Tag: Amazon

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Health

Relentless Amazon has new plan to chop employee accidents by 50%

Relentless Amazon has new plan to cut worker injuries by 50%

The working conditions in the Amazon warehouse and the injuries suffered by workers were a constant source of tension between the corporate giant and its critics. A new safety and wellness program will be rolled out at all US locations by the end of the year as Jeff Bezos’ company continues to add large numbers of new employees.

CHRIS J RATCLIFFE | AFP | Getty Images

Amazon is known for its relentless nature. Can this corporate approach, which has led to so much success, be successfully applied to workplace injury prevention? Amazon employees and the world are figuring out what could be the greatest experiment in safety culture in the workplace that has ever been conducted.

Amazon announced on Monday that WorkingWell, a program that provides physical, mental, and nutritional support to employees, will be rolled out across the U.S. operations network by the end of the year to reduce the frequency of reportable incidents – an OSHA measurement of injuries and Workers’ illnesses – by 50% by 2025. The company, which has faced criticism of working conditions due to its size and increased customer demand, is investing $ 300 million in safety projects this year without breaking the program specifically as part of that budget.

WorkingWell is not entirely new to Amazon employees, nor is it planned to reduce the injury rate. It was first piloted in 2019 and has already reached a large number of workers, 859,000 employees in 350 locations in North America and Europe. In Amazon’s latest earnings report, released in late April, the company said it was expanding the program, although it didn’t provide all the details. A company executive said never having offered all program components in all locations and hopes to reach 1,000 locations by the end of 2021 and then expand to Europe (where pilot locations exist) and beyond.

The CNBC @ Work Summit is back

This fall, October 13, Facebook CIO Atish Banerjea, Bank of America’s Chief Operations and Technology Officers, Cathy Bessant, WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani, and Estee Lauder CFO Tracey Travis, talk about building a resilient future and more. Join Now.

“We want them to be healthy, safe and interested in Amazon and proud to work for them,” said Heather MacDougall, vice president, global health and safety at Amazon. Employee health and wellbeing “is not just a topic of conversation,” she said.

Amazon is adding new employees at a breakneck pace. The youngest employees include 75,000 workers in the United States and Canada. The retail, logistics, and tech giant hired large numbers of workers during Covid, more than 500,000 in 2020, and a common type of injury known as musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) – which was discussed by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon , recently wrote extensively in an annual letter to shareholders – is associated with new employees.

About 40% of work-related injuries on Amazon are MSDs, including sprains or strains caused by repetitive motion. Bezos noted in the letter that the program helped reduce injuries caused by MSD by 32% from 2019 to 2020. Highlighting the problem of workers and work culture, Bezos wrote, “If you read some of the news you might think we don’t have any.” Care for the employees. ”

According to John Dony, Senior Director at the National Safety Council, MSD risk exposure can and should be measured and reduced. “Just as coaches are now preventing pitchers from throwing too many pitches in baseball and addressing their risk of injury from mechanics, employers can also help prevent MSDs in the workplace by systematically measuring exposure to MSD risk factors and by systematically measuring exposure to MSD risk factors and assessing workplace and health problems Redesign work items to limit them. ” Exposure to these risk factors, “said Dony.

Body, Mind, and Wellbeing of an Amazon Worker

Program elements that will be added in all US locations include daily meetings for operations managers and small groups of employees near workplaces so they can watch short interactive videos on topics such as grasping and manipulating, pushing and pulling, and feeding. Amazon calls them “Health & Safety Huddles”.

Experts say there isn’t a lot of data on video training, but when skilled on-site professionals teach staff positioning to avoid injuries and spot checks on the floor, it has been shown to work and it has become more popular for warehouse operations to employ coaches in recent years.

Among the more than 6,000 security employees at Amazon are certified sports trainers, so-called injury prevention specialists, who usually work in separate wellness centers, but also in buildings that offer individual coaching with employees and ergonomic adjustments to the workstation, a spokeswoman said by email.

Hourly prompts at workplaces encourage employees to engage in physical and mental activities that should not last longer than 30 to 60 seconds. However, the company says it can decrease muscle and mental fatigue and reduce the risk of injury. Experts say stretching is key to injury prevention, although most popular workplace programs that are successful run sessions of at least five minutes several times per shift.

Amazon will have dedicated spa areas in buildings dedicated to activities like volunteer stretching and interactive videos. Other aspects of the WorkingWell program include videos on mindfulness practices such as meditation, which will be available at interactive kiosks, as well as promoting healthier eating options and making them available to employees.

“We made hundreds of changes based on employee feedback,” said MacDougall of the new program, which will include a WorkingWell mobile app that is currently being developed to provide access to home wellness education and training.

Some Amazon ideas aren’t new, but the scale is new

Occupational safety experts say many of the elements of the new Amazon program are common features of workplace culture where safety is a priority. In many ways, it is the sheer size of the effort that is striking and can provide scientists and professionals with a new source of data on workplace injury prevention.

“I don’t know of any company with so many people doing this type of work at the same time,” said Deborah Roy, president of the American Society of Safety Professionals. “Just by the sheer numbers, there is a good chance that we can learn from their implementation if they collect data well and do comparisons in a controlled manner. … But we need to see the data published.”

Amazon said it was working with universities on research into workplace safety, including understanding the mechanisms behind MSD injuries, and it was working with health and safety experts, but an Amazon spokeswoman turned down formal plans for sharing of research to work out even though she said so is something the company is contemplating for the future.

I am not aware of any company with so many workers doing this type of work at once.

Deborah Roy, President of the American Society of Safety Professionals

New employees who are not conditioned to do their jobs may be the most susceptible to MSDs. However, as the largest tenant in the US, Amazon also faces the problem of an aging workforce that needs to be kept healthy in a tight and shrinking job market. “They want to take the time and spend the money upfront on new employees, get them to do the job right, and help them position themselves better,” said Roy, but added that existing, older employees ” If you do not.” If you don’t support this workforce, you won’t have new young people to take their place. We just don’t have volume in many parts of the country. “

Some of the technology-driven injury prevention ideas Bezos outlined in the letter, such as: B. Algorithms that allow employees to rotate through jobs continued to be used in a pilot phase, but are not part of this program.

Claims that Amazon has a high rate of work-related accidents have continued over the years, especially during times of high demand like the upcoming Prime Day. Amazon has also fought in the court system to keep some infringement records confidential. The company also recently faced a union formation vote at an Alabama site, in which union officials said injuries were a factor in helping their efforts.

A reduction in accidents at work by 50% is possible

Jeffrey Ku, an operations manager from Amazon provided to CNBC who has piloted several aspects of the program at one of its Denver facilities, “DEN2,” said he had no injury in the six months he was in his team was responsible for training.

“50% is doable,” said Roy. “There have been many organizations that have been able to do this. It is a focus and must be a value in this company.”

While it may seem like a high bar, according to OSHA’s own published studies, companies with the right safety management system should be able to reduce injury rates by 52%.

Roy saw the change firsthand and oversaw an inventory program that increased the operations of 12 out of 100 injured manual laborers to zero injuries over a two-year period. “It is to their advantage to address these issues,” she said. “The support of these people contributes to business results and productivity.”

Having offered “a lot of training for new hires,” Ku has found the short videos and even the shortest pauses to reset helpful. “I’m very adamant about safety, security, security,” he said.

Categories
Health

Jeff Bezos is obsessive about a standard Amazon warehouse harm

Jeff Bezos is obsessed with a common Amazon warehouse injury

An employee searches for items in one of the corridors of an Amazon warehouse.

Carlos Jasso | Reuters

In his last letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, called for a deep dive into musculoskeletal disorders, which account for approximately 40% of work-related injuries across the company and affect millions of workers worldwide in various sectors. It is often synonymous with jobs in manufacturing and places like warehouses.

Of course, from the recent union battle at an Alabama warehouse to the conditions for key employees during the pandemic, Amazon’s treatment of its employees has become a major issue. And it has been cited for a high incidence of work-related accidents in recent years, although the company has stated in the past that it also reports more work-related accidents than its peers due to a more proactive safety culture.

“If you read some of the news, you might think we don’t care about employees,” wrote Bezos in his letter released earlier this month. “In these reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being distressed souls and being treated as robots. This is incorrect. They are sophisticated and thoughtful people who have options for the workplace.”

But they also suffer from MSDs that occur on jobs that can be described as robot-like repetition. Bezos’ in-depth remarks on this workplace injury were one of the first announcements by a large company to bring wider attention to the problem, according to several experts consulted by CNBC. It is estimated that MSDs cost US companies over $ 50 billion each year, resulting in an average of 21 to 32 days of work interruption between 1997 and 2010. In addition to warehouse work at Amazon, MSD issues in meat processing and poultry factories have recently drawn attention.

