#June Bronfenbrenner

[science70]

Student June Bronfenbrenner at an early Xerox machine photocopying a book, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 1976.

#technology #photocopier #Xerox #library #June Bronfenbrenner #Milton S. Eisenhower Library #Johns Hopkins University #Baltimore #Maryland #USA #1976

[r2rthegreat-blog]

Timeline and Theories!

Life is not meant to be easy. We all experience struggles in life in which fighting for a new hope is the most important thing to do. I am not saying that life is all about suffering for we can also experience satisfaction and happiness in life, but the only certainity in this world is nothing is certain. However, we should be thankful to our Lord for giving us problems and situations that has a purpose, and that is for us to be the best version of ourselves. Many things in this world contributed on what we are today and could contribute for what we will become in future. Today, I will be sharing some of significant events in my life wherein the theories of self development could be applied.

(Apology in advance for having large gap in some part of my timeline especially on my childhood for I don't really have pictures then.)

2001: My Baptism Day (Infancy)

           March 4, 2001, the day when I was baptized as Catholic. At this point of my life, I am highly dependent on my parents for I was just seven-month old and still unable to decide on my own, I can’t even stand on my own feet at that time. Thus, they just passed their religion unto me for that was the norm then until in present. In Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory, my age during this time was under the Sensorimotor stage, oral stage in Freud’s Psychosexual Development theory, and trust vs mistrust stage in Erikson’s Psychosocial Development theory. All I can do during this time was to put things on my mouth, suck my thumb, try to reach things around me, and laugh when someone who is familiar plays me.

2010: New Hope (Latee Childhood)               

           I will never forget this year for that was the time when I was confined in San Lazaro hospital and had dengue. I was in 50-50 condition during that time and my parents was in sorrow for I can’t even eat foods to regain my strength and make my health in good condition. During this time, I really felt that my safety needs was provided by my relatives especially my mother. I also felt loved and belonged for my friends and family were giving me reasons to fight (2nd and 3rd in the hierarchy of needs according to Abraham Maslow). Luckily, I recovered after a week and had a new hope.

2013: Simply Special (Adolescence)

           My parents were used to fight since then. I grew up with a complete family but is disunited. I saw the effect of the Exosystem (Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory) for I used to witness their nonsense arguments and affected me in many aspects. I became naughty in school but I am thankful that I met true friends, and teachers who guided me through my journey (Mesosystem). In 2013, our teacher gave us a project wherein my family had to go to museum. I was very happy in that moment for that was the first time (that I remember) that we go out and had some fun.

March, 2017: For Him (Adolescence)

           I am a friendly student (Microsystem), thus, I made true friends and had my former teachers who stand as my parent until today (Mesosystem). My father who promised me that he will stop drinking alcohol if I became honor student was my inspiration. Also, I want to have stable life and give the life that I always dreamed of to my parents (Macrosytem). My friends and teachers took a huge part on my achievements during my junior high school days. They’d help me to gain my esteem and self-actualization through making me felt loved and belonged that made me have the desire to become the most one that I can be (3rd, 4th, and 5th  in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, and Zone Proximal Development). I became salutatorian and had 10 medals but sadly, my father didn’t change.

September, 2017: My Dream (Adolescence)

           At this time, my dream was clear to me, to become an effective and efficient educator, influence the future generation in a way that will improve the society, and become a famous spoken word poet and writer (identity vs role confusion of Erikson’s Psychosocial development theory). I am thankful that I didn’t get unto role confusion for that was the hardest moment in teenage life, to decide for your future. Thankfully, my parents and friends supported me, however, some of my neighbors and relatives belittled me because of the career that I want. In September 2017, I was invited to performed in Canumay West National High School and I performed a piece that is all about the teaching profession. My dreams are clear to me.

August, 2018: I Felt So Special (Adolescence)

           August 10, 2018, my 18th birthday was my first birthday that I felt so special. I was surprised by my friends and I don’t know how to react at that time for I am not used to be surprised. Thus, they took a huge part on my hierarchy of needs especially to love and belonging, and esteem that help me to improve myself. They are also part of Microsystem that influenced me in many aspects.

