NEWS ROUNDUP
Starbucks workers keep winning | Cancel student debt | Profs, Teachers unite
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
STARBUCKS
BREAKING: Marysville, Washington, Starbucks workers win their union election 9-4.
This is the 11th unionized store in Starbucks’ home state.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 21, 2022
► From the PSBJ — Starbucks to launch ‘Heritage Market’ at 3 Seattle stores
► Via Reddit — Mistreatment at the First Starbucks (Pike Place) — They recently announced that our store & 2 others (1st and Pike & University) will be separating from the current district & creating our own district which will be named “Heritage District”. With this new district creation though, every person employed in the 3 aforementioned stores has to reapply for their jobs… (A) big reason behind this I think is to prevent the spread of unions. Our stores are so close to unionizing but to prevent it from spreading to other districts they cut us off from the rest of the company. (1st & Pike went on strike yesterday & the day before that)… This is not the Starbucks I fell in love with. This is a company filled with greed & hatred towards unionization.
► From the AP — Labor board takes Starbucks to court over alleged violations — The National Labor Relations Board is asking a federal court to order Starbucks to stop interfering with unionization efforts at its U.S. stores.
► From the NLRB — NLRB files in federal court seeking nationwide Cease and Desist Order against Starbucks, reinstatement for 7 workers, and a bargaining order — The petition explains that, after learning about the organizing effort in Buffalo, Starbucks immediately set its vigorous antiunion campaign in motion, employing an expansive array of illegal tactics such as raising wages, promising benefits, bringing in a cadre of managers to monitor employees and discourage union activity, closing stores with active organizing drives, and threatening employees—culminating in the discharge of seven union activists at five different stores over the course of six weeks.
► From the AP — Starbucks exec, prominent in push against union efforts, leaving company — Rossann Williams, Starbucks’ North America president who’s been prominent in the company’s push against worker unionization, is leaving the company after 17 years.
BREAKING: 300 Starbucks stores have filed or announced plans to file for a union election.
Workers at 164 stores have successfully unionized.
Seven months ago, 0 Starbucks stores in America were unionized. https://t.co/Owmwgi3A9a
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 21, 2022
► From the Washington Post — A trans 24-year-old finds his voice — and unionizes a Starbucks — These were employees who had been shaped by the push-and-pull over LGBTQ rights in the past decade… These were employees who were told, amid a global pandemic, that they were “essential.” These were employees who could revive a long-declining labor movement in the United States, observers said — employees like Ian Miller, the irritated 5-foot-3, 24-year-old transgender man barreling toward his managers that very moment.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ready for a voice at work? Get more information about how you can join together with co-workers and negotiate a fair return for your hard work. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!
AEROSPACE
► From the PS Business Journal — Aerospace job postings mount as industry tries to recover from pandemic cutbacks –Boeing has added more than 410 new engineers and technical workers since the first of the year, hiring at a “steady clip” since the fall, said SPEEA’s Bill Dugovich. The candidates are now largely new additions, he said, after Boeing exhausted its roster of employees who took voluntary layoffs at the start of the pandemic. The hiring push is “really an indication they cut too deep,” Dugovich said.
THIS WASHINGTON
► From the Tri-City Herald — U.S. Supreme Court strikes down WA state law helping ill Hanford workers — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a 2018 Washington state law that made it easier for ill Hanford nuclear reservation workers to collect state workers’ compensation. However, the decision should have little impact on current and former workers at the site because new legislation in 2022 corrected the fault the Supreme Court found with the earlier law, said Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
TODAY at The Stand — AG: Hanford workers remain protected after court ruling — Legislature has already updated, fixed 2018 Hanford law rejected by the Supreme Court.
► From the union-busting Columbian — Secretary of State Steve Hobbs tackles election misinformation in Vancouver visit — Hobbs said the department is currently focused on educating voters about disinformation and misinformation campaigns commonly seen during elections. While he said his office previously did not have the budget it needed to do extensive public outreach, the Legislature increased the agency’s budget in the last session and Hobbs is now working to expand those efforts.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Union delegates from across the state voted to endorse Steve Hobbs for Secretary of State at the Washington State Labor Council’s 2022 COPE Endorsing Convention on May 22.
SOUTH OF THE BORDER
► From the Oregonian — Business groups challenge Oregon rules meant to protect workers from heat, wildfire smoke — The groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Medford the day the first of the rules took effect, arguing they are unconstitutional.
The Stand (June 6) — UFW: Washington’s new heat protections are ‘strong’
THAT WASHINGTON
TAKE A STAND — Add your name to the AFL-CIO Petition urging President Biden to offer broad-based student debt cancellation, increase borrowers’ financial security, and invigorate our economy.
► From The Hill — Senate advances bipartisan gun safety bill — The Senate voted 64 to 34 Tuesday evening to advance an 80-page gun safety bill to strengthen background check requirements for gun buyers under 21, provide funding to states to administer red flag laws and provide billions of dollars in new federal funding for mental health services.
► From the AP — Biden to call for 3-month suspension of gas and diesel taxes — President Joe Biden on Wednesday will call on Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months — a move meant to ease financial pressures at the pump. The Democratic president will also call on states to suspend their own gas taxes or provide similar relief, the White House said.
► From The Hill — Congress likely to reject gas tax push — With skepticism spanning the ideological spectrum — from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to much of the GOP — the idea is unlikely to make it across the finish line.
► From the AP — 1/6 panel: Local ‘heroes’ rebuffed Trump, then faced threats — The House 1/6 committee heard chilling, tearful testimony Tuesday that Donald Trump’s relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election provoked widespread threats to the “backbone of our democracy”— election workers and local officials who fended off the defeated president’s demands despite personal risks.
► From the NY Times — Companies brace for impact of new forced labor law — A sweeping new law aimed at cracking down on Chinese forced labor could have significant — and unanticipated — ramifications for American companies and consumers. The law, which went into effect on Tuesday, bars products from entering the United States if they have any links to Xinjiang, the far-western region where the Chinese authorities have carried out an extensive crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities.
NATIONAL
► From Inside Higher Education — AAUP delegates approve partnership with AFT — Delegates at the American Association of University Professors’ biennial meeting voted to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers Saturday, forming an alliance of 300,000 college and university faculty members, the largest such network in the U.S. The groups say their partnership comes at time of increased legislative attacks on teaching and academic freedom, and they link what they describe as persistent underfunding for higher education to student debt levels and precarity for adjunct instructors.
► From PBS — Atlantic City casino workers push for a contract with strike wild card in hand — Members of UNITE HERE Local 54 will try one last ditch effort this week to come to an agreement with five Atlantic City casinos to avert a strike that could happen as soon as the Fourth of July weekend.
► From Trains.com — How Wall Street holds railroads hostage (by Bill Stephens) — The U.S. Class I railroads’ recurring crew shortages, related bouts of service problems, and a lack of meaningful volume growth are intertwined. You can lay the blame for all three problems at just one place: Wall Street.
The Stand (June 15) — Mediation fails in railroad talks; Biden likely to intervene
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.