Bloomington workers say banjo maker wants to bust their union by moving to Oregon

February 15, 2024 by

Nechville Musical Products workers and their supporters picketed Feb. 15, a day after their boss changed the locks at the Bloomington shop.

Craftsmen who make banjos for Nechville Musical Products in Bloomington are on the picket line today after their boss asked them to load a U-Haul with tools and materials that he plans to relocate to Oregon, leaving local employees out of work.

The move comes less than a month after Nechville’s six workers – five full-time and one part-time – announced they had formed a union with the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters.

Union members called the relocation plan retaliatory, saying ownership gave them no indication that it intended to move until Jan. 16, when they requested recognition of their union. In fact, they say owner Tom Nechville engaged with them in a robust annual planning session just one week earlier.

“The meeting before we told him about the union was a meeting about the goals for 2024 and how to organize ordering so that the finances would be in line,” John Potts, who has worked for Nechville the last five years, said. “Our goal for the year was going to be 180 banjos.”

Potts showed up to the Bloomington facility yesterday and turned over his keys to Nechville, who had already changed the locks. He and other workers were left wondering if they had been locked out of their jobs or laid off permanently.

“It’s not necessarily a lockout, but it is a situation I’m working on right now,” Nechville said when reached by phone yesterday at the Bloomington shop. He refused further comment and then ended the call.

Union members picketed Nechville Musical Products, located at 9700 Humboldt Ave. S., this morning. About a dozen community and labor supporters joined them on the line.

The Carpenters union filed charges of unfair labor practices against Nechville earlier this month. More are likely coming. Threats to close a facility or lay off workers if they form a union are considered forms of retaliation under federal labor law.

What’s more, the Carpenters contend that Nechville voluntarily recognized the union and has been illegally refusing to bargain since announcing plans to relocate. Workers said the owner granted recognition in messages about the timing of the Bloomington facility’s closure, which he changed from the end of February to this Friday.

“It’s all gone so chaotic,” Nechville worker Gareth Bly, who crafts banjo fretwork and neck shaping, said. “It’s difficult for any of us to parse what (Nechville’s) motivation is. Why does he think that we’re doing this, and what’s so bad about it?”

Bly and Potts said workers’ main goal in forming their union was making their careers more sustainable. Potts described most workers’ job descriptions as “nebulous,” and he attributed recent turnover in the shop to “some sort of falling out with Tom over control issues.”

Additionally, Nechville workers do not receive paid time off, paid holidays or health benefits. They only began earning paid sick time after Bloomington passed a municipal ordinance establishing the labor standard.

Bly said he first considered the idea of forming a union before his first Thanksgiving on staff, when he realized celebrating the holiday would take money off his paycheck. Nechville, according to Bly, later clawed back sick time that he and other workers had been told they’d earned before Bloomington’s ordinance took effect.

“That’s when we started saying this can’t stand,” he said.

Any hopes that Nechville would approach the union in a collaborative spirit – or share their enthusiasm for putting a union label on the brand’s banjos – have evaporated over the last month, leaving workers both disillusioned and worried about their economic security.

Potts, the kind of worker who Bly described as someone who “put himself out there for every single dirty job that had to get done,” said he “oscillates between being extremely sad and extremely angry.”

“I love my job,” Potts said. “I’ve had a great time in the past with Tom, hanging out at bluegrass festivals, taking various trips with him. Ultimately, I want Tom to be doing well. So it’s really sad to see him kind of dismiss our value and assume that we’re trying to hurt him.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Union approves first contract at Planned Parenthood North Central States

January 19, 2024 by

PPNCS United members held informational picketing in November – a strategy that workers credit with pressuring management to improve its health coverage.

Planned Parenthood North Central States workers in Minnesota and four other states voted to ratify their first union contract this week, capping a tumultuous round of negotiations with the reproductive health organization, where workers voted to unionize in July 2022.

The new contract takes effect retroactively to Jan. 1 and covers about 430 members of PPNCS United, who will see immediate gains in wages and health benefits, according to the union.

The contract establishes a 15-year wage scale and provides raises of 11.75% over three years, including a 4.5% increase in year No. 1. For Planned Parenthood’s lowest-paid employees, a new $19 minimum wage, combined with the first-year wage hike, will mean 17% increase in their pay.

“That’s a huge victory,” said PPNCS triage nurse Nicole Anschutz, who served on the union’s bargaining team. “Some staff who were getting $17 an hour are seeing that increase to almost $20 per hour immediately.”

