Working even 10 unpaid minutes a day, the workers say, adds up to 4.5 workdays per year of free labor, or about $712 U.S. (618 euros) in stolen wages. And at the most extreme, stolen time can reach up to 45 minutes per day.

The petition identifies three ways Amazon is stealing workers’ time:

1) Threshold time, where if a worker clocks in up to 15 minutes early for a shift or clocks out up to 15 minutes late, the company rounds back down to the scheduled time
2) Changing times to put on safety gear and boots
3) Walking time to pick up and return equipment

Stella de Palma, a delivery worker at a warehouse near Berlin, said workers normally change before clocking in. “Some shifts are only allowed to clock in or out at certain time clocks, which means we have to walk all the way across the shop floor first,” de Palma said.

She doesn’t think it makes sense, especially during peak night shifts from 11:10 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. “We’re already working near the locker rooms, where there are also time clocks.” What ends up happening is that they have to walk a long distance across the shop floor to clock in and then back to the locker room to change.

She has found workarounds: “I started leaving work unfinished instead of completing it, simply because I didn’t feel it was right to work those extra minutes for free.”

Amazon workers are bringing their case to an arbitration board, overseen by a retired judge, to rule on whether these extra minutes when clocking in and out qualify as working time. The workers are demanding a return to the “secondwise” system, where once you clock in, the exact time is logged in.

But whatever the legal outcome, the fact that workers weren’t consulted when Amazon made the change in 2024 has motivated them to redouble their organizing, so that they can block the unilateral authority of management to impose these kinds of workplace changes.

THRESHOLD TIMES

Workers said Amazon tells them they need to be more flexible with their schedules to meet customers’ needs. But Nils Carrara, a sort center worker, said when they show up earlier than scheduled in a show of flexibility, they aren’t paid for that time. “Why does a corporation like Amazon need to steal a few euros from me every day?” Carrara asked.

Workers like Carrara earn between $20 and $26 an hour. Amazon’s 1.5 million workers and misclassified contractors worldwide generate the company’s enormous wealth, driving its market valuation to nearly $3 trillion. That value created by workers has been funnelled into a $200 billion investment in artificial intelligence, including software for monitoring workers.

In squeezing workers down to the minute, Amazon is engaging in a long employer tradition. More than a century ago, management consultant Frederick Winslow Taylor popularized “scientific management,” a method of increasing output by following workers around with a clipboard and stopwatch, looking to optimize workers’ movements through incentives and by eliminating any superfluous motion or moment of slack.

Amazon has long subjected workers to a regime of algorithmic surveillance, tracking their every move to wring out more productivity. That has been a key spur to organizing as workers are penalized for “time off task” or missing productivity targets, a form of algorithmic management.

That’s old-fashioned twentieth-century Taylorism. Amazon has updated it from the era of stopwatches and clipboards to today’s algorithms, supplying the simple scripts for workers to follow and tracking them.

COMPANY CONTROL

High-tech wage theft is the latest battleground. Christian Harenberg, a supervisor, member of Verdi union, and vice chairman of the works council at an Amazon delivery station in Berlin, is organizing to revert back to a timekeeping log that records exact times a worker punches in and out. The petition is the opening salvo to revitalize the institutional structures of his site’s works councils.

Works Councils, a creation of German law, are elected representative bodies of workers who meet with management to deal with shop floor issues. As a Verdi union member and vice chairperson, Harenberg is a spokesperson and worker advocate; he and fellow works council members convene four general assemblies per year. (In Germany, supervisors are part of unions.)

Under the “threshold times” system, Harenberg explains, “let’s say your schedule is from 7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., and you badge out at 1:40 a.m., it automatically jumps back to 1:30 a.m., even if you have worked this extra 10 minutes, and this goes up to 15 minutes before and after the shift.”

It feels particularly unfair, Harenberg said, that “if your manager asks you to do a little bit more, the company says that in case you have 10 minutes of extra work, and the manager is in charge of booking that manually, but you have no way to control that.”

MANAGEMENT SCREW-UP

Under Germany’s Co-Determination Act, the law that allows for works councils, Amazon should have held a hearing with worker representatives before making software changes, altering working hours, or defining when work officially begins and ends.

“If the software is dealing with personal data, the employer needs to get in contact with the works council and cannot decide to turn something on,” said Harenberg. “There has to be an agreement between both parties.”

Workers weren’t told about the change, but some found out by chance. “Some of my co-workers noticed that the extra minutes they worked were no longer being added to their overtime accounts,” de Palma said. “It was only after we asked about it that we were officially informed about the change.”

Other workers got the information inadvertently when managers screwed up and forgot to set to “private” a SIM ticket, Amazon’s internal ticketing and incident-management platform. SIM is used by workers, managers, and engineers to log breakdowns, track maintenance requests, and escalate all kinds of internal problems across warehouses and Amazon Web Services data centers.

“They made calculations, talking about how many minutes they can save with the new system,” recalled Harenberg. The managers talked about how they would have to “make the work council [delivery] stations agree on a certain software to be able to install these threshold times.”

REFUSED TO BE INTIMIDATED

At one delivery station, though, management was forced to back down from implementing the change.

“Strictly speaking, we didn’t block it ourselves,” said Serdal Sardas, a supervisor on the night shift and a vice chairman of the works council, who has worked at Amazon since 2019, after serving eight years in the military.

“The employer blocked it themselves,” by refusing to answer the question of who had access to the employees’ personal data.

Amazon was apparently running afoul of European data protection laws, which require that personal data may only be accessed by people who need it for their work.

“We suspected that the IT or HR teams handling the [threshold times] tickets and adjustments were located outside the EU, in the U.S. or India,” said Sardas. “If the employer had confirmed that employee data was being processed outside the EU, they wouldn’t have stood a chance of enforcing the tool in court or through a conciliation board.”