April, 2019: Goodbye PLV! (Adolescence)

           April 12, 2019 was my Senior High School graduation wherein I was awarded as with honor student. In 2017, my dreams was clear but I became confused the next years (Identity vs Role Confusion in Erikson’s Psychosocial Development Theory). I became more mature that I consider salary and think of my future life in choosing a career. However, I still want to become a teacher, spoken word poet, and writer and find another ways to achieve my dream to become financially stable in life, have an elegant house and a happy family in it.

June, 2019: Hello PNU! (Adolescence)

           June 17, 2019 was my first day in Philippine Normal University and I think that it will take me too long to adjust especially my classmates came from totally different ecological systems. I want to improve and grow that’s why I leave my comfort zone. I am sure that I will be the best version of myself in this university and meet every theories of self-development in a good way.

           Social interactions took a huge part throughout my journey. All theories were common in one significant point, that social interactions is significant in every individual’s development for no man is an island.

[easyfoodnetwork]

They Tried to Start a Union During a Pandemic, But They Were Fired. What’s Next?

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images

Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize 

Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff.

But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security.

“By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.”

Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois.

“Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.”

More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register.

But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory.

“The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.”

On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic.

Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.”

“It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB.

In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.”

Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.

“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”

Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida.

With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam.

“I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.”

“They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs.

But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.”

“I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.”

For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable.

“There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5 https://ift.tt/32dgcG1

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images

Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize 

Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff.

But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security.

“By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.”

Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois.

“Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.”

More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register.

But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory.

“The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.”

On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic.

Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.”

“It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB.

In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.”

Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.

“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”

Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida.

With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam.

“I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.”

“They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs.

But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.”

“I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.”

For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable.

“There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2OqEowh

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

[instantdeerlover]

They Tried to Start a Union During a Pandemic, but They Were Fired. What’s Next added to Google Docs

They Tried to Start a Union During a Pandemic, but They Were Fired. What’s Next

 A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images

Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize 

Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff.

But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security.

“By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.”

Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois.

“Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.”

More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register.

But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory.

“The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.”

On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic.

Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.”

“It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB.

In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.”

Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.

“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”

Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.)

According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida.

With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam.

“I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.”

“They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs.

But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.”

“I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.”

In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.”

For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable.

“There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/7/14/21315180/food-industry-alleged-union-busting-during-covid-19-trader-joes-whole-foods

Created July 14, 2020 at 08:26PM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

[scholaarblog]

Building on Strengths; Unleashing the Talent and Bringing Out the Best in Others and Yourself

I am very proud to announce the third book from the IMPress publishing team, Kara Knollmeyer’s new book, “Unleash Talent: Bringing Out the Best in Yourself and the Learners You Serve.”

In education, we spend too much time trying to “fix people” instead of bringing out their best not only for themselves, and for our organizations. Kara’s book gives inspiration and practical strategies on how to bring out the strengths in the people you serve, no matter if they are colleagues, bosses, and most importantly, our students.

It was a blessing to write the foreword for the book and I share it with you below.

Kara’s book is now available on Amazon and is practical and refreshing read.

I was done with teaching. Feeling frustrated and that I wasn’t making a difference in the work I was doing, I decided it was time to move on and try to find another profession. Although I loved working with students and enjoyed many aspects of education, teaching had fizzled far from passion into a “job.” I was ready to quit.

To be honest, if I’d had the opportunity to work somewhere else that year, I would not have stayed in education, nor would I be writing this foreword in a book related to education.

With no other options for money, and due to a number of serendipitous events all seeming to occur at the same time, I was offered a one-year position in a school in a new school district. I remember feeling relaxed and comfortable during my interview for that position. The principal interviewing me didn’t barrage me with questions but instead gave me a list of twenty topics we could focus on, and I got to pick. It felt less like an interview and more like a conversation with respected colleagues. We laughed, I cried (seriously), and we talked about things in education that I was extremely passionate about. Things I had forgotten I was passionate about.

