Entries by Paul Becker

Brief  Updates

According to a Gallup poll taken last August, 68 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest number in more than 50 years.   As of late May, the latest count in the drive to unionize Starbucks is 79 stores where the union won the election and only nine where they lost it. Now, […]

Starbucks Organizing Drive Gaining Steam

Efforts to unionize the giant Starbucks chain that began with two stores in Buffalo a few months ago is picking up momentum even though there is still a long way to go. As of mid-May, 78 Starbucks stores around the country have voted to unionize. And Starbucks is not the only one. The drive of […]

More Pieces of a Big Picture

In the space of a few weeks in May, two Verizon stores in Washington state have voted “yes” to unionizing. Responding in typical fashion, Verizon is spending big on a campaign to break the [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–v7HhV2wp8[/embedyt]union drive rather than negotiate with the union. Central to its strategy is the firing of union activists to intimidate […]

Some Union-Busting Tactics at CNH Industrial

As some 1100 workers walked out on strike May 9, CNH Industrial, which operates 13 manufacturing and engineering plants in the U.S., announced that it will cut off the workers’ health insurance as of May 11. It has also hired so-called “replacement workers” who were immediately ready to go even as the strike had barely […]

Union Shops More Likely to Enforce Laws Protecting Workers

One of the many problems facing American workers in recent years has been the lax enforcement of laws and rules meant to protect them. A very interesting April 29 article on the website of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and reproduced on LaborStart.org details how at union-organized shops these rules are more likely to […]

More Nurses Labor Actions

Nurses in many places around the country are staging labor actions, mainly to correct inadequate staffing that puts an undue burden on them and prevents proper care of patients. In Palo Alto, CA, 5,000 nure3ws at Stanford and Packard hospitals were scheduled to begin a strike on April 25. The hospital management has threatened to […]

Two Boston Starbucks Vote to Unionize The Boston is one of the latest to see the Starbucks workers’ drive to unionize. Two of the latest Starbucks union wins are in the area, one in Coolidge Corner and the other in Alston. They are the first two Starbucks stores in Massachusetts to vote union, and the […]

Indiana U. Grad Workers Strike for Recognition

Graduate school workers at Indiana University went on strike April 13 demanding recognition of their union in the face of the university’s refusal to recognize it. The walkout came after the union, the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition, a unit of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IGWC-UE) obtained a strike authorization vote by a […]