The works council at this delivery station was proactive and well-organized, compared to other locations where either there was none in place or elected leaders had only been in office for a short time. If there’s no works council, then the co-determination rules don’t apply and management can arbitrarily impose changes on the workplace without consulting workers’ representatives.

“There’s no blaming those colleagues” at the warehouses where threshold times were imposed, Sardas l said. “They simply didn’t know any better back then and were put under a lot of pressure by the employer. Our works council was already well-established and experienced. We knew our rights inside and out, so we refused to be intimidated or rushed into implementing anything prematurely.”

CREATE HAVOC

Verdi divides its organizing departments into a logistics division, which includes the delivery and sort centers, and a commerce division, which includes the fulfillment centers. The fulfillment centers employ thousands of people in each warehouse. Workers there have organized frequent strikes, starting in 2013.

Amazon has had fulfillment centers in Germany for over 20 years. But sort and delivery warehouses are newer, appearing within the last nine years, made up of immigrants from Latin America and Africa. They are much smaller than fulfillment centers; they employ a few hundred workers.

The confluence of these factors—a largely immigrant workforce like in the U.S., and newer facilities with no strike experience—has meant Verdi has struggled to gain a foothold within them, including on the works council, much less establishing a union representation beachhead.

The result of that institutional weakness, says Verdi organizer Boris Bojilov, is that the works councils can become dominated by workers who tend to go along with management. That danger is present across all Amazon facilities, but especially in newer and smaller sites where it’s harder to run works council elections.That has created an opening for Amazon to exploit union vulnerabilities in the logistics sector.

Bojilov thinks the strategy to build worker power at Amazon must depend on using the existing works council structures to create a culture of organizing. “Amazon won’t give in easily on the legal side,” he said. “They are saying it openly in the negotiations with the works councils—if you are successful here, and we have to give you, let’s say, five minutes for changing time, or two minutes for walking times, or two minutes for threshold time—they will have to roll it out at all sites.”

On the organizing front, “we try to create as many rebellious works councils as possible,” he said. “We try to coordinate them in order that they go all for the arbitration committees, so that creates havoc and cost for Amazon. And at one point, they will say, 10 works councils go to the arbitration board, one day costs €12,000 [ or $13,842]. It’s like 10 days of negotiations per year, times 10 stations.”

TWO ROUTES

Verdi organizers and workers are trying to transform the works councils into fighting institutions, arguing they still serve a valuable function as forums that can cohere workers, educate them, and equip them to take collective action.

“You can also use it as a political stage,” said Bojilov about worker assemblies that the works councils hold. “We will talk to the workers to prepare them, because management has their arguments. They will say, ‘When you enter the shop floor, you’re not working. You are talking about your last weekend and what you did with your girlfriend and blah blah blah.’”

He says the union will need to embolden workers who management has long denigrated as “illiterate migrants” who should be “grateful for their lives that Amazon gives them a couple of bucks” to stand up to managers from Munich or Luxembourg.

“That’s how we build union culture,” Bojilov said. “We show the workers that they can rally majorities on their behalf. They can embarrass managers, contradict, and speak up to them.”

As workers gain confidence they can also hold accountable their elected officials in the works council, who Bojilov said can drift into thinking of themselves as “politicians sitting in their rooms, drinking coffee, and philosophizing—forgetting about the shop floor.”

“There are two routes: there is the bureaucratic route and there is the organizing route,” said Bojilov. “But the idea is also to connect them.”

NEED THE MONEY

Another fight is only beginning. Harenberg said that normally delivery station shifts are eight hours, but now Amazon is pushing for 10-hour shifts during the peak season. The legal maximum is 48 hours per week. And workers at the Berlin delivery station need the hours.

“We tried to reduce the hours, especially during peak time, because of health reasons,” said Harenberg. But workers said no. “They want to have these hours. They want to have the money.”

Under German labor law, the work week constitutes working eight hours, Monday-Saturday. On average, Amazon workers put in 48 hours per week.

“The night shifts are being increased to 10 hours during peak,” said de Palma. “Of course, working 10-hour night shifts from 11:10 p.m. to 9:30 a.m. isn’t great for your health.

“In the long run,” she said, “I think we need to look at getting a collective bargaining agreement in place so that we can earn better wages and people don’t have to rely on those extra hours. And we also need to find a better solution for peak season so that people aren’t put in a position where they feel they have to work those extra hours.”

Trabajadores de Volkswagen en México podrían salir en huelga si no se llega a un acuerdo con la compañía antes del dos de octubre. Los 6,500 trabajadores producen la Jetta, Tiguan y Taos en la planta de Puebla, la instalación más grande de Volkswagen fuera de Alemania. Su sindicato, SITIAVW, es uno de los sindicatos independientes más históricos de México, y está en proceso de una revisión salarial en la planta.

El 11 de septiembre, los trabajadores rechazaron de forma abrumadora la oferta de un aumento combinado del 10 por ciento en salarios y prestaciones. (El sindicato había propuesto un aumento de 17 por ciento anteriormente.) Días antes de que el acuerdo provisional se sometiera a votación, Volkswagen eliminó uno de tres turnos en un segmento de la planta que produce la Jetta y la Tiguan. Aproximadamente 800 trabajadores perdieron sus empleos, reporto El Financiero.

Dentro de días de los despidos, el sindicato anuncio que 611 de los trabajadores—quienes no firmaron acuerdos de separación—serian elegibles para reinstalacion cuando Volkswagen comienze produccion de su linea Golf en la planta de Puebla en abril. Pero ya era muy tarde: 5,925 de los 6,440 votantes elegibles participaron en el voto de ratificación; de ellos, 73 por ciento votaron para rechazar la oferta, en lo que asesor de SITIAVW Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa califico como una expresión de indignación por los despidos. El acuerdo también hubiera pospuesto la siguiente revision salarial a un plazo de 18 meses en lugar del ciclo anual.