Union members also won grievance and arbitration rights and a progressive discipline process that requires just cause for terminations – no small victory for a union whose elected leaders alleged that they were targeted and intimidated by management away from the bargaining table.

Anschutz joined the bargaining team after a wave of resignations and firings, prompted by PPNCS management’s move to deliver “final written notices” to all 14 workers elected to represent their union in negotiations. With no grievance or arbitration process in place, union members filed charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board last March – and are still awaiting a decision.

“There were other staff that weren’t a part of the bargaining team that were fired during this process for various reasons too, and we couldn’t fight that,” Anschutz said.

Shay Gingras, a senior research coordinator who served on the union’s bargaining team from the start, noted that the process has played out as PPNCS and its workers face new challenges – and attacks – in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“We’ve lost too many amazing staff members because of issues we have been facing inside and outside of the organization, so I am happy we won protections and other gains to recognize our important work supporting our patients,” Gingras said.

“As an original bargaining team member, I’m so proud of our team who have fought so hard for so long to win these gains. This has been a really long and difficult process and our fight will continue, but I’m really proud of what we were able to win in this first contract.”

Union leaders and PPNCS reached a tentative agreement on the three-year contract in their 37th bargaining session. Among members who participated in the ratification vote, 84% voted to approve the deal.

Nothing came easily at the bargaining table, committee members said, prompting union members to steadily dial up their public pressure on PPNCS leadership to settle a fair contract. Informational picketing in November outside several facilities, including in St. Paul, had an immediate impact, according to Anschutz.

“Prior to the informational picket, the employer had made it very clear we were going to get nothing on health insurance,” she said. “After the informational picket, we started getting things done on health insurance.”

James Willging, a senior community organizer at PPNCS, said health insurance will become more affordable, especially for workers with children and families, under the new contract.

“This contract gives frontline staff more stability so we can focus on the critical work we do every day,” Willging said. “We hope this will help address our staffing shortage so we can provide the compassionate and kind care our patients deserve.”

Although they celebrated their first contract, Anschutz and other union leaders were quick to note that their union’s efforts in support of workers’ rights and abortion rights is not done.

“It seemed impossible at times, like it was never going to happen,” Anschutz said. “I didn’t expect to cry as much as I did in the whole process. But it’s worth it to have the protections we have now and this foundation that we can build upon in the future.”

PPNCS United is an affiliate of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

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After ‘unprecedented’ disrespect from Planned Parenthood, union plans to escalate contract campaign

September 8, 2023 by

Planned Parenthood North Central States workers rallied behind their bargaining team in July, with support from elected and labor leaders.

The union of over 400 Planned Parenthood workers in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas will enter mediation with the North Central States (PPNCS) chapter after a frustrating round of bargaining last week prompted another elected union leader to resign from the organization.

In a press conference yesterday, April Clark said she used to joke that she was a Planned Parenthood “lifer,” but the senior training and development specialist is now working her final two weeks with the sexual health nonprofit after eight years of service.

Clark was among 14 original members of the union’s bargaining team, and her departure will mean more than half those elected leaders are no longer with PPNCS, after management slapped all 14 with “final written notices” four months into the bargaining process.

The disciplinary action, which the union has challenged as retaliatory and illegal, means any subsequent infraction – no matter how serious – could result in termination. “I feel paranoid about every action that I take, which is not a great way to feel the majority of your waking time,” Clark said.

The move has had a chilling effect throughout the bargaining unit, which voted 264-26 in favor of forming a union with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa last year. The nonprofit’s already high turnover rate – a reason workers cited as a factor in forming their union – has climbed to 44% since contract negotiations began, according to organizers.

“For my mental health, I am leaving – like so many other leaders of this bargaining team have done since receiving their final notices,” Clark said, choking back tears. “Unfortunately, so are many of our other coworkers. I don’t know anyone who isn’t actively looking for employment elsewhere, and that isn’t hyperbole.”

For Clark and others, the final straw came during negotiations last week. Previous sessions had yielded “slow but steady progress,” health educator and LGTBQ care coordinator Elizabeth Wolfe said, and at a meeting in July, management pledged to bring a new health insurance proposal to the next session.

But instead of new health care language, Wolfe said, PPNCS executives offered the union a choice between a three-year contract with “minimal wage increases,” or one with bigger raises that clawed back several agreements reached earlier in negotiations, including longevity pay, increases to paid time off and floating holidays, expanded bereavement leave and new professional development opportunities.

