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  • Orlando union-busters helped Ohio charter school violate employees’ rights, federal judge finds

    Orlando union-busters helped Ohio charter school violate employees’ rights, federal judge finds

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    Courtesy of KIPP Columbus ACTS/Ohio Federation of Teachers-AFT

    Educators and school staff at KIPP Columbus charter schools in Ohio after they went public with their union drive in November 2022.

    An administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board found that a charter school operator in Ohio, with the help of a “union avoidance” firm based in Orlando, unlawfully threatened school staff who sought to unionize with the Ohio Federation of Teachers last year.

    School staff at the KIPP Columbus campus’ four K-12 schools — including teachers, intervention specialists, social workers, teaching fellows and student coordinators — filed a petition with the federal labor board for a union election in November 2022, and voted to unionize last May.

    In the months leading up to the vote, however, the union — the KIPP Columbus Alliance for Charter Teachers and Staff — filed charges against the school, alleging unlawful behavior by the school in relation to their staff’s protected right to organize.

    Administrative law judge Christal J. Key, in a decision released last week, found that, with backup from the Orlando-based Labor Pros, the charter school operator did indeed violate their employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act by unlawfully threatening pay freezes during years of contract negotiations if staff voted to unionize.

    School officials and third-party consultants hired through the Labor Pros also illegally threatened to withhold stipends previously agreed upon for intervention specialists at the school who provide specially designed instruction and case management to students with mental and physical disabilities.

    “All money has been stopped,” Labor Pros consultant Vanessa Ramsey reportedly told one specialist during a December 2022 meeting with the school’s superintendent, according to personal testimony from the specialist. “All the stipends and things have been stopped because the union process has started.”

    The schools’ superintendent, Ciji Pittman, had been working with intervention specialists for months alongside other school officials to come to an agreement on these stipends. The stipends were specifically intended as an incentive for overworked specialists who have student caseloads that are above the state’s limit for professionals in their role.

    According to personal testimony from the specialist, shared with the NLRB officials, both Ramsey and Pittman confirmed that, because of the decision by staff to unionize, the stipends were no longer in play.

    “You’re not getting that compensation,” Pittman reportedly told the specialist. “The union stuff started, and so you don’t — you don’t get that anymore.”

    Under the National Labor Relations Act, employers are prohibited from threatening workers with adverse consequences for unionizing, and from discriminating against workers for their organizing activity or sympathies.

    Separately, the union also alleged that the school unlawfully fired a pregnant performing arts teacher for her union activity. This allegation, however, was dismissed by the judge for lack of sufficient evidence.

    As a result of their findings, Key has ordered the charter school, KIPP Columbus, to cease and desist from threatening the rescission of benefits and from threatening pay freezes, and has ordered the school to make the intervention specialists whole, “with interest,” for the caseload stipend.

    The union sees the ruling, all in all, as a win.

    “This ruling further confirms what we’ve reported in the past, that during our organizing campaign, KIPP’s management engaged in illegal acts of intimidation and retaliation,” the bargaining committee for the union told Orlando Weekly in a statement.

    “We were not deterred by their actions because we, the workers, have the final say over whether or not we form our union.”

    “We were not deterred by their actions because we, the workers, have the final say over whether or not we form our union.”

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    Personal testimony provided by the Labor Pros consultants and school staff at Ohio charter campus reveals that consultants held group and one-on-one meetings with employees on their union rights, with Ramsey doing “most of the speaking,” the judge wrote.

    Records show that Pittman, the superintendent and KIPP Columbus’s high school principal emailed employees, mandating they attend such meetings conducted by the Labor Pros consultants.

    Both consultants hired through the Labor Pros “provided dishonest testimony about the purpose of the meetings,” according to the NLRB judge. Ramsey, for instance, claimed she wasn’t biased one way or another about whether staff voted to unionize.

    The second consultant, Jermaine Webb, testified his job “was to simply provide employees information” and that they “didn’t care if employees supported the Union.”

    During such meetings, Ramsey told school staff that if they voted to unionize, contract negotiations could take years, and in that time, staff’s pay would be frozen. During a presentation, she showed workers a slide that read, “During negotiations, no matter how long they take, employees stay at ‘Status Quo.’”

    Such “futility statements,” as they’re known, are commonly used by employers, their lawyers and union-busting firms to make workers feel that unionizing won’t actually help them, and that they may as well just save themselves the time and abandon the effort.

    This is what allegedly occurred during a recent union drive in Davenport, Florida, where delivery drivers for ReadyRefresh, a bottled water brand, sought to unionize with the Teamsters.

    A mandatory disclosure report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards shows that KIPP Columbus hired two Labor Pros consultants in December 2022 to provide “third party education and services” to school staff in relation to their organizing rights.

    Mind you, this was about a month after the staff had filed a petition to unionize, with 78% of staff having signed authorization cards in support of the effort — well above the 30% minimum that’s required.

    Altogether, records show the school spent nearly $100,000 over the next couple of months on their campaign to convince school staff not to unionize.

    An agreement filed with the labor department by Labor Pros chief executive and founder Nekeya Nunn, based in Orlando, shows the school, through their legal counsel, agreed to pay the Labor Pros a $10,000 retainer fee for their services and hourly rates of $385 per hour for consultants, and $450 per hour for Nunn, who describes herself on her firm’s website as someone who “believes in keeping companies union-free.”

    On top of that, the agreement also allowed for meal stipends, transportation and lodging expenses to be covered by the employer.

    This kind of pay isn’t unusually high. In fact, it’s pretty standard these days for the Labor Pros and other consultants who work within the lucrative union-busting industry, including other union busters based in Florida (or “persuaders,” as they’re formally known) who have been hired over the years by the likes of Amazon, Amy’s Kitchen, Pfizer, Lowes and Mercedes-Benz.

    According to the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. employers spend more than $400 million per year on union avoidance persuaders like the Labor Pros, which lists its address in reports to the government as either a building in downtown Orlando near Lake Eola or the UPS office on East Central Boulevard.

    Such consultants and firms are required by law to file financial disclosure reports with the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards, disclosing agreements they enter into with employers to “educate” employees concerning their organizing or collective bargaining rights.

    However, as Orlando Weekly previously reported, the Labor Pros have a history of filing their reports late or incorrectly — and have at times been one of the “most egregious” offenders in the industry, according to the nonprofit watchdog LaborLab.

    In fact, the report filed by Nunn disclosing her firm’s work for KIPP Columbus lists two persuaders whose names do not match those referenced in Key’s decision.

    According to Key, the two Labor Pros persuaders hired through the Ohio schools’ legal counsel were Vanessa Ramsey and Jermaine Webb. Both provided testimony to the federal labor board during their investigation into the unfair labor practice complaints.

    Nunn, however, lists the consultants hired for the KIPP Columbus campaign as Vanessa Arrington, based in Chicago, and Abram Moore, based in Phoenix. Orlando Weekly was unable to verify the identities of, or find contact information for, either of the two.

    Under the Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act, filers are required to report the full names of all individuals identified in these forms — and must use their real names.

    “Initials and coded names are not acceptable,” according to the Office of Labor Management Standards, which fields these forms.

    A spokesperson for the OLMS told Orlando Weekly earlier this year that the OLMS has civil enforcement authority of these requirements, and (although this never really happens) can also pursue criminal penalties for certain willful violations of reporting requirements, including “false entries” in reports.

    Orlando Weekly reached out to the Labor Pros and Nunn for comment on the administrative law judge’s decision — and the mismatched names — but did not hear back ahead of publication.

    According to the Ohio-based union, bargaining sessions with school leadership to hammer out a contract haven’t been going well, although based on their conduct during their initial organizing drive, they’re not surprised.

    “Over the past year, KIPP management has delayed, obstructed, and drawn out bargaining because they have no incentive to actually reach a deal with us,” the union’s bargaining committee told Orlando Weekly in a statement. “While these bargaining tactics are legal, they go hand-in-hand with KIPP’s illegal anti-union actions. We are looking forward to making progress at our next bargaining date.”

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  • City Auditor’s Office could get more power to investigate groups that receive taxpayer dollars

    City Auditor’s Office could get more power to investigate groups that receive taxpayer dollars

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    Denver City Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien speaks to a reporter in his office, April 3, 2019. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

    The Denver Auditor’s Office could get more power to investigate groups that receive tax dollars, as part of a new bill that would give the office subpoena power. 

    City Council’s Finance and Governance Committee voted Tuesday to move the bill onto full Council for a vote.

    The move comes after City Council unanimously passed a similar bill in April giving the Auditor subpoena power to investigate claims of wage theft.

    Now Auditor Timothy O’Brien wants that same tool as part of its work conducting performance audits of city agencies, contractors and any groups that receive tax dollars.

    “The problem we’re trying to solve is that in many audits … there comes a point in time where the Auditor’s Office requests information of someone and the entity being audited does not want to provide it, and there is right now no resolution for that conflict,” said Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, who is bringing the bill forward along with Councilmember Sarah Parady.

    The Auditor’s Office once had this power

    The office briefly had that power after a Council bill in 2021.

    But a last-minute amendment allowing audited groups to restrict documents to on-site access, out of fears of overreach, prompted O’Brien to sue the city. City Council repealed subpoena powers entirely to avoid litigating a potentially costly lawsuit.

    Now that power could return.

    How would this work?

    Its structure is similar to the wage theft bill, where audited groups can appeal subpoena requests to a third-party hearing officer, who could modify or deny the subpoena or add additional data protections.

    Disputes about data privacy during performance audits have come up in the past when the Auditor’s Office requested access to documents.

    Labor advocates are in favor of the bill

    The bill has the support of the Auditor’s Office, along with a similar group of labor advocates who supported the wage theft bill.

