Tag: Unions

The FTC Says a Giant Supermarket Merger Will Screw Workers—Along With Customers

I answered the Kroger and Albertsons executives’ self-justifying argument with the argument that when you fight market concentration with more market concentration, the end result is not going to be less market concentration. The FTC complaint, informed by a superior understanding of antitrust law, goes to great lengths to argue that the (unmentioned) 30 percent […]

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The FTC Says a Giant Supermarket Merger Will Screw Workers—and Customers

I answered the Kroger and Albertsons executives’ self-justifying argument with the argument that when you fight market concentration with more market concentration, the end result is not going to be less market concentration. The FTC complaint, informed by a superior understanding of antitrust law, goes to great lengths to argue that the (unmentioned) 30 percent […]

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Elon Musk and Amazon Team Up to Try to Demolish Workers’ Rights

Musk also claimed during the event that unions “naturally try to create negativity in a company.” While that assertion is questionable, unionization could imperil Musk’s meticulous efforts at image management and brand promotion, which have helped turn Tesla and SpaceX into multi-billion-dollar companies. It would also make it harder for Musk to impose his own […]

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Union Accuses Sierra Club of Plotting to Fire Strikers

Tensions were already high coming into this round of contract negotiations. Last year, the Sierra Club began laying off large numbers of employees in order to account for a purported $60 million budget gap and restructure the organization around state-based chapters. While Berman declined to provide figures as to how many staff had been laid […]

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Trump Whines about UAW Endorsement, Calls Shawn Fain a “Dope”

The benefits of free flights didn’t stop at the NRA head, who also effectively allowed his family to use the company credit card for trips, charging the NRA more than $1 million for flights around the country, including a $26,995 flight from Dallas to Orlando, a $15,495 flight from Las Vegas to Nebraska, and a […]

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Trump Tears Into Auto Union Leader After Losing Endorsement to Biden

The benefits of free flights didn’t stop at the NRA head, who also effectively allowed his family to use the company credit card for trips, charging the NRA more than $1 million for flights around the country, including a $26,995 flight from Dallas to Orlando, a $15,495 flight from Las Vegas to Nebraska, and a […]

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A Death at Walmart

OSHA’s inspection reports from Arkansas do not provide much insight into Walmart’s worker safety practices there. From 2012 to 2022, OSHA launched just eight Walmart inspections in Arkansas. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency provided records for just three of these cases, explaining that the others had been destroyed per […]

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Elon Musk’s Odious One-Man War Against Labor Law Just May Succeed

Miraculously, the NLRB’s constitutional deficiencies went unnoticed by the courts for 89 years. They warrant attention now because the NLRB is inconveniencing Musk and his various companies. If these arguments sound familiar, that’s because they’re part of Donald Trump’s war on the administrative state, which Trump’s then-chief strategist, Steve Bannon, pledged to “deconstruct” in 2017. […]

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Hero of the Year: Shawn Fain

What about nonunion companies like Tesla and Toyota? “Foreign automakers operating in the United States (Toyota, Hyundai, etc.) pay their workers about $55 per hour all in,” Rampell observed in September. “Tesla is estimated to pay workers somewhere in the mid-$40s. In other words, the legacy manufacturers are already at a significant cost disadvantage compared […]

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Union-Busting at the Bargaining Table

In a statement, REI said it’s typical to take at least 19 months to hammer out a first contract. “Negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement is a lengthy process,” a spokesperson said. “We are engaged in good faith bargaining with stores that have chosen union representation and will continue to participate fully in the negotiating […]

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How Corporations Crush New Unions

In a statement, REI said it’s typical to take at least 19 months to hammer out a first contract. “Negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement is a lengthy process,” a spokesperson said. “We are engaged in good faith bargaining with stores that have chosen union representation and will continue to participate fully in the negotiating […]

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The Actors’ Union May Have Come Up Short in the A.I. Wars

But the fact that SAG-AFTRA voted to strike at all, and the gains it made, showed that its leadership and members are becoming more unified and engaged in making changes in their industry, amid a wave of labor organizing across the country. The “unity and solidarity” built on the picket lines alongside the WGA and […]

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Did the Actors’ Union Really Win?