“What the negotiators and leaders of our union have told us is that they’ve never seen an employer make a proposal to undo so many substantial pieces of progress already won through the bargaining process,” Wolfe said.

Workers have long since given up hope that Planned Parenthood, an organization with deep progressive roots, would seek a collaborative relationship with their union.

PPNCS refused workers’ petition for voluntary union recognition despite overwhelming support, and the attacks on bargaining team members have drawn comparisons to Starbucks and Amazon from veteran SEIU leaders. The union rescinded its endorsement of PPNCS CEO Ruth Richardson, who served in the Minnesota Legislature until her abrupt resignation last week.

But until now, the union’s frustrations had stemmed from actions away from the bargaining table. The unprecedented exchange last week has union members planning an escalation of their contract campaign.

Raven LaBeau, a health center associate in Minneapolis, said no options are off the table.

“We will accept nothing less than (contract) language that honors and is appropriate for the work that every single one of us does every day,” they said. “This work and those that perform it are too important – too necessary – to tolerate half measures and weak proposals made by management at the table.

“My message to management is this. There are more of us than there are of you, and truly we don’t need you as much as you need us. We are the lifeblood of this affiliate, and it’s time to treat us accordingly.”

PPNCS union members encourage supporters to track their social media feeds – @PPNCSUnited – for information about upcoming calls to action and events.

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Bussin’ baristas take Starbucks union campaign on road

July 10, 2023 by

Starbucks workers launched their bus tour a block from the Capitol in St. Paul.

Set to embark on a nationwide tour to pressure Starbucks into bargaining in good faith with their union, members of Starbucks Workers United rallied today in St. Paul with labor activists, community supporters and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, who encouraged the baristas to keep up their fight for a union contract.

“I know firsthand the courage it’s taken to do what you’re doing today, and I salute you for it,” said McCollum, who represents Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District.

Workers at over 300 Starbucks locations nationwide, including six in the Twin Cities, have voted to unionize with the Service Employees (SEIU) affiliate since December 2021. None of them has a contract yet.

In Minnesota, bargaining committees from three stores – including the location at 300 Snelling in St. Paul – have held negotiating sessions, but the company’s representatives walked out of each meeting in less than five minutes, according to union members.

Rather than negotiate with its union, Starbucks has cut hours, closed unionized stores and intimidated workers – all textbook union-busting tactics, Wisconsin barista Charles Poulter said.

“It is my opinion that the Starbucks corporation intends to ignore this union to death,” Poulter said during a press conference outside a coach bus emblazoned with union logos and slogans. “They will slash hours until every union partner is forced to move on. And when they bargain with us, they will not bargain in good faith.”

Rep. Betty McCollum encouraged Starbucks workers to keep up their contract campaign.

Their union has appealed – successfully in most cases – to the National Labor Relations Board to force Starbucks to reinstate fired workers, reopen closed stores and bargain in good faith.

Workers United says 19 of 20 decisions handed down by the NLRB have been favorable for the union, with the agency finding Starbucks has committed 194 labor law violations. Another 77 complaints, encompassing over 1,300 alleged violations, are still pending.

But as the NLRB process plays out, union members are hoping to ramp up public pressure on the corporation with a summer road trip, building solidarity among workers at unionized stores, encouraging others to join and calling out members of Starbucks’ board of directors – like Beth Ford, president and CEO of Arden Hills-based Land O’Lakes Inc.

Minneapolis barista Rev Beeby called Workers United’s bus tour a “new, big counteroffensive” in the contract campaign.

“We’re highlighting the victories we’ve had and the new stores that have organized, and we’re going directly to the board of directors and telling them to negotiate,” Beeby said. “Starbucks is scared of us. They know they’re losing, and they know that once we win a strong contract, even more workers will be inspired to join and organize and exercise their power.”

Locally, union baristas have shut down several stores with short-term strikes, protesting unfair labor practices, the company’s failure to bargain and short staffing in their cafes.

Workers at the 300 Snelling location have been on strike five times since forming a union in April 2022. The St. Anthony location saw picketing June 28 in response to allegations that Starbucks banned some LGBTQ Pride Month decorations.

With the bus tour, dubbed “The Union Is Calling,” Starbucks workers plan to extend those worksite actions to a larger public audience.