I received the job offer a week later, and although I was excited, I still wasn’t convinced teaching was for me; in fact, when I had the opportunity to interview for a job outside education after I had accepted the teaching position, I called my new principal and told her I had an interview for another job. Wanting to be honest, I told her I wanted to explore the job, even though I was under contract with the school. Looking back, it seems like a crazy move, telling my boss before day one of my employment that I was going to explore another option. I will never forget what she said to me on that phone call: “George, we know we would be blessed to have you, but we also do not want you to second guess taking this position. Take the interview, and if you get it, make a decision that is best for you. If you want to still work for us, we would be very lucky and excited to have you.”

I thanked her, hung up the phone, and never took the interview. I knew, at that moment, she was someone I wanted to work for—and I am so grateful I did.

Throughout that first year, I felt trusted, valued, important, and treated as an expert in the areas that I was given to oversee. There is a difference between being valued and feeling valued, and I definitely felt valued. I noticed that, instead of rushing home at the end of the day, I would stay after and work on different elements of the school, connect with other staff members, and push myself to learn and get better.

I learned then that, while it is important to believe in yourself, it is much easier to do that when someone believes in you first. So even as I focused on developing my talents and strengths, I started treating my colleagues and students the way my principal treated me. I began to be intentional about noticing and encouraging people’s strengths as opposed to focusing on their weaknesses. I’m not alone in this. When teachers feel trusted, valued, and important, the way they treat their student changes too.

This quote is tweeted out at conferences all the time, and it drives me absolutely crazy:

“Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.” —Urie Bronfenbrenner

I want to think about some of the math involved here:

How many years does a child spend in school?


How many adults do they interact with?

Based on whatever numbers you come up with for the above, do you really think that “one” (or even five) is enough?

Me neither.

Too often though, when you talk to students about the teachers who have made a significant impact on them, they do not list ten or fifteen, but sometimes only one or two. Even worse, sometimes zero. Obviously, all educators want to make a positive impact on their students, but then we do things sometimes without thinking about the long-term implications for our students. “Response to Intervention” (RTI) meetings are often focused too much on fixing what is wrong with a student instead of on the child’s strengths and on what gets him or her excited to come to school every single day.

I’m not saying we should ignore our weaknesses, only that we should start with our strengths. If meetings were periodically held about you and what was wrong with you and how you could be “fixed,” how excited would you be to come to work every single day?

Students are no different, and making sure they feel valued is a much better way for them to grow.

I’m sure some people disagree with this statement. They offer objections like, “Well, the ‘real world’ doesn’t always value people.”

That’s true. But my aspirations are not to solely prepare students for the real world. I want to empower them to create a better world.

It is no longer okay for our students to be only able to list one or two teachers that inspired them, as it is no longer okay for educators to be able to list only one or two inspirations in their own career trajectory. This is why I am so excited about Kara Knollmeyer’s book. Kara is someone who lives from her passions and wants you to be able to unleash your own. And in so doing, you can inspire and empower others to live from their strengths and passions.

This book is for all educators, school staff, and parents. Kara believes that we first need to support the adults in our school buildings with the goal of helping them tap into their talents so those talents can be used to support students. If you know your staff well and know what their passions are, you can match teachers with students who have similar passions, and the connection can help create strong relationships.

My own passion for bringing out the best in those you serve is mirrored through every word of this book. One of my favorite quotes in the upcoming pages from Kara is the following:

“Great leaders do not care about showcasing their talent to the entire school. The best leaders use talents to help their staff and students realize how great they are.”

The legacy of an educator is not in what they do, but what the learners they serve do because of their inspiration, dedication, and passion. As you read this book, you will find practical strategies to bring out the best in yourself as well as others.

I am passionate about what has been written in these pages because I was blessed to have a leader who did all of the things Kara talks about, and she not only changed my career but made my life better as well. I am grateful because in a very short time, I went from not wanting to be involved in education to not wanting to do anything else. One person made that difference. You can be that one person.