    “Our auditor has been a champion for people with disabilities,” said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, at public comment on Tuesday. “These audits have all led to improvements that alluded us without the objective information uncovered in an audit.”

    Reiskin also talked about the need for oversight of public dollars. 

    “I’m also here as a taxpayer,” she said. “Sometimes the answer is more money but sometimes the answer is more accountability.”

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  • She raised three children working as a Denver janitor. Months before retiring, she’s ready to strike

    She raised three children working as a Denver janitor. Months before retiring, she’s ready to strike

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    Shortly after Maria Hernandez came from Mexico to the United States in 1985, she got her first and only job in this country: working the night shift as a janitor.

    For nearly four decades, she cleaned 12 floors of a downtown Denver office building where the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment does business. 

    Now she plans to retire in a few months. 

    But first, she’s helping negotiate a contract for better wages, health care and retirement benefits for the more than 2,300 unionized janitors who work downtown. More than 90 percent of them are also Latina immigrants. 

    Janitors need more money and benefits to live in Denver, the union argues. But the city’s downtown office economy has taken a beating, and raising pay and benefits could be challenging in this market, their employers argue.

    For Hernandez, these fights are nothing new. 

    An early member of the Denver Justice for Janitors campaign, she has spent decades fighting for better working conditions and struggled for a higher minimum wage citywide.

    She’s marched in the streets, picketed and gone on strike. She was even arrested during a protest for “making too much noise,” she said in Spanish, and she’s proud of it.  

    Now, as her career comes to an end, Hernandez is willing to fight again if it means better working conditions for women like her, struggling to make enough money to raise families in this city, to pay rent and maybe even retire.  

    Working away from family, for unknown bosses

    Hernandez worked hard for her family, getting by on near-minimum wage earnings.

    She scrubbed toilets in dozens of bathrooms a day, threw out the trash, vacuumed the floors. She’s one of the longest-employed people in the building where she works, yet among those who get the least recognition and compensation. 

    She doesn’t know the people she works for. Not the bosses, not even most of the employees of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment whose messes she tidies. 

    A view of the building that houses the Colorado Department of Labor downtown. June 14, 2024.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    Her schedule makes her an invisible part of their lives. After all, the workers in the building are long gone, back home with their friends and families, when she’s getting started, making sure they have a nice place to conduct business.

    Over her 38-year career, she raised three children who all still live in Denver: one daughter who now works with people with disabilities, another who remodels pools and a son who works in a law firm. 

    While they were growing up, she’d leave her home in the Lincoln Park neighborhood for work before they’d get back from school. She would return from work while they were still asleep. 

    She lost precious time with her kids. 

    “It is difficult, but one needs to work to survive,” she told Denverite, standing outside the highrise she cleans before a Friday night shift in June. 

    These days, her kids tell her they’re grateful for the life she provided, even if it was hard for them to be apart from their mother so often.

    Now that retirement is approaching, can she afford it?

    Her family has lived in the same house for decades, though her kids have moved on. Her husband passed away recently, and she’s shouldering the bills on a paycheck that doesn’t match Denver’s cost of living. 

    And rent has gone up mightily. Her family paid roughly $500 in rent decades ago. Now, without her husband, she pays more than $2,000 a month. 

    After 35 years, Hernandez’s pay is just a little over a dollar higher than Denver’s minimum wage of $18.29.

    Maria Hernandez stands outside of the downtown building where she works as a janitor. June 14, 2024.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    On the eve of retirement, Hernandez is not certain she can afford to stay here. Denver’s too expensive, and she hasn’t been able to save enough to make it without working.  

    “It’s sad,” she said. 

    She’s considering moving to another state or even back to Mexico, where the cost of living is lower. But she’d hate to leave her kids. 

    “There you can own your own house,” she said. “Here you have to rent.”

    Her hours haven’t changed after all these years, but the workload has. 

    Since the pandemic, the downtown offices have emptied out. Many janitors lost their jobs. Hernandez was among those who stayed, shouldering extra work. 

    Even with lots of chatter about downtown coming back to life, the office buildings have not been restaffed to pre-pandemic levels. The janitors still employed have been doing extra labor without significant raises. 

    The work itself is tiring and, for some, dangerous. 

    “Many times the chemicals are very strong,” she said. “They give people allergic reactions. There are people who have been unable to work because of what the chemicals do.”

    What do the bosses do to help? 

    “It’s not important to the owners that the chemicals they give you make you sick or hurt you,” she said.

    Marching for better pay and benefits

    Hernandez was voted by more than 2,400 janitors in Service Employees International Union Local 105 to represent them in contract negotiations with multiple companies charged with keeping downtown offices clean, including CCS Facility Services, ABM and Master Klean. 

    The workers are demanding better pay, health insurance and retirement benefits. 

    The negotiations launched on June 17. Janitors marched alongside other SEIU members, labor activists and State Rep. Tim Hernandez.  

    “We know that when workers who are directly impacted have improved conditions that everything around them becomes improved,” Rep. Hernandez said to a cheering crowd.

    Tim Hernandez speaks into a microphone at a rally for janitors outside Union Station.
    Tim Hernandez speaks at an SEIU Local 105 rally for janitors, outside Union Station, on June 17, 2024.
    Kyle Harris / Denverite

    Stephanie Felix-Sowy, President of SEIU Local 105, said the group was fighting for higher wages, better health care benefits, and retirement packages.

    Discussions began Monday morning and were slated to continue until later in the day. 

    “With the growth in Denver, and with the kind of revitalization efforts in the downtown, our members feel like they’ve been left behind at this point,” Felix-Sowy said. “And so this is our opportunity to really concentrate on what are fair wages, competitive wages, where we can attract and retain folks in this industry.”

    Downtown office building owners have been struggling after the pandemic. 

    John Nesse, the attorney who represents the six companies united in negotiations under the name Denver Janitorial Contractors, says the city center’s commercial real estate market is hurting. 

    While he declined to comment on specific points in the negotiation, he suggested that the market isn’t favorable to expensive changes in the contracts. 

    “The Denver office market has a record high vacancy rate right now, and like a lot of office markets, it’s struggling,” Nesse said. “So we expect that that will have an impact on these negotiations.”

    A view of the building that houses the Colorado Department of Labor downtown. June 14, 2024.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    There are already eight meetings on the calendar between the union and Nesse. 

    “We’re very early in the process, and you know, our goal is to negotiate a contract that reflects the realities of the Denver market, and to do that in a way that ends with a handshake with the union and an agreement before the expiration of the contract,” he said.

    What’s next for contract negotiations

    While both parties hope to reach an amenable agreement by the contract’s expiration on July 28, that isn’t guaranteed. 

    Is Hernandez optimistic the contract will favor the janitors? 

    “Hopefully,” she said.

    If the contract expires and a deal hasn’t been struck, workers could walk off the job in protest — an outcome neither party wants. 

    But the union is ready to fight for the long haul for better wages and benefits. 

    “If the owners of the companies do not want to accept what the people are asking of them,” she said, “we are ready to go on strike.”

    Maria Hernandez, a Denver janitor, participates in an SEIU Local 105 rally outside Union Station, on June 17, 2024.
    Maria Hernandez, a Denver janitor, participates in an SEIU Local 105 rally outside Union Station, on June 17, 2024.
    Kyle Harris / Denverite

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  • A new airport could spark the economy in a rural part of Florida. Will the workforce be ready?

    A new airport could spark the economy in a rural part of Florida. Will the workforce be ready?

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    LaBELLE, Fla. — One of Florida’s poorest counties is preparing for the new “Airglades” airport, a $300 million cargo hub that could transform its economy.

    Local leaders see the project as a generational opportunity, one that could bring more than 1,400 new, high-skilled jobs to their largely agricultural community at the edge of the Everglades. But to make good on its promise, the region’s educators will have to overcome some harsh realities.

    A third of Hendry County’s working-age adults lack a high-school diploma, while almost half speak a language other than English at home, among the highest in Florida. Before local leaders can prepare residents for jobs in engineering and manufacturing, educators must first help them earn their GEDs and learn English.

    “We have some of God’s most beautiful country that has never been touched by man,” said Michael Swindle, the county schools superintendent, and yet “by all the metrics you would judge a county on, we’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in the ugly categories.”

    As the airport project pursues approval, community groups and schools are working to fill teacher shortages and make investments in adult education.

    The challenges also include some political headwinds. Most of the county’s workforce is Black and Latino. Efforts to tailor education to serve those demographic groups have drawn scrutiny in Florida, where politicians have forbidden programs factoring race and national origin into people’s treatment. Educators say the political context adds to the difficulties in recruiting teachers.

    The plan to convert the small, county-owned airport to private ownership still has to win approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which will depend partly on solidifying contracts with vendors in Latin America to prove its potential as a hub for perishable goods.

    Meanwhile, two adult education centers in the county expanded with support from the FutureMakers Coalition, a community organization that has spearheaded education retraining efforts across southwest Florida. It also is paying for a counselor to help adults looking to develop new skills and change careers.

    Spanish-speaking students have filled the adult education center in LaBelle, the 5,000-person county seat.

    Many are working jobs or have kids at home, which has forced their instructor, Silvia Gullett, to get creative to meet their needs. She started a WhatsApp group so students could organize carpooling or split childcare duties. If students don’t show up to class, Gullett texts them to figure out the problem. She doesn’t settle for easy excuses.

    “In the beginning, I had some students who didn’t want to continue. I try to tell people that the only one who can stop them is themselves,” said Gullett, who was born in Peru before starting her teaching career in Florida two decades ago.

    At the country’s other adult education center, in Clewiston, sparks fly as dozens of students in thick gloves and respirator masks work toward industrial certifications needed to enter the workforce. One of them, Samantha Garza, 21, initially studied child care at a community college in Fort Myers but pivoted after watching YouTube videos about female welders.

