Members of the Teamsters union have authorized a strike against popular US retailer Costco next month as a pre-emptive bargaining-position ahead of the expiration of a work contract for 18,000 company workers.
If a strike goes ahead, 56 of the company’s warehouse stores across five states would be affected after 85% of Teamster members voted to authorize the action over wages and benefits.
The Teamsters said Costco had rejected proposals dealing with seniority pay, paid family leave, bereavement policies, sick time, and safeguards against surveillance. The union represents around 8% of Costco’s 219,000, mostly un-unionized, employees.
Costco has also bucked a trend for large US employers to roll back diversity efforts and said such efforts contribute to innovation and to its bottom line. Employee diversity, the Costco board has said, promotes “the ‘treasure hunt’ that our customers value.
“Our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary,” it added.
Last month, the Teamsters union staged a strike at Amazon. In that dispute, the online retailer does not recognize the union, or recognize union-represented delivery drivers as employees and has refused to negotiate.
But the strike authorization doesn’t mean there will be a strike. The Teamsters union declined to endorse Trump or Kamala Harris for president ahead of November’s election, saying neither candidate had sufficient support from the 1.3m member union.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” said Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president.
Trump called the Teamsters’ decision not to endorse “a great honor”.
“It’s a great honor,” he said. “They’re not going to endorse the Democrats. That’s a big thing.”
But the threat of a strike comes as unions, which represent 10% of US workers, according to the bureau of labor statistics, anticipate changes under Donald Trump’s administration after four years of union support under Joe Biden.
Among the major changes in policy that workers could expect under the Trump administration, according to the Economic Policy Institute, are an end to proactive government support for the right to form a union, crackdowns on immigrants in the workplace, and a rollback of pro-worker laws and that gives employers more power.
Trump has nominated Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer for secretary of labor. The former congresswoman is one of three Republicans who have backed the right to organize and could enact a pro-worker agenda.
Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO president, praised Chavez-DeRemer’s “pro-labor record in Congress”, but said “it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as secretary of labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda”.
Article by:Source: Edward Helmore
