So on July 11, Chipotle workers in Augusta,
Maine filed a petition to form the company's first union.
But yesterday, Chipotle announced that they would be closing down that store,
here are the details of that story.
The store recently became the first Chipotle location to file union paperwork
with the National Labor Relations Board, according to the Associated Press.
The matter was scheduled to be taken up at a 10 AM hearing on Tuesday, but
the company informed workers of the closure in a 7:30 AM email,
according to emails shared with the Washington Post by Jeff Young,
an attorney representing the workers.
So here's an excerpt of that email that was sent at 7 AM by
Chipotle to the workers.
Despite the considerable time and resources we've spent trying to staff
the restaurant, we don't have management necessary to reopen it.
And combined with the ongoing callouts and lack of availability of existing staff,
we won't be able to open the restaurant for the foreseeable future.
As a result,
Chipotle has made the difficult decision to close the location permanently.
But Chipotle's excuse doesn't really hold up
because the company has deliberately understaffed the store for months.
Let's watch.
>> They kept insisting that we run with not quite the number of people that we
should run with.
>> If there aren't enough people to run the store, we have to cut corners.
>> But we have customers coming in and they're upset.
Why are you so slow?
Why is the food not right?
The dangers of not being able to have enough people to run the store are a lot
of shortcuts that are unsafe.
>> [INAUDIBLE] saying all the way to the bank while their employees are struggling.
Let's watch.
[MUSIC].
>> I'm interested in companies with magnificent sales and
earnings like Chipotle.
>> Melissa, Chipotle out with beats on the top and bottom lines for
Q1 and same-store sales also up 9%.
>> Chipotle shares sizzled in early trading Wednesday,
jumping more than 10% to a record high.
[MUSIC]
>> Look, I think our secret weapon is our people and our culture.
[MUSIC]
>> So for the reasons you heard,
the working conditions that were awful at Chipotle and
the huge pay differentials between Chipotle executives and the workers.
The Chipotle employees decided that it's time to create a union and
will let the workers speak for themselves on why precisely they decided to do that.
>> We're asking for
the bare minimum that Chipotle itself should be providing to begin with.
Training and staffing your own restaurant is pretty par for the course for
any business.
>> It benefits us but also it benefits Chipotle and the customers too.
When we realized that we could all stand up together and say, hey,
we're not gonna do this anymore.
You can't run us around like this anymore, they listened.
>> All right, so they had great reasons for forming their union and
of course Chipotle's response shut down the store.
And Chipotle is actually not the only large company that is using this
union-busting tactic.
Amy's kitchen makes ethical vegetarian frozen and canned food, but
the company is not so ethical when it comes to how they treat their employees.
On Monday, July 18, 2022, Amy's kitchen in San Jose announced
the closure of their facility in the city after just over a year of operations.
Workers were blindsided with the news.
Without any advanced notice, workers came in with their lunch bags then within
an hour of clocking in for their shift,
they were summoned to a meeting, where the news broke that their jobs were gone.
In the last few months,
Amy's workers organized work actions to demand respect and justice on the job.
They were met with captive audience meetings, threats, intimidation, and
retaliation from management.
Amy's closure of the facility in San Jose is part of their overall campaign
orchestrated against its workers.
More Perfect US reporting on that.
And Starbucks has been using this same tactic as well.
Famously, so
about 3% of Starbucks stores nationwide are in the process of unionizing.
Yet somehow, 30% of the stores Starbucks is closing have active union campaigns.
There's no clearer evidence of Starbuck's union-busting rampage,
again, More Perfect Union reporting.
And so it's really no surprise why these corporations are afraid of unions,
unions are quite effective.
Wages for workers in the union are 11% more than what non-union workers make.
94% of workers in a union have employer-provided health insurance
compared to 68% overall and 91% of workers in a union have access to paid sick days.
A report by the Economic Policy Institute shows that increased union density,
increases wages, and benefits for all workers, reduces racial and
gender disparities in the labor market, and
helps win pro-worker legislation across all levels of government.
Now, the Starbucks unionization is pretty significant.
I actually spoke with the lead union organizer there for
Workers United Starbucks and his name is Richard Minter.
And he said to me, the heinous attack by Starbucks against partners is unlike any I
have ever witnessed,
made-up allegations since they're plotting against targeting supporters.
Mean-spirited and meant to hurt the workers.
Starbucks doesn't deserve such loyal, devoted staff.
So things are getting pretty intense as we see the labor movement really growing in
the United States, corporations are terrified.
And it's because unions are very effective at cutting into those profit margins,
where executives are taking that money home, and actually giving workers.
Some of the fruits of their labor, some of the dollars created off of the labor that
they do on behalf of those corporations, for
wages that are far less than their labor is worth.