    “I’m an artsy person, so I have more of a steady hand already, and I love to be down and dirty doing physical things, so I felt like this would be a career for me,” she said.

    Even before the airport arrives, there are still plenty of local employers waiting to hire the students. As current employees near retirement age, U.S. Sugar, the Clewiston-based farming giant, has such urgent needs it started an in-house welding program.

    “We’re trying to close that generation gap between mechanics and welders,” said Nathan Hollis, an industrial skills trainer at the company.

    Finding enough instructors to offer the training has been a challenge. Swindle had to recruit a U.S. Sugar worker to teach welding and coax a school bus mechanic out of retirement to lead the diesel mechanics program.

    Still, the program has been so successful the county is using tuition revenue and donations to open another training facility in LaBelle focused on HVAC and plumbing.

    There has been controversy around some efforts, including a slide on the topic of “white privilege” shown during a teacher training event led by FutureMakers. It sparked an outcry from conservative activists who accused organizers of racism, and a Republican city commissioner in LaBelle suggested it violated the “ Stop WOKE Act ” signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

    The political climate in Florida has made it difficult to attract K-12 teachers, according to Swindle. In a state where DeSantis has harnessed culture war passions in his education policies, Swindle said many of his teachers feel unsupported.

    “The rhetoric around public education is horrible. It absolutely does hurt us,” Swindle said.

    Teacher shortages threaten local schools’ ability to teach not just welders and mechanics, but also construction workers, nurses and other professionals to support the influx of people the airport could bring.

    “We don’t have a chemistry or physics teacher in high school. We’ve left the job openings up for three years, and we can’t even get someone to apply,” Swindle said.

    The county has been running more marketing campaigns to recruit educators and paying paraprofessionals to secure licenses so they can become teachers with help from a $23 million Good Jobs Challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

    There is a lot at stake for Swindle’s long-time home.

    The superintendent knows where the alligators lie, sunbathing along the acres of canals that irrigate fields of sugarcane. He knows which sabal palms make the best swamp cabbage, teaching his sons how to cut palm hearts out with his knife, like their ancestors did to survive leaner times.

    Yet there is no way to know if all his retraining efforts will be successful. The airport still might not come, especially if the county can’t prove it will have the workers ready to support it.

    For now, officials are trying to fill current workforce needs while test-driving their ability to spin up new training programs. Once construction begins on the airport, they know they will have about two years to teach a wave of logistics operators, agricultural customs inspectors and other aviation-specific professionals.

    “We’re not just talking about an airport,” Swindle said. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity to move the needle on unemployment, on poverty, to a better place.”

    ___

    Nick Fouriezos covers the role of college in rural America for Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Sign up for his newsletter, Mile Markers.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • How Elon Musk’s $44.9B Tesla pay package compares with the most generous plans for other U.S. CEOs

    How Elon Musk’s $44.9B Tesla pay package compares with the most generous plans for other U.S. CEOs

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    Even though the median U.S. CEO pay package last year was nearly 200 times more than a worker in the middle of their company pay scales, Elon Musk’s record-setting Tesla compensation dwarfs them by comparison.

    Tesla shareholders on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring Musk’s 10-year pay plan, valued by the company in April at $44.9 billion. It was worth more early in the year, but Tesla’s stock value has fallen about 25% since then.

    The all-stock package, approved by the board and shareholders in 2018, rewards Musk for hitting milestones that include raising Tesla’s market value, pretax income and revenue.

    It had been tossed out by a Delaware judge in January who said the process for approving it was “deeply flawed.” The court ruled that Musk controlled the company’s board, and shareholders weren’t fully informed.

    But the company said Musk deserves the pay because he turned Tesla into the top-selling electric vehicle maker in the world, increasing its market value by billions.

    Even with the reapproval vote, Musk won’t get access to the stock options just yet. Tesla is expected to ask the judge to revisit her decision in light of the vote, and if she doesn’t, the company probably will appeal the ruling to Delaware’s Supreme Court. The whole process could take months.

    No matter the outcome, Musk’s package — the largest award to a CEO of a U.S. public company — is far above what’s been granted to other chief executives. Here’s how the package compares:

    WITH THE MEDIAN CEO PAY

    The median pay package for an S&P 500 U.S. CEO last year was $16.3 million, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. If you multiply that by 10 to get $163 million for a decade of work, Musk’s earnings still would be 275 times greater.

    In her January ruling that struck down the package, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick wrote that Musk’s package, then worth about $56 billion, was 250 times larger than the median peer CEO’s pay plan.

    WITH INDIVIDUAL CEOS

    The top earner in the AP’s survey was Hock Tan, CEO of artificial intelligence company Broadcom Inc. His package, mostly consisting of stock awards, was valued at about $162 million, when given to Tan at the start of fiscal 2023. Thanks to a surging stock price, Broadcom in March valued Tan’s pay package, plus older options he hadn’t yet cashed in, at $767.7 million. That’s an amount easily eclipsed by Musk’s potential haul of 304 million shares worth almost $45 billion.

    Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

    Technically, Musk got no compensation last year because he didn’t get any stock options. But he stands to get even richer if his pay package goes through.

    WITH TESLA WORKERS

    It’s difficult to calculate what Musk’s annual pay would have been last year. The company says he got nothing. But if his compensation package makes it through the courts, his pay will be in the billions. According to the company’s proxy filing this year, the median annual pay of a non-CEO Tesla employee last year was $45,811.

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  • How Elon Musk’s $44.9B Tesla pay package compares with the most generous plans for other U.S. CEOs

    How Elon Musk’s $44.9B Tesla pay package compares with the most generous plans for other U.S. CEOs

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    Even though the median U.S. CEO pay package last year was nearly 200 times more than a worker in the middle of their company pay scales, Elon Musk’s record-setting Tesla compensation dwarfs them by comparison.

    Tesla shareholders on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring Musk’s 10-year pay plan, valued by the company in April at $44.9 billion. It was worth more early in the year, but Tesla’s stock value has fallen about 25% since then.

    The all-stock package, approved by the board and shareholders in 2018, rewards Musk for hitting milestones that include raising Tesla’s market value, pretax income and revenue.

    It had been tossed out by a Delaware judge in January who said the process for approving it was “deeply flawed.” The court ruled that Musk controlled the company’s board, and shareholders weren’t fully informed.

    But the company said Musk deserves the pay because he turned Tesla into the top-selling electric vehicle maker in the world, increasing its market value by billions.

    Even with the reapproval vote, Musk won’t get access to the stock options just yet. Tesla is expected to ask the judge to revisit her decision in light of the vote, and if she doesn’t, the company probably will appeal the ruling to Delaware’s Supreme Court. The whole process could take months.

    No matter the outcome, Musk’s package — the largest award to a CEO of a U.S. public company — is far above what’s been granted to other chief executives. Here’s how the package compares:

    WITH THE MEDIAN CEO PAY

    The median pay package for an S&P 500 U.S. CEO last year was $16.3 million, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. If you multiply that by 10 to get $163 million for a decade of work, Musk’s earnings still would be 275 times greater.

    In her January ruling that struck down the package, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick wrote that Musk’s package, then worth about $56 billion, was 250 times larger than the median peer CEO’s pay plan.

    WITH INDIVIDUAL CEOS

    The top earner in the AP’s survey was Hock Tan, CEO of artificial intelligence company Broadcom Inc. His package, mostly consisting of stock awards, was valued at about $162 million, when given to Tan at the start of fiscal 2023. Thanks to a surging stock price, Broadcom in March valued Tan’s pay package, plus older options he hadn’t yet cashed in, at $767.7 million. That’s an amount easily eclipsed by Musk’s potential haul of 304 million shares worth almost $45 billion.

    Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

    Technically, Musk got no compensation last year because he didn’t get any stock options. But he stands to get even richer if his pay package goes through.

    WITH TESLA WORKERS

    It’s difficult to calculate what Musk’s annual pay would have been last year. The company says he got nothing. But if his compensation package makes it through the courts, his pay will be in the billions. According to the company’s proxy filing this year, the median annual pay of a non-CEO Tesla employee last year was $45,811.

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  • Judge Orders California Grad Students To Pause Their Massive Strike

    Judge Orders California Grad Students To Pause Their Massive Strike

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    A state judge has ordered graduate student workers at the University of California to temporarily stop their strike at six campuses across the system, delivering a win to UC regents in their legal effort to force strikers back to work.

    Both the university system and the academic workers’ union, United Auto Workers Local 4811, said late Friday that the judge in Orange County had granted a temporary restraining order against the work stoppage. UC had argued that the strike would cause “irreparable harm” by disrupting classes and research as finals loom.

    The strike began last month in response to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests at the Los Angeles and Irvine campuses, part of a wave of college demonstrations across the country against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The union accused the university system of authorizing brutal arrests and violating workers’ right to peaceful protest.

    After starting at UC Santa Cruz, the strike spread to five other campuses: UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego. It now appears to be the largest U.S. work stoppage of the year so far, involving up to 31,500 of the union’s 48,000 members.

    The injunction orders graduate student instructors and researchers temporarily back to work while the underlying case moves through a state labor board. The union has accused UC of committing various unfair labor practices stemming from its protest response.

    Academic workers protest at the University of California, Irvine, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Orange County, California. When workers there recently walked off the job, they joined their counterparts at other campuses on strike in response to UC’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

    Zeng Hui/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

    Melissa Matella, UC’s associate vice president for labor relations, said in a statement that the university system was “extremely grateful” for the judge’s order.

    “The strike would have caused irreversible setbacks to students’ academic achievements and may have stalled critical research projects in the final quarter,” Matella said.