But the fact that SAG-AFTRA voted to strike at all, and the gains it made, showed that its leadership and members are becoming more unified and engaged in making changes in their industry, amid a wave of labor organizing across the country. The “unity and solidarity” built on the picket lines alongside the WGA and […]

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Experis QA workers for Forza Motorsport, Starfield vote to unionize

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Quality assurance workers at Experis Game Solutions voted this week to unionize with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 10. About 90% of workers cast votes […]

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The GOP Showed Again How Anti-Worker It Really Is

Enjoying union benefits without joining the union and paying for those benefits is known as the “free rider” problem, and it reduces union membership. The free-rider problem is why private-sector union membership in right-to-work states (5.2 percent) is roughly half the rate in non-right-to-work states (10.2 percent). According to a June 2022 study by Nicole […]

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The Hilarious Reason Elon Musk May Regret Going to War With Sweden

The solution? Reverse course on a party maxim to oust Trump from the public consciousness, according to Democratic leadership, who no longer feel that ignoring the real estate mogul is an effective tactic and instead are quietly hoping for live broadcasting of his notorious campaign rallies, reported The New York Times. “Not having the day-to-day […]

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Unions Are Finally Going Where the Money Is

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Unions Are Finally Going Where the Money Is

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Even Bank Workers Want to Unionize Now

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Can the Most Pro-Union President Maybe Ever Get a Little Love Here?

People can complain about his age, and there are probably major fights coming within the Democratic coalition over Israel-Palestine. Both of those things are legitimate issues. But I also know this to be true: There’s a general liberal diffidence toward Biden that he doesn’t deserve. On most aspects of domestic policy, on making the United […]

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Liberals, Start Giving Biden Some Damn Credit

People can complain about his age, and there are probably major fights coming within the Democratic coalition over Israel-Palestine. Both of those things are legitimate issues. But I also know this to be true: There’s a general liberal diffidence toward Biden that he doesn’t deserve. On most aspects of domestic policy, on making the United […]

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The “W” in UAW Stands for Win After Sweet Ford Deal

The following year, in 2005, Johnson defended a so-called “Day of Truth,” in which far-right Christian organizations organized students to protest same-sex marriage as an attack on religious liberty. At Harvard, pamphlets were handed out decrying gay love as sinful and evil. “If the other side is going to advance their point of view, it’s […]

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Ford, UAW Deal Is a Lesson to Workers Everywhere: It’s Time To Unionize

The following year, in 2005, Johnson defended a so-called “Day of Truth,” in which far-right Christian organizations organized students to protest same-sex marriage as an attack on religious liberty. At Harvard, pamphlets were handed out decrying gay love as sinful and evil. “If the other side is going to advance their point of view, it’s […]

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Thank You, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for Flagging Biden Labor Policies You Hate

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging [italics mine] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining. The Chamber backs up its interpretation of the […]

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The NCAA’s Plot to Protect Its Riches From Labor Unions

“Players at Academic Institutions perform services for institutions in return for compensation and subject to their control,” Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel at the time, said in a statement. She added that her memo on the matter hoped to “help educate the public, especially Players at Academic Institutions, colleges and universities, athletic conferences, and […]

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The Emerging Coalition That Could Revitalize Our Politics

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have passed bills in the state House to raise the minimum wage and enshrine the right to collective bargaining in the state constitution. They were able to do so in part because DSA and the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO joined forces to elect legislators like Elizabeth Fiedler; unions, teachers, and pro-choice groups also came […]

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Hollywood CEOs Thought They Could Wait Out a Writers’ Strike. They Were Wrong.

My first glimpse that something extraordinary was happening this summer came in May, when I was asked to speak at a rally outside 30 Rock, where I write comedy for a show I love with friends I adore. What I encountered when I got up to the podium was staggering. More than a thousand writers, […]

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Why Working Stiffs Don’t Mind Trump Crapping on Their Union

Why does the working class no longer support the party of working men and women? Well, obviously the decline of organized labor plays a huge role; the proportion of private-sector workers represented by a union is 6 percent, about half what it was in 1992. But Lainey Newman, a law student at Harvard, and the […]

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GM CEO Twists Herself Into Pretzel Trying to Defend Outlandish Salary

The February letter, which was also shared with TNR, didn’t promise to hand over years of Hunter Biden’s financial records, as Republicans requested, but it did offer a chance to meet directly with his legal team. The letter also argues that the Oversight Committee is overreaching in its investigation of Hunter Biden because he is […]

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