Sherman A1
Sherman A1's JournalThe volatile retail landscape is hitting retail employees the hardest
The ongoing shakeups in the retail world have had major effects on department stores and retailers across the board, but it’s always the employees and workers, the people who actually operate those stores day in and day out, who end up feeling the biggest impact.
Having just announced the closure of 125 stores, Macy’s is the most recent example of the challenges facing modern retailers. But many stores are overextended and not adapting to ways that consumers shop today.
“It’s a perfect storm for retail right now,” said Scott Stuart, CEO of Turnaround Management Association. “Retail has fundamentally changed in the last few years. The big box store is not the go-to, only solution for customers anymore, and the retailers need to adapt.”
But it’s the employees who face the brunt of these shakeups. Macy’s is laying off 2,000 people as part of the store closures, and, according to one anonymous employee, that process has been chaotic, confusing and sudden. When Barneys went bankrupt, 800 people lost their jobs, and in January 2019, retail layoffs were up 92% compared to a year before.
https://www.glossy.co/fashion/the-volatile-retail-landscape-is-hitting-retail-employees-the-hardest
Fate Is The Hunter
This is one of my all time favorite movies and I just stumbled across it on YouTube.
Glen Ford, Suzanne Plesette, Rod Taylor, Wally Cox, Nancy Kwon and more.
1964 release
ATU Local 788 ratifies new contract with Metro Transit
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 788 (St. Louis) has approved a new three-year contract with Bi-State Development Board of Commissioners, which oversees the Metro Transit system.
Local 788 members approved the contract last month after rejecting a previous contract offer in October. Local 788 represents about 1,500 employees including MetroBus drivers and MetroLink operators.
The new contract includes a higher starting pay for bus drivers and a rollover of employee health plan contributions to address rising insurance costs.
“It was a long fight,” Reggie Howard, president of Local 788, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But we feel really good about it.”
https://labortribune.com/atu-local-788-ratifies-new-contract-with-metro-transit/
Labor Board majority shrinks size of union buttons on the job
Washington (PAI) — By a partisan 3-1 vote just before the holidays, the National Labor Relations Board’s GOP majority shrank the size of union buttons and other insignia workers can wear on the job.
The Dec. 16 ruling represented a win for Walmart in its long-running and vicious campaign to stop workers from standing up for themselves, whether by unionizing or, as in this case, by advocacy through a non-union worker group, OurWalmart.
Walmart’s employee handbook banned buttons – or anything else – larger than its own workers’ name tags. In one case, it said a 3” x 5” pin memorializing a worker killed in a car crash was too large, because it was a half-inch taller than the name tag.
The anti-worker retail monster also banned non-Walmart tags, notably the union buttons, even in “employees only” areas.
https://labortribune.com/labor-board-majority-shrinks-size-of-union-buttons-on-the-job
Missouri bucks national trend, adds 46,000 union members - a 15-year high
“Right-to-work,” minimum wage and the 1% not knowing when to say enough is enough when it comes to squeezing workers is paying off in a surprising way for Missouri unions.
Union membership in the Show-Me state grew last year by 46,000, to 297,000, bucking a national downward trend. Union members now make up 11.1 percent of the state’s workforce, up from 9.4 percent in 2018.
In Illinois, union membership fell by 15,000 last year, reducing the unionization rate from 13.8 percent to 13.6 percent.
Union density nationwide was 10.3 percent last year according to an annual report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Based on a Current Population Survey sample of 60,000 households nationwide, BLS calculated the U.S. had 14.574 million union members last year, down 170,000 (0.2 percent) from 2018.
https://labortribune.com/missouri-bucks-national-trend-adds-46000-union-members-a-15-year-high/
Missouri bucks national trend, adds 46,000 union members - a 15-year high
“Right-to-work,” minimum wage and the 1% not knowing when to say enough is enough when it comes to squeezing workers is paying off in a surprising way for Missouri unions.
Union membership in the Show-Me state grew last year by 46,000, to 297,000, bucking a national downward trend. Union members now make up 11.1 percent of the state’s workforce, up from 9.4 percent in 2018.
In Illinois, union membership fell by 15,000 last year, reducing the unionization rate from 13.8 percent to 13.6 percent.