When we all focus on unleashing talent together, imagine where our schools, students, and educators can go both as individuals and organizations.

I hope you enjoy Kara’s inspiration throughout these pages, and I look forward to hearing the stories of students’ and teachers’ lives being changed because of the work you have done. Thank you for taking the time to read this, but more importantly, thank you for being the “one” who makes a difference for others. There are people, like me, who will always be grateful.

June 15, 2015 5 Questions To Drive Personal-Professional Learning

January 9, 2015 Higher Expectations, Higher Responsibility

January 18, 2018 Traditional Practice Versus Bad Practice

December 1, 2017 High, Mid, and Low

January 4, 2011 Pockets of Excellence

Building on Strengths; Unleashing the Talent and Bringing Out the Best in Others and Yourself published first on https://profitinfomastery.tumblr.com/

[earlrmerrill]

Chief Financial Officer - Kansas City Symphony

Bronfenbrenner Consulting Group is pleased to collaborate with the Kansas City Symphony in the search for a new Chief Financial Officer, available June 1, 2018.

Position Summary

The CFO will fill a leadership role in the organization, building on the accomplishments and success of the current twenty-one-year incumbent. Core responsibilities encompass managing the Symphony’s financial and accounting functions, planning and budgeting, human resources, information technology, and office administration. The CFO is a member of the Symphony’s leadership Management Team, providing financial expertise to colleagues and leads staff interaction with the Board of Directors on financial matters.

Organizational Summary

Kansas City Symphony is led by Music Director Michael Stern, Board Chairman William M. Lyons, and Executive Director Frank Byrne.

The Orchestra’s performance home is Helzberg Hall in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts with offices located one block away. The Kauffman Center opened in 2011 to critical acclaim and is also home to the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Kansas City Ballet.

The Orchestra maintains a 42-week contract with its musicians with the schedule including diverse performance programs. The orchestra is among the largest in the U.S. consistently performing with an Opera and Ballet company.

Informational resources:

The Symphony’s website – www.kcsymphony.org – offers extensive information regarding the organization’s history, programming, and summary financial data.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS

The Chief Financial Officer reports to the Executive Director and has three direct reports: Accounting Manager, Staff Accountant, and Information Technology Manager. This team has long tenure with the organization.

The CFO serves on the Management Team led by the Executive Director and also including the General Manager, Director of Development, Director of Marketing, and Director of Artistic Operations.

The CFO serves as the staff liaison to the Finance and Audit Committee, Endowment Committee, Executive Committee, the full Board, and ad hoc Committees pertaining to special projects.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Organizational Leadership: The selected candidate will be called upon to continue the process of elevating the position as a strong member of the Management Team – defining the CFO function as a strategic partner to the Executive Director, an advocate for best practices, and fulfilling a strategic leadership role with the Symphony’s Board and volunteer leadership.

ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND TASKS

Financial Management and Accounting

Maintain best practices pertaining to all aspects of accounting including effective use of Microsoft Dynamics (Great Plains version) conforming at all times to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and standards for net asset accounting.

Oversee and manage all financial accounting functions including the interface between Microsoft Dynamics, Budget Maestro, and Tessitura, the chart of accounts, accounting procedures, control systems, and related items.

Prepare and present periodic internal financial statements including those required for management, Board Committees, and the full Board of directors.

Manage a lean and highly-qualified financial and accounting team, maintaining compliant and accurate financial records and producing timely and highly-informative internal and external reporting.

Prepare all required external financial reports including those associated with operations, the endowment, tax compliance, benefit plan compliance, and grant/funding source reports.

Direct the annual budgeting process and subsequent management of forecasts and variances.

Serve as the primary staff liaison for the preparation and completion of the annual independent financial audit, benefit and pension plan reviews and audits, and other external reviews.

Human Resources

Maintain staff employee benefit programs including periodic assessment and renewal, compliance monitoring, employee communications, vendor/provider relationships, and reporting.