“By going on tour, these Starbucks workers are raising the stakes and escalating their fight, and Minnesota’s labor movement stands in solidarity with the thousands of Starbucks workers who are fighting for their right to form a union across the country,” St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson said.

After the kickoff event at the Minnesota AFL-CIO’s offices in St. Paul, Starbucks workers traveled to Land O’Lakes headquarters, where they called on Ford to oppose union busting at Starbucks. Later this morning the bus stopped outside two non-union stores, where union members distributed campaign materials.

The bus leaving from St. Paul will wind its way to Buffalo, NY, where workers made history in forming the first union at a corporate-owned store in the U.S. Another bus tour is scheduled to launch later this week on the west coast, with union members traveling to the company’s headquarters in Seattle.

Supporters can follow the tour online.

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SEIU pulls MN lawmaker’s endorsement over union busting at Planned Parenthood

July 7, 2023 by

(SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa photo)

Planned Parenthood workers this week pledged to continue fighting back against an intimidation campaign targeting elected union leaders at the reproductive health organization’s North Central States chapter.

Meanwhile, the Service Employees (SEIU) union announced it had rescinded its endorsement of the Minnesota legislator who serves as the nonprofit’s CEO. 

Over 440 employees of Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) voted to form a union with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa in July 2022, and they have been in contract negotiations with management for about eight months. 

While the two sides have made some progress toward a first contract, members of the union’s bargaining team allege that, away from negotiations, they have come under heightened scrutiny from management, resulting in excessive and unwarranted disciplinary measures.  

In February, management placed “final warning” notices in all of the bargaining team members’ personnel files, and in March PPNCS used that warning to fire one member, Grace Larson. 

Now, half of the 14 workers originally elected to serve on the bargaining committee have stepped down or no longer work at PPNCS, union leaders said during a virtual press conference yesterday. Those who remain said they fear a misstep as minor as a time card infraction will cost them their jobs. 

“I fear losing my job and being unable to pay my bills,” PPNCS researcher Shay Gingras said. “And I will continue to hold this fear for as long as I am a PPNCS employee and the final warning remains in my file.  

“I joined the process in order to make a positive difference in the lives of PPNCS employees and patients, and I feel as if I am being punished for this work.” 

The union has filed charges against PPNCS with the National Labor Relations Board. SEIU members and staff, meanwhile, have attempted discussions with management, including CEO Ruth Richardson, a DFL state representative from Mendota Heights, about the chilling effects of targeting union leaders, particularly during negotiations. 

But PPNCS has refused to pull back the final warnings or reinstate Larson, who was fired for sending an email from her private address alleging abusive behavior by an ex-colleague, who was seeking employment with another organization at the time. 

“It was something that I grappled with, and ultimately I still stand by my decision,” Larson, a former PPNCS nurse, said. “Planned Parenthood decided my email was retaliation against a co-worker and terminated me. 

“A union contract could have kept me in the clinic. After years of dedication to this organization, giving my blood, sweat and tears and taking pride in what I do every single day, I’ve been left feeling pushed out and unwanted by people in the organization who didn’t know my name 10 months ago.” 

Executive officers and staff at SEIU Healthcare, which represents workers across the table from powerful and notoriously anti-union employers like Allina and Sanford Health, have never seen firsthand such an aggressive attempt to intimidate union leaders, Executive Vice President Phillip Cryan said. He called it “union busting” on par with campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon. 

“This is a long way off from the kind of pro-worker, progressive approach to their staff union that these workers expected and the labor movement expected when these workers organized last year,” Cryan said, adding that SEIU leadership had given PPNCS, including Richardson, “countless opportunities to walk back these extreme actions” before asking the SEIU Minnesota State Council to rescind its endorsement. 

Richardson did not directly respond to a request for comment on union busting at PPNCS or the SEIU endorsement. But PPNCS issued a statement denying the bargaining team members’ allegations and emphasizing its commitment to completing the negotiations. 

“Planned Parenthood North Central States leadership remains committed to bargaining in good faith with SEIU and remain committed to adhering to the law,” the statement reads. “As we have stated previously, no staff have been disciplined or fired by PPNCS for union organizing, however, unions are not designed to be a shield for misconduct.” 

As the NLRB investigates workers’ charges, SEIU members plan to raise awareness of the increasingly toxic work environment at PPNCS – and demand Larson’s reinstatement – at public rallies across the organization’s five-state jurisdiction. The rallies will also demand accountability from PPNCS leaders regarding a recent decision to close three clinics in Iowa. 

