Labor News — 4/6/2023
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Recently-unionized Kingwood Starbucks workers launch unfair labor practice strike
Recently-unionized Starbucks workers in Kingwood, TX launched an unfair labor practice over the retaliatory practices of management.
Starbucks is currently under federal investigation for violations of labor laws, and has been cited by the National Labor Relations Board. They recently fired the employee responsible for igniting the Starbucks Workers United union campaign, Alexis Rizzo.
The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins
Via Bloomberg
If you want to unionize a workplace, Will Westlake was saying, get used to unclogging the drains. At a secret off-hours gathering held in Rochester, New York, in March, the 25-year-old former barista told a few dozen labor activists that a great way to build trust with co-workers and bosses is to volunteer for thankless chores. In his case, that meant spending months at a Starbucks outside Buffalo in 2021 getting on his knees and reaching beneath the sinks to yank loose the grimy mix of mocha chips, espresso beans, congealed milk and rotten fruit that regularly stopped things up. “Be the person who’s willing,” Westlake said. “It’s going to make the company less suspicious of you.”
The proof, he told the crowd, came toward the end of 2021, after baristas at his Starbucks and others in the area had filed federal petitions to hold union elections. Executives and managers arrived from across the country to work shifts at the cafes and conduct mandatory meetings about the potential dangers of organizing. According to Westlake, the then-president of Starbucks Corp.’s North American division personally warned at least one new hire at his store to be careful about trusting other staffers, naming several baristas she suspected of being covert union operatives. Confused and distressed, the hire called up a trusted colleague that the big boss hadn’t named: Westlake. (Starbucks has denied all claims of anti-union activity at its shops.)
The practice of joining a workplace with the secret aim of organizing it is called “salting.” Westlake was addressing recruits at the Inside Organizer School, a workshop held a couple times a year by a loose confederation of labor organizers. At these meetups, experienced activists train other attendees in the art of going undercover. Speakers lecture and lead discussions on how to pass employer screenings, forge relationships with co-workers and process the complicated feelings that can accompany a double life. Most salts are volunteers, not paid union officials, but unions sometimes fund their housing or, later, tap them for full-time jobs. Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate that’s home to the new Starbucks union, hired Westlake as an organizer around the time the coffee chain fired him last fall.
Salts have been the mostly secret ingredient in a once-in-a-generation wave of union organizing that’s spread from Starbucks and Amazon.com Inc. to other Fortune 500 companies in the Covid-19 era. At least 10 undercover activists, including Westlake, landed jobs at Starbucks cafes in the Buffalo area, where they quietly laid the groundwork for the first successful organizing campaign among the company’s US employees in decades. That victory inspired hundreds more successful union votes at Starbucks and other companies. Early on, a group of six salts made up half the organizing committee for the Amazon Labor Union that won an election at an 8,000-person warehouse in the Staten Island borough of New York last spring. “They didn’t make or break us, but they were definitely helpful,” says the Amazon campaign’s most prominent organizer, Christian Smalls.
TEA now intervening in Austin ISD just two weeks after Houston ISD takeover
Via Houston Chronicle
The Texas Education Agency plans to appoint conservators to oversee the Austin Independent School District’s embattled special education program, sparking a fresh round of allegations Texas’ GOP state leaders are targeting public schools in a second Democratic stronghold.
The action comes roughly two weeks after the agency announced it will take over the Houston Independent School District, triggering pushback from community members and criticism from opponents who say that the takeover is a political maneuver that would strip voting rights from the black and hispanic communities.
Budget Day is here — how Texas passes its budget
Via Every Texan
Today is Budget Day, the day when the Texas House hears hundreds (388 pre-filed this year) of amendments — also known as riders — on the House floor with each member getting an opportunity to offer, debate, and vote on each eligible amendment.
By contrast: budget amendments are not offered on the Senate floor. In the Senate, changes to the budget must be adopted in the Senate Finance Committee.
Why this matters: For advocates, House Budget Day is really the last opportunity for open and transparent debate on the most important piece of legislation for the biennium.
What we’re watching: HB 1 is a 979-page document organized by articles, agencies, and program areas.
How Biden Is Using Federal Power to Liberate Localities
Via Washington Monthly
Local sovereignty is integral to Texas’s frontier, “Remember the Alamo” self-image. But Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a spirited critic of federal overreach, has gone to war against the self-governance of Texas localities. This is not “the United States of Municipalities,” Abbott proclaimed in 2017. Over his two-plus terms, he and his GOP-controlled legislature have overridden the ability of local governments in Texas to, among other things, mandate paid sick leave, require COVID-19 vaccines for workers, expand voting options, and regulate oil and gas drilling within their own borders.
The penchant of state-level Republicans for squashing municipal policies they don’t like has been made easier by the way the federal government has traditionally funded programs to help localities: by routing the money through the states. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017, city lawmakers expected the state to pass along the more than $1 billion Congress had appropriated for emergency aid. Instead, they received nothing: The entire package was doled out to largely white, inland communities less affected by the storm. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner accused Abbott of a “money grab.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development later found that the stunt put Texas in violation of the Civil Rights Act. “Let me just tell you, that remains a sore spot,” Turner recently told me. His ire was further piqued when the Texas Department of Transportation announced in February 2021 that it would expand a highway that cuts through the city without changes requested by the mayor and other Houston lawmakers. The planned expansion would displace nearly 1,100 homes, 340 businesses, five churches, and two schools.
But that dynamic is not going unchallenged at the national level. One of the least noticed but most profound changes in Washington over the past two years has been a concerted effort by Joe Biden’s administration and Democrats in Congress to liberate localities from the overweening power of state governments.
The Texas legislature is in full swing right now in Austin. Every day, bills are moving out of committee and onto the calendar for full hearings in front of the House and Senate.
The labor movement is working hard every day to keep track of thousands of bills, especially those that threaten our basic rights.
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