Implement recruitment, retention, performance review, and separation policies and procedures for administrative staff.

Provide advice to colleagues regarding human resource matters.

Insure compliance with all regulatory and reporting requirements.

Participate in collective bargaining as directed by the Executive Director.

Manage effective and informative employee communication programs.

Report to the Board of Directors as directed regarding human resource related issues and policy decisions.

Information Technology:

Manage strategic and day-to-day operations of the Orchestra’s information technology system in collaboration with the Information Technology Manager and the Kauffman Center Tessitura Consortium including:

Create and maintain a strategic plan for the Symphony’s technology systems.

Manage the capital and operational budgets for information technology.

Provide up-to-date hardware and system resources to all appropriate personnel.

Maintain a high level of internal and external security policies and resources.

Establish internal policies for system access, appropriate utilization, backup and retention, and related matters.

Obtain, manage, and update software resources insuring that current, secure, and effective functionality is available as required.

Maintain ongoing hardware and software support resources.

Supervise Information Technology Manager.

Office Management: Oversee day-to-day office management including:

Administration of contracts with third parties for service provision.

Management of general office policies and procedures.

Maintaining safety-related resources and policies.

Function as a primary liaison with corporate legal counsel.

Expertise and Industry Participation: The new CFO will be called upon to:

Participate in conferences, seminars and other forums geared to professionals in non-profit finance, the orchestra industry, and the Kansas City non-profit community.

Provide in-house expertise on financial matters.

Identify, assess, and offer recommendations critical accounting, financial, and related matters impacting the Symphony.

SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS

Requirements

Minimum of seven-years’ experience as a senior financial manager in the non-profit sector.

Expertise in complex financial analysis including multi-party transactions, reporting, risk analysis, cost-benefit assessment.

Strong background in effective budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning and modeling.

Experience managing an annual operating budget of a minimum of $15 million.

Career path reflecting increased responsibilities over time.

In-depth expertise in net asset accounting and fund accounting.

Demonstrable experience in improving organizational efficiencies and outcomes.

Knowledge of non-profit audit and control standards.

Investment management experience including policies, transactional, and reporting elements.

Knowledge of information technology including cloud-based and multi-constituent systems.

Skilled user of Microsoft Office products.

Experience managing a lean accounting function.

Expertise in human resource management, labor law, policies, and regulations.

Excellent communication skills including experience in clear communications to internal constituents (Board and staff) and external recipients.

Strong writing skills and ability to take concise minutes

 Entrepreneurial thinker seeking to solve problems, leverage opportunities.

Preferred

Knowledge of Microsoft Great Plains accounting software, Budget Maestro, and Tessitura.

A passion for symphonic music.

Experience in the performance-based non-profit sector (orchestra, opera, ballet, theatre).

Knowledge of policies, procedures and systems for fundraising, ticketing, and related areas.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Interested applicants are encouraged to learn more about Kansas City Symphony at www.kcsymphony.org and from other resources.

Applications may be submitted through the following website for the Bronfenbrenner Consulting Group – http://ift.tt/2Ar6zSn.

SUPPORTING INFORMATION

The Chief Financial Officer is an exempt position.

Kansas City Symphony is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a high standard for compliance with all employment laws, rules, and regulations.

Kansas City Symphony seeks, celebrates, and nurtures diversity among its employees and volunteers.

Bronfenbrenner Consulting Group Please send cover letter and resume to [email protected] No mailed or faxed applications accepted.