During the press conference, workers said they are hopeful of drawing support from both the reproductive care community and the labor movement.  

“We don’t want to pit abortion rights and workers’ rights against each other, especially right now,” Larson said. 

No other union has pulled its endorsement of Richardson, who has a strong voting record on labor issues and drew praise from labor leaders as a lead author of the new statewide family leave law.  

But the dispute is likely to draw increased attention with the Legislature adjourned. Delegates to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation last month approved a resolution in support of SEIU’s campaign to hold Richardson accountable for union busting at PPNCS. 

“A CEO who engages in this course of conduct toward the elected leaders of a union and who stands by those decisions and refuses to make any changes to them – even as the actions cause fully half of the union bargaining team to no longer be working for the organization she leads – does not deserve the labor movement’s support,” Cryan said. “She has done some great things as an elected official, but her actions as CEO fly in the face of those accomplishments.” 

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St. Paul baristas to Starbucks: ‘We’re not going away’

May 19, 2023 by

Baristas at the Starbucks on Snelling and Stanford avenues in St. Paul went on strike for the fourth time since winning their union election a year ago.

Workers at Minnesota’s first unionized Starbucks store, at Snelling and Stanford avenues in St. Paul, went on strike for a fourth time April 27 – on the one-year anniversary of their historic union election – after management unlawfully removed their union bulletin board.

Workers on the picket line said the bulletin-board stunt is emblematic of Starbucks’ do-nothing approach to labor relations since a wave of successful union drives began sweeping across the country 18 months ago.

Pulling down a union bulletin board isn’t just disrespectful – it’s illegal, too.

But breaking labor law has become the norm for Starbucks’ since the union organizing spree began. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), through its regional offices, has issued over 80 official complaints against Starbucks, alleging over 1,400 charges of unfair labor practices since late 2021. The charges include illegal surveillance of workers, firing union supporters and failing to bargain in good faith.

Workers at Minnesota’s six unionized shops can attest to Starbucks’ failure to bargain.

The company’s representatives walked out of separate meetings with bargaining teams from St. Paul and unionized locations in St. Anthony and Minneapolis after just five minutes – and has refused to meet since.

Workers chalked the union’s logo onto the sidewalk outside the store.

The same scene has played out in over 100 bargaining sessions nationwide, according to Starbucks Workers United.

“Recently, a (district manager) came in to the store, and she asked if I needed anything from her,” barista Graciela Nira said. “I told her I needed some bargaining dates.”

“It’s been a year and we still haven’t had any bargaining sessions that Starbucks has shown up to,” another barista, who requested anonymity, said. “They have refused to release benefits to our store that they’ve released to other stores. They’ve cut down our hours so that we’re extremely short staffed, more so than since I’ve been here. And then they took down our union board.”

The NLRB process is grinding, but Nira, who serves on the union’s national bargaining committee, said she is hopeful it will push Starbucks back to the bargaining table.

Meanwhile, baristas around the country are continuing to organize with Starbucks Workers United, which now represents some 8,000 workers at over 300 U.S. locations.

The national union recently released a list of its contract demands. They include a $20 starting wage, with cost-of-living adjustments for baristas in high-cost areas.

The union also says it will bargain for grievance procedures, employer-paid health insurance with mental-health coverage, consistent schedules, higher staffing levels and more.

On the picket line in St. Paul, workers said staffing is at the top of their concerns. Their bargaining unit had 20 members when workers petitioned for a union election a year ago. Now it’s down to 12.

Nira was one of two baristas who clocked into work at 5 a.m. April 27. Two hours later, as the store was set to open, about 20 co-workers, customers and community supporters showed up in solidarity as they walked off the job.

It was the first strike at the St. Paul location that involved a walkout, and union members said they pulled it together in about 48 hours.

“We just want to sit down and bargain,” Nira added.

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Ban on captive audience meetings advances in Minnesota Legislature

May 3, 2023 by

Patrick Kennedy, a licensed social worker, recounted the chilling effect captive audience meetings had on a campaign to organize his workplace two years ago.

After the pandemic hit three years ago, Patrick Kennedy and his co-workers at a local community mental health center became concerned about abrupt and unilateral changes management began making at their workplace.

Talk of forming a union soon turned into a full-fledged organizing campaign with Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12. Sixteen months later workers were poised to vote in a union election, with public support from nearly 60% of the agency’s 130 workers.

