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Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
11–20 of 303 posts
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#12Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#13This article made me curious, has any business tried to defend antiunion activities through a desire for free association? As in the business does not want to associate with unions. It made me curious because I've not seen that argument before, in the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.
This is a very common tactic these companies typically use to discourage employees internally. Not that the company doesn't want to associate with a union but an attempt to convince workers that they shouldn't want to associate with a union.
Lots of companies have been "caught" putting up signs in the break room next to the legally required signs about worker rights, they'll put up a sign in the room that tries to convince employees that Unions take away their rights.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#14I want to know about closing stores in apparent retaliation against unionizing. This has been happening lately in Boston, with the Cambridge Milk Bar location and the Boylston Starbucks location. It seems like that's the new corporate tactic to try to discourage unionizing. Of course, if every store unionized, then they'd be forced to concede at some point that they still need to keep stores open in order to make mon…
To this, it seems like a mechanism by which they are firing workers that are organizing and is just a scale motion over the same underlying illegal action.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#15I want to know about closing stores in apparent retaliation against unionizing. This has been happening lately in Boston, with the Cambridge Milk Bar location and the Boylston Starbucks location. It seems like that's the new corporate tactic to try to discourage unionizing. Of course, if every store unionized, then they'd be forced to concede at some point that they still need to keep stores open in order to make mon…
SCOTUS has said it is okay to close a place of business to avoid unionization of workers. Frankly I think this is fine, you can't compel someone to operate a business.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#16This article made me curious, has any business tried to defend antiunion activities through a desire for free association? As in the business does not want to associate with unions. It made me curious because I've not seen that argument before, in the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.
You cannot "free association" your way out of legally required actions. You can't, say, refuse to deal with the IRS because it's your right not to associate with them.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#17This article made me curious, has any business tried to defend antiunion activities through a desire for free association? As in the business does not want to associate with unions. It made me curious because I've not seen that argument before, in the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.
Corporations have their first amendment rights curtailed along various axes (or, depending on your political philosophy, they aren't people so they don't have first Amendment rights and any first Amendment-esque writes they enjoy are a convenience fabrication the US legal system put together so they didn't have to go through every law that applies to people and decide whether it applies to corporations).
But as example, without modification to the first Amendment, the Civil Rights Act broadly curtailed the freedom of association of employers and public establishments. Similar law exists for anti-union activity already.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#18This article made me curious, has any business tried to defend antiunion activities through a desire for free association? As in the business does not want to associate with unions. It made me curious because I've not seen that argument before, in the function of a union seems like it wants to force the company to associate with it whether the company wants to or not.
Companies don't own their employees.
edit: There's an equivocation on "association" here. As an individual, I don't have the right to "disassociate" people from myself. I can't demand that my sister not refer to me as her brother, or that she stop doing things because she is known to be my sister and those things would be "associated" with me. Freedom of association is about a person being able to choose who they wish to interact with, not freedom for a person to dictate what is "associated" with them in people's minds.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#19I want to know about closing stores in apparent retaliation against unionizing. This has been happening lately in Boston, with the Cambridge Milk Bar location and the Boylston Starbucks location. It seems like that's the new corporate tactic to try to discourage unionizing. Of course, if every store unionized, then they'd be forced to concede at some point that they still need to keep stores open in order to make mon…
SCOTUS has said it is okay to close a place of business to avoid unionization of workers. Frankly I think this is fine, you can't compel someone to operate a business.
That makes sense for smaller businesses, where "closing" might mean closing the entire business.
But the situation seems materially different for a large company like Starbucks, where each physical location is only a small part of their overall business operations.
What SCOTUS ruling was that? I wonder if it applies to e.g. shutting down a warehouse or dismantling a department within the business, as opposed to shutting down a business entirely.
Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules
#20I want to know about closing stores in apparent retaliation against unionizing. This has been happening lately in Boston, with the Cambridge Milk Bar location and the Boylston Starbucks location. It seems like that's the new corporate tactic to try to discourage unionizing. Of course, if every store unionized, then they'd be forced to concede at some point that they still need to keep stores open in order to make mon…
SCOTUS has said it is okay to close a place of business to avoid unionization of workers. Frankly I think this is fine, you can't compel someone to operate a business.
I think this is a clear cut case of retaliation and the SCOTUS is wrong in this case.
At the minimum there should be a $Duration long waiting period.