“No somos ciegos ante la delicada crisis que atraviesa la industria automotriz alemana, ni ignoramos los retos financieros globales que argumenta Volkswagen,” dijo el sindicato en una declaración despues de que los trabajadores rechazaron la propuesta. “Pero que se escuche claro hasta Wolfsburgo: ¡la crisis de los corporativos no se va a resolver a costa del sudor, los derechos y el futuro de la clase trabajadora mexicana!”

Volkswagen no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios.

DESPIDOS GLOBALES

En septiembre, VW anunció planes para eliminar 100,000 empleos a nivel global para 2030—marcando el mayor recorte de empleos visto por un solo fabricante de automoviles. IG Metall, que representa 120,000 trabajadores de Volkswagen en alemania y está en el consejo de supervision de la empresa, afirmó al Guardian que ambos lados habian hecho sacrificiso para prevenir “una escalada peligrosa al conflicto.”

No queda claro cuantos recortes más se preveen en Puebla. Desde 2012, la planta ha recortado su plantilla en un 36 por ciento, reporto Milenio, pero continua siendo uno de los empleadores más grandes en el estado hoy. Algo como 6,500 trabajadores de producción se emplean directamente en la planta, que produce vehículos principalmente para la exportación en Estados Unidos. Algunos 30.0000 más trabajan en la cadena de suministro automotriz en el estado.

“Para mí, la explicación: la empresa desde minuto uno nunca quiso negociar,” afirmó Gómez Zuppa. “Lo más rápido que puedes hacer para reducir costos es el despido de trabajadores. Creo que en ese sentido, ellos están buscando un conflicto mayor para tener la justificación de hacer un ajuste de mayores dimensiones.”

Las huelgas en México son diferentes que en Estados Unidos. Bajo la ley laboral mexicana, las compañías deben frenar la producción enteramente en una planta en huelga—a diferencia de lo que ocurre en Estados Unidos, donde las compañías pueden recurrir a gerentes y emplear a trabajadores de reemplazo para continuar con operaciones. Eso le da a los sindicatos mexicanos un enorme poder. Pero las huelgas en la industria automotriz—la séptima más grande del mundo—han sido sumamente escasas en las últimas décadas, ya que la mayoría de contratos colectivos en la industria están en las manos de sindicatos de protección patronal, quienes han sido aliados clave en el modelo de desarrollo mexicano basado en salarios bajos. SITIAVW, uno de los pocos sindicatos independientes, ha ganado los salarios más altos en la industria.

Pero las huelgas si conllevan ciertos riesgos.

En México, los empleadores deben proveer una justificación al gobierno cuando realizan despidos. Entre esas justificaciones pueden figurar las pérdidas ocasionadas por una huelga, señaló Gomez Zuppa: “Abre la posibilidad frente al gobierno de decir, ‘Por eso tengo que despedir a tantos.’”

“Lo difícil no es estallar una huelga,” afirmó Hugo Tlalpan, Secretario General de SITIAVW. “Lo difícil es levantarla.”

UN MINUTO TARDE

La planta de Puebla ha operado desde 1967. En sus inicios, los trabajadores estaban afiliados con la Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), una central sindical conocida por imponer a los empleados “contratos de protección”. Pero en 1972, los trabajadores se separaron de la CTM y fundaron el sindicato independiente SITIAVW. Desde entonces, la planta ha sido escenario de varias huelgas y acciones laborales, así como de casi tantos intentos por parte de las esferas de poder de México para impedirlas.

En 1992, 14,500 trabajadores en la planta de Puebla se declararon en huelga para expulsar a la direccion de su sindicato que algunos consideraban complice en la negociacion de un contrato favorable a la empresa. Con el visto bueno del Secretario de Trabajo, la compañia les impidó accesso a las instalaciones, y luego los despidio. Algunos 10,000 fueron reinsalados un día despues, pero bajo un acuerdo que impuso objetivos de productividad más elevados, horarios flexibles y una reducción de prestaciones.

En 2000, los trabajadores volvieron a declararse en huelga, y una vez más el paro fue sofocado con el apoyo de las autoridades laborales de Mexico. Porque los trabajadores iniciaron la huelga a las 11:01 a.m. en lugar de exactamente a las 11, la fecha límite que habían fijado para el comienzo del paro, la Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje declaró inválida la huelga. (Un año despues volvieron a irse a la huelga y lograron aumentos de 14.7 porciento.)

El sindicato esta evaluando cuidadosamente sus opciones en esta ronda de negociaciones; hasta ahora, SITIAVW ha prorrogado el plazo para la huelga en cuatro ocassiones.. Más recientemente, solo dos días antes de la fecha límite del 17 de septiembre, el sindicato extendió el plazo hasta el viernes 2 de octubre.

“Lo que está sucediendo en VW es un ataque directo a uno de los sindicatos independiente con mayor historia, a uno de los contratos colectivos más robustos,” afirmó Gomez Zuppa. Lo que suceda a continuación tendrá repercusiones para los trabajadores del sector automotriz en todo México y para los trabajadores de Volkswagen en todo el mundo.

Mexican Volkswagen workers could soon be on strike if their salary demands are not met. The 6,500 workers build the Jetta, Tiguan, and Taos at the company’s Puebla plant, the largest Volkswagen facility outside of Germany. Their union, SITIAVW, is one of Mexico’s most storied independent unions, and is in the midst of an annual wage reopener at the plant.