The CNBC @ Work Summit is back

This fall, October 13th, Facebook CIO Atish Banerjea, Bank of America’s Chief Operations and Technology Officers, Cathy Bessant, WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani, and Estee Lauder CFO Tracey Travis, talk about building a resilient future and more. Join Now.

MSDs, often referred to as “ergonomic injuries,” are typically strains and sprains caused by repetitive movement, overexertion, or performing tasks in awkward positions, and include problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail, manufacturing, and welfare jobs accounted for 50% of all MSD cases in the private sector. While they are common in factory workplaces and with first-time workers, they can also occur through exercise, desk work, and everyday use.

“MSDs are common in the type of work we do and are more likely to occur in the first six months of an employee,” wrote Bezos, adding that the company had started a program to target small groups of employees on body mechanics and safety coaching, which helped a 32% decrease in injuries between 2019 and 2020, while time as a result of injuries “decreased by more than half,” Bezos said in the latest letter. “We need to invent solutions to reduce MSDs for new hires, many of whom may be working in a physical role for the first time.”

Amazon declined to provide additional information to CNBC about its ongoing MSD efforts.

While MSD cases in the US workplace have declined over the past decade, approximately 1.71 billion people worldwide have musculoskeletal disorders, with lower back pain being the most common, the World Health Organization reported. This number is expected to increase as the population ages and grows.

“Many of these injuries are actually preventable, they’re not accidents, we can work to prevent them and make a big difference for patients,” said Anna Miller, vice chairwoman of the orthopedic surgery department and director of the orthopedic trauma department Washington University School of Medicine.

The dangers of repetitive work

While it is common for manufacturing workers to work on the repetitive assembly line, they can also occur while sitting in a home office doing remote work.

One of the biggest problems with MSDs is that there is no specific reason why they are occurring, and they can arise on the fly from a seemingly minor task like climbing stairs, says John Dony, senior director of the National Safety Council. There is little research into how they occur, why they occur, and who is most susceptible. While older workers often suffer from wear and tear, younger workers often try to overcome the risks or fail to understand the risks, Dony said.

Some studies suggest obesity, genetics, or smoking may increase the risk of MSD, but the causal link data isn’t very clear, says Andrew N. Pollak, senior vice president of clinical transformation and chief of orthopedics at the university’s medical system of Maryland.

Very limited federal funding is allocated to this research, but large companies like Amazon, which now employs over a million people, are better able to gather information to share with other companies.

“This type of research has been difficult to do in smaller companies because you just don’t have the same number of people doing the same jobs as you would with a giant like Amazon,” says Pollak.

MSDs can also lead to mental health problems for many frontline workers, and many people keep working after exposure because they need the money, Miller says.

In many service-oriented professions, workers are under pressure to keep working to make the customer happy and deal with injuries to meet the goals, says Jaimo Ahn, professor and chair of education in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Health System University of Michigan.

“If you are not getting there, or if you feel that you are not where you need to be, then move on,” said Ahn.

Solving the MSD Problem

In addition to the WorkingWell coaching program, which was introduced as part of Amazon’s workplace safety efforts last year for 859,000 employees in 250 locations, Amazon is also developing automated workforce plans that use “sophisticated algorithms for rotating employees” across jobs to prevent overuse of certain muscle groups and injuries, and that started rolling out this year.

Rotation schedules are one of the easiest precautionary solutions to preventing continued use of a particular muscle, as well as teaching workers how to lift from their legs instead of their arms or back. It also helps construct a job that involves excessive bending, requires non-slip shoes, or requires workers to lift heavy objects with a partner. Some companies have already put these guidelines in place, but they are sometimes ignored or not well communicated, Dony said.

Other alternatives include automating and implementing robots or machines that can minimize hand use and help with lifting, or handheld devices that show the environment and detail the span and range of motion. Robots have historically been a point of contention for workplace injuries, in some cases because of increasing risks to human workers, including requiring workers to move too fast to keep up ergonomically. However, the company’s executives have rejected this argument.

Solving MSDs outside of Amazon, across the world of work, and for many smaller, less deep-pocketed employers, begins with assessing the risk and walking through the workspaces.

“If you don’t even assess the risk or hazard you’re exposing someone to, you’re already behind the game,” says Dony.

Categories
Business

Amazon is accused of corrupting the union voting course of at an Alabama warehouse.

Amazon is accused of corrupting the union voting process at an Alabama warehouse.

The union, sensibly defeated in its efforts to organize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, is attempting to dismiss the election results and accusing the company of corrupting the voting process by intimidating and monitoring workers.

On Monday, the retail, wholesale and department store union appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the voting process via email last month.

The union lost its offer to organize the camp at a ratio of more than 2 to 1. Many workers said the union had not convinced them of the benefits of the organization and that they were largely satisfied with Amazon’s wages, benefits and working conditions.

In a statement on Monday, Amazon said: “Instead of accepting the choice of these employees, the union seems determined to continue to misrepresent the facts in order to advance its own agenda. We look forward to the next steps in the legal process. “

At the center of the union’s complaint is a mailbox that Amazon installed in the warehouse parking lot, where workers can cast their ballot papers. The union said Amazon brought the collection box without permission from the labor authority. The company also used video cameras to monitor workers who cast their ballots there and encouraged them to toss the ballots in the box instead of mailing them from home, the union said.

The union said these actions by Amazon “created the impression that the collection box was a polling station and that the employer had control over the conduct of postal votes”.

The union also accused Amazon of other tactics that may have intimidated the workers, such as hiring local police to patrol the parking lot while the organizers were outside and possibly pulling union-friendly workers out of the “captured audience” meetings that did the Company had held to raise the issue of organizing the ride among employees.

The company “would require the employee to come forward, identify them and then remove them from the meeting in the presence of hundreds of other employees, thereby compromising and / or chilling the employees’ right to freely discuss issues related to the union organizing campaign will, ” said the union in its filing with the labor authority.

The union has asked the Labor Authority to hold a hearing on their petition in order to overturn the results. If the union succeeds in its legal challenges, the labor authority could order another election to be held.

Categories
World News

How Amazon fought the union drive in Alabama

How Amazon fought the union drive in Alabama

Die Menschen protestieren am 22. März 2021 in Los Angeles, Kalifornien, um die gewerkschaftlichen Bemühungen der Arbeiter im Amazonasgebiet von Alabama zu unterstützen.

Lucy Nicholson | Reuters

Amazon hat letzte Woche eine Gewerkschaftsaktion in einem seiner Lagerhäuser in Alabama besiegt, ein großer Gewinn für den E-Commerce-Riesen, der seit langem gegen Gewerkschaftsversuche in seinen Einrichtungen gekämpft hat.

Die Arbeiter im Lagerhaus in Bessemer, Alabama, stimmten mit überwältigender Mehrheit für die Ablehnung der Gewerkschaftsbildung, wobei weniger als 30% der Stimmen dafür stimmten. Die Gewerkschaft für Einzelhandel, Großhandel und Kaufhäuser, die die Gewerkschaftsaktion leitete, beabsichtigt, das Ergebnis in Frage zu stellen, und argumentiert, dass Amazon vor und während der Abstimmung mit einigen seiner gewerkschaftsfeindlichen Aktivitäten gegen das Gesetz verstoßen habe.

Das Ergebnis ist ein Rückschlag für die organisierte Arbeit, die gehofft hatte, dass die Bessemer-Wahl dazu beitragen würde, bei Amazon Fuß zu fassen. Gewerkschaften, Arbeitnehmervertreter und einige Mitarbeiter des Bessemer-Werks, bekannt als BHM1, sind jedoch der Ansicht, dass die Bessemer-Wahlen weitere Organisationsversuche in anderen Lagern im ganzen Land ankurbeln werden. Die Gewerkschaftsführer sagten, die Wahlen in Bessemer hätten der Öffentlichkeit auch gezeigt, wie weit die Arbeitgeber gehen werden, um Gewerkschaften zu verhindern.

Nach Angaben mehrerer Arbeitnehmer und Gewerkschaftsvertreter, die die Taktik beschrieben haben, hat Amazon bei BHM1 eine aggressive PR-Kampagne gestartet, die Textnachrichten an Mitarbeiter, Broschüren, eine Website, auf der die Arbeitnehmer aufgefordert wurden, “ohne Gebühren zu arbeiten”, und Flugblätter, die in Badezimmern veröffentlicht wurden und die die Arbeitnehmer aufforderten zu “NEIN stimmen.”