That’s when the “mandatory information sessions” with their bosses began, Kennedy said.

“In one meeting we were told that wage increases were just about to roll out, but could be delayed another year if we were to unionize,” he said. “In another, the CEO assured us that a union would only harm our clients.”

The meetings, according to Kennedy, a licensed social worker, had a “shocking” impact on his co-workers’ organizing drive. By the time workers voted, support for unionizing had dropped to 42%, and the effort failed.

Testifying before a Minnesota House committee earlier this legislative session, Kennedy and other workers urged lawmakers to support legislation that would make it illegal for employers to compel their employees to attend meetings where bosses promote religious or political views, including views on collective bargaining.

“The person who signs your paycheck should not be allowed to force you, under threat of discipline or retaliation, to listen to their opinions about your legally protected right to choose whether to join a union,” Kennedy said.

The proposed legislation has since passed both the House and Senate as part of omnibus labor policy bills. It has been a top priority for unions this legislative session, along with paid family leave, the infrastructure jobs bill, earned sick and safe time and fully funded public services.

Captive audience meetings have come under scrutiny in recent years from policymakers and analysts looking to understand why union membership has remained flat despite polling that shows interest in forming unions at a near-record high.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham (L) testified in support of the captive audience meeting legislation, authored by Rep. Kaela Berg in the House.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham, head of the state’s largest labor federation, said captive audience meetings have become even more common – employers use them in an estimated 90% of union elections, according to one study – during a recent surge in organizing activity both in Minnesota and across the U.S.

“These meetings have nothing to do with the actual jobs that workers do for an employer,” Burnham told legislators. “In fact, many workers describe them as raw intimidation.”

Minnesota lawmakers are not alone in seeking to protect workers’ right to not listen to unwanted political or religious speech. Connecticut passed a ban on captive audience meetings last year, and Oregon has had one on the books for over a decade.

The National Labor Relations Board may soon act, too. A recent memo issued by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo urged members to reverse the board’s precedent of allowing employers to force their workers to listen to anti-union speech, calling it a “license to coerce” and a “fundamental misunderstanding of employers’ speech rights.”

The Minnesota bill’s lead House author, Rep. Kaela Berg (D-Burnsville), said employers would still be allowed to encourage workers to listen to their political or religious views if her bill becomes law. “If the employee wants to have that discussion with the employer, that’s great,” she said. “This just says it cannot be required, and you cannot be punished if you say that’s just not for me.”

That’s a right Kennedy and other workers who have experienced captive audience meetings can only wish they would have had.

Nate Krantz, who went through an organizing drive while working as a certified nursing assistant at a local health care facility, told lawmakers he “noticed that my heart-rate tracker on my Apple watch showed a spike in my heart rate each time I had to sit through one of those meetings.”

Jeff Schreiner, a member of Teamsters Local 120 who helped lead a 10-year organizing drive at Sysco in St. Cloud, said regular captive audience meetings created a “psychologically stressful” work environment, pitted workers against each other and spread misinformation.

“It’s almost like there’s a script that companies follow,” he said after listening to testimony from workers in other industries.

“Employers use mandatory meetings to unfairly influence workers,” Kennedy said. “If the meetings didn’t influence workers, they wouldn’t be happening.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

General counsel will urge NLRB to deem captive audience meetings illegal

April 25, 2022 by

After learning its booksellers were forming a union, management at Half Price Books in St. Louis Park called Lindsey Dorsey and her co-workers into a meeting, hoping to snuff out the organizing drive.

“When you’re scheduled to do it, you do it,” Dorsey said. “But it was really clear why they were there and what they were doing and what they were talking about.”

Such mandatory meetings – known by union organizers as “captive audience meetings” – could soon become a violation of federal labor law, after the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel announced April 7 that she will ask board members to overturn a longstanding precedent allowing the practice.

Jennifer Abruzzo, appointed general counsel by President Joe Biden last summer, said employees organizing a union on the job have a right to listen to – or refrain from listening to – employer speech concerning their rights to act collectively to improve their workplace. And it falls on the NLRB to protect that right.

For over 70 years the NLRB has allowed employers to use captive audience meetings to stifle organizing drives and take disciplinary action against any employee who refuses to attend. Abruzzo said that’s inconsistent with the National Labor Relations Act, which the board is charged with upholding.

“This license to coerce is an anomaly in labor law, inconsistent with the Act’s protection of employees’ free choice,” Abruzzo wrote. “It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of employers’ speech rights.