    UC had asked the state labor board twice to seek an injunction and was rebuffed both times. It then took its case to Orange County Superior Court.

    Local 4811 cautioned that the judge did not rule the strike to be illegal, as the university system has argued. It also criticized UC regents for going outside of the labor board process in search of a “more favorable outcome” in state court, and vowed to defend the legality of the strike.

    The university system has said that the justifications for the strike are purely political and social — rather than work-related — and therefore the stoppage is against the law. But the grad students have maintained that the fight is about their rights as employees to protest without fear of arrest or retaliation.

    “UC academic workers are facing down an attack on our whole movement,” Rafael Jaime, the union’s president, said in a statement. “In the courtroom, the law is on our side and we’re prepared to keep defending our rights — and outside, 48,000 workers are ready for a long fight.”

    Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine, said on social media that it was “pretty darn brazen” of the university system to take its injunction request to court after the labor board had twice decline to pursue it.

    “UC’s actions are not unlike what Starbucks and Amazon are doing in the private sector: attempting to undermine the bodies governing labor law,” Dubal said.

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  • US job openings fall to 8.1 million, lowest since 2021

    US job openings fall to 8.1 million, lowest since 2021

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    WASHINGTON — U.S. job openings fell in April to the lowest level since 2021. But they remained at historically strong levels despite high interest rates and signs the economy is slowing.

    The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8.1 million vacancies in April, down from a revised 8.4 million in March. The March figures had originally come in at 8.5 million.

    Still, layoffs fell, and the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their prospects — rose in April.

    Monthly job openings have come down steadily a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 — as the economy’s recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns left companies desperate for workers — but they remain at a high level. Before 2021, they never topped 8 million — a threshold they have now reached for 38 straight months.

    The high level of job openings reflects a surprisingly strong U.S. labor market. When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March 2022 to combat a resurgence in inflation, the higher borrowing costs were expected to tip the economy into recession and push up unemployment.

    Instead, the economy kept growing and employers continued to hire. The United States has averaged a solid 234,000 new jobs a month over the last year. On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that employers added another 180,000 jobs, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

    The unemployment rate is expected to come in at 3.9%, which would be the 28th straight month it’s been below 4%. That would be the longest such streak since a 35-month run from 1951 through 1953 during the Korean War.

    Still, high rates are taking a toll. The economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.3% from January through March, the slowest since spring 2022. Much of the first-quarter slowdown was caused volatile factors such as a surge in imports and a reduction in business inventories. Consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity, kept growing but at a slower annual pace — 2%, down from 3.3% in the last three months of 2023.

    The economy had been expected to get a lift from lower rates. The Fed signaled that it planned to cut its benchmark rate three times this year. But the start of the cuts keeps getting pushed back because inflation remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target.

    Now Wall Street investors don’t expect the first cut until the Fed’s September meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

    Fed policymakers likely welcome lower job openings — a relatively painless way to cool a hot job market and reduce pressure on companies to raise wages, which can feed inflation.

    “Overall, job openings are still elevated, signaling strong demand for workers,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. ”But they continue to move in the right direction, towards pre-pandemic readings, pointing to an ongoing normalization between supply and demand for labor.”

    ___

    AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.

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  • Number of Americans applying for jobless benefits inches up, but layoffs remain low

    Number of Americans applying for jobless benefits inches up, but layoffs remain low

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    The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits ticked up last week, but layoffs remain historically low in the face of lingering inflation and high interest rates.

    Jobless claims for the week ending May 25 rose by 3,000 to 219,000, up from 216,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

    The four-week average of claims, which quiets some of the week-to-week noise, also rose modestly to 222,500. That’s an increase of 2,500 from the previous week.

    Weekly unemployment claims are broadly interpreted as a proxy for the number of U.S. layoffs in a given week and a sign of where the job market is headed. They have remained at historically low levels since millions of jobs were lost when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in the spring of 2020.

    The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in a bid to stifle the four-decade high inflation that took hold after the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020. The Fed’s intention was to cool off a red-hot labor market and slow wage growth, which can fuel inflation.

    Many economists had expected the rapid rate hikes would trigger a recession, but that’s been avoided so far thanks to strong consumer demand and sturdier-than-expected labor market.

    In April, U.S. employers added just 175,000 jobs, the fewest in six months and a sign that the labor market may be finally cooling off. The unemployment rate inched back up to 3.9% from 3.8% and has now remained below 4% for 27 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.

    The government also recently reported 8.5 million job openings in March, the lowest number of vacancies in three years.

    Moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown in wage growth, could give the Fed the data its been seeking to finally bring interest rates back down. A cooler reading on consumer inflation in April could also play into the Fed’s next rate decision.

    Though layoffs remain at low levels, companies have been announcing more job cuts recently, mostly across technology and media. Google parent company Alphabet, Apple and eBay have all recently announced layoffs.

    Outside of tech and media, Walmart, Peloton, Stellantis, Nike and Tesla have recently announced job cuts.

    In total, 1.79 million Americans were collecting jobless benefits during the week that ended May 18. That’s an increase of 4,000 from the previous week.

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  • University Of California Tries To Force Striking Graduate Students Back To Work

    University Of California Tries To Force Striking Graduate Students Back To Work

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    Academic workers have walked off the job to protest the crackdown on campus demonstrations. The university claims the work stoppage is illegal.

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  • The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’

    The Low-Paid Humans Behind AI’s Smarts Ask Biden to Free Them From ‘Modern Day Slavery’

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    AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers who do AI training work or online content moderation for companies like Meta and OpenAI published an open letter to President Biden, demanding that US tech companies stop “systemically abusing and exploiting African workers.”

    Most of the letter’s signatories are from Kenya, a hub for tech outsourcing, whose president, William Ruto, is visiting the US this week. The workers allege that the practices of companies like Meta, OpenAI, and data provider Scale AI “amount to modern day slavery.” The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    A typical workday for African tech contractors, the letter says, involves “watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day.” Pay is often less than $2 per hour, it says, and workers frequently end up with post-traumatic stress disorder, a well-documented issue among content moderators around the world.

    The letter’s signatories say their work includes reviewing content on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as labeling images and training chatbot responses for companies like OpenAI that are developing generative-AI technology. The workers are affiliated with the African Content Moderators Union, the first content moderators union on the continent, and a group founded by laid-off workers who previously trained AI technology for companies such as Scale AI, which sells datasets and data-labeling services to clients including OpenAI, Meta, and the US military. The letter was published on the site of the UK-based activist group Foxglove, which promotes tech-worker unions and equitable tech.

    In March, the letter and news reports say, Scale AI abruptly banned people based in Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan from working on Remotasks, Scale AI’s platform for contract work. The letter says that these workers were cut off without notice and are “owed significant sums of unpaid wages.”

    “When Remotasks shut down, it took our livelihoods out of our hands, the food out of our kitchens,” says Joan Kinyua, a member of the group of former Remotasks workers, in a statement to WIRED. “But Scale AI, the big company that ran the platform, gets away with it, because it’s based in San Francisco.”

    Though the Biden administration has frequently described its approach to labor policy as “worker-centered.” The African workers’ letter argues that this has not extended to them, saying “we are treated as disposable.”

    “You have the power to stop our exploitation by US companies, clean up this work and give us dignity and fair working conditions,” the letter says. “You can make sure there are good jobs for Kenyans too, not just Americans.”

    Tech contractors in Kenya have filed lawsuits in recent years alleging that tech-outsourcing companies and their US clients such as Meta have treated workers illegally. Wednesday’s letter demands that Biden make sure that US tech companies engage with overseas tech workers, comply with local laws, and stop union-busting practices. It also suggests that tech companies “be held accountable in the US courts for their unlawful operations aboard, in particular for their human rights and labor violations.”

    The letter comes just over a year after 150 workers formed the African Content Moderators Union. Meta promptly laid off all of its nearly 300 Kenya-based content moderators, workers say, effectively busting the fledgling union. The company is currently facing three lawsuits from more than 180 Kenyan workers, demanding more humane working conditions, freedom to organize, and payment of unpaid wages.

    “Everyone wants to see more jobs in Kenya,” Kauna Malgwi, a member of the African Content Moderators Union steering committee, says. “But not at any cost. All we are asking for is dignified, fairly paid work that is safe and secure.”

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    Caroline Haskins

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  • After decisive loss at Alabama Mercedes plants, powerful auto union vows to return and win

    After decisive loss at Alabama Mercedes plants, powerful auto union vows to return and win

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    TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A decisive vote against the United Auto Workers union at two Mercedes factories in Alabama on Friday sidetracked the UAW’s grand plan to sign up workers at nonunion plants mainly in the South.

    But newly elected President Shawn Fain said the union will return to Mercedes and will press on with efforts to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen auto factories across the nation.

    Employees at Mercedes battery and assembly plants near Tuscaloosa voted 56% against the union in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

    The vote count handed the union a serious setback a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s 4,300-worker assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

    The NLRB’s final tally showed a vote of 2,642 against the union, with 2,045 in favor. Nearly 93% of workers eligible to vote cast ballots.

    Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University’s business school who has long studied the union, said the UAW will have to analyze what went wrong and apply those lessons as it moves to other nonunion factories largely in the South.

    “They’re going to have to go back to the drawing board,” said Masters, who added that the union will need to ask itself if it needs to get more workers to sign cards seeking a union election before calling for a vote. The union may also want to respond faster to management opposition, he said.

    “Do they need to assess more realistically the actual level of grievances and how passionately workers are to stay committed to a union organizing effort in the face of opposition?” Masters asked.

    Fain assured workers that the union will return, telling them the loss was a bump in the road, not failure. He said he told company officials the fight was not over.