Amazon verschickte Textnachrichten und Mailer, in denen die Mitarbeiter in seiner Einrichtung in Bessemer, Alabama, aufgefordert wurden, “NEIN zu stimmen”.

Die größte Gelegenheit für Amazon, die Arbeitnehmer zu beeinflussen, bestand in Form von so genannten Captive-Audience-Meetings, an denen die Arbeitnehmer während ihrer Schicht teilnehmen mussten. Amazon hielt die Treffen wöchentlich von Ende Januar bis zum Versand der Stimmzettel Anfang Februar ab. Die Mitarbeiter saßen ungefähr 30 Minuten lang in PowerPoint-Präsentationen, um die Gewerkschaftsbildung zu entmutigen, und erhielten die Gelegenheit, Fragen von Vertretern von Amazon zu stellen.

Gefangene Publikumsversammlungen sind eine gängige Taktik, die Arbeitgeber bei Gewerkschaftskampagnen anwenden. Befürworter vorgeschlagener arbeitsrechtlicher Reformen wie des Gesetzes zum Schutz des Organisationsrechts, das im Senat verabschiedet werden soll, haben argumentiert, dass Treffen in Gefangenschaft als Forum für Arbeitgeber dienen, um gewerkschaftsfeindliche Botschaften zu übermitteln, “ohne der Gewerkschaft die Möglichkeit dazu zu geben.” reagieren.” Das PRO-Gesetz würde es Arbeitgebern verbieten, diese Treffen obligatorisch zu machen.

Amazon sagte, es habe laufende Treffen in kleinen Gruppen veranstaltet, um den Mitarbeitern die Möglichkeit zu geben, alle Fakten über den Beitritt zu einer Gewerkschaft und über den Wahlprozess selbst zu erfahren.

Das Unternehmen verteidigte auch seine Reaktion auf die Gewerkschaftskampagne im weiteren Sinne und argumentierte in einer Erklärung nach dem Ergebnis, dass die Arbeitnehmer “weitaus mehr Anti-Amazon-Botschaften von Gewerkschaften, politischen Entscheidungsträgern und Medien gehört haben, als sie von uns gehört haben”.

Warum einige mit “Nein” gestimmt haben

Die Nachrichten von Amazon in den Meetings waren für einige BHM1-Mitarbeiter überzeugender als für andere.

Ein Mitarbeiter von Bessemer, der letztes Jahr bei Amazon angefangen hatte, sagte, er habe das Gefühl, Amazon habe bei Gesprächen mit Arbeitnehmern über die Gewerkschaft einige Schreckensstrategien angewandt, sagte aber auch gegenüber CNBC, er verstehe nicht, wie die Gewerkschaft den Arbeitnehmern bei BHM1 helfen würde. Diese Person, die um Anonymität bat, um Vergeltungsmaßnahmen zu verhindern, sagte, die RWDSU habe nicht erklärt, was sie für die Arbeitnehmer tun würden, und nicht auf ihre Anfrage nach Informationen darüber geantwortet, wie sie Mitarbeitern auf anderen Baustellen geholfen hätten.

Abgesehen von seinen Zweifeln an der RWDSU sagte dieser Mitarbeiter, er habe auch in erster Linie positive Erfahrungen bei Amazon gemacht. Während sich einige Arbeiter über den stressigen und anspruchsvollen Charakter der Arbeit beschwerten, sagte er, ein früherer Baujob habe ihn auf die körperliche Arbeit der Lagerarbeit vorbereitet, so dass er es leicht finde. Die Bezahlung und die Vorteile von Amazon sind auch eine Verbesserung gegenüber seinem vorherigen Job.

Am Ende stimmte dieser Arbeiter gegen die Gewerkschaftsbildung.

In privaten Facebook-Gruppen, in denen Amazon-Mitarbeiter miteinander interagieren, teilten andere BHM1-Mitarbeiter ihre Gedanken über die Gewerkschaftskampagne mit. Ein Arbeitnehmer befürchtete, dass die Arbeitnehmer bei einer Abstimmung in der Gewerkschaft den Zugang zu bestimmten Leistungen von Amazon verlieren würden, beispielsweise zum Weiterbildungsprogramm, bei dem Amazon einen Prozentsatz der Studiengebühren für die Ausbildung von Lagerarbeitern für Jobs in anderen Bereichen mit hoher Nachfrage zahlt.

Ein anderer Arbeiter war der Meinung, dass eine Gewerkschaft nicht notwendig sei, und behauptete, wenn man hart arbeitet, könne man bei Amazon erfolgreich sein: “Ich habe mit Nein gestimmt. Amazon ist nur ein Spiel mit Regeln. Lernen Sie die Regeln, spielen Sie das Spiel, steigen Sie auf, gewinnen Sie. “”

Obligatorische Sitzungen

Einige BHM1-Mitarbeiter empfanden die gewerkschaftsfeindlichen Nachrichten von Amazon als zu aggressiv.

Ein Mitarbeiter von BHM1, der als Stower arbeitet und Gegenstände in leere Lagerplätze in der gesamten Einrichtung überführt, sagte, Amazon habe die Texte, Flyer und obligatorischen Besprechungen so gestaltet, dass die Botschaft vermittelt wird, dass die Gewerkschaft niemandem helfen würde. Dieser Arbeitnehmer bat um Anonymität aus Sorge um den Verlust seines Arbeitsplatzes.

Der Arbeiter, der für die Gewerkschaft gestimmt hatte, sagte, er sei vorsichtig, Unterstützung für die Gewerkschaftsbildung vor Amazon und seinen Mitarbeitern zu zeigen, und sei nervös, Fragen zu stellen, statt dumm zu sein, um nicht gefeuert zu werden.

Luftaufnahme der Amazonas-Einrichtung in Bessemer, Alabama, 5. März 2021, in der die Arbeitnehmer darüber abstimmen werden, ob sie sich gewerkschaftlich organisieren wollen.

Dustin Chambers | Reuters

In einer obligatorischen Sitzung, die vor der Verteilung der Stimmzettel im Februar stattfand, versuchte Amazon, Zweifel daran zu wecken, wie die Arbeitnehmergebühren ausgegeben werden, indem er den Arbeitnehmern mitteilte, dass die RWDSU jährlich mehr als 100.000 US-Dollar für Fahrzeuge für Arbeitnehmer ausgab. Der Arbeiter war skeptisch gegenüber der Präsentation von Amazon und dachte, dass Amazon wahrscheinlich jedes Jahr viel mehr für Autos ausgab als die Gewerkschaft.

Gewerkschaftspräsident Stuart Appelbaum sagte in einem Interview, dass die RWDSU Autos für einige Vertreter kauft, deren Aufgabe es ist, von Arbeitsplatz zu Arbeitsplatz zu reisen, um Mitglieder zu vertreten und zu betreuen.

Amazon sagte, es wolle den Arbeitnehmern, insbesondere denjenigen ohne Vorkenntnisse der Gewerkschaften, erklären, dass eine Gewerkschaft ein Unternehmen ist, das Beiträge erhebt und erklärt, wie diese Beiträge verwendet werden können.

In einem weiteren obligatorischen Treffen teilten die beiden Bessemer-Mitarbeiter CNBC mit, Amazon habe Beispiele früherer Verträge verteilt, die die RWDSU gewonnen habe, und versucht, die Mängel der Gewerkschaft herauszustellen. Amazon behauptete auch, dass die RWDSU in erster Linie eine Geflügelarbeitergewerkschaft sei, die nur über begrenzte Erfahrung in der Vertretung von Lagerarbeitern verfüge.

Appelbaum sagte, Geflügelarbeiter machten einen bedeutenden Teil der RWDSU-Mitgliedschaft in Alabama aus, und viele der Organisatoren, die die Kampagne leiteten und sich beim Abschluss ihrer Schicht an Amazon-Arbeiter außerhalb von BHM1 wandten, stammten aus nahe gelegenen Geflügelfabriken. Die Gewerkschaft vertritt auch Arbeitnehmer in anderen Branchen, darunter Einzelhandel, Lebensmittelproduktion, gemeinnützige Organisationen und Cannabis, sagte Chelsea Connor, Sprecherin der RWDSU.

Auf die Frage, ob die RWDSU als Geflügelgewerkschaft charakterisiert sei, antwortete Amazon, sie wolle den Arbeitnehmern zeigen, wie gut oder schlecht die Gewerkschaft ihren Arbeitgeber verstehen könne.

Während der Treffen versuchte Amazon auch, negative Ergebnisse hervorzuheben, die sich aus der Abstimmung für die Gewerkschaft ergeben könnten. Amazon sagte den Arbeitern, die Gewerkschaft könne die Arbeiter zum Streik zwingen und die Arbeitnehmer könnten in Zukunft ihre Leistungen verlieren, sagten die Arbeiter gegenüber CNBC.

