Breaking: Starbucks and its union are working to revive long-stalled contract negotiations, @sbworkersunited.org says. The union sent the company a new comprehensive contract proposal last month, and the two sides are discussing how to get back to the table: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop: REI has told staff it plans to cut pay for future hires and reduce benefits for current staff.
REI has also told its union, UFCW, that it plans to unilaterally impose terms from its final offer at recently-unionized stores. Union says that's illegal www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
"WE WILL NOT unlawfully surveil or interrogate you regarding distribution of union materials in non-work areas...during non-work time," says notice Mercedes will be required to distribute. "WE WILL NOT threaten you with the closure and/or relocation..." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop: Mercedes has settled US labor board case over alleged union-busting in the lead-up to 2024 vote in Alabama. Mercedes will make promises including not threatening to move to Mexico. NLRB general counsel office approved settlement despite objections of the UAW www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Trump's Labor Department will be less likely to pursue enforcement against unionized companies where unions are already robustly enforcing workers' rights, labor solicitor told his attorneys in a memo www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop: Trump Labor Dept. "will give greater scrutiny to employers whose market power permits them to dominate their respective labor markets in ways that can facilitate employment-law violations," labor solicitor Jonathan Berry told staff in a memo today www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop–CFPB just fired employee alexisgoldstein.bsky.social for allegedly disrupting &documenting a meeting a year ago between CFPB & DOGE www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
She says she's being retaliated against after asking DOGE visitors who they were & if they'd completed training on handling info
Couldn’t have imagined this is where this story would land back in 2022.
"The legal system doesn’t feel like it’s working like it’s supposed to, and it doesn’t feel like it’s protecting workers the way it's supposed to… I think that this is a sign of worse things to come in declawing the NLRB" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Context: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Scoop: The US labor board is giving up oversight over Elon Musk's SpaceX, and abandoning its yearslong case over the firing of engineers behind an open letter that criticized Musk www.bloomberg.com/news/article... NLRB prosecutors now say NMB, not NLRB, has jurisdiction over SpaceX
New: UAW reaches landmark tentative contract deal with Volkswagen in Chattanooga Tennessee, including 20% across-the-board pay hikes www.bloomberg.com/news/article... "This contract is proof that if you stand up and stick together, you can win a better life”
Scoop: Trump Administration is reversing its massive cuts to NIOSH, the agency behind most US workplace safety research www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Our September @BW feature on the sweeping consequences of those cuts: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
NIOSH employees were told today that their layoff notices were “hereby revoked.”
“Life-saving research is going to be able to continue,” says union leader and industrial hygienist
"Critical public health functions remain intact and effective," says HHS
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop: Trump Administration is reversing its massive cuts to NIOSH, the agency behind most US workplace safety research www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Our September @BW feature on the sweeping consequences of those cuts: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Trump’s nominee for permanent NLRB GC Crystal Carey was also just sworn in. “I am excited to return to the NLRB and look forward to working with the hard-working NLRB employees to ensure that the Act is effectuated fairly, transparently, and efficiently,” she says in statement.
The NLRB now has a quorum for the first time since last January, after the swearing in today of new Republican members James Murphy and Scott Mayer, the agency says. Trump fired Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox, claiming the law protecting board members from removal without cause is unconstitutional
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Wherever you work, please bring me your stories. And Happy New Year!
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In 2025 I wrote about workers in aerospace, AI, banking, coffee, delivery, energy, gaming, grocery, hardware, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, maintenance, recycling, retail, software, and throughout the newly-upended US government, confronting or trying to foment change.
8 favorite stories:
“In areas like this where the law is either developing, or the ground below you is shifting – in the middle of a level nine earthquake, you have to figure out where you’re going to stand,” NLRB acting GC Bill Cowen told me www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Scoop: NLRB decided to withdraw a complaint about confidentiality rules at Elon Musk's SpaceX because of SpaceX's lawsuit challenging the NLRB's constitutionality, the labor board's top prosecutor says.
“Is this the horse we want to ride on this issue?” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
anything happen the past couple weeks while I was away?
Honored by these awards from SF Press Club for
features on Musk's war on the NLRB - bloomberg.com/news/feature... - and subminimum wage pay for workers with disabilities - bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Grateful to all who make this work possible.
Wherever you work, please bring me your stories!
The old joke in the National Park Service is that rangers are “paid in sunsets.” Spurred by the Trump administration’s chainsaw cuts to the federal workforce, now many workers are hoping to change that, by unionizing. My latest, with @josheidelson.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
I'll be off until December 29.
In the meantime, check out these @BW features:
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Happy Holidays!
“It was just one fire after another… And it’s still like that today.”
“I don’t want to stay at a park service that looks like this. But I don’t want to give up on it, either.”
“Trump’s probably the best union organizer we have”
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Park service staff have long joked that they’re “paid in sunsets,” sometimes relying on food banks. Supervisor told one, “seasonals are to be seen, not heard.” Staff often have to share bedrooms with co-workers, or the mice who keep infesting the housing. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
New BW feature: While federal unions play defense elsewhere, a unionization wave is building in the National Park Service, driven by slash-and-burn Trump Admin. cuts, decades of prior bipartisan neglect, and worker-to-worker organizing www.bloomberg.com/news/feature... w/ @mslaurabliss.bsky.social
So great, immense solidarity.
For a labor movement in harmony with the Earth — to borrow from the Wobblies.
Scoop: Park Service staff at 24 parks and offices are petitioning to unionize. Federal employees at a dozen including Grand Canyon filed for an election today, following staff at a dozen others including Joshua Tree who recently did same www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