On September 11, workers overwhelmingly voted down the company’s offer of a 10 percent combined increase to wages and benefits. (The union had been pushing for a 17 percent increase earlier in negotiations.) Days before the tentative agreement was put to a vote, Volkswagen cut one of three shifts in a segment of the plant that produces the Jetta and the Tiguan. Approximately 800 workers lost their jobs, El Financiero reported.

Within days of the firings, the union announced that 611 of the workers—those who did not sign voluntary separation agreements—would be eligible for reinstatement when Volkswagen begins production of its Golf compact car at the Puebla facility next April. But the damage was done: 5,925 of the company’s 6,440 eligible voters participated in the ratification vote: of them, 73 percent voted to reject the offer, in what SITIAVW advisor Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa characterized as an expression of anger at the firings. The deal would have also pushed the next wage reopener to 18 months out instead of the yearly cycle, angering workers.

“We are not blind to the delicate crisis facing the German automotive industry, nor are we ignoring the global financial challenges Volkswagen cites,” the union said in a statement after workers voted down the offer. “But let it be heard loud and clear, all the way to Wolfsburg: corporate crises will not be resolved at the expense of the sweat, the rights, and the future of the Mexican working class.”

Volkswagen did not respond to requests for comment.

GLOBAL LAYOFFS

In September, VW announced plans to eliminate 100,000 jobs globally by 2030—marking the largest culling of jobs ever seen by a single automaker. IG Metall, which represents 120,000 Volkswagen workers in Germany and sits on the company’s supervisory board, told the Guardian that both sides had made concessions to stave off “a dangerous escalation of the conflict.”

It remains unclear how many more cuts are expected in Puebla. Since 2012, the plant has cut its workforce by 36 percent, Milenio reported, but it remains one of the largest employers in the state today. About 6,500 production workers are directly employed at the plant, which produces vehicles largely for export to the United States. Some 30,000 more work in the wider auto supply chain across the state.

“I think the company, from the first moment, never wanted to negotiate,” said Gómez Zuppa. “The fastest thing you can do to reduce costs is to fire workers. I think that in that sense, they are seeking a greater conflict to justify making greater cuts.”

Strikes in Mexico are different than in the U.S. Under Mexican labor law, companies must cease all production at a struck plant—unlike in the U.S., where companies can use managers and hire replacement workers to continue operations. That gives Mexican unions tremendous power. Yet strikes in the country’s auto industry, the world’s seventh largest, have been exceedingly rare in recent decades, with most of the industry’s contracts held by employer protection unions who have been a key partner in Mexico’s low-wage development model. SITIAVW, one of the few independent unions, has won the highest wages in the industry.

Strikes do pose some risk though.

In Mexico, employers must provide a justification to the government for firings. Among those justifications can be losses incurred due to a strike, Gomez Zuppa said: “It opens the door before the government to say, ‘That’s why I have to fire so many people.’”

“It’s not hard to go out on strike,” said Hugo Tlalpan, SITIAVW’s General Secretary. “The hard thing is ending it.”

ONE MINUTE LATE

The Puebla plant has been in operation since 1967. In the plant’s early days, workers were affiliated with the Confederation of Mexican Workers, or CTM, a labor confederation known for imposing pro-employer “protection contracts” on workers. But in 1972, workers split off from the CTM and formed the independent SITIAVW. Since then, the plant has seen a number of strikes and workplace actions—and nearly as many efforts from Mexico’s halls of power to subvert them.

In 1992, 14,500 workers at the Puebla facility struck to expel their union leadership that some workers felt was complicit in negotiating an employer-friendly contract. With the blessing of the Secretary of Labor, the company locked them out, then fired them. About 10,000 were rehired a day later, but under an agreement that imposed higher productivity targets, flexible scheduling, and a reduction in benefits.

In 2000, workers struck again, and once more their strike was quashed with support of Mexico’s labor authorities. Because workers went out on strike at 11:01 a.m. instead of exactly at 11, their stated strike deadline, the Federal Arbitration Board deemed their strike invalid. (They struck a year later and clinched 14.7 percent raises.)

The union is carefully weighing its options in this round of negotiations; so far, SITIAVW has extended its strike deadline four times. Most recently, just two days before the September 17 strike deadline, the union extended the deadline to Friday, October 2.

“This is an attack on one of the most robust collective bargaining agreements [in the country],” Gomez Zuppa said. What happens next will have repercussions for autoworkers throughout Mexico and Volkswagen workers across the world.

They also secured a raise of almost 13 percent over three years, which will help keep pace with inflation and attract high-quality artists. But for the musicians, the most important gains related to their working conditions and artistic integrity.

The orchestra usually performs classical music without amplification, but sometimes plays in a supporting role to pop artists who use large sound systems. During one such performance last year, the musicians were seated right next to unbearably loud speakers, with no way to address the situation.

“Our phones were blowing up about it afterwards, and we knew this had to be a priority,” said Local 77-274 Vice President Marjorie Goldberg.

STOP THE CONCERT

The issue goes beyond discomfort. Hearing loss can impact a musician’s career, especially one who performs very precise classical music in an ensemble.

Under the new contract, decibel meters will be placed onstage during rehearsals and performances. If the sound levels get too high for too long, musicians can remove themselves or even stop the concert.

Artists performing with the orchestra will be required to attend rehearsals to ensure that sound details are worked out in advance. And management will provide a $150 allowance for musicians to buy professional-level hearing protection.

The union also proposed, and management agreed, to open up unlimited opportunities for students of all ages to attend dress rehearsals and sometimes meet with members of the orchestra. Experiences like these can spark a lifelong interest in the arts.

“It’s very important for developing the next generation of musicians and music-lovers,” said violinist Dara Morales, a member of the bargaining committee.

In addition, management will be required to meet at least quarterly with the musicians’ education committee to discuss ways to improve outreach.

