Several companies that cultivate progressive images--Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe's, REI--appear to have really escalated their pushback against union campaigns, with formal discipline and firings. I have a new piece up explaining how and why nytimes.com/2023/05/22/bus… Labor relations experts say these companies typically try not to go all-out at first so as not to create too much dissonance with their progressive brands. But once the union wins an election or two... 2/

Amazon has more than doubled its footprint since the start of the pandemic. I have a piece out today on how that massive growth created a very large, very under-appreciated vulnerability for the company. 1/ nytimes.com/2023/05/19/bus… The reason: A lot of the growth is in Amazon’s delivery network—to allow Amazon to deliver its own packagers rather than rely primarily on UPS and the Postal Service. 2/

Interesting development today at an REI store in Cleveland where workers filed for a union election. The company sought to challenge the election, potentially extending the process for weeks. Workers walked off the job this morning. REI backed down. Election is set for Mar. 3. 1/ One thing I've learned covering labor over the past several years: Your labor rights are typically as robust as the power you and your co-workers can muster at the workplace. This case was a perfect example. 2/

“Biden in this case revealed that I’m your friend, but I won’t risk anything for you." Biden remains the most pro-labor president in decades, but his intervention in the rail workers dispute has prompted a debate over how supportive he really is. nytimes.com/2022/12/27/bus… The critique is that, while Biden may have better relationships with labor leaders than Clinton and Obama, and he may push more pro-labor legislation at the margins, the basic model is similar: manage labor's decline rather than seek to reverse it. 2/

I don’t think the general public, and even people who follow this stuff, appreciate how high the stakes are in the bargaining that’s underway b/w Starbucks and its union. 1/ If the union gets a contract with concrete concessions, it will demonstrate the benefits of being in a union and likely prompt more unionizing within the company and at other companies. 2/

NEWS: Biden admin releases long-anticipated rule making it more likely for millions of workers to be classified as employees. Could deal a blow to gig companies' business model. nytimes.com/2022/10/11/bus… Companies like Uber and Lyft argue that drivers prefer the flexibility of contractor status and have cited polling data that appears to support this. Legal experts say there's nothing inherent in employment status that prevents employers from offering flexible arrangements. 2/

There's been a lot of talk in the past few days about how only a minority of Americans go to college. Not true. According to the Census Bureau, more than 63% of Americans 25 and older have been to college. census.gov/newsroom/press… It's just that a lot of them don't have bachelor's degrees--about 40% of those who've been to college have no degree or an associates. And even among those who do have bachelor's, many have one that's not super valuable on the job market, like from a for-profit college. 2/

My recent story on pharmacists and @jodikantor and @arya_sundaram's story on workplace surveillance are in some ways two sides of the same coin: white-collar workers appear to be losing power at work, and their wage growth may be slowing down as a result. nytimes.com/interactive/20… Once you see the situation as one in which employers are gaining power and white-collar workers are losing power, it shifts the way you think about the labor market of the last few years. 2/

More Amazon news: NLRB has found merit to the Amazon Labor Union's accusations that the company behaved illegally in its mandatory anti-union meetings. nytimes.com/2022/05/06/bus… Critically, the labor board regional office has concluded that the whole practice of holding mandatory anti-union meetings is illegal. 2/

Starbucks announces pay increases, says it's prohibited from giving them to unionized workers. Labor experts says it may be illegal for Starbucks to discriminate against unionized workers that way. nytimes.com/live/2022/05/0… Starbucks also says it plans to post flyers in its stores pointing out that union negotiations are risky. “Through collective bargaining, wages, benefits and working conditions may improve, diminish or stay the same," says one.

Since the Great Recession, a lot of college-educated folks have had to take jobs at companies like Starbucks and Amazon. Guess who’s playing a key role in unionizing those companies? nytimes.com/2022/04/28/bus… 1/ Obviously people who’ve never spent a day in college can, and have, unionized companies over the years. Many are playing important roles now. But the college-educated bring two things that appear to be propelling things forward. 2/

I don't think I've ever seen this before--Starbucks just fired a worker *after* the NLRB issued a complaint against the company for retaliating against her for union activity by suspending and disciplining her. yahoo.com/entertainment/… Here's more on the NLRB complaint against Starbucks for retaliation. nytimes.com/2022/03/15/bus…

This biggest/most significant election upset I think I ever covered was Obama over Hillary in 2008. The Amazon vote on Staten Island feels like a waaaaaay bigger upset. An indie union that didn't exist until last year winning over arguably the most powerful company in the world. Final results shortly...

NEWS: Two days before ballots are scheduled to go out in a high-stakes union election at Buffalo-area Starbucks, the company asks the NLRB to stay the election. nytimes.com/2021/11/08/bus… Lots of other plot twists over the last few days in Buffalo. Howard Schultz turned up to rally workers, conceding the company had made mistakes and vowing to fix them, but leaving some workers wrong-footed.

What's funny looking back on iconic 80s bands is how much it felt they were straining to extend their window of relevance when they put out new stuff in the late 80s/early 90s. Like U2 in 91 or Tears for Fears in 89. But it was actually like a minute after their previous album. Special thanks to whoever made Tears for Fears trend on Twitter for inspiring that thought.

United's Covid vaccine mandate has been remarkably effective. Fewer than 250 out of ~67,000 employees had not complied as of yesterday (or <.4% for those keeping official score). @NirajC and I tell the story of how it happened. nytimes.com/2021/10/02/bus… One key moment: United was very close to imposing a mandate in late April. Its pilots and flight attendants unions pushed back hard. The two sides negotiated a vaccine incentive that got the pilots to ~90% and flight attendants to ~80% vaxxed. Made the mandate go down smoother.

NEWS: Employees at 3 Starbucks stores in Buffalo say they've filed petitions with the NLRB for a union vote in mid-September. Could represent the most serious challenge to Starbucks labor model in years. No Starbucks-owned stores in U.S. are unionized. nytimes.com/2021/08/30/bus… You need 30% of workers to sign cards to trigger a union vote. The Starbucks union says it has "strong majorities" of workers in all three stores.

I think there’s a lot of confusion about where unions are on vaccines and vaccine mandates. 1/

https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1422628691440553988

As a group, unions have been extremely pro-vaccine. They’ve spent millions of dollars reaching out to millions of members and non-members to persuade them to get vaxxed and make it easier for them to do so, and to combat vaccine misinformation. 2/ unitehere.org/campaign/our-s…

I have a new piece on how green jobs are often more like gig work than the middle-class jobs they’re made out to be. “It’s a lot of transient work--marginal, precarious and very difficult to organize,” one union leader told me. 1/ nytimes.com/2021/07/16/bus… My reporting bore this out over and over. At a massive solar farm in Michigan, labor officials often check in to pitch their members for jobs. But the construction company says they’re way too expensive. Here’s a telling exchange. 2/

One key thing abt Biden is how much globalization affected him. He voted for the '90s trade deals, then saw that the effects on workers were "unexpectedly sharper, deeper,” his friend Chris Coons told me. "He believes we need to change direction on trade.” nytimes.com/2021/02/11/mag… If there's a key divide on economic policy in the Biden admin, this could be it. A lot of his top WH aides are more skeptical of globalization, in favor of building up domestic manufacturing.

I wrote a story for the NYT Magazine this week about Biden’s radical ideas for transforming the economy once the pandemic is over--by spending well over $1 trillion to turbo-charge new industries. nytimes.com/2021/02/11/mag… 2) The underlying concept is one that economists have dismissed for decades, but which Biden is attempting to bring back into fashion in a big way: Industrial policy.