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The union representing thousands of Starbucks workers in the US is staging a walkout on one of the coffee chain's busiest days of the year. The action comes amid a bitter fight between Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United, which started organising workers at the company in 2021. The two sides are fighting over pay, scheduling and other issues. Roughly 200 stores are expected to be affected by the 16 November work stoppage. Barista Michelle Eisen, one of the union's leaders, said the company could afford to "do better by its workers". The protest is the second to coincide with Starbucks'...

The union representing thousands of Starbucks workers has said it will launch its “largest strike ever” on Thursday amid the coffee chain’s annual Red Cup Day. Starbucks Workers United said in a press release on Monday that it is demanding the company bargain over staffing and scheduling issues and turn off mobile ordering on promotion days like Red Cup Day. The yearly event, during which Starbucks gives away free reusable holiday cups, is the company’s “biggest sales event of the season” and “one of the most infamously hard, understaffed days for the baristas that work them,” according to the union....

After months of negotiations and a weekslong strike, the UAW has reached tentative deals with Ford Motor Company, General Motors and Stellantis that both sides classify as historic. The agreements, though slightly different at each automaker, contain significant wage increases, a restructured wage progression, better conditions for temporary employees and more. Ford autoworkers have begun voting on the tentative deal, with at least one local voting in favor of it as of Thursday. UAW members at Stellantis and GM are expected to begin voting on the deals soon as they move through the ratification process.

The Oakland Education Association created a massive rift after putting out what many see as an inflammatory anti-Israel statement that angered teachers who didn't agree with the message and made many Jewish community members feel upset and scared.

Families are voting with their feet to charter schools, which are increasingly resisted by school boards and teacher unions. Diana Diaz-Harrison, above, started a charter in Arizona to fill a gap: no specialized services for children like her autistic son Sammy. . A vote by the Los Angeles board of education vote last month to ban charter schools from sharing space at 300 district campuses is the latest big-city attack against alternatives to struggling traditional public schools. With the strong support of United Teachers Los Angeles, school board members say the ban will protect black and Latino students from the...

The fervent push from Brussels to admit Ukraine into the European Union would see €186 billion transferred to Kyiv from other member states in addition to the billions poured into the country to subsidise the war effort against Russia. According to leaked internal assessments from the secretariat of the EU Council of the cost of admitting nine new countries into the bloc, many states that hitherto were net beneficiaries of wealth transfers would need to begin sending their limited resources abroad and wealthier economies such as France, Germany, and The Netherlands would need to significantly increase their foreign contributions

The United Auto Workers strike against the 'Big Three' Detroit carmakers entered its second day on Saturday, and some union members are questioning whether President Joe Biden has done enough to back their cause. The strike involves 13,000 workers so far, less than a tenth of the union's total membership, but UAW's strike fund has enough cash to support a full 150,000-member walkout for up to three months. The union representing workers at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis is seeking a 40 percent raise for its workers. The walkout is limited for now to three assembly plants: a GM factory...

Want to have some ability to choose where your child goes to school? Well, then you’re a racist. So says Randi Weingarten, leader of the American Federation of Teachers. Words like “school choice” or “parental rights,” she maintains, are the “same kinds of words” used by segregationists, so if you use them too, you’re one of them. Predictably, Weingarten is now furiously backpedaling, claiming that she was just making an innocent comment about “language” rather than actually accusing anyone of being racist, but this isn’t the first time she’s beat this drum. In 2017, she called school-choice programs the “only...

WASHINGTON — President Biden endorsed a United Auto Workers strike at manufacturing plants of the “big three” domestic car makers as the union demands a 40% pay raise and a 32-hour work week. “Over the last two — past decade, auto companies have seen record profits, including the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the UAW workers,” Biden, 80, said at the White House Friday, hours after the strike began.

Members of the United Auto Workers began a strike Friday at three plants in the Midwest, walking out amid a contract dispute over pay, pensions and work hours at the three Detroit automakers. The strike of each of the three Detroit automakers is not a full-scale walkout by the union’s roughly 150,000 members, but a “limited and targeted” work stoppage that could expand if talks remain bogged down. The workers’ four-year contracts with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis — which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — expired at midnight Thursday, with the two sides far apart. The union, which...