Increasingly, the orchestra has been asked to do concerts where they perform the soundtrack while a movie is shown. But a movie soundtrack is written to be recorded in small chunks in a recording studio, not for hours at a time.

Playing it all straight through, live, can be very physically demanding and even put the musician at risk of long-term physical injury due to repetitive motion. For brass players, these scores often call for sustained playing of loud and high notes in a way that’s not common in symphonic pieces.

Now the orchestra has a limit of two film programs per subscription season. This also provides opportunities for other orchestras that are more used to playing that type of program, such as the Philly Pops.

STARTED EARLY

The orchestra’s last contract fight was much more contentious and almost led to a strike. This go-round, the union started laying the groundwork earlier, beginning with a detailed survey on priorities. Substitutes and extras were surveyed as well.

“This time we were very prepared,” said Local 77-274 President Ellen Trainer.

Though management didn’t push back as hard as it did three years ago, members still had to organize pressure. When CEO Ryan Fleur stopped showing up to bargaining sessions, the union launched a petition demanding he be present. Every single orchestra member signed. Fleur started appearing again.

After one concert, musicians passed out flyers thanking the audience for supporting classical music. During movie-soundtrack concerts, they wore their union T-shirts.

Principal players—the section leaders for each group of instruments—signed a petition demanding that substitute players receive pension contributions, which had been eliminated for them when the orchestra declared bankruptcy in 2012. Now substitutes will receive a 5 percent pension contribution starting in year three of the contract.

The bargaining committee used a phone tree to keep in touch with members and coordinate actions. Once the committee met for two hours after a concert that ended at 11 p.m.

A UNION FAMILY

The contract reflects years of bottom-up organizing to transform the local.

A slate of reform leaders won office in 2019. They ran to rebuild a union they saw as stagnant and unresponsive. Before, “people didn’t feel like the union did anything except take dues,” Trainer said.

Freelancers worked on various different contracts and never interacted with each other, “a bunch of small islands, ” she said. The Philadelphia Orchestra musicians in particular felt very separate from the rest of the membership.

Since taking office, the leaders have worked to involve members in the life of the union and to make connections across different workplaces. The local is more connected to the local labor scene, and members provide music at various picket lines and union events. “We’re much more active now, and freelancers feel like the union cares about them,” said Morales.

Goldberg was especially proud that five or six orchestra members showed up to an action this year supporting musicians at the Forrest Theatre. “It definitely feels more like a union family now,” she said.

When workers file for a union election, it’s like a Bat-Signal goes off: a column of light cuts through the night sky, summoning not Bruce Wayne but a swarm of anti-union managers and consultants who reap tens of thousands of dollars from sowing fear and doubt.

A new calculator from workers’ rights watchdog LaborLab estimates that the parts retailer AutoZone has paid $210,696 to managers and lawyers to crush a union drive by 11 workers in one store in White Plains, New York. The workers went public in July with their drive to join United Auto Workers Local 259.

“It’s like hitting a fly with a mallet,” said Michael DiGuiseppe, vice president of Local 259. “At the first whiff of a union, they had their corporate executives in the store the next day. They’ve been camped out at a hotel around the corner since, and it’s been going on for two months.”

Managers have been pulling workers into meetings for antiunion propaganda and closely surveilling them to assess union support and chill the organizing. “They’ve had more corporate executive union-busters in the store than workers,” said DiGiuseppe.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that U.S. employers spend $1.7 billion annually on union-busting consultants and law firms.

“If you understand the corporate structure in America, then you understand they’re spending the money with expectations to make more money,” said AutoZone worker David Valencia. “And where is that money going to come from? It’s going to come from us!”

INVITATION TO FIRE YOU

The election is on September 25. Workers are seeking to become the first of the company’s 111,000 U.S. employees across 6,863 stores to form a union.

AutoZone management is pulling out all the stops to ensure this effort ends in defeat just like in 1992, when the Teamsters tried to organize a distribution center employing 200 workers. No workers have filed for an election at an AutoZone store or warehouse since.

The company has also pushed hard to exclude one of the key worker-organizers, Nathan DuCongé, from the bargaining unit, claiming he is a supervisor.

“If you don’t stop, we will accept your invitation to fire you,” Tammy Hamilton, a regional manager, told DuCongé on an August 28 recording shared with Labor Notes. DuCongé and his co-workers presented management with a demand letter in July calling for fair wages, regular raises, reliable scheduling, and affordable health insurance.

Hamilton admitted to monitoring his social media and organizing activities.

AutoZone CEO Phil Daniele III has also been skulking around DuCongé’s Instagram posts, screenshots shared with Labor Notes indicate. Daniele’s total compensation last year was $9.64 million, 331 times the median salary of an AutoZone worker, which is just $29,017.

Federal labor law protects workers’ right to organize a union and talk with co-workers about it, and prohibits employers from surveilling this activity, as well as from threatening to discipline or fire workers for exercising their rights. Supervisors, however, do not have these protections.

CARVED OUT FROM UNION

Workers and a UAW organizer said management succeeded in carving DuCongé out of the bargaining unit, claiming that he was a supervisor, even though he has no hiring or firing authority and other workers with the same title and responsibilities are eligible to vote.

“They wanted them to vote because these are people that already swung to the no side,” said DiGuiseppe. “It has nothing to do with who’s the supervisor and who’s not.”

But it could have delayed the election and cost Local 259 tens of thousands of dollars to challenge his exclusion in court. Instead, DuCongé and the union agreed to accept it.

“The guy fell on his sword,” DiGuiseppe said. “He’s like, ‘If this is what it takes to at least have a vote and let people know what’s going on here, then I’ll let them pull me out of it.’”

STUCK AT MINIMUM WAGE

Juan Accostupa, another White Plains worker, has worked for AutoZone for 10 years, earning $17 an hour. During that time, his wage has increased only to keep up with New York’s minimum wage.

