Tausi Insider

A Starbucks location in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Nov. 7. Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press Starbucks SBUX-Q workers at more than 100 U.S. stores are on strike Thursday in their largest labour action since a campaign to unionize the company’s stores began late last year. The walkouts coincide with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives free reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink. Workers say it’s often one of the busiest days of the year. Starbucks declined to say how many red cups it plans to distribute. Workers say they’re seeking better pay, more consistent schedules and higher staffing levels in busy stores. Stores in 25 states planned to take part in the labour action, according to Starbucks Workers United, the group organizing the effort. Strikers are handing out their own red cups with union logos. Starbucks, which opposes the unionization effort, said it is aware of the walkouts and respects its employees’ right to lawfully protest. The Seattle compan...

Workers who test games at Activision Blizzard Inc.’s unit Blizzard Albany have voted to form a union months after the games developer began negotiating with employees at its Wisconsin unit, the first in the company to unionize. The workers based near Albany, New York, voted 14-0 to join the Communication Workers of America union, the National Labor Relations Board said on Friday. Blizzard Albany has developed installments of popular video game franchises including Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Activision had argued that Blizzard Albany’s entire work force of about 100 employees, including production workers, should have been involved in the union vote and not only game testers. The NLRB rejected those claims earlier this week, saying game testers could form their own bargaining unit because they perform a distinct role and have separate supervision and significantly lower wages than other employees. CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens said in a statement th...

The New York Times building, in New York. Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press Hundreds of journalists and other employees at The New York Times began a 24-hour walkout Thursday, the first strike of its kind at the newspaper in more than 40 years. Newsroom employees and other members of The NewsGuild of New York say they are fed up with bargaining that has dragged on since their last contract expired in March 2021. The union announced last week that more than 1,100 employees would stage a 24-hour work stoppage starting at 12:01 a.m. Thursday unless the two sides reach a contract deal. The NewsGuild tweeted Thursday morning that workers, “are now officially on work stoppage, the first of this scale at the company in 4 decades. It’s never an easy decision to refuse to do work you love, but our members are willing to do what it takes to win a better newsroom for all.” Negotiations took place Tuesday and some of Wednesday, but the sides remained far apart on issues including wage increases...

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 6. Ross D. Franklin/The Associated Press President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday announced the infusion of nearly $36 billion to shore up a financially troubled union pension plan, preventing severe cuts to the retirement incomes of about 350,000 Teamster workers and retirees across the United States. “It’s about everything you worked for … it’s about finding a dignified retirement,” Biden said. “Thanks to today’s announcement, hundreds of thousands of Americans can feel that sense of dignity again, knowing that they’re providing for their families and their future.” The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal aid provided for a pension plan, the Biden administration said. It comes from the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he signed into law in 2021. “This matters,” Biden said. “This matters for workers … This matters for their spouses, this matt...

Unifor National President Lana Payne addresses a crowd of Ontario Unifor members at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto on Dec. 2. She implored union locals to push harder and more creatively at the bargaining table. Galit Rodan At a gathering of thousands of Unifor members in early December in Toronto, Lana Payne, president of Canada’s largest private-sector union, was noticeably riled up. Working people, she declared, have been “thrown to the wolves” by a coterie of company executives, corporate barons and central bankers. The latter, she said, are deliberately waging a class war, wielding interest rates as a “sledgehammer” to send the country into recession, because they insist on fighting inflation with stringent monetary policy. As Ms. Payne implored union locals to push harder and more creatively at the bargaining table, her language had a whiff of militancy to it. “The Bank of Canada needs to understand that it is not acceptable to throw people out of work to meet some arbitr...

Railway workers picket outside Lime Street Station, in Liverpool, Britain, on Dec. 13. PHIL NOBLE/Reuters The United Kingdom recorded the highest number of working days lost to labour disputes in October for more than 10 years, official data showed on Tuesday, as employees went on strike to demand higher pay in the face of soaring inflation. The data comes as more than 40,000 railway workers begin their latest round of walkouts on Tuesday in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions, causing widespread disruption to the country’s transport network. The Office for National Statistics said 417,000 working days were lost to strikes in October, the highest since November 2011 when just under a million days were lost due to public sector workers walking out in a row over pension reforms. Between June and October this year, more than 1.1 million working days were lost, the ONS figures showed, the highest in a five-month period since early 1990. Workers across a range of sectors have g...

Canada's Parliament is pictured on Sept. 30, 2013, in Ottawa. Dave Chan/Tausi Insider Ottawa is mandating that federal public servants return to the office at least two to three days in a week, or 40 to 60 per-cent of the time they spend working, in an attempt to bring more uniformity to a hybrid work setup that has varied widely across different federal departments since September. The government’s decision comes after months of contentious negotiations with unions over the inclusion of remote work clauses in bargaining agreements, and pressure from business lobby groups in Ottawa to get more workers back into downtown office buildings. In a memo issued Thursday afternoon, the Treasury Board Secretariat — the government body responsible for the administrative management of the federal public service — stated that the mandate will take effect on January 16, 2023 with employees having to fully comply by the end of next March. “While departments and agencies are each unique, the ex...

