BLS compiled comparable data. Even so, the union membership rate for retail workers is just 4.3%, down from 4.4% in 2021.

☆ U.S. union membership rate falls to all-time low despite organizing efforts, data shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Kanishka Singh | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Brendan McDermidWASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The United States' union membership rate, or percentage of wage and salary workers who belong to unions, edged down to an all-time low in 2022, data released by a government agency showed. The union membership rate fell from 10.3% in 2021 to 10.1% in 2022, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday. However, the number of wage and salary workers who are members of unions, at 14.3 million last year, increased by 273,000, or 1.9%, from 2021, the data showed. The total number of wage and salary workers grew by 5.3 million, or 3.9%, most of them non-union workers. The data released Thursday shows that while unionization efforts have come into the limelight, they have not translated into greater representation of the workforce.

☆ Amazon Appeal to Union Victory in New York Rejected
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Sebastian Herrera | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A federal labor official has upheld the unionization of Amazon.com Inc. workers in Staten Island, N.Y., rejecting an appeal by the e-commerce giant, which tried to challenge last year’s vote to organize. Cornele Overstreet, a regional director with the National Labor Relations Board who has overseen the case, ruled on Wednesday that Amazon hadn’t provided sufficient evidence to overturn the election results, according to an NLRB spokeswoman.

☆ Amazon workers' union victory upheld by U.S. labor board director
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. labor board director has upheld Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) workers' landmark union victory at a warehouse in New York, according to a decision issued Wednesday, bringing the online retailer closer to having to bargain with staff on a contract. The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) celebrated the labor board director's decision. "This is a HUGE moment for the labor moment!" Workers in different facilities in New York state have rejected joining the union in two elections since, and Amazon filed objections to conduct during the original contest. The NLRB regional director overruled those objections on Wednesday, in line with an NLRB hearing officer's recommendations last year.

☆ Apple’s first US labor union reaches new milestone for tech industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Workers at Apple’s first unionized retail store began collectively bargaining with management on Wednesday, in a milestone moment not only for the iPhone company but for all of Big Tech. The worker group, based out of a mall near Baltimore, is organized with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) union. “Other Apple workers will be watching this,” she said. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe success of the Towson Apple store workers’ unionization bid came amid a broader wave of workplace organizing. David DiMaria, the lead organizer of the Towson Apple store union campaign with the IAMAW, said excitement was high among the Apple store workers ahead of Wednesday’s first meeting.

☆ Amazon union victory at Staten Island warehouse upheld by federal labor board
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon workers arrive with paperwork to unionize at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, October 25, 2021. A federal labor agency on Wednesday certified an independent union's landmark victory at Amazon 's Staten Island warehouse and threw out a litany of objections filed by the e-retailer. In April, a majority of the roughly 8,300 workers at Amazon's Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, voted to join the Amazon Labor Union, becoming the company's first unionized facility in the U.S. Amazon sought to overturn the results of the election, alleging the National Labor Relations Board office that oversaw the election interfered in the union drive. "As we've said since the beginning, we don't believe this election process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team wants," Nantel said. Workers at a nearby facility on Staten Island rejected unionization in May, and the ALU lost an election at an Albany warehouse in October.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday hears a dispute between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a concrete company in Washington state that labor advocates say could weaken workers’ rights if the ruling goes against the union. The legal question is whether the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can sue the union for damages in state court over an August 2017 strike action in which it says that concrete was lost when drivers walked off the job. Business interests that are often in conflict with organized labor have in the past been heavily critical of the labor board. The Supreme Court's conservative majority has ruled against unions in several high-profile cases in recent years. As a result of the strike, concrete hardened in the trucks and had to be broken up before it could be removed, the company says.

☆ Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement. As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees.

☆ Microsoft recognized its first labor union in the US after staff at $7.5 billion video game firm ZeniMax Studios voted to unionize
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft recognized its first US labor union, the Communications Workers of America said, Tuesday. Around 300 workers at Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax Studios voted to unionize in December. Microsoft agreed to voluntarily recognize the union if workers voted to unionize in December, per Reuters. Union workers can petition to the National Labor Relations Board to force their employer to recognize their union, but the process is long and arduous. Microsoft and ZeniMax Studios did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Jan 3 (Reuters) - A group of about 300 videogame testers at Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) subsidiary Zenimax Studios have voted to unionize, the Communication Workers of America union (CWA) said on Tuesday, marking a first for the tech giant in the United States. The CWA said Zenimax employees at four locations in Maryland and Texas voted overwhelmingly to join the union, but did not provide a tally. Microsoft in a statement provided by a spokesperson said it would follow through on an earlier promise to voluntary recognize the union if the workers voted to join. CWA President Christopher Shelton in a statement said Microsoft has set itself apart from other tech companies that have discouraged union campaigns. Game testers at Activision units Blizzard Albany and Raven Software voted in 2022 to join unions amid claims by the CWA that the company has threatened and retaliated against union supporters.

☆ Activision's Boston studio workers announce unionization
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 27 (Reuters) - A majority of workers at videogame publisher Activision Blizzard Inc's (ATVI.O) recently acquired studio Proletariat said on Tuesday that they are forming a union with the Communications Workers of America. The move would make the Boston-based studio, the third Activision Blizzard studio to seek unionization. The 57 workers in the Proletariat unit – that include animators, designers, engineers, producers and quality assurance workers – said they have filed for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board. Earlier in July, Activision said that it had Proletariat to expand the development pipeline of its online role-playing game "World of Warcraft". Workers who test games at Activision's unit Blizzard Albany have voted to form a union months after the company began negotiating with employees at its Wisconsin unit, the first in the company to unionize.

REUTERS/Andrew KellyWASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - A $1.7 trillion government funding bill approved by the U.S. Senate Thursday will bolster U.S. regulators and make it easier for states to bring antitrust lawsuits. The National Labor Relations Board is receiving a $25 million increase to $299 million after not receiving a funding lift in more than a decade. The International Trade Administration, which investigates foreign trade practices, is getting a $55 million increase to $625 million. The spending bill includes a measure that strengthens state attorneys general by allowing them to choose the venue where they bring antitrust lawsuits. The funding bill includes a new provision to ensure millions of working mothers have reasonable break time and a private place to pump breast milk.

Search resuls for: "National Labor Relations Board"

25 mentions found