Submitted on Wed, 04/11/2007 - 12:55pm
The National Blood Service performs a vital role in collecting blood from donations from 100's of sites daily, testing the blood for Hepatitis, HIV, Malaria and Syphilis and filtering the blood and separating into components. They must then distribute it promptly to hospitals. There are centres that perform these functions in Oxford, Bristol, Southampton, Tooting, Colindale, Brentwood, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Cambridge, Sheffield and Leeds.
Staff have been in industrial dispute with the NBS board of directors and management for about a year, over unworkable reconfiguration plans which will see local processing and testing sites condensed into just three 'supercentres', in Bristol, Manchester and Colindale.
Submitted on Wed, 04/11/2007 - 3:17am
April 8, 2007 - New York Times, By Daniel Gross [of Slate Magazine, not the IWW Organizer] ON March 30, the National Labor Relations Board’s New York office delivered a stinging accusation against one of the city’s — and the nation’s — most popular retail outlets. The labor board charged that Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee chain, committed 30 violations of law in the process of trying to ward off union activity at four Manhattan outlets.
This may be the latest salvo in a new kind of labor battle: union workers versus corporate do-gooders.
The allegations that the company fired employees who were supportive of unionization and threatened to fire others are more reminiscent of 1930s-era industrial management than of the carefully groomed culture of a company that wears its conscience on its recyclable coffee-cup sleeves.
Submitted on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 5:48pm
New Labor Board Complaint Exposes Deep, Lengthy Anti-Union Effort by Starbucks
LABOR BOARD COMPLAINT ATTACHED
New York, NY- Just over a year after settling extensive labor charges against it, the Starbucks Coffee Co. is the target of a new
National Labor Relations Board complaint over the termination of IWW Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) organizers Daniel Gross and Joe Agins, Jr., and a host of other unlawful anti-union tactics. The government complaint is the result of an independent Labor Board investigation triggered by charges from the SWU [StarbucksUnion.org].
"This Labor Board complaint reveals that repeat-offender Starbucks is an unrepentant violator of workers' rights," said Daniel Gross, the outspoken former barista whose termination after a false allegation by Starbucks was deemed unlawful by the Labor Board. "Starbucks left the rule of law behind when the union campaign started in 2004 and according to this complaint has yet to return. It's remarkable that our union is growing stronger everyday despite an almost three year campaign of illegal dirty tricks to defeat us."
Submitted on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 5:42pm
By Steven Greenhouse - New York Times, April 3, 2007
The National Labor Relations Board has accused Starbucks of breaking the law 30 times in fighting union activity at four of its coffee shops in Manhattan.
The labor board’s regional office in Manhattan issued detailed charges against Starbucks on Friday after organizers from the [Industrial] Workers of the World complained that the company had sought to suppress their efforts to form a union.
In its complaint, the labor board said that Starbucks managers at the four locations had retaliated against workers supportive of unionizing by firing two of them, threatening to terminate others and giving several workers negative performance evaluations.
Submitted on Mon, 04/02/2007 - 7:25pm
Members from the NYC Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) put up daily picket lines this past week in front of Giant Big Apple Beer Ltd, a beer and soda distributor in Woodside, Queens. Wobblies, workers, and supporters were out there every day starting Monday, March 26, through Saturday, from about 8:00 am until 2:00 pm. The pickets were held in response to the vandalism of union workers’ cars. The goal of the pickets was to hurt the company by preventing trucks from making deliveries to the company.
The pickets proved to be a useful tool against the company, as a number of trucks did not want to cross the picket line and thus did not make their deliveries. Tuesday was probably the most successful day of the picket, as three out of four trucks were turned away. Most of the truck drivers who make deliveries to Giant Big Apple are Teamsters and thus respect picket lines. However, there were some Teamsters as well as some independent contractors who drove their trucks past the lines. Even though some drivers crossed, enough trucks were turned away to have caused a substantial loss to the company this week.