Union density nationwide was 10.3 percent last year according to an annual report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Based on a Current Population Survey sample of 60,000 households nationwide, BLS calculated the U.S. had 14.574 million union members last year, down 170,000 (0.2 percent) from 2018.
https://labortribune.com/missouri-bucks-national-trend-adds-46000-union-members-a-15-year-high/
Sephora plans to open 100 new stores from Charlotte to Nashville as it ramps up its presence outside
Sephora announced Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 100 new stores across North America in 2020.
The new location will open in 75 different cities including Charlotte, North Carolina; San Jose, California; and Nashville, Tennessee.
"There's no doubt that there's a trend toward more local shopping destinations," Jeff Gaul, senior vice president of Real Estate and Store Development at Sephora, said in a statement to the press on Tuesday. "This year, clients can expect to see more Sephora stores not only in malls and high-traffic shopping centers, but also closer to home."
Sephora has more than 490 standalone stores in the US, many of which are located in malls, which have been badly hit by the retail apocalypse as anchor stores such as Sears and JCPenney's close and traffic to these shopping centers dries up.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sephora-opens-100-stores-focuses-growth-outside-of-mall-2020-2?op=1
Not all the news in the Retail Sector is bad and while this hardly makes up for the losses being seen, it is a bit of a bright spot.
St. Louis County Will Provide Tablets To Jail Inmates
St. Louis County is expecting to provide tablets to approximately 900 inmates in its jail, but it won’t need to purchase them.
An undisclosed private company will pay for the tablets — and at least one staff member to maintain them — in exchange for charging inmates for the services offered on the devices, said Doug Moore, spokesman for County Executive Sam Page. Those services are likely to include email-like communication, photo exchanges, video chatting, law library access and educational classes.
They will replace the county’s former contract for inmate phone services, which has expired. The new contract is being offered for five years, with a one-year extension, Moore said. It is not expected to cost the county any money, but it won’t make money off the services either, he said.
Currently, the jail gets a portion of the money inmates spend on phone services, but the jail won’t get that from the new tablet programs. The county is not going to take a share of the tablet charges in order to keep the rates lower for the inmates, Moore said.
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-county-will-provide-tablets-jail-inmates
Fairview Heights Moves Closer To Having A Marijuana Dispensary, But It's Still Months Away
FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS — The City Council voted nine to one on Tuesday to approve regulations for recreational marijuana businesses that want to open in the community.
The ordinance specifies which kind of businesses can open in Fairview Heights — whether that be a dispensary, cultivator, craft grower or other facility.
nitially, the rules are restrictive compared to other Metro East communities. Fairview Heights will only allow one recreational cannabis dispensary to open in the city. All other kinds of marijuana-related businesses are prohibited.
“We decided as a community right now we would try one, should it be successful or problematic,” said Andrea Riganti, director of land use and development. “That way we aren’t setting ourselves up for more than we can adequately handle.”
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/fairview-heights-moves-closer-having-marijuana-dispensary-it-s-still-months-away
Instacart employees in Chicago are the first to unionize in the US
Gig economy workers may have won an important, if conditional, battle in their push for better conditions. Instacart employees in the Chicago suburb of Skokie have voted to unionize through their local branch of United Food and Commercial Workers, giving them more collective bargaining power than they had before. The move only covers 15 staffers who operate at the Mariano's grocery store, but it's the first time Instacart employees have unionized in the US and could affect issues like turnover rates, work pacing and mysterious employee rating algorithms.
In a statement, Instacart said it "will honor" the unionization vote pending certification of the results, and that it intended to negotiate in "good faith" on a collective bargaining agreement. The company added that it "respect[s] our employees' rights to explore unionization."
That last claim doesn't appear to be true based on evidence, however. Motherboard reported that Instacart had high-level managers visit the Mariano's store to distribute anti-union material insisting that unions would hurt pay and "exercise a great deal of control" over staff. If accurate, the approach isn't novel. Tech companies like Google, Uber and Lyft have been accused of anti-union efforts.
This isn't a night-and-day change for Instacart, at least not yet. Only 12,000 of Instacart's 142,000 shoppers are employees capable of unionizing. The rest, like at many other gig economy companies, don't have that status and the bargaining chip it provides. Still, this could spur more employees to consider unions, and that in turn could have a significant impact on Instacart working conditions across the country.
https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/02/instacart-employees-unionize-in-chicago/
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