Parents in a Colorado school district expressed outrage after a report said the local teachers union sent out an email to its members instructing them to get rid of evidence of students' transgender information, according to a CBS report. The Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) email explained to teachers that if they surveyed students on their gender identities, that information should not be stored in records, in a CBS report headlined, "Controversy erupts in Jefferson County after the teachers union tells educators to destroy evidence of student surveys regarding gender identity." The email said, "if you do a questionnaire, please...

Stacy Davis-Gates is undoubtedly Illinois’ most prominent and rabid opponent of school choice — and pretty much everybody and everything associated with it, all of which she labels racist or worse. As president of the Chicago Teachers Union, she is at the forefront of its campaign to kill Illinois’ meager Invest in Kids Act, which currently gives about 9,000 disadvantaged kids scholarships to attend private schools. “It must be ‘game over'” for the program, the CTU says. But, as initially reported** by SubX News, she sends one of her kids to to Chicago’s De La Salle Institute, a private, Catholic...

When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, government employees weren’t allowed to unionize. Now, they make up almost half of all union members. This would be unacceptable, even if they were all showing up to work. But they are not, and that adds insult to injury. President Joe Biden needs to make sure they do. Just 10% of wage earners are members of a union, down from more than 30% in the 1950s. The number is still falling. However, the percentage of public sector workers who belong to unions is much higher, at 33%, and rising. Some 7.1...

Two Pennsylvania State Education Association staff members were arrested Wednesday for trespassing on HACC’s Lancaster campus. The union employees, who had set up a table with information supporting HACC’s unionized faculty members, refused to leave when asked by campus security. East Lampeter Township police were called to remove them. “We have every right to be on campuses talking to faculty,” said Kathy Sicher, president of HACCEA, the union representing faculty. “We’re part of the campus, whether HACC likes it or not, we’re part of HACC.” The representatives – Lauri Lebo Rakoff, region advocacy coordinator, and Adam Weber, union representative –...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

Property-tax relief? Hardly. Proposition HH on this fall’s statewide ballot is really about growing government. And it attempts to do that by piggybacking on public outrage over skyrocketing property tax bills. The proposal’s purported property-tax “relief” — served up by Gov. Jared Polis and his legislative allies as one part of their dizzyingly complicated scheme — is a ruse. As with every attempt to play politics with a crisis, there’s a hidden agenda. And that agenda is to snooker Colorado voters into letting the state keep and spend billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue that otherwise would have to...

Motorists in Oregon are expressing excitement and confusion after a 72-year ban on self-serve gasoline pumps was lifted on Friday. Across the Beaver State, drivers took to social media to boast of pumping their own gas, while local new outlets published step-by-step instructions to help bewildered first-timers. The change came after Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill allowing people across the state to choose between having an attendant pump gas or doing it themselves. The law took immediate effect. That leaves New Jersey as the only US state that prohibits motorists from pumping their own gas. A few countries also...

Trucking giant Yellow collapsed on Sunday, ceasing operations immediately and leaving some 30,000 workers without jobs. The closure is the biggest in terms of jobs and revenue in the U.S. trucking industry, according to The Wall Street Journal - which first reported its shutdown. The company, which received $700 million in federal COVID relief funds in 2020, is preparing to file for bankruptcy and is in talks to sell off all or parts of the business. The nearly 100-year-old firm is known for its competitive pricing and has more than 12,000 trucks shipping freight across the US for brands including...

(The Center Square) — Employees at a Pittsburgh-area Starbucks say they want to de-unionize amid growing workplace tension. The request comes just one year after the Penn Center East location became one of 25 in Pennsylvania to organize under Starbucks Workers United, which is affiliated with the SEIU. Longtime employee and Shift Supervisor Elizabeth Gulliford filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, on July 12 to hold a vote on whether to break with the union. Gulliford supported the establishment of the union but changed her mind after she said its representation created tension at the...

The state of Illinois reached a new contract agreement with members of the AFSCME union that will cost taxpayers an additional $620 million over four years. Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday announced the agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The state's previous contract with the union expired at the end of June. The $620 million in additional costs amounts to a raise of nearly 18% during that time. About $200 million of that would be during the current fiscal year. “Illinois is a pro-worker state, and when it comes to workers’ rights, my administration is...