Article source here:Arts Journal

[easyfoodnetwork]

A group of union members picketing circa 1938 | Photo by MPI/Getty Images Some food industry workers say companies are using the pandemic as an excuse to halt efforts to unionize  Abismael Colon, a server at an Outback Steakhouse in the Orlando International Airport, was ready to unionize his workplace. For almost nine years, Colon had served countless Bloomin’ Onions and trained new hires despite what he describes as verbal insults and a daily fear that he’d be fired without cause by his superiors. This particular Outback Steakhouse was operated by HMSHost, an airport and highway food service company. Together with the hospitality-industry union Unite Here, the veteran employee and his colleagues helped garner majority support of about 800 workers at the airport’s other HMSHost-operated restaurants, such as Chili’s and Starbucks, with an election slated for late March to determine whether the union would officially represent the staff. But Colon’s hopes for union representation took a heavy blow once the novel coronavirus hit Florida. The National Labor Relations Board delayed all elections a week before the HMSHost vote due to the pandemic. Once the Tampa regional branch reopened and announced it was accepting mail-in ballots, the company successfully moved to block the option and pushed for in-person voting, further dragging out the union campaign. More than three months later, Colon, like many of his now-furloughed colleagues, is without a paycheck, without health insurance, and without any job security. “By them delaying the union and getting ourselves into a contract or negotiating, right now, we don’t have a guarantee to go back to work,” Colon says. “So employees are angry. They’re like, ‘Hey, when are we gonna get this vote?’ because they want their jobs back.” Amid a growing wave of worker activism across the food industry, employees and contractors at restaurant chains and delivery apps alike have found themselves banding together to improve workplace conditions. In 2012, the Fight for $15 movement began to push nationally for a $15 minimum wage and union representation for fast-food workers, and in the years since, Gimme Coffee baristas in upstate New York have voted in favor of unionization, followed by employees at Portland branches of the fast-food chain Burgerville and Tartine locations in the Bay Area, as well as a group of Instacart workers in Skokie, Illinois. “Employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump National Labor Relations Board.” More recently, as the coronavirus spurred citywide business shutdowns, grocery store and restaurant workers were deemed “essential” in ensuring communities’ access to food and supplies. This led to some crisis-born benefits like pay raises and improved sick leave options at chains like Starbucks, where employees were given a temporary $3 per hour pay bump along with extended catastrophe pay. Other workers, however, saw their temporary wage increases and new workplace safety measures only through strikes and sickouts: After hundreds of workers at Kroger’s Delta Distribution Center in Memphis briefly stopped fulfilling orders in late March, the company granted all its employees temporary $2 per hour hazard pay and increased protections, like plexiglass protecting workers at the cash register. But even as low-wage workers across the industry have gained these handfuls of new financial and health perks, some say companies have wielded the ongoing public health crisis as a tool for cracking down on union and worker organizing. On July 5, California-based Augie’s Coffee laid off its baristas and closed its retail operations indefinitely so as not “to risk the health and safety of our staff.” The timing was roughly a week and a half after employees informed management of their intent to unionize and asked for recognition, according the Augie’s Union; many of the company’s stores had continued service throughout the pandemic, even after Los Angeles County reported its first death. Whole Foods, which, according to a Business Insider report, has been using a heat map to monitor potential unionization activity, fired an employee who had been tracking the number of COVID-19 cases at Whole Foods locations; the company told Motherboard that the employee’s firing was not retaliatory and that she had violated company policies. And after Trader Joe’s workers began organizing earlier this year, in March, an employee who helped start a non-management-staff Facebook group to discuss coronavirus safety and health concerns was similarly fired. A Trader Joe’s spokesperson also said the firing was not retaliatory. “The Trump [National Labor Relations] Board has made some changes to the rules, and employers feel they have a real friend in the Trump Board,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. “So they’re acting with even more impunity.” On March 20, employees at the downtown Portland, Oregon, location of the nationally expanding chain Voodoo Doughnut delivered a letter to management announcing that they had formed a union with the International Workers of the World. Even before holding an official union election, the newly formed Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union demanded higher wages and increased safety protections for staff, and severance packages for the branch’s roughly 30 employees laid off because of the pandemic. Workers said they were told their unemployment would be temporary, and that the company would rehire workers once the social and economic climates stabilized. But this past June, the workers’ union accused the company of using the layoffs to “clean house” and hire new, non-unionized employees through Snagajob. Under overcast skies and the watch of pastry-hungry customers, workers picketed outside of the chain’s Old Town location, holding signs that read “Stop Union Busting” and “Don’t Throw Us Out Like Day Old Donuts.” “It absolutely was a shock to many of us how the company has treated us,” says Samantha Bryce, a Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union representative. “Really what we want is recognition and we want our jobs back.” The workers’ union said that it had filed 29 charges against the company with the NLRB. In response to questions regarding the allegations of discriminating against union workers in rehiring, Audrey Lincoff, a Voodoo Doughnut spokesperson, said in a statement to Eater: “Like all affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Voodoo Doughnut continues to rehire and hire as the business needs dictate.” Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce. “Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.” Employees at HMSHost-operated restaurants at Orlando International Airport have been campaigning for a union since last year, and the company has taken steps in an apparent aim to stifle the union drive — and use the coronavirus as pretext to ensure its success. (HMSHost did not respond to a request for comment.) According to restaurant workers, HMSHost hired a labor relations consulting firm and hosted captive audience meetings starting in February. In a tiny room at the airport, consultants lectured groups of employees with anti-union talking points, even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began to recommend early social-distancing methods. As staff members began to face furloughs, Colon says an assistant manager informed him and other workers that the general manager was planning to bring back only non-union workers. And the company stymied election proceedings by arguing against a mail-in-ballot election to the National Labor Relations Board, as employees wanted to avoid congregating for in-person voting while coronavirus cases surged in Florida. With a successful vote in favor of a union, HMSHost would be legally required to bargain with employees’ union representatives and sign a contract. Along with higher wages, health benefits, and workplace safety provisions, union representatives could also push for an agreement that includes recall guarantees and a fair recall system. But as of now, there is no election date in sight: According to emails between company and union lawyers, HMSHost’s latest holdup is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that furloughed workers — roughly 90 percent of the company’s airport restaurant staff — shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the union election. And lately, some workers are worrying that their campaign could lose steam. “I have coworkers who have kids,” says Rosanny Tejeda, a furloughed barista at an HMSHost-operated Starbucks. “The unemployment benefits aren’t going to last forever, and for a big family it might not be enough. They might give up on waiting and find themselves another job.” “They don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.” American companies have exploited chaotic climates to undermine workers’ organizing efforts before. In an interview with the New York Times, the Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin said that during the 1918 flu pandemic, steel plants and industrial companies managed to sway local officials to ban union meetings and frustrate organizing campaigns, the rationale being that they were breeding grounds for disease transmission. During the Great Depression, he added, employers often targeted union workers for layoffs. But now, even employees who are simply organizing for safe working conditions and hazard pay during the pandemic are coming under fire from their superiors. Louisville, Kentucky, Trader Joe’s employee Kris King was among those fired after starting a Facebook group to discuss workplace health and safety concerns. On March 31, shortly after King was fired, Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO, Dan Bane, sent a letter to company employees, writing that “a host of union campaigns have been launched that seek to capitalize on the current unstable environment in America.” “I think they’re just afraid of a larger voice and losing control of their employees,” King says. He adds that although the company manages to keep most of its employees content during normal times, “when more is at stake and people want to step up and be vocal together, they don’t want to lose control of the dynamic.” In April, Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, wrote in an email to Eater regarding King’s firing: “I can tell you we did not end his employment due to a desire to unionize, set up a social media page or express concerns, nor would we do so with any other Crew Member.” For McNicholas, the labor counsel at the EPI, there is a potential silver lining in this moment. Food industry workers who have continued to supply everyone from the newly unemployed to people working from home with basic necessities and comforts are shedding light on their treatment by companies, whether it’s by demanding union recognition or the extension of hazard pay and more hand sanitizing stations. In turn, they’re gaining community support, and more importantly, an increased desire to hold companies accountable. “There has been a backlash, and the more these stories are told, that comes together for the perfect storm where you have a new administration with demands put on it by working people,” she says, “and those become priority for new administration, changes for the way we work, and then growth for the union movement.” Matthew Sedacca is a writer living in Brooklyn. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/30cd1f5

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/they-tried-to-start-union-during.html

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