John, what are your thoughts?
>> Yeah, my thoughts are that I feel bad for Chipotle for
having to make that difficult decision.
I'm sure that they just, they spent days just think, is there any way around this?
Is this, Wait, this is something that I really, want to do.
It's awesome and it's going to benefit me personally screw the workers,
who cares about them?
I love messages like that.
The Amy's thing, by the way, I'm glad that you mentioned that.
It's a reminder to people that,
like the theme of a company doesn't necessarily say anything about its values.
Like that's, that's that's all, that, that is.
I mean, look, I'm committed to Ben and
Jerry's up until they eventually turn on us.
But other than Ben and Jerry's,
it doesn't really mean anything like the google said do no evil.
They say things like this, this is what PR is about.
And also, I'm really glad that you played that video summarizing
the profitability of Chipotle because there are many corporations that would
use the supposed difficulties that they're having staffing their shops,
like they want to use that as an excuse.
The fact that they're making so much money that they can obviously afford to increase
pay and benefits totally undercuts that, which means that we,
through the beginning of the pandemic, up until this year, there have been,
as you said, more and more labor actions, all over the place and
all sorts of different industries and that is great.
The strike back against that is very predictable.
The issue is going to be, are we going to be able to make them pay for that?
Is the bad publicity they're going to get off of the actions you've detailed going
to be worse for them, than simply going along with the unionization?
It's one of the reasons that, like more perfect US, other groups like that are so
important for constantly drawing people's attention to these.
People in the chat were shocked that Amy's had done something like this.
We need people to know about Amy's and about all these other corporations, so
that companies in the future will be too scared to do this sort of thing.
>> Yeah. I think also not seeing enough lawsuits
brought against places like Amazon against places like Starbucks,
against Amy's, for their violations of labor law, blatant violations.
When Amazon was trying to unionize Alabama, they put one of the ballot
boxes where you could submit your mail in, vote for or against the union.
It was right on the company's property in the parking lot,
which is against NLRB Law.
And for months and months, the people on the ground in Alabama that were organizing
with the union were saying, they're gonna, if this election doesn't go their way,
they're just going to say, hey, it's actually not a fair election.
We didn't realize that we shouldn't have had this on our property.
It's way the results.
And, and no matter how that election was going to go,
Amazon was going to be like we have to do to again extend the process to unionize.
It's a union-busting tactic because they have huge lawyers.
They have so much money to pay lawyers, and
who's going to defend these workers in front of the NLRB and defend NLRB law?
I think that's a huge gap we have in the labor movement right now.
>> Yeah. And then I'm only one other quick point I
want to make is that they, they find the added pressure coming from more and
more of their incoming employees to unionist to be unacceptable.
They want to go back to the way things were before the pandemic.
Where workers are at most an inconvenience for corporations,
their economic prospects and all that are not something to be considered.
The only people that are supposed to matter the CEO and the board and
of course the shareholders, that's it.
No, that's not acceptable anymore.
That is that we are not going to judge our society's having a successful prosperous
economy simply because it generates a nice rate of return for shareholders.
And if that means that people are having to sleep in their car,
then that's acceptable.
And like they, seem to be experiencing some whiplash like with the new added
labor power that people have after the experience of the pandemic,
like they haven't yet, I guess gotten used to that reality.
And so their strike back is going to be harsh and it's gonna be really painful for
people like your company being shut down,
and losing your jobs like that is for individuals, for many people.
That's devastating the effect on their life.
But there's gonna be a lot of these different battles.
Hopefully, politicians will start to side with these workers.
There's very few in the federal government that do.
But, having, the, I guess the balance of the benefits
of capitalism be fundamentally shifted.
It's been inevitable, I think for a long time, and
it's good to see people fighting to make that actually happen.
>> Yeah, it's actually really great to see this is a dream come true when we saw
Amazon form their first union.
Seeing people realize that a union is actually important and overcome a lot of
the union-busting tactics that were so sophisticated because,
at the end of the day, Amazon would be nothing without their workers.
Amy's, nothing without their workers, Chipotle, nothing without their workers.
There wouldn't be any profits there for the executives to split up and take home.
That money comes from people doing work with their own two hands.
And of course, they're going to tell you, you don't need a union.
You know, we have a great relationship with you.
We don't need a union getting in the middle of us.
And then, of course, they're going to promote the people who are the main folks
organizing the unit, and they're gonna use every single union-busting tactic there
is, because a lot on the line for them, hundreds of millions of dollars.
They can spend a fraction of that, subduing union efforts, and
go home at the end of the day and be fine.
And so it's great that people are starting to see through that because for
a long time we've seen union membership decline in the United States.
And it's great that that's changing and it's high time that that's changing.
>> Green.
>> Yeah.