    “We’ve been here before, and we’re going to continue on and we’re going to win,” he said. “And I think we’ll have a different result down the road, and I look forward to that.”

    The NLRB said both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, and the union must wait a year before seeking another vote at Mercedes.

    Whether the union challenges the election will be up to its lawyers, said Fain, who accused the company of “egregious illegal behavior.”

    The union already has filed unfair labor practice complaints against the company alleging that management and anti-union consultants tried to intimidate workers. Mercedes has denied the allegations.

    “Obviously we’re following through on complaints, both here and in Germany” where Mercedes is headquartered, Fain said.

    A big difference between the loss at Mercedes and the overwhelming win at Volkswagen, Fain said, was that Mercedes actively fought the union. “Obviously, Volkswagen was more neutral, and that wasn’t the case here,” he said of Mercedes, which he accused of holding captive meetings of workers to campaign against the UAW.

    In a statement Friday, Mercedes said it looks forward to “continuing to work directly with our team members so they can build superior vehicles for the world.”

    The company said its focus is on providing a safe and supportive work environment.

    Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who has campaigned against the union, wrote in a post on X that auto manufacturing is one of the state’s crown jewel industries, and the state is committed to keeping it that way.

    “Alabama is not Michigan, and we are not the Sweet Home to the UAW,” she wrote. “We urge the UAW to respect the results of this secret ballot election.”

    Worker Melissa Howell, who opposed joining the union, said she and other employees realized that the UAW was making lofty promises that it couldn’t put in writing, including pay of $40 per hour, pensions and better benefits.

    “They kept repeating over and over, ‘You’re not going to lose anything. We’re going to start with what you have right now,’” Howell said. “That’s when we really started letting people know, ‘Hey, hold up. It’s all negotiable.’”

    But Kirk Garner, 60, who works in quality control at the Mercedes assembly plant and supported joining the union, said workers were shown an anti-union video every day ahead of the vote, while union opponents targeted employees who they thought could be persuaded to vote no.

    “I’m disappointed in the people that flipped and believed the persuaders,” Garner said.

    The UAW won at Volkswagen largely because of the prospect of substantially higher wages and other benefits. Contracts reached with the Detroit Three automakers, General Motors, Stellantis and Ford, brought 33% raises between now and 2028 when the deals expire, giving the union a large recruiting tool.

    Before VW, the United Auto Workers had little success at nonunion auto plants in the South, where workers have been much less drawn to organized labor than in the traditional union strongholds of Michigan and other industrial Midwestern states.

    A victory at the Mercedes plants would have represented a huge plum for the union, which has long struggled to overcome the enticements that Southern states have bestowed on foreign automakers, including tax breaks, lower labor costs and a nonunion workforce.

    It turns out that the union had a tougher time in Alabama than in Tennessee, where the UAW narrowly lost two previous votes and was familiar with workers at the factory.

    ___

    A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Mercedes employee Kirk Garner as Rick Garner.

    ___

    Krisher reported from Detroit. AP Business Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York contributed to this report.

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  • UAW’s push to unionize factories in the South faces latest test at 2 Mercedes plants in Alabama

    UAW’s push to unionize factories in the South faces latest test at 2 Mercedes plants in Alabama

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    DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union faces the latest test of its ambitious plan to unionize auto plants in the historically nonunion South when a vote ends Friday at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

    The voting at the two Mercedes factories — one an assembly plant, the other a battery-making facility — comes a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that election, VW workers voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW, drawn by the prospect of substantially higher wages and other benefits. The plant has about 4,300 production workers.

    The UAW had little success before then recruiting at nonunion auto plants in the South, where workers have been much less drawn to organized labor than in the traditional union strongholds of Michigan and other industrial Midwest states.

    A victory at the Mercedes plants would represent a huge plum for the union, which has long struggled to overcome the enticements that Southern states have bestowed on foreign automakers, including tax breaks, lower labor costs and a nonunion workforce.

    Some Southern governors have warned that voting for union membership could, over time, cost workers their jobs because of the higher costs that the auto companies would have to bear.

    Yet the UAW is operating from a stronger position than in the past. Besides its victory in Chattanooga, it achieved generous new contracts last fall after striking against Detroit Big 3 automakers: General Motors, Stellantis and Ford. Workers there gained 33% pay raises in contracts that will expire in 2028.

    Top-scale production workers at GM, who now earn about $36 an hour, will make nearly $43 an hour by the end of their contract, plus annual profit-sharing checks. Mercedes has increased top production worker pay to $34 an hour, a move that some workers say was intended to fend off the UAW.

    Shortly after workers ratified the Detroit contract, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a drive to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen nonunion plants, mostly run by foreign-based automakers with plants in Southern states. In addition, Tesla’s U.S. factories, which are nonunion, are in the UAW’s sights.

    About 5,200 workers at the Mercedes plants are eligible to vote on the UAW, the union’s first election there. Balloting is being run by the National Labor Relations Board.

    The union may have a tougher time in Alabama than it did in Tennessee, where the UAW had narrowly lost two previous votes and was familiar with workers at the factory. The UAW has accused Mercedes of using management and anti-union consultants to try to intimidate workers.

    In a statement Thursday, Mercedes denied interfering with or retaliating against workers who are pursuing union representation. The company has said it looks forward to all workers having a chance to cast a secret ballot “as well as having access to the information necessary to make an informed choice” on unionization.

    If the union wins, it will be a huge momentum booster for the UAW as it seeks to organize more factories, said Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University’s business school who has long studied the union.

    “The other companies should be on notice,” Masters said, “that the UAW will soon be knocking at their door more loudly than they have even in the recent past.”

    If the Mercedes workers reject the union, Masters expects the UAW leadership to explore legal options. This could include arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes’ actions made it impossible for union representation to receive a fair election.

    Though a loss would be a setback for the UAW, Masters suggested it would not deal a fatal blow to its membership drive. The union would have to analyze why it couldn’t garner more than 50% of the vote, given its statement that a “supermajority” of workers signed cards authorizing an election, Masters said. The UAW wouldn’t say what percentage or how many workers signed up.

    A UAW loss, he said, could lead workers at other nonunion plants to wonder why Mercedes employees voted against the union. But Masters said he doesn’t think an election loss would slow down the union.

    “I would expect them to intensify their efforts, to try to be more thoughtful and see what went wrong,” he said.

    If the UAW eventually manages to organize nonunion plants at Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Toyota and Honda with contracts similar to those it won in Detroit, more automakers would have to bear the same labor costs. That potentially could lead the automakers to raise vehicle prices.

    Some workers at Mercedes say the company treated them poorly until the UAW’s organizing drive began, then offered pay raises, eliminated a lower tier of pay for new hires and even replaced the plant CEO.

    Worker Austin Hall, 20, said Friday that he’s confident in the union’s chances of winning. “We know that we may not have the money for fancy lawyers but we have the power, we have the numbers,” he said.

    Other Mercedes workers have said they prefer to see how the company treats them without the bureaucracy of a union.

    ___

    Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama.

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  • Walmart lays off hundreds of employees and requires others to relocate

    Walmart lays off hundreds of employees and requires others to relocate

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    Walmart on Tuesday announced layoffs affecting several hundred jobs at the retail giant’s campus offices and said it will be requiring most remote workers and personnel in its Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto offices to relocate to office hubs in Bentonvill…

    BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart on Tuesday announced layoffs affecting several hundred jobs at the retail giant’s campus offices.

    It also said it will require most remote workers and personnel in its Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto offices to relocate to its primary offices in Bentonville, Arkansas; Hoboken, New Jersey; and the San Francisco Bay Area.

    The news, conveyed via a Walmart staff memo provided to The Associated Press, said the relocations will serve the goal of “bringing more of us together more often.” The memo likewise noted that being together in person “makes us better and helps us to collaborate, innovate and move even faster.”

    The memo did not give a reason for the layoffs beyond stating that “some parts of our business have made changes” that will result in job losses.

    A Walmart spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions regarding the reason for the layoffs and why Walmart is working to consolidate other office jobs in Arkansas, New Jersey and California.

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  • Congress is sending families less help for day care costs. So states are stepping in

    Congress is sending families less help for day care costs. So states are stepping in

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Across the country, the story for families is virtually the same: Child care is unaffordable for many, hard to find for those who can pay, and financially precarious for day care operators and their employees.

    The Biden administration and Congress tried to alleviate some of these problems when the pandemic crippled the child care industry. But as the record $52.5 billion in relief winds down, many states have stepped in with their own solutions.

    States have expanded free preschool and early education and helped more families pay for child care, making it low-cost or even free for many. Recognizing that a federal solution is unlikely to materialize anytime soon, policymakers have come up with novel ways to pay for their plans, creating permanent funding sources that will make new programs sustainable.

    New Mexico, for instance, has tapped into its petroleum revenue, Washington state put a new tax on investment profits, and Kentucky is incentivizing parents to become child care workers.

    And while the largest investments in child care have come from Democrats, Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care — citing the importance to the economy.

    After she gave birth, Marisshia Sigala put on hold plans to start her real estate career. She and her husband — a personal trainer — lived on one paycheck for about two years and realized the cost of child care would be out of reach even if both were working.

    Then, in 2022, New Mexico made child care free for nearly all the state’s families, amending the constitution to fund early childhood initiatives with money from leasing state land to oil and gas companies.

    The change will bring in an estimated $150 million a year for the early education of children like Mateo. Sigala and her husband qualify because they earn less than 400% of the federal poverty rate, currently about $120,000 a year for a family of four. Mateo is one of more than 21,000 children now benefitting from the subsidies.

    Now Sigala, 32, is back at work while Mateo attends Koala Children’s Academy, which specializes in bilingual education.