Das Mid-South-Büro der RWDSU, das die Organisation bei Amazon leitete, widersprach der Behauptung von Amazon, dass die Gewerkschaft BHM1-Arbeiter zum Streik zwingen würde, und nannte es laut den an die Arbeiter verteilten Mitteilungen eine “Angst-Taktik”.

“Amazon hat unterstellt, dass die Gewerkschaft Sie in einen Streik ziehen wird”, sagte Randy Hadley, Präsident des Mid-South Council, in einem Brief an die Arbeiter im Februar, in dem auch andere Behauptungen von Amazon angesprochen werden. “Hier sind die Fakten, unsere Mitgliedschaft und unsere Mitgliedschaft kontrollieren NUR, ob mit einer Super-Mehrheit gestreikt werden soll oder nicht. Dies bedeutet, dass fast 4.000 Amazon-Arbeiter abstimmen müssten, um in den Streik zu treten. Ein Streik kann bei Bedarf nützlich sein, ist es aber auch.” sehr, sehr selten. Dies ist eine weitere Angst-Taktik von Amazon. “

Amazon sagte, es wollte die Arbeitnehmer darauf hinweisen, dass die Gewerkschaft bei einer Abstimmung in einer Gewerkschaft einen Streik fordern könnte, da dies der Haupthebel der Gewerkschaft gegenüber einem Arbeitgeber ist.

Als Antwort auf die Frage, ob es den Arbeitnehmern mitgeteilt wurde, dass sie ihre Leistungen verlieren könnten, wenn eine Gewerkschaft gewählt wird, sagte Amazon, es habe versucht, die Arbeitnehmer im Rahmen der allgemeinen Bildung über Gewerkschaften darüber zu informieren, dass es viele Ergebnisse gibt, die sich aus Tarifverhandlungen ergeben können.

Nicht die letzte Anstrengung

Amazon-Mitarbeiter, Gewerkschaftsführer und Arbeitnehmervertreter hoffen, dass der Verlust in Alabama nicht der letzte Versuch sein wird, die weitläufige Belegschaft des Einzelhandelsgiganten zu organisieren.

Möglicherweise gibt es auch zukünftige Kampagnen bei BHM1. Der Arbeiter, der für die Gewerkschaft gestimmt hat, sagte, einige gewerkschaftsfreundliche Angestellte hätten die Möglichkeit diskutiert, sich an die Teamsters zu wenden und eine zukünftige Gewerkschaftskampagne in ihrem Lager durchzuführen.

An anderer Stelle erwägen Amazonas-Arbeiter und Gewerkschaften unterschiedliche Organisationsstrategien. Das Teamsters kommuniziert mit Amazon-Fahrern und Lagerarbeitern in einer Einrichtung in Iowa und erwägt Wege, um Arbeiter über den Wahlprozess hinaus zu sammeln. Amazon-Mitarbeiter in Chicago haben eine Gruppe gebildet, um Mitarbeiter in Einrichtungen in der Region zu organisieren, die Amazonians United Chicagoland heißt.

Ein Mitarbeiter einer Amazon-Einrichtung in New Jersey, der ebenfalls um Anonymität bat, sagte, er habe sich zuvor an eine Gewerkschaft gewandt, um die Einrichtung zu organisieren. Nachdem der Arbeiter das Ergebnis in Bessemer gesehen hatte, sagte er, dass sie zum Zeichenbrett zurückkehren und sich mit informelleren Taktiken befassen, um eine Hebelwirkung zu erzielen.

Susan Schurman, Professorin an der School of Management and Labour Relations der Rutgers University, verwies auf die Alphabet Workers Union, eine kürzlich gegründete Minderheitengewerkschaft mit mehr als 800 Google-Mitarbeitern, als potenzielles Modell für Amazon-Mitarbeiter.

Im Gegensatz zu traditionellen Gewerkschaften repräsentieren Minderheitengewerkschaften nicht die Mehrheit der Arbeitnehmer, sondern nur diejenigen, die sich für einen Beitritt entscheiden. Sie werden auch von der NLRB nicht anerkannt und fungieren nicht als Verhandlungspartner mit Arbeitgebern.

Schurman sagte jedoch, dass Minderheitengewerkschaften als “Weg zu Mehrheitsgewerkschaften” dienen und ein wirksames Instrument für den Aufbau von Arbeitnehmerunterstützung sein können, noch bevor eine formelle Kampagne mit der NLRB gestartet wird.

“Warum nicht bleiben und eine Organisation aufbauen und dabei bleiben?” Sagte Schurman. “Lassen Sie die Arbeiter neue Mitglieder rekrutieren und den Wert einer kollektiven Verhandlungsmacht demonstrieren.”

Appelbaum, der Präsident der RWDSU, sagte, eine Strategie der Minderheitengewerkschaft sei “eine Überlegung wert”.

“Wir haben noch keine Entscheidung getroffen, aber ich denke, wir werden es uns ansehen”, sagte Appelbaum. “Wir wissen, dass wir nicht weggehen.”

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Business

The Week in Enterprise: Amazon Defeats the Union

The Week in Business: Amazon Defeats the Union

Good Morning. Here are the top business and tech stories you should know for the week ahead. – Charlotte Cowles

pictureRecognition…Giacomo Bagnara

Large companies are often good at avoiding taxes to maximize profits for their shareholders. But President Biden wants to make this more difficult with new tax legislation that increases tax rates and closes the loopholes for American companies with annual incomes of more than $ 2 billion. The plan is expected to generate enough tax revenue to fund Mr. Biden’s $ 2 trillion infrastructure proposal. If it gets through Congress (and that’s a big if), what can stop companies from shifting profits overseas to tax havens like the Cayman Islands? The Biden government has a plan for this too: a global minimum tax rate that would apply to multinational companies regardless of their location.

Amazon won its battle against the biggest union surge in company history. The vote count showed that workers in their huge Alabama warehouse had decided not to form a union. The results must be confirmed by federal officials. But it is a severe blow to union organizers and Democrats who believed the time was right for organized labor to gain momentum across the country. It’s also a big win for Amazon, which has been accused of union breach in several states.

For the labor market, it’s two steps forward and one step back. For the second straight week there were new jobless claims, a sign that employment gains, while still promising, will be uneven at times. Although employers created an impressive 916,000 jobs in March, the economy still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it was before the pandemic. And many sectors that have been almost completely wiped out – like travel, restaurants and bars – are only now returning.

pictureRecognition…Giacomo Bagnara

Coinbase will be the first publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange in the US when it publishes its shares on the Nasdaq this Wednesday. It has grown to become the largest American cryptocurrency company by making it easier for people to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital tokens. (The company charges a fee every time a customer places an order to trade.) Last week, Coinbase announced that it is expecting revenue of around $ 1.8 billion in the first quarter. That’s a whopping 847 percent year-over-year increase, largely thanks to Bitcoin’s recent rally.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is suing the federal government to allow cruise ships to sail from the state’s ports again. Boats must meet requirements set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year before they can accept passengers. However, the industry says the instructions are not clear enough. Regardless, several cruise lines have announced plans to resume operations from other ports in the Caribbean and Bermuda, often with a requirement that all passengers must be vaccinated. But Mr. DeSantis has banned Florida companies from asking customers to provide proof of vaccination.

As the coronavirus pandemic led to standstills, undocumented immigrants were particularly hard hit. Their communities suffered disproportionately from high death rates and were largely ineligible for unemployment insurance and other pandemic assistance. Until now it has been like that. In New York, the government is offering one-time payments of up to $ 15,600 to one-time immigrants who lost their jobs during the pandemic and were unable to access other unemployment benefits. The money will come from a $ 2.1 billion fund in the state budget, which critics say should have gone to legal New Yorkers who are struggling.

In another win for Netflix, Sony Pictures Entertainment has signed a five-year deal to grant the streaming giant exclusive rights to its films as soon as they leave theaters. In France, Ikea faces a new lawsuit over a ten-year-old case in which its executives spied on employees and customers. And more bad news for Boeing, the company has advised airlines to ground some of their troubled 737 Max jets – the same model that was grounded for over a year after two fatal accidents – because of an electrical problem.

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Business

Amazon Employees Defeat Union Effort in Alabama

Amazon Workers Defeat Union Effort in Alabama

Amazon fought back the most significant labor dispute in its history on Friday when a tally showed that workers at its huge Alabama warehouse had voted firmly against the formation of a union.

Workers cast 1,798 votes against a union, which gave Amazon enough to forcefully thwart efforts. According to federal officials, the vote for a union was 738, less than 30 percent of the vote.