“We don’t just cash people out,” said Accostupa. “We do extra work physically. We do the unloading of trucks. We do installations of wiper blades, headlights, and batteries.”

Workers say the company generates a lot of sales from these installation services, and it compels them to upsell washer fluid when customers purchase wiper blades, or grease when they purchase batteries.

“You’re changing batteries, wiper blades, in extreme weather conditions,” said DuCongé, who had to walk through a blizzard earlier this year to open the store.

Since 2021, retail workers at Chipotle, Home Depot, REI, and Trader Joe’s stores have filed for union elections. But even when they’ve won, these workers have yet to win first contracts, as the companies have been implacable in their opposition and have stonewalled in negotiations. Chipotle workers announced they were abandoning their efforts earlier this year.

Public support for unions hasn’t abated, however; it’s still at a record high of 71 percent. And unions are filing for elections at the same rate as in previous years.

GLORIFIED TITLE, NO AUTHORITY

As social inequality has deepened a cost-of-living crisis, workers have turned to alternatives in labor and politics. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York City became a lightning rod for workers frustrated with low wages and high rents.

DuCongé was one of them. He and his wife moved to New York from Atlanta two years ago as he pursued a career in the film industry. But his big break never came, and he ended up at AutoZone.

When he became a parts manager, responsible for opening and closing the store and auditing the cash register, he got a pay bump to $18.50 an hour. He called it “a glorified title, but no authority.”

Seeing his own struggles reflected in Mamdani’s platform, DuCongé became a field lead for his mayoral campaign in the Bronx. Through canvassing, he met organizers with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, which put him in touch with a UAW organizer.

DuCongé credits filmmaker Boots Riley as another inspiration. In Riley’s latest film "I Love Boosters," shoplifters help factory workers in China and retail workers in San Francisco to join together in a strike against the corporation that’s oppressing them. The ultimate takeaway is that it will take international worker solidarity and militant strikes to rein in corporate power.

And now, “here I am unionizing the workplace with my co-workers,” he said. The big break had finally arrived. “No matter what happens, we are always there for any other AutoZoner who would like to organize their workplace,” he said.

The 1,900 workers are employed by Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2023 in the largest deal ever in the video game industry.

Their new Communications Workers (CWA) contracts include recall rights and guaranteed severance packages for laid-off workers—significant wins, since tech and video game workers have seen waves of layoffs in the last few years.

Workers on various Activision Blizzard teams have voted to join CWA since 2022. It started with quality assurance testers at Raven Software—when Raven abruptly laid off a dozen testers in December 2021, they went on strike and launched a union drive.

Soon after the Raven workers voted the union in, Microsoft signed a neutrality agreement with CWA, pledging to remain neutral in organizing campaigns and to allow workers and union representatives to communicate openly. In exchange, the union agreed to support the software giant’s purchase of Activision Blizzard, which was facing antitrust scrutiny.

Activision Blizzard had also faced employee walkouts and a lawsuit by the California Civil Rights Department in 2021 over claims of misconduct and discrimination against women and a “frat boy” company culture.

Next to unionize were quality assurance testers at Blizzard’s offices in Albany, New York, and Austin, Texas. A wall-to-wall unit of 500 World of Warcraft workers unionized in 2024, followed by units of 200 game developers at Overwatch, 160 members of Blizzard’s story and franchise team, and 450 Diablo designers, engineers, artists, and support staff in 2025.

RECALL RIGHTS

Blizzard workers won the right to be recalled for 14 months after being laid off. This right extends to any open positions they are qualified for across the 1,900-worker Blizzard bargaining units. The contracts have separate expiration dates but the same terms across all these units. (The Raven workers, who are part of Activision, already bargained a separate contract.)

“We know we are at the start of a labor movement in video games and tech at large,” said Mahreen Fatima, a senior environment artist on Diablo. “So it weighed heavily on us to make sure we set a strong precedent.”

CWA has organized 4,000 video game workers at Microsoft, and has another 550 members in its industry-wide United Video Game Workers affiliate. The latter is a pre-majority union: it allows video game workers to directly join before winning a union election, a model CWA has employed in organizing public sector and higher education workers in Southern states. Another 100 game developers behind Magic: The Gathering Arena voted to join CWA in June.

In a survey of U.S. video game workers by the Game Developers Conference early this year, 82 percent of respondents supported unionizing. Organizers hope that the protections and job security provisions won at Blizzard will convince more game workers to organize.

At Blizzard, laid-off workers will get a minimum of four weeks’ severance plus an additional week for every six months’ tenure, up to 39 weeks. The contract also includes just cause protections, a grievance procedure, and a three-day in-office hybrid workweek. And the union fought hard to put other existing benefits and policies in writing, from weather-related policies to money Blizzard workers are given to spend on the company’s games—all now enforceable through the contract.

Blizzard workers also won language that requires the company to discuss, evaluate, and bargain over the impact of artificial intelligence on their work. “Now we have a seat at the table to be part of the conversation when it comes to A.I. implementation,” said Fatima. “The contract gives us the ability to critically think about how it’s going to impact our workflow, our skill sets, the quality of our product, our teams.”

The union won a guarantee that existing remote workers, like Fatima, can continue working remotely, which prevents them from being forced to potentially move across the country to keep their job. Remote workers make up around one-fourth of the workforce covered under the new contract.

The contract also includes protections against outsourcing—a Blizzard worker can't be laid off unless the company has let go any contractor hired in the last year doing a similar job, and a laid-off Blizzard worker can't be replaced by a contractor for another year. Successorship language in the agreement requires a purchasing company to recognize the union contract if Microsoft decides to sell off the unionized Blizzard units.