“I believe that the NLRB case precedent, which has tolerated such meetings, is at odds with fundamental labor-law principles, our statutory language and our congressional mandate. Because of this, I plan to urge the board to reconsider such precedent and find mandatory meetings of this sort unlawful.”

That’s good news for working people looking to gain a say over their wages, benefits and working conditions, union organizers said.

“Ending captive audience meetings puts decisions about organizing back in workers’ hands,” Minnesota AFL-CIO Organizing and Growth Director Todd Dahlstrom said. “Working people need the freedom to decide whether to join together in union without a boss putting their finger on the scale with threats or misinformation.”

Captive audience meetings are a mainstay of the anti-union playbook, utilized by human resources departments and the high-priced, union-busting consultants they call on to squelch organizing drives. In a 2009 study, the Economic Policy Institute found that 89% of employers held captive audience meetings in advance of union elections between 1999 and 2003.

In Abruzzo’s opinion, those meetings should have been voluntary and, moving forward, employers should be held responsible for making it clear that attendance is optional. “Such an approach will appropriately protect employers’ free-speech rights to express views, arguments, or opinions concerning the employees’ exercise of their protected labor rights without unduly infringing on the rights of employees to refrain, or not, from listening to such expressions,” her statement said.

“This is a big step in returning power back to working people,” Dahlstrom said.

Whether workers at the Half Price Books in St. Louis Park could have opted out of their meeting with management without facing discipline is unclear. No one thought to ask, Dorsey said.

Either way, the move backfired, as workers later voted nearly unanimously to form a union with Local 663 of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Several workers, Dorsey said, signed union cards shortly after the meeting with management.

“We knew when they were being misleading because we had been communicating with workers at other stores,” Dorsey said. “So when we were talking about our staffing issues and we were told that it’s our store’s problem and no other store has that problem, we knew it was a lie.

“That’s the best defense against anything, just communicating and knowing the truth.”

Half Price Books unions in St. Louis Park and three other metro stores – Arden Hills, Roseville and St. Paul – are currently bargaining first contracts with the bookseller.

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Twin Cities Starbucks workers join union wave

February 11, 2022 by

Starbucks workers supporting the union drive at the Snelling and Stanford location include (L to R) Max Chang, Colton Johnson, Sohyeon Yun, Graciela Nira, Asusena Barragan, Lola Rubens and Sitra Abdulkadir.

Workers at two Starbucks locations in the Twin Cities today announced they are forming unions, becoming the first Minnesotans to join a nationwide surge of worker organizing at the world’s largest coffeehouse chain.

In letters emailed to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson and hand-delivered to their store managers this morning, baristas at 300 Snelling Avenue in St. Paul and 4712 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis demanded recognition of their bargaining units.

“We are organizing a union at the Snelling and Stanford store in Saint Paul to improve our workplace for ourselves, for members of our community, and for Starbucks as a whole,” St. Paul workers wrote.

An “overwhelming majority” of employees at each location signed cards requesting union representation, according to the union behind the Starbucks organizing campaign, Workers United. It petitioned the National Labor Relations Board today for union elections at the two Twin Cities stores.

Workers United has filed for elections at over 70 Starbucks locations nationwide in recent months. That includes the Elmwood Village café in Buffalo, N.Y., where workers succeeded in forming the first union at a corporate-owned Starbucks in the U.S.

Organizing efforts moved quickly in the St. Paul and Minneapolis Starbucks, which employ about 50 workers combined.

Lola Rubens, a barista at the Snelling location, said she and her co-workers pulled together enough signatures to file for an election in just one week. They pushed the pace, she said, in part to show solidarity with seven union supporters fired by Starbucks in Memphis Tuesday.

“The message we’re trying to send, in general, to other Starbucks workers in Memphis and Buffalo is that we’re behind them, that we support them,” Rubens said. “Nobody is in this alone anymore.”

Rubens and other Twin Cities baristas said they want to bargain for higher wages, better training opportunities and more support for employees from marginalized communities.

Most of all, Starbucks workers want a seat at the table in decisions that affect their working conditions, said Kasey Copeland, a barista at the Cedar Avenue coffeehouse. For many baristas, she added, the company’s approach during the pandemic did not seem to prioritize their health and safety.

“We really feel like a lot of the policies and procedures in place, they don’t take our perspective into account,” said Copeland, who has three years of experience with the company. “We really want to make Starbucks the best possible place it can be. We want it to live up to the mission and values they put forward, but it’s impossible for them to do that without our eyes on the ground.”

