Public opinion of unions in the United States is the highest it's been since 1965. But joining a union is often extremely difficult, due in no small part to the union-busting efforts of management. Bosses will hold captive audience meetings or mandatory anti-union work events, and even if union organizers manage to get a majority of workers to sign up for union recognition, an employer could still call for a vote to be held—a delay tactic during which management can engage in union-busting behavior.
It's during this period that companies often ramp up their dirty tricks: ruthlessly culling pro-union employees, sending anti-union propaganda directly to workers through texts or posting it on bulletin boards, or even going so far as putting a mailbox onsite directly next to an anti-union pop-up stand on company grounds. Until recently, the only recourse for workers to fight this union-busting was to file a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board (which would take months to review the claim, with punishment usually coming in the form of asking employers to eventually put up a sign discouraging union harassment), and hope they still somehow won their election. And a lot of workers and unions did it!
But now, workers seeking to organize their companies, have a new tool in hand—and one of the first possible beneficiaries is right here in New York City.
Last week, the NLRB issued a new rule, stemming from the case Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC, that would allow the NLRB to recognize a union if an employer broke labor laws while an election was taking place. The Cemex rule wouldn't allow a union to be formed with a simple majority "card check," something a lot of union groups have been pushing for for decades—but it's a huge step forward nonetheless. It means that employers would actually pay a price for anti-union activity, and their normal tomfoolery would land them with exactly what they didn't want—a union.
Of course, whether this rule actually discourages employers from union-busting will play out in the coming months, but there's an interesting and important wrinkle to the NLRB's rule—it's retroactive. Meaning, even if you lost your union election, if management broke the law during that process, you might still end up with a union.
One of the first up to try out this new rule? The employees of the Essex Crossing Trader Joe's, who launched a union drive this past spring. At the time, workers told Hell Gate that they were unionizing because of low pay, limited benefits, and a store-wide sewage problem that was going unaddressed.
In April, those workers, who were unionizing as part of Trader Joe's United, an independent union, lost their election in a tied vote, 76-76, with the tie going to the company. Following the Cemex decision, however, the union is going to try to gain recognition anyways, alleging in a complaint to the NLRB that the company coerced workers by promising better conditions if they voted against a union, engaged in surveillance of workers to determine how they planned to vote, and changed schedules to retaliate against union organizers.
"Threats, coercion, interrogation, and blatant misinformation, along with pitting workers against each other, are all par for the course when an employer wants to stop worker power in its tracks," employees wrote in a press release following their complaint to the NLRB. "These kinds of tactics were a significant factor in the Essex election, but Cemex has leveled the playing field and given Essex workers a new opportunity for unionization, despite the employer’s blatant union-busting."
If the NLRB follows its own rules here, 200 Trader Joe's workers will now be union members, and unions will finally have more of a level playing field—and it started, like a lot of great union activity, on the Lower East Side.
Help us, Proskauer Rose! Our links are beginning to unionize:
- The influx of migrant children to an NYC school system that has been steadily losing students is a gigantic net positive from a state and federal funding standpoint, don't listen to anyone who says otherwise.
- More than 2,000 additional NYCHA units have been privatized, in the hopes that repairs will come sooner under private stewardship.
- Airbnb transformed this Brooklyn neighborhood. What happens now that the regulatory state has caught up with it?
- The East Broadway Mall is getting a new operator who plans on renovating the Chinatown space, complete with a planned dim sum hall staffed by union labor.
- If you need an elevator to use the subways, even of the piss-stained variety, it's still a nightmare.
- The City Council is still not into redoing its plan to close Rikers by 2027, no matter what the mayor has asked.
- This morning, Mayor Eric Adams, unions, and other NYC elected officials will be holding a rally at Foley Square calling on the federal government to expedite the process for migrants to receive work permits (something that statutorily will probably have to be addressed by Congress). We go now to a live view of Congress.
- Meanwhile, the White House has pledged to help New York identify migrants who are currently eligible for work permits to help move them out of shelters, after a meeting with Governor Kathy Hochul.
- Would you attend a rave (or rave-adjacent event) with RFK Jr.?
- And finally, we don't know what this means, but we are ready to serve our new crab overlords:
