The uprising that Trump can’t end

They’re spreading

Welcome to a Sunday edition of Progress Report.

With the Amazon and Starbucks strikes growing, I’m updating my story from yesterday with new reported details and taking it out from behind the paywall out of solidarity with the workers — it’s important that this information gets out to as many people as possible, and as somebody who covers this full time, it’s incumbent on me to contribute.

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New unions strike, lay down marker as Trump 2.0 looms

As Joe Biden prepares to quietly shuffle out of the White House under a cloud of ignominy, two labor unions that rose up during his tenure are digging in their heels and loudly asserting their power.

Starbucks Workers United kicked off a five-day escalating strike with work stoppages in three key markets on Friday, promising walkouts at all 537 unionized stores if the coffee giant did not improve on a paltry financial offer made during contract negotiations this week. What began in LA, Chicago, and Seattle has now expanded to Pittsburgh, Denver, Columbus, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Long Island.

Here’s the list of anchor strike locations today — there are additional unannounced picket lines, too:

• LA: 10am PST @ 1190 W Alameda Ave Ste G-2, Burbank CA

• Seattle: 3pm PST @ 1124 Pike St, Seattle WA

• Chicago: 12pm CST @ 5964 N Ridge Ave, Chicago, IL

• Denver: 12pm MST @ 2700 S Colorado Blvd, Denver, CO

• Columbus: 12pm EST @ 7176 N High St, Worthington, OH

• Pittsburgh: 9am EST @ 5932 Penn Cir S. Pittsburgh, PA

• St. Louis: 12pm CST @ 2350 S Grand Blvd, St Louis MO

• Philadelphia: 9am EST @ 1528 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA

• Brooklyn: 12pm EST @ 476 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY

• Long Island: 1pm EST @ 914 Old Country Rd, Garden City, NY

The Starbucks strike was announced mere hours after Teamster-affiliated drivers and warehouse workers at seven different Amazon facilities began a rowdy and immediately eventful strike. The first unionized Amazon warehouse, JFK8 in Staten Island, went on strike at midnight Friday. An NYPD strategic response unit was called the facility late in the afternoon, causing the union to retreat to its office for a while before eventually marching back to the picket line. Meanwhile, the water main were turned on workers at the facility in Maspeth, Queens.

In February, Starbucks and the union announced that they had reached a truce and would begin good faith negotiations on a national contract framework. They made slow but steady progress — the union had bargaining delegates from 400+ stores, all of whom attended monthly meetings — and came to more than 30 tentative agreements.

There was cautious optimism that they’d achieve their goal of reaching an overall agreement by the end of the year. Workers have told me that they earned strong terms on non-economic benefits and protections, and won everybody major improvements in paid parental leave, among other items, but were immensely frustrated by Starbucks’ economic offer in November.

Here’s what one worker in Chicago sent me:

Under new CEO Brian Niccol, who as Chipotle chief executive took hardline approach to union activity, the company in November offered 1% raises, equaling out to about 30 cents an hour. The union voted to authorize a strike, and Starbucks responded by barely upping its offer, to 1.5%.

SBWU was also frustrated that the company had yet to make real offers to settle the hundreds of remaining ULP charges levied by workers. All told, there was a sense that Niccol was calling their bluff, and now a growing number of stores are being shut down during the company’s busiest time of year.

From the start, the two unions together represented a cross-section of the mostly young people that have been driving this renaissance in public opinion and organizing: frustrated, exploited working class people of color and some socialist salts (Amazon) and creative queer people… and some socialist salts (Starbucks).

While owing largely to the determination and strength of the workers and organizers on the ground, both Starbucks Workers United and Amazon Labor Union — which this year affiliated with the Teamsters — enjoyed a slew of very favorable rulings from Biden’s NLRB. The board regularly found both companies liable for unfair labor practices, including soft union-busting like intimidation and schedule manipulation, reprimanding management and often ordering that fired workers be reinstated with significant backpay and damages.

The NLRB, led by by general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, also used the two unions’ conflicts to establish new legal precedents, including more severe punishments for union-busting and much better remuneration for fired workers. While never excited to be fired for union activity, Starbucks workers would often express confidence to me that they’d ultimately get their jobs back.

More recently, I’ve written a fair amount how the NLRB also ruled that Amazon Flex drivers, who technically work for third party contractors, should be considered Amazon employees. That ruling validated the Teamsters’ organizing those drivers, and as one of the union’s top organizers recently told me, Amazon did not file any of the formal objections to the seven units that have voted to join thus far.

It’s possible that Amazon is instead focusing on its lawsuit that claims the entire NLRB is unconstitutional, which, despite strong legal precedent saying otherwise, may find friendly ears on a Supreme Court that loathes the administrative state. If they do win that suit, we’ll be back to the pre-New Deal era of labor relations, but even if they don’t, things are going to get tougher for unions.

Thanks to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, Democrats failed to cement a majority on the NLRB for the next two years, giving Donald Trump free reign to nominate who he pleases.

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