Starbucks SBUX-Q workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain’s stores. More than 1,000 baristas at 100 stores are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old unionization campaign. The union says it expects the strike will shutter some stores entirely; at others, managers or other workers may keep the stores open. A message seeking comment was left with Starbucks Friday morning. This is the second major strike in a month by Starbucks’ U.S. workers. On Nov. 17, workers at 110 Starbucks stores held a one-day walkout. That effort coincided with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink. More than 264 of Starbucks’ 9,000 company-run U.S. stores have voted to unionize since late last year. Starbucks opposes the unionization effort, saying the c...

German union Verdi on Sunday urged workers at Amazon AMZN-Q warehouses across the country to support rolling strikes in coming days in a protest over pay, aimed at maximizing disruption to the online retailer’s pre-Christmas business. The union said that, in response to pay hikes that had lagged inflation, it had called on workers at seven German distribution centres to down tools unannounced in strikes that would alternate between different locations. Amazon said the strike calls affected only a few of its 20 logistics centres in Germany. Germany is Amazon’s biggest market after the United States, and Verdi has been organizing strikes at the company’s German sites since 2013 in a long-running protest over low pay and poor conditions. “Colleagues are furious and don’t want to be taken for fools by a company that makes billions in profits,” the union said. It said alternating strikes would hinder Amazon management’s attempts to prepare for stoppages. Amazon, which does not recognise c...

An ambulance on emergency call drives past an ambulance workers' strike, outside the NHS London Ambulance Service, in London, on Dec. 21, 2022. HENRY NICHOLLS/Reuters Britain will face more strikes by workers demanding higher pay after meetings between ministers and trade unions on Monday failed to end a wave of stoppages across sectors from health care to transport. More than 10,000 ambulance workers will walk out on Wednesday as planned, the GMB union said in a statement, after talks with health minister Steve Barclay failed to produce a breakthrough. “There was some engagement on pay – but not a concrete offer that could help resolve this dispute and make significant progress,” GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison said. With pay rises failing to keep up with double-digit inflation, which is now around 40-year highs, nurses, ambulance staff and rail workers are among those who have staged walkouts, with teachers also being balloted over action. Teaching unions, who will annou...

A U.S. labour board director has upheld Amazon.com Inc workers’ landmark union victory at a warehouse in New York, according to a decision issued Wednesday, bringing the online retailer closer to having to bargain with staff on a contract. Amazon AMZN-Q has the right to appeal the decision to a wider panel at the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) or can start negotiating with the workers at its JFK8 facility in the New York City borough of Staten Island. “We knew it was unlikely that the NLRB Regional Office would rule against itself, and intend to appeal,” Kelly Nantel, Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement. “We don’t believe this election process was fair, legitimate, or representative of the majority of what our team wants,” Nantel added. The victory marked the first time U.S. staff at Amazon had decided to unionize in the company’s nearly three-decade history, as well as a watershed moment for organized labour, which has taken issue with productivity tracking among ot...

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. CP-T and Unifor have reached a tentative collective agreement for 1,200 workers who are responsible for maintaining rail cars and locomotives. The company and the union say details of the tentative contract will not be released publicly until the agreement has been ratified. Unifor says it will provide members with information in the coming days on ratification meetings, which will be held at multiple locations across the country. The contract covers workers at 18 locations from British Columbia to Quebec. The union says negotiations with the railway had been ongoing since September. The previous collective agreement expired on Dec. 31. https://www.tausiinsider.com/canadian-pacific-railway-and-unifor-reach-tentative-deal-for-1200-workers/?feed_id=324560&_unique_id=63eea8dcb8c39

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has filed an unfair labour practices complaint against the union representing taxation employees, claiming it is not bargaining in good faith. The Public Service Alliance of Canada – Union of Taxation Employees (PSAC-UTE) left the bargaining table on Sept. 1, declaring an impasse in negotiations, then withdrew from mediation on Dec. 20. On Friday the CRA filed the complaint with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, asking it to make the union return to the bargaining table before being allowed to declare or authorize a strike. Three days earlier, the union announced it would be launching strike votes for about 35,000 workers to be conducted from Jan. 31 to April 7, during which time the union and the CRA will also be engaging in Public Interest Commission hearings recommended by the labour board on Jan. 27 and Feb. 20. The union says it withdrew from mediation because the Treasury Board announced a return-to-work order for a...

Former OPSEU boss Warren 'Smokey' Thomas speaks to reporters at Queens Park in Toronto in a file photo on Jan. 21, 2019. Chris Young/The Canadian Press The former president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union — Warren ‘Smokey’ Thomas — has called the recent allegations of financial improprieties made against him by the union “bogus” and is vowing to defend them. Mr. Thomas released a statement on Tuesday afternoon, just a day after OPSEU filed a lawsuit accusing him and two other former union executives of improperly using millions of dollars in cash and assets for personal enrichment. The statement, issued by Mr. Thomas’s lawyers, said that the lawsuit was riddled with “errors, falsehoods and untrue allegations.” “Mr. Thomas rejects the claims against him and intends to defend his good name,” the statement read. The union alleges that Mr. Thomas, who served as president of OPSEU for 15 years before retiring from the union last April, along with Eduardo Almeida, the...