The one-sided outcome at the 6,000-person warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama dealt a heavy blow to work organizers, Democrats and their allies at a time when conditions were ripe for unions to move forward.

Amazon, which has repeatedly suppressed labor activism, appeared to be vulnerable as it faced increasing scrutiny of its market power and influence in Washington and around the world. President Biden signaled support for the union effort, as did Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermonter. The pandemic, which caused millions of people to shop online, also shed light on the plight of key workers and raised questions about Amazon’s ability to protect these employees.

However, in an aggressive campaign, the company argued that its workers had access to rewarding jobs without having to involve a union. The win leaves Amazon the freedom to treat employees on its own terms as it went on a hiring frenzy and expanded its workforce to more than 1.3 million people.

Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the history of tech companies, said Amazon’s message of offering good jobs with good wages won over criticism from the union and its supporters. The result, she said, “reads as a justification.”

She added that while the elections were just a warehouse, they had attracted so much attention that they had become a “brawl.” Amazon’s victory likely led organized workers to think “maybe it is not worth trying other places,” Ms. O’Mara said.

The retail, wholesale and department stores union that spearheaded the campaign blamed Amazon’s anti-union tactics before and during the vote, which ran from early February to late last month. The union said it would question the election results and call on federal labor officials to investigate Amazon in an attempt to create “an atmosphere of confusion, coercion and / or fear of reprisal”.

“Our system is broken,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president. “Amazon took full advantage of that.”

Amazon said in a statement that “the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that is not true.” It added, “Amazon did not win – our employees made the decision to vote against joining a union.”

About 50 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters in the camp cast ballots in the elections. A majority of 1,521 votes was required to win. About 500 ballot papers were mostly contested by Amazon, the union said. These ballot papers were not counted.

William and Lavonette Stokes, who started working at the Bessemer camp in July, said the union had not convinced them how to improve their working conditions. Amazon already offers good performance, relatively high pay starting at $ 15 an hour, and opportunities for advancement, said the couple, who have five children.

“Amazon is the only job I know of where they pay for your health insurance from day one,” said Ms. Stokes, 52. She added that she was put off by how organizers tried to view the union action as an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement as most of the workers are black.

“This wasn’t an African American problem,” said Ms. Stokes, who is black. “I think you can work there comfortably without being bothered.”

The vote could lead to a rethinking of strategy within the labor movement.

For years, union organizers have tried to use growing concerns about low-wage workers to break into Amazon. The retail, wholesale and department store unions had addressed critical issues related to supporting key black workers in the pandemic. The union had estimated that 85 percent of the workers in the Bessemer camp were black.

The inability to organize the warehouse also follows decades of unsuccessful and costly attempts to form unions at Walmart, the only American company that employs more people than Amazon. The repeated failures in two large companies could lead labor organizers to focus more on supporting national policies, such as a higher federal minimum wage, than on unionizing individual jobs.

The Amazon warehouse on the outskirts of Birmingham opened a year ago when the pandemic hit. It was part of a significant expansion for the company that accelerated during the pandemic. Last year, Amazon grew by more than 400,000 employees in the US, which now employs almost a million people. Warehouse workers typically assemble and package orders for items for customers.

The union efforts came together quickly, especially for someone aiming at such a big goal. A small group of workers in the Bessemer building reached out to the local retail union branch last summer. They were frustrated with the way Amazon was constantly using technology to monitor every second of their work day and felt that their managers were unwilling to listen to their complaints.

Organizers had at least 2,000 workers sign cards saying they wanted an election, enough for the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts union elections, to approve a vote.

The election was carried out by mail, a concession to the pandemic. Instead of holding elections for just a few days, workers had more than a month to fill out and send in their March 29 ballot papers.

Amazon’s public campaign focused on the company’s accomplishments and the $ 15 minimum wage, which is double the Alabama minimum wage. Internally, it was stressed that workers do not have to pay for union membership to have a good job. The company’s slogan – “Do it for free” – was conveyed to employees in text messages, mandatory meetings, and signs in toilet cubicles.

The union had complained that these tactics showed how companies like Amazon can have an advantage in holding mandatory anti-union meetings and having access to workers in the warehouse to convince them to vote no. In 2018, the union also tried and failed to gain a foothold in an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island.

Ms. O’Mara said complaints about the union about job stability and safety made it difficult for workers to organize. This is because the impermanence of warehouse jobs “counteracts solidarity and willingness to invest in this employer and this job,” she said.

Many union leaders said union formation at Amazon was critical to reversing the long-term decline in union membership, which fell from the upper teens to just over 6 percent of the private sector in the early 1980s.

They argued that Amazon had power over millions of workers in the industries in which it operated. The dominance of the company has forced its competitors to adopt their work practices, where efficiency is paramount.

“Amazon is changing the industry one by one,” said Appelbaum, president of the retail workers’ union, in an interview in 2019. “Amazon’s vision of the world is not the vision we want or can tolerate.” He has often referred to efforts to unify Amazon as a struggle for the “future of work”.

Some union leaders said the campaign in Bessemer would advance work goals, even if it ended in loss.

The election generated “a lot of coverage and discussion, and people in this country are hearing that unions are the solution,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “We were able to have a real discussion about what the union is actually doing.”

Noam Scheiber, Sophia June and Miles McKinley contributed to the coverage.

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Business

Amazon Vote Depend Outcomes: Dwell Updates

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Bob Miller for The New York Times

The counting of ballots in the closely watched unionization drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., is set to resume Friday at 8:30 a.m. Central time.

With about half the ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had an advantage of more than 2-to-1 over those in favor, according to a live broadcast of the counting that was tallied by The New York Times. When the counting paused, there were 1,100 votes against unionization and 463 in support.

There were 3,215 ballots cast, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, from 55 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse. The union must get support from more than half of the votes cast to prevail.

Unofficial Tally of Amazon Warehouse Unionization Votes

1,608 yes votes are needed for the union to win today.

The New York Times·As of 9:39 a.m. Hundreds of ballots have been contested, which could delay either side from reaching the threshold. One ballot was marked as void.

The ballots were being counted in random order in the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Birmingham, Ala., and the process was broadcast via Zoom to more than 200 journalists, lawyers and other observers.

The voting was conducted by mail from early February until the end of last month. A handful of workers from the labor board called out the results of each vote “Yes” for a union or “No” for nearly four hours on Thursday.

Amazon and the union had spent more than a week in closed sessions, reviewing the eligibility of each ballot cast with the labor board, the federal agency that conducts union elections. The union said several hundred ballots had been contested, largely by Amazon, and those ballots were set aside to be adjudicated and counted only if they were vital to determining an outcome. If Amazon’s large margin holds steady throughout the count, the contested ballots are likely to be moot.

The incomplete tally put Amazon on the cusp of defeating the most serious organized-labor threat in the company’s history. Running a prominent campaign since the fall, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union aimed to establish the first union at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. The result will have major implications not only for Amazon but also for organized labor and its allies.

Labor organizers have tapped into dissatisfaction with working conditions in the warehouse, saying Amazon’s pursuit of efficiency and profits makes the conditions harsh for workers. The company counters that its starting wage of $15 an hour exceeds what other employers in the area pay, and it has urged workers to vote against unionizing.

Amazon has always fought against unionizing by its workers. But the vote in Alabama comes at a perilous moment for the company. Lawmakers and regulators — not competitors — are some of its greatest threats, and it has spent significant time and money trying to keep the government away from its business.

The union drive has had the retailer doing a political balancing act: staying on the good side of Washington’s Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled he supported.

Labor leaders and liberal Democrats have seized on the union drive, saying it shows how Amazon is not as friendly to workers as the company says it is. Some of the company’s critics are also using its resistance to the union push to argue that Amazon should not be trusted on other issues, like climate change and the federal minimum wage.

Sophia June contributed to this report.

After a lengthy review, the F.A.A. allowed the Boeing 737 Max to fly again in November.Credit…Matt Mcknight/Reuters

Boeing said Friday it had notified 16 customers of a potential electrical issue with its troubled 737 Max plane and recommended that they temporarily stop flying some planes.

Boeing said airlines should verify that “that a sufficient ground path exists for a component of the electrical power system” on certain Max planes. The statement comes just months after airlines resumed flying the jet, which had been grounded for nearly two years because of a pair of accidents that killed nearly 350 people.

“We are working closely with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on this production issue,” Boeing said in a statement. “We are also informing our customers of specific tail numbers affected and we will provide direction on appropriate corrective actions.”

Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest customers of the plane, said that 30 of its 58 Max jets were affected by the notification and that it was swapping those planes out for now. The airline is only flying 15 or fewer Max jets each day.

