After Starbucks dismissed seven employees who attempted to unionize its Tennessee location, a US government agency secured a court order requiring the firm to rehire them. Starbucks now wants the Supreme Court to limit the government’s power in such situations.

The justices will hear Starbucks’ appeal against the National Labor Relations Board, a federal organization that safeguards employees’ ability to organize, on Tuesday. If the court rules with Starbucks, it may make it more difficult for the NLRB to intervene when it claims corporate meddling in unionization efforts.

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Starbucks Takes On The Federal Labor Agency Before The US Supreme Court

The hearing comes as tensions between Starbucks and Workers United, the union that organizes its employees, have begun to subside. In February, the two sides announced that they would resume negotiations with the goal of completing contract agreements this year. Starbucks and union representatives were set to meet Wednesday for their first bargaining session in over a year.

Since late 2021, workers at 420 company-owned Starbucks stores in the United States have voted to unionize, but none of those stores has reached a labor deal with Starbucks.

The issue before the Supreme Court began in February 2022, when Starbucks dismissed seven employees who were spearheading a unionization campaign in Memphis, Tennessee. Starbucks claimed the staff broke company rules by reopening the store after it had closed and invited non-employees, including a television news crew, to enter.

The National Labor Relations Board concluded that the firings were an improper interference with workers’ ability to organize. The agency discovered that Starbucks often permitted off-duty employees and non-employees to stay in the business after hours to create drinks or collect things.

The NLRB requested that a federal district court intervene and order Starbucks to rehire the employees while the case proceeded through the agency’s administrative proceedings. A district court judge agreed with the NLRB and ordered a temporary injunction, forcing Starbucks to rehire the employees in August 2022. After the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, Starbucks filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.

According to Workers United, five of the seven workers are still employed at the Memphis shop, with the remaining two active in the organizing drive. The Memphis store voted to unionize in June 2022.

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Starbucks Takes On The Federal Labor Agency Before The US Supreme Court

Starbucks argued that the Supreme Court should intervene because federal appeals courts disagree on the conditions that the NLRB must achieve when seeking a temporary injunction against a firm. Starbucks claims that temporary injunctions can be a significant burden for businesses, as the NLRB’s administrative process might take years.

Since 1947, the National Labor Relations Act, which controls the agency, has permitted judges to approve temporary injunctions requested by the NLRB if they are deemed “just and proper.” In its examination of what happened at the Starbucks outlet in Memphis, the Sixth Circuit needed the NLRB to prove two things: that it had reasonable cause to suspect unfair labor practices occurred and that a restraining order would be a “just and proper” solution.

Other federal appellate courts, however, have required the NLRB to meet a four-factor criteria for obtaining restraining orders, including demonstrating that it was likely to prevail in the administrative matter and that employees would suffer irreparable injury if an injunction was not issued.

Starbucks has petitioned the Supreme Court to make the four-factor test the standard that all courts must follow when considering NLRB injunction cases.

“This court’s intervention is urgently needed,” Starbucks stated in an October court petition. “National employers like Starbucks must defend themselves against years-long injunctions under materially different tests depending on where alleged unfair labor practices occur or where employers reside.”

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Starbucks Takes On The Federal Labor Agency Before The US Supreme Court

According to the NLRB, it already assesses the possibility of success before bringing a case to court, so whether courts employ two or four considerations is mainly irrelevant. The agency states that it rarely seeks temporary injunctions from the courts; in the fiscal year 2023, it received 19,869 allegations of unfair labor practices and allowed the filing of 14 lawsuits seeking temporary injunctions.

“The two-part inquiry undertaken by the Sixth Circuit and other courts … subjects board petitions to meaningful scrutiny, and does not call for courts merely to ‘rubber-stamp’ agency requests,” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stated in a filing

SOURCE – (AP)

According to a workers’ representative group, Google fired at least 20 more employees in response to protests over the technology it provided to the Israeli government during the Gaza conflict, bringing the total number of fired employees to more than 50.

It’s the most recent indication of internal conflict at the tech giant, which centers on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion agreement that Google and Amazon signed in 2021 to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government.

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Google Fires More Workers Who Protested Its Deal With Israel

Last week, workers staged sit-in protests at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. The corporation responded by contacting the police, who made arrests.

No Tech For Apartheid, the group coordinating the protests, said the company dismissed 30 staff last week, up from the initial 28 disclosed.

Then, on Tuesday night, Google dismissed “over 20” more employees, “including non-participating bystanders during last week’s protests,” according to Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid, who did not provide a particular figure.

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Google Fires More Workers Who Protested Its Deal With Israel

“Google’s aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” Chung said in a statement. “In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers.”

They stated that it fired the extra workers after gathering information from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and identifying employees who donned masks and did not carry their staff badges to conceal their identity. It did not specify how many were fired.

The corporation denied the group’s allegations, claiming that “every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings.”

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Google Fires More Workers Who Protested Its Deal With Israel

The Mountain View, California-based corporation had previously hinted that more individuals could be dismissed, with CEO Sundar Pichai stating in a blog post that employees would be on a tight leash as the company ramped up its efforts to improve its AI technology.

SOURCE – (AP)

NEW YORK — Tesla reduced the price of its “Full Self Driving” system — which cannot drive itself and requires drivers to remain attentive and ready to intervene — by nearly a third to $8,000 from $12,000, according to the company website.

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Tesla Cuts The Price Of Its “Full Self Driving” System By A Third To $8,000

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk stated in 2019 that there would be a fleet of robotaxis on the road by 2020, but that promise has yet to be fulfilled, and the system must still be supervised by humans.

The cutbacks, which took effect on Saturday, follow Tesla’s decision to trim $2,000 off the pricing of three of its five models in the United States late Friday. That is the most recent example of the difficulties that the electric vehicle manufacturer is facing.

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Tesla Cuts The Price Of Its “Full Self Driving” System By A Third To $8,000

Tesla dropped the costs of its most popular model, the Model Y, a small SUV that is the best-selling electric vehicle in the United States, as well as the Models X and S, which are older and more expensive. Prices for the Model 3 car and Cybertruck remained unchanged.

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Tesla Cuts The Price Of Its “Full Self Driving” System By A Third To $8,000

The price cut comes a day after Tesla’s stock fell below $150 a share, wiping out all gains recorded in the previous year. The Austin, Texas-based company’s stock price has fallen almost 40% this year due to declining sales and growing competition. Discounted sticker prices are intended to entice more car purchasers.

SOURCE – (AP)