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Starbucks workers around the U.S. are planning a three-day strike starting Friday as part of their effort to unionize the coffee chain’s stores. More than 1,000 baristas at 100 store s are planning to walk out, according to Starbucks Workers United, the labor group organizing the effort. The strike will be the longest in the year-old union ization campaign. This is the second major strike in a month by Starbucks’ U.S. workers. On Nov. 17, workers at 110 Starbucks stores held a one-day walkout. That effort coincided with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink. Starbucks employees plan one-day strike on annual Red Cup Day Nov. 18, 2022 00:50 More than 264 of Starbucks’ 9,000 company-run U.S. stores have voted to unionize since late last year. Starbucks opposes the union ization effort, saying the company functions better when it works directly with employees. But the company said last month that it respects employees’ ...

The bitter negotiations that nearly brought the country’s freight rail system to a halt last week hinged on one quality of life issue: worker leave.  Rail workers nearly went on strike over paid sick leave. They lost their fight, but in the post-pandemic era, the issue of how and when workers can take leave from their jobs is at the core of several major labor negotiations. At Delta, nearly 15,000 pilots threatened a work stoppage due in part to disagreements about time off and scheduling before they reached a tentative agreement with the airline this week. At the University of California, where some 48,000 graduate student workers and researchers are in the midst of a contentious strike; workers pushed for — and won — major concessions from the university on its paid time-off and family leave policies.  Delta Airlines pilots take part in an informational picket at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in 2016. Glen Stubbe / Star Tribune via AP file More than 100,000 rail workers ...

Workers at two of the country's biggest rail unions split over a tentative contract their leaders had hashed out with freight rail companies — leaving open the possibility of a debilitating rail strike in the middle of the holiday season. The 28,000-member SMART-TD union, which represents rail conductors, rejected the contract after one of its divisions voted it down. Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which represents some 24,000 freight train engineers, voted in favor of the deal. The no vote is a rejection of the compromise worked out in September with the help of the White House and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. Several unions have signaled their discontent primarily over the proposed contract’s lack of fully paid sick leave and other scheduling requirements. Union leaders said Monday they were ready to go back to the bargaining table. “This can all be settled through negotiations and without a strike," Jeremy Ferguson, the president of t...