“Southwest anticipates minimal disruption to our operation, and we appreciate the understanding of our customers and employees as safety is always our uncompromising priority,” it said in a statement.

The Max was banned from flying globally in March 2019 after the crashes. After a lengthy review, the F.A.A. allowed the Max to fly again in November, provided that Boeing and airlines make required changes to the jet, including updating its flight control software.

Since then, aviation regulators around the world have followed suit and the plane has been used on thousands of flights.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a White House appearance on Thursday.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The White House budget office will release the first fragments of President Biden’s budget proposals to Congress on Friday, providing a fresh sense of his priorities as lawmakers wait on his administration’s full budget.

Officials have stressed that the document — which will outline plans for discretionary spending within government agencies — is not a formal budget and will not include tax proposals or so-called mandatory spending in areas like Social Security. Instead, it will provide overall funding levels for agencies, like the Treasury and Defense Department, and some detail on proposed spending across the administration in areas like combating climate change.

The request will cover the 2022 fiscal year, which starts in October. White House officials had originally announced it would be released last week, before pushing back the timeline. The budget office does not have a confirmed director, after Mr. Biden’s first pick for the job, Neera Tanden, withdrew from consideration amid Republican opposition centered on her past statements on Twitter that were critical of conservatives.

Shalanda D. Young, who was confirmed by the Senate last month to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, is serving as Mr. Biden’s acting budget director.

Officials have promised that Mr. Biden’s full budget will be released later this spring. They have blamed delays on a lack of cooperation from outgoing members of the Trump administration.

“Well there’s no question, as we talked about during the transition, that we dealt with some impactful intransigence from the outgoing political appointees,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week.

“We had some cooperation from the career staff, but we didn’t have all of the information that we needed,” she added. “As you all know, we also don’t have a budget director. We have not had a budget director confirmed. We have now an acting budget director, which is an important step forward.”

Congress, which is responsible for approving government spending, is under no requirement to adhere to the White House budget, which is generally viewed as a political messaging document. In recent years, lawmakers rejected many of the Trump administration’s efforts to gut domestic programs.

Officials say the proposal that will be released on Friday will not reflect the details in Mr. Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which he introduced last week, or of a second plan he has yet to roll out, which will focus on what officials call “human infrastructure” like education and child care.

After its initial public offering imploded, WeWork went public through a SPAC deal.Credit…Kate Munsch/Reuters

After weeks of wading into the debate over how to regulate SPACS, the popular blank-check deals that provide companies a back door to public markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending its first shot across the bow.

John Coates, the acting director of the corporate finance division at the S.E.C., issued a lengthy statement on Thursday about how securities laws apply to blank-check firms, the DealBook newsletter reports.

In particular, he is interested in a crucial (and controversial) difference between SPACs and traditional initial public offerings: blank-check firms are allowed to publish often-rosy financial forecasts when merging with an acquisition target, while companies going public in an I.P.O. are not.

“With the unprecedented surge has come unprecedented scrutiny,” Mr. Coates wrote of the recent boom in blank-check deals.

Investors raise money for SPACs via an I.P.O. of a shell company, and those funds are used to merge with an unspecified company within two years, which then also becomes a publicly traded company. Because the deal is technically a merger, it’s given the same “safe harbor” legal protections for its financial forecasts as a typical M.& A. deal.

With traditional I.P.O.s, companies can’t issue such projections to prospective investors, because regulators consider it too risky for firms as yet untested by the public markets. And that’s why there are flying-taxi companies with little revenue going public via a SPAC while promising billions in sales far in the future.

The S.E.C. thinks allowing financial forecasts for these deals might be a problem. They can be “untested, speculative, misleading or even fraudulent,” Mr. Coates wrote. And he concludes his statement by suggesting a major rethink of how the “full panoply” of securities laws applies to SPACs, which could upend the blank-check business model.

If the S.E.C. does not treat SPAC deals as the I.P.Os they effectively are, he writes, “potentially problematic forward-looking information may be disseminated without appropriate safeguards.”

The letter serves as a warning, but perhaps not much else — yet. Unless the S.E.C. issues new rules (as it did for penny stocks) or Congress passes legislation, SPAC projections will continue. But this strongly worded statement could moderate or even mute them.

“The S.E.C. has now put them on notice,” Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant of the agency, said.

Revolut’s office in London in 2018. The banking start-up is offering its workers the opportunity to work abroad for up to two months a year.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, companies used to lure top talent with lavish perks like subsidized massages, Pilates classes and free gourmet meals. Now, the hottest enticement is permission to work not just from home, but from anywhere — even, say, from the French Alps or a Caribbean island.

Revolut, a banking start-up based in London, said Thursday that it would allow its more than 2,000 employees to work abroad for up to two months a year in response to requests to visit overseas family for longer periods.

“Our employees asked for flexibility, and that’s what we’re giving them as part of our ongoing focus on employee experience and choice,” said Jim MacDougall, Revolut’s vice president of human resources.

Georgia Pacquette-Bramble, a communications manager for Revolut, said she was planning to trade the winter in London for Spain or somewhere in the Caribbean. Other colleagues have talked about spending time with family abroad.

Revolut has been valued at $5.5 billion, making it one of Europe’s most valuable financial technology firms. It joins a number of companies that will allow more flexible working arrangements to continue after the pandemic ends. JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, Ford Motor and Target have said they are giving up office space as they expect workers to spend less time in the office, and Spotify has told employees they can work from anywhere.

Not all companies, however, are shifting away from the office. Tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, have added office space in New York over the last year. Amazon told employees it would “return to an office-centric culture as our baseline.”

Dr. Dan Wang, an associate professor at Columbia Business School, said he did not expect office-centric companies to lose top talent to companies that allow flexible working, in part because many employees prefer to work from the office.

Furthermore, when employees are not in the same space, there are fewer spontaneous interactions, and spontaneity is critical for developing ideas and collaborating, Dr. Wang said.

“There is a cost,” he said. “Yes, we can interact via email, via Slack, via Zoom — we’ve all gotten used to that. But part of it is that we’ve lowered our expectations for what social interaction actually entails.”

Revolut said it studied tax laws and regulations before introducing its policy, and that each request to work from abroad was subject to an internal review and approval process. But for some companies looking to put a similar policy in place, a hefty tax bill, or at least a complicated tax return, could be a drawback.

A screenshot of a “vax cards” page on Facebook. 

Online stores offering counterfeit or stolen vaccine cards have mushroomed in recent weeks, according to Saoud Khalifah, the founder of FakeSpot, which offers tools to detect fake listings and reviews online.

The efforts are far from hidden, with Facebook pages named “vax-cards” and eBay listings with “blank vaccine cards” openly hawking the items, Sheera Frenkel reports for The New York Times.

Last week, 45 state attorneys general banded together to call on Twitter, Shopify and eBay to stop the sale of false and stolen vaccine cards.

Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Shopify and Etsy said that the sale of fake vaccine cards violated their rules and that they were removing posts that advertised the items.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced the vaccination cards in December, describing them as the “simplest” way to keep track of Covid-19 shots. By January, sales of false vaccine cards started picking up, Mr. Khalifah said. Many people found the cards were easy to forge from samples available online. Authentic cards were also stolen by pharmacists from their workplaces and put up for sale, he said.

Many people who bought the cards were opposed to the Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Khalifah said. In some anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, people have publicly boasted about getting the cards.

Other buyers want to use the cards to trick pharmacists into giving them a vaccine, Mr. Khalifah said. Because some of the vaccines are two-shot regimens, people can enter a false date for a first inoculation on the card, which makes it appear as if they need a second dose soon. Some pharmacies and state vaccination sites have prioritized people due for their second shots.

An empty conference room in New York, which is among the cities with the lowest rate of workers returning to offices.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times

In only a year, the market value of office towers in Manhattan has plummeted 25 percent, according to city projections released on Wednesday.

Across the country, the vacancy rate for office buildings in city centers has steadily climbed over the past year to reach 16.4 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the highest in about a decade. That number could climb further if companies keep giving up office space because of hybrid or fully remote work, Peter Eavis and Matthew Haag report for The New York Times.

So far, landlords like Boston Properties and SL Green have not suffered huge financial losses, having survived the past year by collecting rent from tenants locked into long leases — the average contract for office space runs about seven years.

But as leases come up for renewal, property owners could be left with scores of empty floors. At the same time, many new office buildings are under construction — 124 million square feet nationwide, or enough for roughly 700,000 workers. Those changes could drive down rents, which were touching new highs before the pandemic. And rents help determine assessments that are the basis for property tax bills.

Many big employers have already given notice to the owners of some prestigious buildings that they are leaving when their leases end. JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor, Salesforce, Target and more are giving up expensive office space and others are considering doing so.

