COVID-19
Federal Relief – The industry is making a renewed push for federal relief funds amid the Omicron variant surge. The National Restaurant Association is making the case to lawmakers that operators are still saddled with debt from the past two years, and now face new challenges today as they grapple with new mandates and try to maintain a healthy workforce. A bipartisan, standalone bill is working its way through the process that would replenish the Restaurant Relief Fund (RRF). The best opportunity may be to attach that bill to a larger legislative package that’s needed to fund the government after the current stopgap spending measure runs out Feb. 18. More details.
Omicron Variant – Brands are again struggling to keep up with a flood of new mandates in response to the Omicron variant. Masking and vaccine policies continue to change as policymakers react to the latest news or new CDC guidance. Within the past few weeks, Chicago, D.C., Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, as well as Rhode Island, New York, and California, have all changed their vaccine and/or masking policies. Expect more changes in the coming weeks.
CDC – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance, ending COVID-19 isolation at five days. The isolation period should be followed by strict mask use for an additional five days. However, if an individual tests positive after 5 days, they should isolate for the full 10 days, according to the guidance. The change resulted in many companies and jurisdictions reconsidering their own policies. More details.
U.S. Supreme Court – Today, the court will hear oral arguments on challenges to OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). The justices will not be determining whether the vaccine mandate is constitutional, rather, they will decide whether either mandate should stay in place while the cases play out in court. The first bloc of cases challenges a federal rule requiring nearly all health care workers to become vaccinated. The second bloc challenges a rule requiring workers at companies with 100 or more employees to either get vaccinated or be regularly tested for COVID-19. The decision to hear the cases stems from the decision by the Sixth Circuit – which was designated to review all challenges to the ETS – to dissolve the Fifth Circuit’s previous nationwide injunction. The court found that OSHA was afforded substantial discretion to err on the side of over-protection rather than under-protection when promulgating the ETS and would not be expected to do workplace by workplace assessments. They opined that any other result would belie the whole point of an emergency temporary standard, which requires quick action. More details.
Starbucks – The company became one of the first major restaurant brands to publicly announce its vaccine policy. The company will require its U.S. workers be vaccinated as of Feb. 9, in keeping with a federal mandate. Workers must disclose their vaccination status by Jan. 10. Workers who opt out of vaccination will have to buy their own OSHA-approved tests and submit results every week. The new Starbucks union, Starbucks Workers United, staged a walkout over the company’s policies, temporarily shutting down their Buffalo location. The union wants workers to be able to enforce mask mandates for customers, and for Starbucks to provide employees with N95 masks, COVID-19 testing kits, and hazard pay. More details.
Study – A new “report” issued by the UCLA Labor Center finds that fast food employees in Los Angeles County are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 in addition to facing difficult work conditions during the pandemic. The report also asserts that fast food workers don’t receive workplace protections to which they are legally entitled despite their frontline roles during the pandemic. Nearly a quarter of fast-food employees contracted COVID-19 in the last 18 months and less than half were notified by their employers after they had been exposed to the virus. The study which was commissioned by the county’s health department is the first in the nation to provide an in-depth look at COVID-19 safety compliance from the perspective of fast-food workers through personal accounts and testimonies. It is important to note that the Advisory Committee of the UCLA Labor Center is almost entirely made up of representatives from labor unions throughout the state. More details.
Wages
Michigan – The newly-formed Raise the Wage Michigan Ballot Committee, announced the official filing of a $15/hr minimum wage initiative for the Nov. 2022 ballot. The ballot language has to be approved by the bureau of elections before signature gathering can begin. A similar measure was on the 2018 ballot but the legislature intervened and passed an increase to $12/hr by 2030. If passed, the hourly wage would climb to $11/hr in 2023 and reach $15/hr in 2027. After reaching the $15/hr target, the wage would automatically adjust for inflation each year. More details.
Portland, ME – The city council voted to repeal the declared state of emergency that temporarily had raised the city’s minimum wage to $19.50/hour. In 2020, voters passed a ballot referendum that called for a 50 percent increase in the local wage during a declared state of emergency. Until this week, the city council had been reluctant to end the declaration and the new wage went into effect Jan. 1. The local business community led a vigorous effort to force the city council to revisit the issue and the subsequent 8-1 vote rescinded the state of emergency and returned the local wage to its previous $13.00/hr. More details.
