🏛️📚 The NRLB is working on it
Although the NLRB doesn’t have a quorum yet, the Board is back in sort-of business after a record-breaking 43-day shutdown. From here, employers can expect a slow return to “normal” as the Board’s small staff starts clearing out the backlog of union petitions and ULP filings. Elections will need to be rescheduled as well, and the Board has posted a list of revised due dates for certain documents and processes.
Now, if only a crystal ball could tell us when Board rulings will start being issued, or rather, when that quorum will be satisfied. General Counsel nominee Crystal Carey and Board nominee James Murphy could soon be confirmed by the Senate now that the government has reopened. The fate of Scott Mayer, who is currently Boeing chief counsel, should also be decided in the near future after the Boeing strike resolved late this week.
Surely, these pieces will come together before David Prouty’s term ends in August 2026? Fingers crossed.
🌿⚖️ An industry thrown into overnight disarray
The newly approved federal spending bill made the surprise move of closing a loophole, thereby making most hemp products illegal in one year. Now, a $28 billion dollar industry has been put on notice that entire farm operations could be wiped out, and an estimated 300,000 jobs could soon disappear. The eleventh-hour measure was opposed by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, who represents Kentucky, one of the top hemp-producing states. Paul tried to have the provision removed before voting against the bill.
It’s a controversial and complicated development, and it’s worth watching how unions react. In this case, the UFCW and the Teamsters are the most common Big Labor organizations involved in hemp workplaces. They will likely lobby to have the ban reversed in favor of the hemp industry being extensively regulated in the same manner as cannabis.
Not only would such an outcome be a tax-dollar boon–and let’s get real, that might have been one motivation for the ban being inserted in a spending bill–but if unions succeed in that lobbying, they’ll receive goodwill from hemp workers, who would likely be receptive toward organizing.
☕🥤Starbucks Workers United’s Red Cup Rebellion has returned
Four years after Starbucks Workers United won their first election in Buffalo, NY, baristas still have no first contract or even a national bargaining framework. As forecast, baristas at scattered stores went on an open-ended strike for Red Cup Day (Nov. 13) to protest the lack of progress in talks between the union and company. CNBC reports that 65 stores in 40 cities saw 1,000 baristas walk out on the strike’s first day.
Additionally, Starbucks and the NLRB are meeting again on the company’s appeal of a ruling that a New York cafe’s dress code policy, which limited attire to “one pin” and barred union t-shirts, violated workers’ right to organize under the NLRA. That case has arrived with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals with the company asking to halt the NLRB’s policing of workplace dress codes, and this week, a panel of judges expressed skepticism over that Board standard. One judge reasoned that Starbucks’ dress code is in line with the company’s “general desire to create a vibe for this retail establishment,” which “seems to me a reasonable position.”
We’ll have to see how those proceedings conclude, but back in 2012, the Second Circuit did side against the NLRB and with Starbucks during a time when the Industrial Workers of the World were trying to organize baristas. At that time, the court allowed the “one pin” policy to stand if “special circumstances” applied.
🤖💡🧠 Off to the AI-building races
This field’s biggest contenders are not slowing their rush to develop mega-infrastructure. To that end, Claude owner Anthropic is investing $50 billion in a swath of custom data centers stretching from Texas to New York. The facilities will begin to go live beginning in 2026 and will employ 800 permanent workers and involve thousands of construction roles. Whereas OpenAI announced plans to spend $500 billion by year’s end on starting development on five new data center sites. OpenAI projects at least 25,000 onsite jobs will be created at these five sites.
To what end? The sky is the apparent limit, at least until the need for profit comes calling. Anything could happen in the next few years, but the Wall Street Journal reports how Anthropic projects that they will break even by 2028 while OpenAI is forecast to lose $74 billion in that same year.
And in case anybody wondered how Mark Zuckerberg’s quest for “superintelligence” is going, Meta also pledged to spend over $1 billion on a 700,000 square-foot data center in Wisconsin. Zuckerberg has further forecast a $600 billion total spend on AI infrastructure through 2028.
🎲🎰🎯 Teamsters’ turmoil at casinos
A strike at Horseshoe Indianapolis casino is approaching the one-month mark. This week, a federal court upheld the Caesars Entertainment-owned casino’s decision to have the picket line moved. The workers’ election date to join the Teamsters has been on hold due to the government shutdown, and the union sued the City of Shelbyville while claiming violation of First Amendment rights. A federal district court judge did not agree with the union’s claim since workers weren’t asked to move off Horseshoe’s property, simply to an area less likely to further disrupt casino operations.
And in Las Vegas, Teamsters members authorized a strike at the off-strip Rio hotel-casino following two years of contract negotiations. Currently, 100 workers have been working without a contract since April 2024, and the strike could disrupt upcoming events such as the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix and National Finals Rodeo.
In this case, what happens in Vegas might not stay in Vegas.