The stock prices of the big landlords, which are often structured as real estate investment trusts that pass almost all of their profit to investors, trade well below their previous highs. Shares of Boston Properties, one of the largest office landlords, are down 29 percent from the prepandemic high. SL Green, a major New York landlord, is 26 percent lower.

A closed restaurant and pastry store in Tucson, Ariz. The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said the economic recovery from the pandemic has been “uneven and incomplete.”Credit…Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

  • U.S. stock futures rose on Friday along with government bond yields after the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, reiterated his intention to keep supporting the economic recovery until it is complete.

  • The rollout of vaccinations meant the United States economy could probably reopen soon, but the recovery was still “uneven and incomplete,” Mr. Powell said at the International Monetary Fund annual conference on Thursday.

  • He pointed out that the economic burden of the pandemic was falling most heavily on low-income service workers who were least able to bear it. “I really want to finish the job and get back to a great economy,” Mr. Powell said.

  • The yield on 10-year Treasury notes jumped 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.67 percent. The yield on 10-year government bonds rose across Europe, too.

  • The S&P 500 index was set to open 0.1 percent higher and has risen 0.4 percent so far this week.

  • The relatively quiet week in the stock market has sent the VIX index, a measure of volatility, to its lowest level since February 2020. The index was at 17 points on Friday. In mid-March, as the pandemic shut down huge parts of the global economy, it spiked above 80.

  • European stock indexes were mixed on Friday, though the Stoxx Europe 600 was heading for its sixth straight week of gains. The DAX index in Germany rose 0.1 percent after data showed an unexpected drop in industrial production.

  • Oil prices rose slightly with futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, 0.2 percent higher to $59.70 a barrel.

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Business

Amazon Illegally Fired Activist Staff, Labor Board Finds

Amazon Illegally Fired Activist Workers, Labor Board Finds

SEATTLE – Amazon illegally battled two of its most prominent internal critics when it fired them last year, the National Labor Relations Board found.

Employees Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa had publicly urged the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns about warehouse workers.

The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that they would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not resolve the case. This emerges from correspondence Ms. Cunningham shared with the New York Times.

“It is a moral victory and it really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law,” said Ms. Cunningham.

The two women were among dozens of Amazon workers who told the Labor Department of the company’s retaliation last year, but in most of the other cases the workers had complained about the safety of pandemics.

“We support the right of every employee to criticize the working conditions of their employer, but that does not imply blanket immunity from our internal guidelines, which are all lawful,” said Jaci Anderson, a spokeswoman for Amazon. “We fired these employees because they did not speak publicly about working conditions, safety or sustainability, but because they repeatedly violated internal guidelines.”

Allegations of unfair labor practices at Amazon were common enough for the employment agency to convert them into a national investigation, the agency told NBC News. The agency usually conducts the investigation in its regional offices.

While Amazon’s starting wage of $ 15 an hour is twice the federal minimum, its labor practices in Washington and elsewhere are under scrutiny. The focus has increased over the past year as online orders soared during the pandemic and Amazon expanded its US workforce to nearly a million people. Amazon’s warehouse workers are considered key employees and have not been able to work from home.

This week, the National Labor Board is counting thousands of ballots determining whether nearly 6,000 workers will unionize at an Amazon warehouse outside of Birmingham, Alabama. This is the largest and most viable work threat in the company’s history. The union has stated that workers are under excessive production pressures and are closely monitored by the company to ensure quotas are respected.

The results could change the shape of the labor movement and one of America’s largest private employers.

Ms. Costa and Ms. Cunningham, who worked as designers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, began publicly criticizing the company in 2018. You were among a small group of employees who wanted the company to do more to manage the climate impact. The group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, has more than 8,700 colleagues to support their efforts.

Over time, Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa have expanded their protests. After Amazon told them that they had violated its external communications guidelines by speaking publicly about the company, their group organized 400 people to speak up and deliberately violated the guidelines to make a point .

At the start of the pandemic, they also raised concerns about the safety of Amazon’s warehouses. Amazon fired Ms. Costa and Ms. Cunningham last April, not long after their group announced an internal event where warehouse workers would speak to technical staff about their working conditions.

After the women were released, several Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, wrote to Amazon of concerns about possible retaliation. And Tim Bray, an internet pioneer and former vice president of the Amazon Cloud Computing Group, stepped down in protest.

Mr Bray said he was delighted to hear the employment office’s findings and hoped Amazon had settled the case. “The policy so far has been ‘don’t admit anything, don’t admit anything’,” he said. “This is your chance to think it over a little.”

Ms. Cunningham said that despite the company’s rejection, she and Ms. Costa felt that they and Ms. Costa were primary targets for Amazon as they were the most visible members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

The Labor Authority also upheld a complaint involving Jonathan Bailey, co-founder of Amazonians United, a workforce advocacy group. The agency filed a complaint against Amazon based on Mr Bailey’s allegations that the company was breaking the law when it interrogated him after a strike last year at the Queens warehouse where he works.

“They realized that Amazon violated our rights,” said Bailey. “I think the message that employees should hear and understand is, yes, we all experience it. But many of us struggle too. “

Amazon has resolved Mr Bailey’s case without admitting any wrongdoing and has agreed to post notices informing employees of their rights in the break room. Ms. Anderson, Amazon’s spokeswoman, said the company contradicts allegations in Mr. Bailey’s case. “We pride ourselves on providing an inclusive environment in which employees can perform excellently without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment,” she said.

Kate Conger contributed to the coverage.

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Entertainment

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Counting of Ballots Begins in Amazon Union Vote: Reside Updates

The Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Charity Rachelle for The New York Times

The counting of votes that will determine whether to a union can form at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., begins Tuesday. But the results of the union election, one of the most consequential in recent memory, may not be known until later this week or early next week because the vote can often involve a painstaking process that will be closely scrutinized by representatives from the union and Amazon.

The ballots, which were mailed out to workers in early February, must be signed and had to be received by the National Labor Relations Board at its Birmingham office by the end of Monday.

First, a staff member at the labor board will read the names of the workers, without opening an inner envelope with the actual ballot. Representatives from the union and Amazon will be on a private video conference. As each name is read, they will check the workers’ names against a staff list, and if either side contests whether that worker was eligible to vote, that ballot will be set aside. A representative from each side is also expected to be there in person to observe the process.

After the two sides have had the opportunity to make their objections about eligibility, the N.L.R.B. will begin counting the uncontested ballots. After every 100 votes, the labor board will count those ballots again until all the votes are counted. This portion will be open to reporters on a video conference line.

A finding of more contested ballots than uncontested is likely to set off legal arguments by the Retail Warehouse and Department Store union, which has led the organizing drive, and Amazon over the eligibility of each contested ballot. Each side has about a week to make its case before N.L.R.B. certifies the vote.

Either side can contest whether the vote was conducted fairly. The union, for instance, could argue that the company took steps to improperly sway the vote, by potentially making workers fearful of reprisal if they supported organizing.

If the union prevails, workers fear that the company may shut down the warehouse. Amazon has backed away from locations that brought it headaches before.

But the company has committed more than $360 million in leases and equipment for the Bessemer warehouse, and shutting down the vote of a large Black work force could publicly backfire, said Marc Wulfraat, a logistics consultant who closely tracks the company.

A worker inspecting disposable gloves at a Top Glove factory near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August.Credit…Mohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

United States Customs and Border Protection has ordered port officials to seize disposable gloves made by the world’s largest rubber glove maker, a Malaysian company that the agency says uses forced labor in its factories.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement on Monday that it had “sufficient information to believe” that the company, Top Glove, “uses forced labor in the production of disposable gloves.”

Last July, the agency issued an import ban on products from two Top Glove subsidiaries because they were suspected of using forced labor. On Monday, it said it had determined that rubber gloves produced by the company with forced, convict or indentured labor “are being, or are likely to be, imported into the United States.”

Based on that determination, the agency said in a notice, it had authorized U.S. port directors to seize the gloves and start forfeiture proceedings unless importers can produce evidence showing that the gloves were not produced with prohibited labor.

The notice was the result of a monthslong investigation “aimed at preventing goods made by modern slavery from entering U.S. commerce,” Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement.

The agency, he said, “will not tolerate foreign companies’ exploitation of vulnerable workers to sell cheap, unethically made goods to American consumers.” He added that the agency had “taken steps to ensure” that the enforcement action would not significantly affect total imports of disposable gloves into the United States.

After the import ban on Top Glove subsidiaries last summer, officials at the company said they were upgrading their worker dormitories and paying restitution to affected workers.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it was in touch with the U.S. agency and hoped to “resolve any ongoing areas of concern immediately.”