Paid Leave
Federal – The bipartisan discussions around whether the paid leave provisions in the Democrats’ budget reconciliation package pass muster under the Byrd rule have been placed on hold. Staffers were meeting with the Senate Parliamentarian as late as Christmas Eve in hopes of approving the language in time for a vote on the package this month, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pledged. Several policies in the package have already been axed by the Senate rules referee, including Democrats’ immigration reform proposals. More details.
Publix – The company announced a paid parental leave program for full and part-time workers beginning in 2022. Under the program, employees are eligible for at least two weeks of an employee’s average hours upon the birth or adoption of a child and more depending on the employee’s length of service and whether the employee is full-time or part-time, salaried or hourly. Full-time employees could get as much as six weeks of full-time, paid leave. Publix was among the grocery chains maligned by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last week for “putting company profits over customers” as grocery prices have risen along with grocer profits. In that same news release, she also called on Congress to act on her Essential Workers Bill of Rights, which calls for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. More details.
Walmart – As a result of the CDC’s new guidance cutting in half quarantine requirements for asymptomatic people with COVID-19 from 10 days to five days, the company is cutting pandemic-related paid leave in half (from two weeks to one week). Walmart said that through March 31, it will provide paid time off for employees who are mandated to quarantine by a healthcare provider, government, or the company itself or if they fail a health screening or test positive for COVID-19. It said employees who qualify will be paid for one week. More details.
Labor Activism
Starbucks – Units of the coffee chain continue to pursue union representation. Stores in metro Buffalo, Boston, Phoenix, Knoxville, Seattle, Chicago, and Denver are all in the process of filing election petitions with the NLRB. More details.
Labor Policy
Federal – The Wage & Hour Division (WHD) of the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have struck an agreement to collaborate on investigations and share information on potential violations of law, specifically targeting independent contractor misclassification and retaliation against workers. The NLRB and the WHD will work together to create a system to share information in an effort to “maximize” and “improve” enforcement, according to the agreement. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) also says the agencies will work to “systematize” information sharing regarding “the identification and investigation of complex or fissured employment structures,” including single or joint employer relationships, among other areas. The WHD and NLRB also plan to hold joint training sessions for their field staff, as well as team up on outreach and education efforts involving labor rights. More details.
Amazon – The company reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) promising to give workers more leeway to conduct union activity inside warehouses. The terms of the agreement demonstrate the new environment in which employers are operating. According to the settlement, Amazon said it would reach out via email to its warehouse workers (former and current) who were on the job anytime from March 22, 2021 until now to notify them of their organizing rights. The settlement outlines that Amazon workers, which number 750,000 in the U.S., have more room to organize within the buildings. For example, Amazon pledged it will not threaten workers with discipline or call the police when they are engaging in union activity in exterior non-work areas during non-work time. Additionally, the Board will be able to more easily sue Amazon – without going through a laborious process of administrative hearing – if it found that the online company reneged on its agreement. The agreement comes as the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union prepares for a re-run election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. In November, a regional director ordered a new representation election after finding the company may have intimidated workers by pressuring them to cast votes in a newly installed mailbox in view of security cameras. More details.
Key Takeaways
- The Starbucks Workers United walk out this week over the company’s COVID-19 policies is emblematic of the new paradigm in which the company must now operate. The six-person strike temporarily shut down one location but earned national headlines and called into question the brand’s approach to the pandemic. The union is likely to win in at least some of the pending elections where workers are seeking representation in seven major metros. Those metros constitute seven very large media markets that often drive national media coverage. Other brands would be wise to ensure their internal teams appreciate how, in this environment, issues in a handful of stores can quickly escalate into a national, sustained reputational challenge for companies.
- Most state legislatures will be convening in the next few days to begin their 2022 legislative sessions. It is likely that the renewed vigor within the labor organizing community (ex. Starbucks) will find its way into legislative action across the country starting with California and the proposed FAST ACT. While the sectoral bargaining bill was sidetracked in 2021, it could return early in 2022 and meet with renewed grassroots support. Brands should prepare for this and similar legislation in other labor-friendly states.
Podcast
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