    “Being entrepreneurs, it’s a lot more challenging, and we have to rely on ourselves. We don’t have a paycheck coming in every week,” Sigala said. “It’s been a blessing for us.”

    Expanding free child care for families is “making a difference for families in such a profound way,” said Elizabeth Groginsky, New Mexico’s early childhood education secretary. And, she said, it’s helping the people who care for and educate young kids, too.

    Groginsky and other state leaders are hoping the massive investment will help blunt the effects of poverty.

    “It’s just a really incredible opportunity we have here,” she said.

    Washington state is aiming to offer free preschool to all low-income families, and child care vouchers to all low- and moderate-income families by the end of the decade, along with high-quality care for infants and toddlers with developmental concerns.

    The state is expanding its programs with help from a new 7% tax on profits made from residents’ financial investments — a levy intended to fall on wealthier people.

    When Zaneta Billyzone-Jatta’s daughter Zakiah was born prematurely in 2021, her mother hired a nanny to watch the baby three days a week. A clinical manager for a hospital network, Billyzone-Jatta, 42, had to work while keeping an eye on her daughter the other two days. She felt like she couldn’t give her toddler enough attention, much less address the girl’s developmental concerns like a professional could.

    Through a state program for low-income families and kids with challenges like Zakiah, she now sends her daughter to a child care center near her Seattle-area home, free of cost. There, three teachers supervise seven children in Zakiah’s class and diligently document her progress. Occupational and speech therapists see Zakiah at the school and work closely with the teachers.

    Billyzone-Jatta said Zakiah has made huge strides at the school. She talks about her days in detail and refers to classmates by name. She has learned to interact with other students, drink from an open cup and share.

    “Being a working mother and being able to know that you’re bringing your child to an environment where they’re loved and cared for gives you so much peace,” she said.

    But the program helping infants and toddlers like Zakiah is still small, serving fewer than 200 kids statewide. And in November, Washington voters will have a chance to weigh in on the tax in a referendum that could lead to its repeal, endangering the progress the state has made, child care advocates say.

    “It would be catastrophic,” said Jon Gould, of Akin, the nonprofit that operates Zakiah’s state-supported child care center.

    Rylee Monn, 24, was working at Baptist Health Child Development Center in Lexington when she had her second child, doubling what she paid for her children to attend the same center.

    She thought about quitting and getting a night-shift job so she could stay home and care for her children during the day.

    “All of my paycheck was going to child care,” Monn said.

    Then, in 2023, Kentucky started a program to cover or reduce the cost of day care for parents who work in the child care industry. The program was meant to tackle two challenges at once. Policymakers hoped it would draw more workers into the child care industry, addressing a shortage. And they wanted to provide more low-cost child care for all families.

    Now, more than a dozen states are considering or have already adopted policies modeled after the one in Kentucky, according to EdSurge, a publication that focuses on education.

    The program has helped the state’s child care industry recruit workers who might otherwise be working in service jobs.

    Delaney Griffin, 30, was working in a pizza restaurant last year and pondering her next move with her young family. Her child care costs consumed all but $100 of her biweekly check.

    After learning about the child care benefit, she took a job in December with Baptist Health Child Development Center. She now pays about $5 a week. Her older child is in a preschool program.

    “The free child care part was like the biggest reason that I actually got to start in child care,” Griffin said.

    ___

    This series on how the child care crisis affects working parents — with a focus on solutions — is produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, including AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post & Courier, and The Seattle Times.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Wonderful Co. sues California over law aimed at making it easier for farmworkers to unionize

    Wonderful Co. sues California over law aimed at making it easier for farmworkers to unionize

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    SAN DIEGO — One of California’s most influential agricultural companies filed a lawsuit Monday against the state to stop a contentious law to help farmworkers unionize that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reluctantly signed two years ago after pressure from the White House.

    The action by the Wonderful Co. comes as it battles the United Farm Workers over a newly formed UFW local of 640 workers at one of its businesses. The $6 billion company founded by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who have donated to President Joe Biden and Newsom, makes a host of products recognizable to most grocery store shoppers, including Halos mandarin oranges, Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and Fiji Water brands.

    Farmworkers aren’t covered by federal rules for labor organizing in the United States. But California, which harvests much of the country’s produce, enacted a law and created a special board in 1975 to protect their right to unionize. That came after the storied work of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to organize farmworkers across California under what later became the United Farm Workers.

    But farmworker unionization has dropped precipitously in the years since, and today few such workers are organized in California.

    The new law lets farmworkers unionize by collecting a majority of signatures without holding an election at a polling place — a condition proponents say protects workers from employers applying pressure or trying to retaliate against employees who vote to unionize. A union is formed if more than half of workers sign an authorization card.

    Wonderful argues the law is unconstitutional by going too far in cutting employers out of the process.

    Newsom’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit before responding and included his statement from when he signed the legislation that “California’s farmworkers are the lifeblood of our state, and they have the fundamental right to unionize and advocate for themselves in the workplace.”

    Farm industry leaders have argued the lack of a secret ballot under the law makes workers vulnerable to coercion by unions and the elections susceptible to fraud. Wonderful said under the prior system, employers and union representatives were present at polling places to ensure a transparent process.

    So far, four unions have formed under the new law. No other company has taken any legal action. Wonderful said it is best equipped to spearhead the battle since other companies are much smaller.

    The law does not require union authorization cards to be dated or that an employee identify his or her employer, Wonderful said in its lawsuit.

    Wonderful said under the law there is no independent verification process to prove majority support for a union, violating due process rights.

    Wonderful said it also is asking Kern County Superior Court to issue an injunction to stop the law from being enforced until the court rules on its claim that it’s unconstitutional.

    Wonderful is up against the clock.

    Under the law, once a union is certified, employers must enter into collective bargaining within 90 days, Wonderful said in its lawsuit. That would be June 3 for the newly formed union at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, Calif., that was certified by the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

    Wonderful filed a complaint with the board, saying its workers didn’t want a union. The company says many employees thought the cards they signed were to access $600 payments under a federal pandemic relief program administered by the UFW, the largest farmworker union in the U.S. The UFW denied the allegation.

    The UFW called the lawsuit “unfortunate but not surprising.” The union said that on April 22 the Agricultural Labor Relations Board filed an unfair labor practice charge against Wonderful, accusing it of obligating workers to attend a meeting to discuss revoking their signatures on the authorization cards they used to form the union.

    “Wonderful Nurseries now wants to get rid of the law that protects farm workers,” said UFW spokesperson Elizabeth Strater.

    The case is being played out before an administrative law judge who is taking testimony from workers during a weekslong hearing.

    Wonderful Nurseries contends the board has failed to ensure an honest process for the unit’s 60 permanent employees and as many as 1,500 seasonal workers. The company’s only workers to unionize are at Wonderful Nurseries, which grows table grapes and wine grape vines as well as other plants. The company has roughly 10,000 employees, according to its website.

    Wonderful said its employees are paid well and the 1975 protections have worked.

    Before Newsom in 2022 signed the new law, he and his two predecessors had vetoed similar legislation over concerns about the voting process. The Democratic governor had announced plans to veto it again in 2022, but he reversed course after Biden announced support for the change. He signed it on condition that another method of forming a union, through mail-in ballots, was later removed.

    Biden, who keeps a bust of Chavez in the Oval Office, said in a statement in 2022 that “in the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union.”

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    Taxin reported from Orange County, Calif.

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  • Apple Store employees in Maryland vote to authorize a first strike over working conditions

    Apple Store employees in Maryland vote to authorize a first strike over working conditions

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    TOWSON, Md. — Workers at the first Apple Store to unionize have now also authorized a first strike against the tech giant’s retail operations.

    Apple Store workers in Towson, Maryland, voted late Saturday to authorize a strike, according to a statement from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ Coalition of Organized Retail Employees, which represents the workers.

    No date was set for the strike. The vote followed what the union called “over a year of negotiations with Apple management that yielded unsatisfactory outcomes.”

    According to the statement, the workers are seeking changes in what they call “unpredictable” scheduling practices and wages that align with the local cost of living.

    “We deeply value our team members and we’re proud to provide them with industry leading compensation and exceptional benefits,” Apple said in a statement provided by a spokesperson. “As always, we will engage with the union representing our team in Towson respectfully and in good faith.”

    Workers at the store in the Baltimore suburbs voted by a nearly 2-to-1 margin to unionize in June 2022, joining a growing push across U.S. retail, service and tech industries to organize for greater workplace protections.

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  • A new organizing drive at Disney Springs sparks both excitement and some opposition

    A new organizing drive at Disney Springs sparks both excitement and some opposition

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    Earlier this week, workers for nonunion restaurants at Disney Springs in Orlando announced a historic campaign to organize with Unite Here Local 737, a labor union that represents thousands of employees at Walt Disney World theme parks and hotels.

    While many of the employees at Disney World are already represented by a labor union, hundreds of others who work at subcontracted restaurants at Disney Springs, the theme park’s shopping and dining district, are not.

    Some of these restaurant employees, who work just yards away from union Disney workers, say this makes them feel like “second-class citizens,” with fewer job benefits and less take-home pay.

    “We’re expected to provide that Disney experience for our guests, but as employees, we are not getting that Disney experience that we deserve,” Kristen Mercer, a server at Maria & Enzo’s who has nearly 15 years in the restaurant industry, shared at a press conference this week. “I’m someone that’s going to stand up for myself and stand up for others.”

    In an effort to address her concerns, Mercer and others who work at nonunion restaurants at Disney Springs say they’re in the process of organizing a union to change that.

    Maria & Enzo’s, an upscale Italian restaurant modeled after a 1930s airline terminal, is one of five nonunion restaurants at Disney Springs owned by Delaware North, a multinational food service and hospitality company.