Top Glove also said it had engaged a independent labor consultancy from Britain since last July. That consultancy, Impactt Limited, said in a statement this month that its latest investigations had not turned up any “systemic forced labor” among the company’s direct employees.

But Andy Hall, a labor rights campaigner based in Nepal, said on Tuesday that Top Glove “remains an unethical company whose factories and supply chain continue to utilize forced labor,” and one that prioritizes profits and production efficiency over its workers’ basic rights.

Mr. Hall said he welcomed the Customs and Border Protection notice, and that the next step would be holding the company’s owners and investors to account.

Top Glove controls roughly a quarter of the global rubber glove market and has 21,000 employees. Many of them come from some of Asia’s poorest countries — including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal — and live and work in crowded conditions.

The company has enjoyed record profits during the pandemic, even though thousands of its low-paid workers in Malaysia suffered from a large coronavirus outbreak last year.

Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks goes up for a shot against Ben Simmons and Danny Green of the Philadelphia 76ers. Sports fans can buy, sell and collect digital “moments” on N.B.A. Top Shot.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Dapper Labs, the blockchain company that has pushed digital collectibles known as NFTs, for nonfungible tokens, said on Tuesday that it had raised $305 million in new funding.

The company, which has a partnership with the National Basketball Association, created an online marketplace called N.B.A. Top Shot in October where sports fans can buy, sell and collect digital “moments” — essentially, video clips of basketball players. But unlike most basketball highlights that can be found on YouTube or ESPN, these moments are on a blockchain, a digital ledger that records cryptocurrency transactions, which makes it possible for fans to buy, collect and exchange them like trading cards.

Top Shot has exploded in popularity, part of a larger frenzy for cryptocurrencies and NFTs that has driven up the value of Bitcoin and led to head-turning bids for digital artwork. There have been more than three million Top Shot transactions, Dapper Labs said, generating $500 million in sales. The company makes money through the sale of the digital moments and also collects a cut whenever a moment is resold.

The new funding values Dapper Labs, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, at $2.6 billion. It is the biggest financing for the company, which had previously raised $52.5 million.

Investors in the new funding include the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the hedge fund Coatue Management and former and current N.B.A. stars including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Kyle Lowry and Klay Thompson, as well as celebrities like Will Smith and Ashton Kutcher.

Roham Gharegozlou, the Dapper Labs founder and chief executive — who also created the 2017 blockchain game CryptoKitties — said Top Shot had “catalyzed” the excitement surrounding NFTs.

“I think N.B.A. Top Shot is proving that these platforms are ready for prime time,” he said.

Mr. Gharegozlou said the new funding would go toward partnerships with other sports leagues like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts organization. He said the company would also hire more employees and fund NFT ventures made by other start-ups.

The Obama administration had said that a design “concept” featuring Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20 bill would be unveiled by 2020.Credit…Harvey B. Lindsley/Library of Congress, via Associated Press

On the first day of the Biden presidency, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the Treasury Department was “taking steps to resume efforts” to put the abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. “It’s important that our money reflects the history and diversity of our country,” Ms. Psaki said.

But it will probably be years before we see the Underground Railroad conductor gracing U.S. currency, the DealBook newsletter reports.

The reason? The deadline for printing a new version of the $20 bill is 2030. It was set by an anti-counterfeiting committee in 2013, two years before Tubman won a campaign to replace President Andrew Jackson on the bill.

“The primary reason currency is redesigned is for security against counterfeiting,” Lydia Washington, a representative for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, told DealBook. “The redesign timeline is driven by security feature development.”

The Obama administration said that a design “concept” would be unveiled by 2020, to coincide with the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Extensive redesign work was reportedly done, but in 2019, President Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said the project would be delayed until at least 2026. (Insiders said they had always doubted that the 2020 deadline could be met).

It turns out that the complex design and testing process for currency cannot be hurried. “No final images have been selected,” Ms. Washington said. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The container ship Ever Given was refloated on Monday, unblocking the Suez Canal. Oil prices fell as ship traffic on the waterway resumed.Credit…Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images

  • Wall Street opened lower on Tuesday, as bond yields jumped higher.

  • The S&P 500 was down 0.3 percent in morning trading, and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite declined 0.7 percent.

  • In bond markets, attention was returning to the pace of the economic recovery in the United States as more details of President Biden’s clean energy and infrastructure spending plans emerged, including a huge expansion of offshore wind energy along the East Coast. A $3 trillion economic package is in the works, on the heels of the $1.9 trillion economic recovery bill.

  • Bond prices dropped, sending yields on 10-year bonds sharply higher. The yield on U.S. Treasury notes rose 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.76 percent, the highest since January 2020. Faster economic growth is likely to lead to higher prices, which reduces the appeal of bonds.

  • Most European stock indexes rose, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5 percent. Data published on Tuesday showed an increase in inflation in Spain and Germany, while an index of economic confidence for the eurozone in March was at its highest level since before the pandemic.

  • Oil prices fell. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, fell 1.5 percent to $60.61 a barrel. With the Suez Canal now unblocked, focus shifted to the meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies beginning Thursday to decide on production quotas for May. In early March, OPEC decided to keep the tighter quotas the same for April.

  • “Much as the Suez Canal is seeing traffic return progressively to normal, it seems that bond markets are returning to pricing the economic recovery,” analysts at ING wrote, referring to the rise in bond yields. They also warned that traders and investors settling positions for the end of the first quarter would affect market prices this week.

  • Shares in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse and the Japanese bank Nomura extended their deep declines slightly from Monday, when the banks said they faced losses as they tried to exit positions tied to an American hedge fund, Archegos.

  • The British pound rose 0.2 percent against the euro to the strongest level in 13 months as England’s lockdown restrictions were eased slightly on Monday.

A mobile touch screen doubles as a digital whiteboard while a cellphone on a tripod makes a recording that can be used later in a presentation.Credit…John Muggenborg for The New York Times

As company heads are once again planning for a return to the office, it is not only safety measures but also the new work arrangements that are driving discussions about the post-pandemic workplace. More than 80 percent of companies are embracing a hybrid model whereby employees will be in the office three days a week, according to a new survey by KayoCloud, a real estate technology platform.

Workplaces are being reimagined for activities benefiting from face-to-face interaction, including collaboration on projects, Jane Margolies reports for The New York Times.

Common areas will be increased and equipped with furniture that can be moved as needs change. Steelcase and Knoll, suppliers of office furniture, report strong interest in mobile tables, carts and partitions.

As the amount of space devoted to gathering expands, the fate of one’s own personal turf at the office — a desk decorated with family photos, a couple of file cabinets — hangs in the balance. In some cases, personal desks are being replaced with “hoteling” workstations, also called hot desks, which can be used by whoever needs a place to touch down for a day.

Conference rooms, too, are getting a reboot. Companies are puzzling over how to give remote workers the same ability to participate as those who are physically present. There are even early discussions about using artificial intelligence to conjure up holographic representations of employees who are off-site but could still take a seat at the table. And digital whiteboards are likely to become more popular, so workers at home can see what’s being written in real time.

Kroger requires employees and customers to wear masks.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York Times

Retail and fast-food workers feel newly vulnerable in states like Mississippi and Texas, where governments have removed mask mandates before a majority of people have been vaccinated and while troubling new variants of the coronavirus are appearing.

It feels like a return to the early days of the pandemic, when businesses said customers must wear masks but there was no legal requirement and numerous shoppers simply refused, Sapna Maheshwari reports for The New York Times. Many workers say that their stores do not enforce the requirement, and that if they do approach customers, they risk verbal or physical altercations.

For many people who work in retail, especially grocery stores and big-box chains, the repeals of the mask mandates are another example of how little protection and appreciation they have received during the pandemic. They were praised as essential workers, but that rarely translated into extra pay on top of their low wages. Grocery employees were not initially given priority for vaccinations in most states, even as health experts cautioned the public to limit time in grocery stores because of the risk posed by new coronavirus variants. (Texas opened availability to everyone 16 and older on Monday.)

The differing state and business mandates have some workers worried about more confrontations. Refusing service to people without masks, or asking them to leave, has led to incidents in the past year like a cashier’s being punched in the face, a Target employee getting his arm broken and the fatal shooting of a Family Dollar security guard.

Emily Francois, a sales associate at a Walmart in Port Arthur, Texas, said that customers had been ignoring signs to wear masks and that Walmart had not been enforcing the policy.

“I see customers coming in without a mask and they’re coughing, sneezing, they’re not covering their mouths,” said Ms. Francois, who has worked at Walmart for 14 years and is a member of United for Respect, an advocacy group. “Customers coming in the store without masks make us feel like we aren’t worthy, we aren’t safe.”