And in a win that links a new group of workers to one of the labor movement’s oldest traditions, the Blizzard contract includes a paid holiday on May 1, International Workers’ Day.

JOB SECURITY A TOP ISSUE

Job security is a major issue for workers throughout the tech industry. Shortly after Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $75 billion in 2023, it announced in January 2024 that it was laying off 1,900 workers in its gaming division—9 percent of the workforce.

This July, Microsoft announced it would be laying off another 3,200 workers in gaming. Half of the layoffs were immediate, including hundreds of CWA members at Bethesda, ZeniMax, and other studios. In August,workers and allies held “Save Our Devs” rallies across the U.S. and Canada to protest the layoffs and demand fair first contracts for Microsoft video game workers. CWA and Microsoft are now bargaining over the effects of these layoffs. The other 1,600 layoffs are expected by the end of 2027.

The sense that Blizzard workers were now a part of a bigger company with a more ruthless economic logic was one motivation behind the union effort. “Being in a union stops you from being treated like a line in an Excel sheet,” said Paul Cox, a senior content designer at World of Warcraft who’s been with Blizzard for 19 years. “We are in a giant corporation, and there is no way that anybody who makes decisions knows everybody in the company.”

After years of robust hiring, the entire tech sector has been hit with waves of mass layoffs since 2022. The tracker website layoffs.fyi estimates that tech companies have announced 100,000 layoffs in 2026 alone.

For years, tech workers were in such demand that employers vied to offer the most appealing benefits and work environment. However, “these days, a position in tech looks like a regular job,” wrote the Wall Street Journal last year. “Workers are contending with the constant fear of layoffs, longer hours, and an ever-growing list of responsibilities for the same pay.” The rapid development of artificial intelligence has only intensified workers’ concerns about being replaced.

At Google, 4,700 workers have signed a petition supporting guaranteed severance packages and buyouts before involuntary layoffs. The Alphabet Workers Union, another CWA affiliate, has also organized T-shirt days and mass email actions as part of its “Googlers for Job Security” campaign, launched last year in response to rounds of mass layoffs even as the company remains immensely profitable.

The campaign takes credit for Google’s offer of voluntary exit packages to 70,000 employees—something no other big tech company has done—and is pushing for these buyouts to be offered across the company.

RED SHIRT DAYS

Blizzard has four U.S. offices, in Austin, Boston, Irvine, and Albany, New York, each with hundreds of workers. The neutrality agreement gave the union access to the facilities.

“Because of the neutrality agreement, we were able to set up tables in the courtyard,” said Alison Veneto, a senior editor on the Blizzard Story and Franchise Team who works in the Irvine office. “Everybody moves through there to go from one building to the other, or to go to lunch. So the union was always quite visible.”

Blizzard workers embraced the CWA tradition of wearing red on Thursdays, adopted in memory of a striking telephone company worker killed on a picket line in 1989. “The cafeteria would be a sea of red T-shirts,” said Veneto. “You would go into in-person meetings with management and everyone would be wearing their red shirts.”

Since these video game workers spend much of their time in front of computer screens, workers showed their support digitally by changing their Zoom backgrounds and Slack profile photos to echo the union’s message.

While the workers at Blizzard are on separate teams, they’re all in a large general chat on Slack, a communications platform used to coordinate work within and across teams. There they could post messages of support for the union and the bargaining team en masse.

“People would put forward in company chats why unionizing mattered to them,” said Veneto. “That’s why it felt personal—the union doesn’t feel like a third-person entity.”

These tactics also helped engage remote workers. “We tried to make as many avenues as possible to include remote workers—we don’t want them to feel excluded,” said Fatima, who works remotely from Seattle. The organizing committee arranged union info sessions for remote workers, and put Outlook invites onto everyone’s work calendar so they couldn’t miss it.

PATTERN BARGAINING

At first the different Blizzard bargaining units were negotiating separately with Microsoft, although the bargaining committees were in communication with each other.

As they pushed for first contracts, workers organized numerous marches across Blizzard’s Irvine campus with members from all the bargaining units. They held sign-making parties in view of executive offices, and a sit-in on the executive floor.

But gradually, workers recognized that the World of Warcraft unit, the largest, would set the standard—so the union started to focus its mobilization efforts there. In the end, Microsoft agreed to a union proposal to extend the terms it had agreed to with the World of Warcraft unit to other Blizzard workers.

One factor that likely weighed on management was the possibility of disruptive action at BlizzCon—the annual convention to promote Blizzard’s games, which draws 40,000 attendees to the Anaheim Convention Center. This year’s convention was held September 11-13, just days after the union agreement was reached.

For more information on the Blizzard contract, see “After Years Of Company Stalling, Blizzard Workers Win Mega-Contract That Applies To All Unionized Teams” at Aftermath.

The vote was a close 560-512, following an intense anti-union campaign by the company.

Nakisha West, a wirecutter, voted yes for “fairness and accountability.” She and her co-workers use scorching heat and precision-cutting tools to turn polysilicon crystals, or boules, into slim squares, known as wafers, for solar panels.

“It’s a very dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it,” she said.

It’s been more than a decade since that “somebody” was a worker in the U.S.; nearly all the world’s wafers are produced in China. But in January 2025, Corning received $325 million from the federal government to build a solar plant across the street from its semiconductor plant in Hemlock, Michigan, which employs more than 1,000 more workers.

The Hemlock Semiconductor plant is one of only two plants in the U.S. that produce the solar-grade polysilicon. Because it produces this material domestically, Corning is insulated from the effects of the 15 percent tariffs that the Trump administration imposed in August on imported products made with polysilicon.

The 1,380 Corning workers represent the largest victorious union drive in a manufacturing plant since the United Auto Workers unionized a Volkswagen assembly plant in Tennessee in 2024. The Steelworkers also notched a big organizing victory in 2023 with 1,400 school bus manufacturing workers at a Blue Bird factory in Georgia.