    Unlike employees of the multi-billion dollar entertainment giant, who have been unionized for decades, the roughly 300 workers at Enzo’s Hideaway, Pizza Ponte, Morimoto Asia, Maria and Enzo’s and The Edison are technically employed by the Patina Restaurant Group, a company acquired by Delaware North in 2014.

    Andrea Molineros, a mom who also works part-time at Maria & Enzo’s, has seen both sides. In addition to her job at Disney Springs, she also works part-time as a server at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort — a union-represented job. She’s seen the difference having a union can make.

    “When I walk into my job at Disney, I know that if anything happens, I have a voice,” said Molineros, a Disney World employee of six years and a shop steward for her union at the Grand Floridian.

    “When I walk into Delaware North, it’s unstructured and disorganized,” she explained, sharing how rules at her restaurant can be changed on a whim, creating a feeling of uncertainty and helplessness for servers like herself just trying to get by.

    “I know that we’re far behind on wages compared to Disney, and everybody at Disney Springs deserves respect and to live their life to the fullest,” said Molineros. “We’re on Disney property, we should be given the same respect and be treated as equals.”

    At Delaware North’s Morimoto Asia, full-time cook Sabrina Reddit said she makes just $18 an hour. She helps train international students on the job in the kitchens, which she admits is a “fun” experience.

    As a single mom, however, her take-home pay isn’t enough for her to comfortably support herself and her two young girls. The oldest, she says, is turning 6 years old in August. “She is now looking for extracurriculars,” Redditt shared, her voice revealing a combination of pride and disappointment. “Unfortunately, that’s something I can’t provide.”

    If she were working for Disney, under a union contract, Reddit says she’d be making $24 an hour in the same job, a meaningful difference from $18.

    click to enlarge Kristen Mercer, a server at Maria & Enzo's, speaks in support of forming a union with Unite Here Local 737. April 29, 2024. - McKenna Schueler

    McKenna Schueler

    Kristen Mercer, a server at Maria & Enzo’s, speaks in support of forming a union with Unite Here Local 737. April 29, 2024.

    But it’s not just the pay that makes a difference at the multinational food service and hospitality company, which itself reported $3.93 billion in revenues in 2022.

    According to Unite Here Local 737 president Jeremy Haicken, 70 percent of restaurant jobs for union-represented Disney employees are full-time, meaning workers have access to union-negotiated job benefits like insurance, paid sick leave, paid vacation, a company-paid pension plan and more job protections.

    Mercer, the employee at Maria & Enzo’s, said full-time job opportunities are scarce, despite the company often requiring part-time workers like herself to be available full-time. Mercer doesn’t receive sick leave, nor does she have access to health benefits through her job.

    The lack of health benefits in particular is a big deal for her. She was diagnosed with a chronic illness this past year and has struggled to find affordable health insurance. Since Delaware North only considers her “part-time,” Mercer had to turn to the Affordable Care Act marketplace (healthcare.gov) for a health plan. Today, she says her plan costs her $500 per month just in monthly premiums, making it difficult for her to put away any money toward savings.

    Mercer said she considers herself an “outspoken” person in both her personal and professional lives. She “doesn’t put up with bullies” on the job or anywhere else, and will “stand up for the little person.”

    Joli Lindsay, a 21-year-old server at Maria & Enzo’s, also isn’t afraid to speak up.

    After suffering a foot injury, Lindsay worked for a time at Pizza Ponte, another Delaware North-owned restaurant at Disney Springs, where she says that she was sexually harassed by a supervisor who would make inappropriate comments about her appearance and question her about her personal life and her partner. She knew she wasn’t the only one who had experienced the same kind of treatment, so she reported him to management.

    According to Lindsay, management questioned her and others as part of their “investigation” into the situation. And while the company did send the supervisor home early one day, Lindsay says he was back on the job the very next day.

    “I felt as if my, our voice wasn’t heard,” Lindsay said. Julie Ruiz, another young server at Pizza Ponte who supports forming a union, also said she was sexually harassed by this supervisor.

    Ruiz said the supervisor would ask her and others about birth control and once tried to pressure her into staying late, telling her he’d drive her home after her late-night shift and walk her up to her door. “That made me feel really unsafe,” she shared, taking moments to pause as she recalled the experience.

    Ruiz makes just $16 an hour as a server at the pizza spot. Even though she works another part-time job to help cover basic living costs, she says she currently lives in the living room of a friend’s home, paying $450 each month in rent. She doesn’t have financial support from family, or anyone else, and can’t afford anything more.

    Organizing with Unite Here, however, has made her feel more empowered on the job. “Organizing with the union, I feel stronger. I feel more safe,” said Ruiz, surrounded by other Delaware North employees and community allies. “Before, I didn’t have a voice. Now I can raise my voice,” she said.

    click to enlarge A new organizing drive at Disney Springs sparks both excitement and some opposition (4)

    Orlando Weekly reached out to Delaware North for comment on the organizing campaign and the allegations of sexual harassment. Company spokesperson Charles Roberts confirmed over email that they had “received communication” about the union’s organizing activity. However, he did not answer our inquiry about the sexual harassment allegations.

    Not everyone’s on board

    According to the union, a majority of the more than 300 workers at the five Delaware North restaurants in Disney Springs have signed cards confirming their support for forming a union.

    But, as is generally common during organizing drives, not everyone is on board. Anthony Wuorio, a bartender and server at The Edison, told Orlando Weekly on Friday he was personally against the organizing effort, and felt frustrated seeing positive coverage of it.

    A former Disney employee, Wuorio began working at The Edison when it first opened seven years ago. He feels that management has been open to employee feedback on issues that arise, and that negotiating better working conditions through a union is unnecessary. He admits he doesn’t know if this is the same at other Delaware North restaurants.

    Wuorio is originally from New York, and worked two union jobs in the past: first, a job at a unionized deli up in his home state, and then a brief stint as a Disney employee in Orlando, which he didn’t recall fondly.

    Even so, during the early days of organizing efforts at The Edison, Wuorio said he was open-minded to the idea. He’s moving early next year, anyway, to live closer to his aging mother.

    But he feels like union reps who’ve approached him have been “manipulative” in the information they’ve provided to him and fellow staff, and that they haven’t been transparent about what they’re actually likely to achieve through contract talks with their employer.

    “Some people, like, I get it. They’re just not happy with the company, you know?” he said.

    But to him, the idea that he and fellow staff can’t address issues in the workplace without a formal union is insulting. “This union wants to come in and manipulate them [his co-workers] into believing that their voice doesn’t matter,” he said, evidently frustrated.

    “What kind of union is that?” he asked.

    Wuorio claims that more than two-thirds of staff at The Edison are against unionizing with Unite Here. He says they have been “on edge” over the uncertainty of whether they would have to join the union if a majority of workers at the other Delaware North restaurants are in favor.

    Under Florida’s right-to-work law, union membership (and paying union dues) is completely voluntary, even when your job or workplace has union representation.

    When reached by Orlando Weekly for comment, staff for Unite Here Local 737 politely declined  to respond to Wuorio’s remarks at this time.

    Local electeds show up in support

    A number of other locals nonetheless expressed solidarity with the pro-union workers Monday at a press conference organized by the union.

    Samuel Vilchez Santiago, chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, said it’s important to support the workers who serve as the backbone of Central Florida’s tourism economy. “They deserve better pay, and they deserve better benefits,” Santiago said.

    Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani, whose father once worked at Disney Springs (then known as Downtown Disney), expressed pride for the workers of Central Florida who are standing up to demand better.

    As the Florida Legislature passes legislation designed to undermine labor unions, Eskamani said, “I take so much pride that here on the ground in Central Florida, we are building unions.”

    Local faith leader Rev. Charles T. Myers, Central Florida Jobs With Justice, and a couple of candidates running for elected office this year — including Democratic State Senate candidate Carlos Guillermo Smith and Orange County Commission District 5 candidate Kelly Semrad — also showed up to support the organizing workers at Disney Springs.

    At the very least, workers are hoping for a fair process. Those in favor of unionizing have asked Delaware North to commit to remain neutral, and to allow for a process that is free from unlawful intimidation or other coercive tactics that are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.

    The union, Unite Here Local 737, has already filed two unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board against the Patina Restaurant Group, alleging that company management has made unlawful threats over their organizing activity and has unlawfully surveilled them on the job.

    Joli Lindsay, one of the servers at Maria & Enzo’s, said management warned her personally against joining the union, allegedly telling her that doing so would have “negative effects” for herself and her co-workers.

    “I didn’t let any of that stop me. So we’re calling — all of us, the majority, for a fair process,” said Lindsay.

    Under the National Labor Relations Act, there are two ways to form an official union in the private sector: First, you can gather a majority of signed cards in support of forming a union, present them to your employer and request voluntary union recognition. If the employer denies a request for voluntary recognition, then the union can submit those signed cards to the federal labor board and petition for a union election. Or, the employer can file a petition for an election.

    Haicken, the union president, politely declined on Monday to share more details about whether Unite Here plans to request voluntary recognition, or whether they plan to file a petition for a union election.

    Unite Here Local 737 already represents employees at Tutto Italia and Via Napoli, two subcontracted restaurants at Disney’s Epcot that are also operated by Delaware North. So, they’re already in fairly regular communication.

    The announcement of the organizing drive at Disney Springs comes less than a month after Disneyland performers in Anaheim, California, officially filed their own petition to unionize with Actors Equity. This historic move itself follows in the footsteps of their counterparts in Orlando’s Disney World, where character performers first organized with the Teamsters in the 1980s.

    Altogether, a group of six labor unions, collectively known as the Service Trades Council Union, represent over 40,000 Disney World theme park workers in Orlando, ranging from Disney’s character performers to ride operators, food service workers, housekeepers, lifeguards and more.

