Labor News & Commentary September 24, 2024 organizers collect union authorization cards at an Amazon warehouse & more

https://onlabor.org/september-24-2024/

By John Fry

John Fry is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary, organizers collect union authorization cards at an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina; the NLRB finds that Starbucks’ ban on union pins was unlawful; and GM announces a layoff amid its shift to electric vehicle production.

Union supporters at an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina have announced that they are collecting authorization cards from their coworkers, signaling their intent to seek an NLRB-administered election. To trigger an election, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE) will need to collect cards from 30% of the warehouse, which reportedly employs between 3,500 and 6,000 workers. The union reports that it has collected “hundreds” of cards so far. CAUSE’s announcement comes on the heels of last week’s news, which Sunah covered, that hundreds of Amazon delivery drivers in New York had signed authorization cards to join the Teamsters.

The NLRB has affirmed that Starbucks violated federal labor law by telling workers not to distribute union pins in a store’s break area and by throwing away a bag of pins that workers had left out. In its decision—the Board’s 26th against the company since Starbucks Workers United began organizing in 2021—the Board explained that the order not to distribute pins constituted an unlawful work rule. Curtailing unlawful work rules has been a focus of the Board’s since its Stericycle decision last year, and distributing union materials in break areas during break time has been a cornerstone labor right since 1945.

General Motors will temporarily lay off nearly 1,700 unionized workers in Kansas as the company prepares to transition a factory there to electric vehicle production. The affected UAW local has expressed optimism that the conversion of the plant will help its members in the long run. Ensuring that the electric vehicle supply chain becomes and remains unionized was a key priority of UAW’s strike at the Big Three automakers last year. In the wake of the new CBAs following that strike, UAW and the automakers have fought over how much discretion the companies should have regarding plant closures. For example, as Sunah covered last week, the union accused Stellantis of violating its CBA by failing to reopen a shuttered plant in Illinois quickly enough, while Stellantis insists that the contract allowed it to delay the reopening due to changing conditions in the market.