Starbucks’ values have come under scrutiny since workers in Buffalo took their union drive public last fall.

Despite its reputation as a progressive corporation, Starbucks executives unleashed an aggressive campaign to pressure Buffalo workers into voting down union representation. And the firings in Memphis suggest the company’s tactics are escalating as the union wave spreads.

“It’s just so disappointing,” Copeland said of Starbucks’ union busting. “While I didn’t necessarily expect better, I did hope for better. It’s going to be very interesting to see how long they can get away with that without losing support from their customers.”

Still, workers in the Twin Cities have the benefit of knowing what to expect in the coming weeks.

Copeland said she anticipates a parade of “district and regional managers coming into our stores and looking over our shoulders.” Rubens said she and her co-workers have already begun preparing a response, with support from Workers United, to the pressure tactics and talking points executives are likely to use in captive-audience meetings.

“We are very fortunate that there have been workers at many stores who have paved the way for us,” Rubens said. “Starbucks still believes they can throw more money and lawyers at this to make it go away. The amount of money they’re willing to put behind this is shocking.”

The anti-union campaign may be coming, but today workers were intent on celebrating some history in the making. They hope it’s just the start of bigger things to come.

“I think what we did will really get the ball rolling in Minneapolis,” Copeland said. “This is becoming a significant movement, and it will mean a lot not just for Starbucks employees, but for baristas and essential workers everywhere.”

“It’s going to be hard, but I hope no one is letting it get in the way of their joy and excitement,” Rubens added. “This is a joyous time for us, a time to speak our minds and advocate for ourselves, and Starbucks can’t take that away from us, no matter how hard they might try.”

Workers United is an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Starbucks workers in the Twin Cities are organizing with support from the union’s Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board.

Workers United representative Esau Chavez urged other Starbucks workers interested forming a union to email sbworkersunited@gmail.com, and to follow the campaign on social media, including @SBWorkersUnited on Twitter.

As for members of the community, placing an order at the Cedar or Snelling stores under the name “Union Yes” is a “great way to show support for these workers,” Chavez said.

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , ,

Don’t be fooled by AT&T’s authorized retailers, CWA members warn

December 17, 2021 by

Union members and supporters demonstrate outside the AT&T authorized retailer in Roseville, where CWA members used to work.

After a push from union members in Minnesota, the Communications Workers of America is stepping up its campaign to fight back against job cuts and union busting at AT&T retail stores nationwide, asking supporters to do business with stores that employ CWA members.

AT&T workers were in the streets outside dozens of “AT&T authorized retailers” across the country last weekend, including stores in St. Cloud and Roseville. The actions drew attention to the company’s recent move convert corporate-owned stores, staffed by CWA members, to third-party dealers.

That’s union-busting, said Kieran Knutson, president of CWA Local 7250, which represents AT&T wireless sales reps, technicians and call-center employees in Minnesota.

“It’s an attack not just on our union and on the working conditions in those stores, but also on the communities because there are less union jobs available,” Knutson said during a protest Saturday outside the authorized retailer in Roseville. “We’re not going to let them off the hook for that.”

AT&T has closed or converted more than 650 corporate-owned stores in the last two years, including 12 of 36 stores in Minnesota. The cuts have come despite AT&T’s promise that then-President Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which put billions into the company’s coffers, would create new jobs.

Local 7250 authored a resolution, passed by the CWA at its international convention in October, calling for the day of action against AT&T’s job cuts, held Saturday during the holiday shopping season.

The union also has launched a campaign to help AT&T customers tell the difference between union and non-union stores, which look alike except for a small sign on the front indicating which are authorized retailers.

Union stores in the east metro include Burnsville, Maplewood, St. Paul (Highland Park) and Woodbury. Find a complete list of union stores nationwide at CWA.org/ATTstore.

Union members and supporters all but shut down the AT&T authorized retailer in Roseville for nearly two hours Saturday, marching outside the storefront with signs and distributing fliers in the parking lot.

The store used to be staffed by union members, Knutson said, but recently closed and reopened as an authorized retailer owned by Prime Communications. That company’s leadership includes several former AT&T executives.

“The sole purpose of Prime Communications is to franchise AT&T retail stores, to turn them from union into non-union stores,” Knutson said. “It’s not like they also franchise Verizon; they are purely a creation for union-busting.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , ,
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