    The STCU — made up of the Teamsters, two Unite Here locals, the Transport Workers Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees — negotiated a new contract for Disney World employees last year, delivering an $18 minimum wage for the lowest-paid employees — along with raises for those who earn more — plus other benefits like paid family leave.

    That eventual contract came after Disney offered a worse contract deal that workers rejected by an overwhelming margin.  That rejection led to, get this, an even worse offer from the Walt Disney Co. before the company eventually agreed to the agreement ratified by a majority of union members last March.

    If you work at one of these nonunion Disney Springs restaurants and have thoughts on the organizing drive, we want to hear from you. Contact reporter McKenna Schueler at [email protected].

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  • US jobs report for April will likely point to a slower but still-strong pace of hiring

    US jobs report for April will likely point to a slower but still-strong pace of hiring

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    WASHINGTON — The American economy likely delivered another solid hiring gain in April, showing continuing durability in the face of the highest interest rates in two decades.

    The Labor Department is expected to report Friday that employers added a healthy 233,000 jobs last month, down from a sizzling 303,000 in March but still a decidedly healthy total, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

    The unemployment rate is forecast to stay at 3.8%. That would make it the 27th straight month with a jobless rate below 4% — the longest such streak since the 1960s.

    The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden.

    Yet America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Federal Reserve began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels.

    The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March.

    Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target. As a result, the Fed is delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its target.

    So far this year, monthly job growth is averaging 276,000, up from an already solid 251,000 last year.

    “If you look at the last couple of months, it has been a safe bet to take the optimistic side,’’ said Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at the employment website Glassdoor.

    That said, the job market has been showing some signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Yet that is still a vast number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021.

    The number of Americans quitting their jobs — a figure that generally reflects confidence in finding a better position elsewhere — fell in March to its lowest level since January 2021.

    A more stable workforce, Terrazas said, is helping many businesses run more efficiently.

    “When firms have high numbers of workers quitting,” he said, “that takes up time to find and train new workers. It’s incredibly destructive at the company level.”

    Now, “there are finally people in seat who know what they’re doing, know the processes, know the systems. You don’t need to waste a lot of resources on training.”

    Economists have noted that hiring has recently been concentrated in three employment sectors: healthcare and social assistance; leisure and hospitality (largely hotels, restaurants and bars); and government. Those three categories accounted for nearly 70% of job growth in March.

    More concerningly, the progress against inflation has stalled, raising doubts about the likely timetable for Fed rate cuts, which would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing. Most economists envision no rate cuts before fall at the earliest.

    On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target.

    The central bank’s inflation fighters will be watching Friday’s jobs report for any signs that the inflation picture might be shifting. From the Fed’s perspective, Terrazas said, “the best outcome we can hope for Friday is slower but still solid payroll growth, steady employment and, most importantly, slowing wage pressure.”

    Many economists say that year-over-year increases in hourly pay must slow to about 3.5% to be consistent with the Fed’s inflation goals. That probably didn’t happen last month: The forecasters surveyed by FactSet project that hourly wages rose 4% from a year earlier, just below the 4.1% year-over-year rise in March.

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  • On International Workers Day, Orlando hotel workers rally to raise industry standards for all

    On International Workers Day, Orlando hotel workers rally to raise industry standards for all

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    photo by McKenna Schueler

    Orlando hotel workers rally on International Workers Day. (May 1, 2024)

    Working in the kitchens for the Hilton Buena Vista Palace resort near Disney World, cook Michael Zabata makes $20.42 an hour after 30 years on the job.

    At 71 years old, Zabata knows he’s reached the age where he should be able to retire. He relies on Social Security income to help him get by. But, with Orlando’s cost of living and a subpar pension (which he only has in the first place thanks to his union), Zabata says he can’t afford to retire. Not yet.

    “If I have more money in my salary, it will be less stressful,” Zabata shared Wednesday evening during a rally organized by his union in the heart of Central Florida’s tourism district. A group of about 50 union members gathered, just across the street from a nonunion Hilton hotel off Destination Parkway, wearing dark T-shirts bearing the phrase “Respect our work.”

    “All hotel workers,” Zabata said, “should be able to retire with a decent pension.”

    And when Zabata says “all,” he means all.

    His union, Unite Here Local 737, plans to fight to raise industry standards for the roughly 300,000 hospitality workers in Central Florida, union and non-union alike, through upcoming union contract negotiations set to begin later this year.

    Hotel workers in Orlando joined thousands of their fellow Unite Here union members in 18 cities across the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday, May 1, to uplift this fight and to warn of potential labor disputes in the future should  major hotel groups like Hilton not heed the call.

    About 300 employees of Orlando’s Hilton Buena Vista Palace and DoubleTree Universal resorts — ranging from housekeepers to cooks, lobby staff and bartenders — have two separate union contracts that are set to expire at the end of the year, on Dec. 31.

    Hotel workers in over a dozen other major cities — from Honolulu to Boston, Toronto and San Francisco — similarly have union contracts that have either expired, or are set to expire sometime this year. That means it’s time to prepare for bargaining.

    Local union president Jeremy Haicken said members at both of the Orlando hotels are uniting with five key demands in mind, based on feedback they received through member feedback.

    First, to raise minimum wage standards, reduce the workload of housekeepers, fight for a good pension plan that allows workers like Zabata to retire with dignity, more affordable health insurance coverage, and to end what they call the “exploitation” of nonunion temporary workers hired by the hotels through temp agencies — a practice workers say has become more common since the pandemic, leaving in-house staff to train endless cycles of co-workers who come in, without any additional pay.

    “Our demands of the whole hotel industry are very clear,” said Haicken of Local 737, which represents about 19,000 hospitality and tourism employees across Central Florida, including workers at Disney World and the Orange County Convention Center.

    While the hotel and tourism industry suffered losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haicken says the industry has since bounced back. “The industry is charging more for hotel rooms than ever before, and their revenue per room is higher than ever before.”

    Financial disclosure reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor show Hilton Hotels managed to scrounge together at least $287,911 last year for anti-union consultancy services, specifically to target organizing efforts at hotels in Oregon, California and Arizona.

    Even worse, that money was entirely paid out to an anti-union firm based in Orlando called the Labor Pros, a “union avoidance” firm that Orlando Weekly  published an investigative report on last year.

    click to enlarge LM-10 financial disclosure report filed by Hilton Hotels with the U.S. Department of Labor OLMS on March 29, 2024. - U.S. Department of Labor-OLMS

    U.S. Department of Labor-OLMS

    LM-10 financial disclosure report filed by Hilton Hotels with the U.S. Department of Labor OLMS on March 29, 2024.

    Back in 2015, Hilton also paid anti-union consultants over $65,000 to thwart unionization efforts specifically at their Hilton Buena Vista Palace location in Orlando, records show.

    That year, Hilton altogether paid out at least $820,000 to the Labor Pros (and more to another firm, Cruz & Associates) to thwart organizing efforts at the local hotel and others across the country.

    Unite Here Local 737 is specifically fighting for a contract that provides a $25-an-hour minimum wage for cooks, a $22 base rate for housekeepers, and ensures that no hotel staff member they represent makes less than $20 an hour.

    “I’m fighting for myself and my co-workers. We’re doing this together to achieve what we rightfully deserve as working-class people.”

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    Jeeleen Paredes, a cook at the Hilton Buena Vista, makes $16.75 an hour and is struggling with credit card debt as she fights to make ends meet. Harold Negron, a Hilton Buena Vista Palace employee of 18 years, says he sees many of his workers working multiple jobs just to stay afloat, leaving them mentally and physically spent.

    “They go home with aching bodies, taking medication just to get the pain out of their bodies,” said Negron. “We should be making at least $25 an hour just to be able to survive and do things for the family.”

    Under current contracts, almost all job classifications at the two hotels pay less than $20 an hour, according to collective bargaining agreements the union has posted online.

    For Curtis Freeman, a banquet attendant of 29 years at the unionized DoubleTree hotel near Universal Orlando, the fight for more affordable health insurance is personal. He said he’s currently paying $450 a month for a health plan covering himself and his two youngest kids, and is uncertain when he’ll be able to afford to retire.

    “I have worked so hard for three decades and I don’t deserve to be uncertain about my future,” said Freeman. “It’s sad that it seems that I’ll have to keep working until I’m 75 [before I can] think about retiring.”

    According to the Tampa Bay Times, Florida has seen a rise in older workers remaining in, or even reentering the workforce as the state has become less affordable for older Floridians. And it’s not just confined to the hospitality industry either.

    A recent poll by the National Institute for Retirement Security found that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is facing a “retirement crisis,” up from 67 percent in 2020. More than half admitted they’re uncertain about whether they can achieve the kind of financial security they need in order to retire.

    Job listings for positions at non-union Hilton and DoubleTree hotels don’t offer a pension. Instead, they advertise 401(k) plans, which are more common these days, but offer less stability.

    A Unite Here organizer confirmed to Orlando Weekly that the pension is something they fought for locally. And while union members believe the current one is insufficient, they’re fighting for one that can better benefit them, especially their older co-workers.

    The union’s current contracts covering workers at the Hilton Buena Vista Palace and DoubleTree Universal were last negotiated in 2020 and 2021, and are set to expire Dec. 31, 2024.

    The union, drawing on a similar sentiment shared by the United Auto Workers during their high-profile contract negotiations last year, has declared an ambitious goal to raise standards industry-wide, not only for their members, but to also benefit hotel workers at non-union hotels, which will then have to compete with the wages and benefits established at theirs.

    “I’m fighting for myself and my co-workers,” said Freeman. “We’re doing this together to achieve what we rightfully deserve as working-class people.”

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