Corning employs 12,000 production workers in the U.S., in the fields of glass and ceramics, life sciences (laboratory tools), fiber optics, and solar. Its products include Gorilla Glass, ceramics for catalytic converters, optical communications cables, automotive glass, and iPhone screens.

The Steelworkers have long represented workers in several other Corning plants. After this win, the union now represents 4,400 Corning workers at facilities in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and now Michigan.

But the company has increasingly been moving its operations to non-union facilities. Its fiber optic business is rapidly expanding, fueled by demand from data centers.

HARD FLOPS

The work at Corning is grueling and dangerous. The solar factory runs on a heavy production schedule, operating 24 hours a day, with workers on 12-hour shifts. They alternate between working two weeks on day shift and two weeks on night shift.

Another practice of Corning management, known as “hard flops,” means workers can suddenly be forced to go from night to day shift with very little notice. This, on top of the already brutal working hours, leads to more accidents, injuries, and write-ups.

Workers have to fulfill a strict daily quota of processing bricks into wafers. Workers say the task is difficult to accomplish when wirecutting machines break down frequently—repairing the machine can take an entire shift. When they don’t meet the quota, they get reprimanded and written up for poor performance.

West said workers were often disciplined for things that weren’t their fault, creating a high-turnover environment. “You ought to know who you’re hiring, put them in the right place,” she said. “Don’t set them up for failure. The job is very hard. We needed stability there.”

Many workers cited health and safety as major factors in their decision to support the union drive.

The factory itself was being built around her, West said, during her entire 11 months at Corning. It felt dangerous that her department would be operating wiresaws while contractors were still on site constructing the building.

Several fires and chemical leaks have occurred in the pulling department, West and others said. Workers there operate massive ingot pullers—two-story-tall machines that grow crystalline silicon inside a vacuum-sealed furnace.

Pulling is the most dangerous and potentially explosive department. A major accident there in March injured nine workers, adding urgency to the union drive.

BROKEN PROMISES

Workers also said the company has a long record of broken promises. For example, workers earn profit-sharing, but management recently changed that benefit to “goal sharing,” based on quarterly rather than end-of-year profits. This drastically reduced the added benefit workers had been promised.

“Their word wasn’t bond,” said West. “If it was, we wouldn't go through this.”

Glen Dowdy, a finishing operator, said management has constantly changed the rules and refused to give employees a handbook of its policies. “They just care about money and numbers,” said Dowdy. “That the hourly employees aren’t being treated fairly doesn’t mean jack to them.”

Changes to paid time off and sick leave policies incensed workers. Management forced workers to use sick leave in increments of six or 12 hours at a time, Dowdy and West said, even if workers only needed one or two hours for an appointment.

Under Michigan’s Earned Sick Time Act, all private sector workers are eligible to earn an hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, and can use up to 72 hours each year. However, Corning’s policies were causing workers to burn through their leave.

When workers began organizing, they studied how Corning paid similar workers at its other plants. They found out that Corning employees in New York, who are members of the Steelworkers, earn several dollars an hour more than the workers in Michigan, who generally start at $20 an hour.

A UNION IS BORN

The organizing drive began in March, Dowdy recounted, when five workers from the pulling department reached out to the union after the accident. Two weeks later, those workers had brought in 25 more people.

Workers built support by distributing leaflets and having daily conversations with their fellow workers. Often they did home visits and held meetings after working a 12-hour shift.

When the union drive erupted in the spring of this year, management begged workers for a second chance. “It was five months too late,” Dowdy said.

The Steelworkers filed for an election on August 11, and voting began three weeks later.

As soon as the union filed, Corning hired 120 new employees, presumably an attempt to dilute the pool of pro-union workers and increase the number of people the organizing committee would need to reach before the vote.

And Corning ran an intense campaign to break the union drive, as it has at other plants. The workers were prepared for what to expect, because of lessons shared by USW organizers and workers from a fiber optic factory in North Carolina, where the company had successfully thwarted a recent organizing drive.

At the Michigan plant, management held in-plant meetings about the union twice a day. The Global Vice President of Human Resources flew in from New York to meet with workers. Twenty televisions were installed in common areas—including in the breakroom, at timeclocks, and even in production areas—to push anti-union propaganda around the clock.

Workers said they were illegally polled by management on how they planned to vote. Two days before the election, two workers were walked out of the factory for talking to a union organizer. They were reinstated when the union filed an unfair labor practice charge and demanded their return.

LIKE A SHOCKWAVE

Victory in the plant was “like a big shockwave,” Dowdy said. “Management is not walking around arrogant anymore.”

The win also has implications further south, as Corning focuses its expansion in areas where unions have a much weaker presence.

Besides solar manufacturing, Corning is a major player in the buildout of A.I. data centers because of its longstanding position in fiber optics manufacturing. The newest data centers use enormous amounts of fiber optic cable to transmit data through their servers.

Much of its expansion is happening in North Carolina, where the company has operated for a half-century and already has 5,000 fiber optics-related jobs across seven facilities, as well as its headquarters for optical communications. In right-to-work North Carolina, only 2.4 percent of workers belong to unions—the lowest rate in the country.

Through a new $6 billion deal with Meta to supply its A.I. infrastructure growth, Corning is expanding its non-union facility in Hickory, North Carolina—60 miles northwest of Charlotte— which will become the largest fiber optic plant in the world.

Corning also announced an agreement with Nvidia in May to build three new facilities in North Carolina and Texas, adding 3,000 workers. An additional 1,000 jobs in North Carolina are promised from a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Amazon in June.

The Steelworkers have been targeting Corning’s North Carolina facilities; the union already represents workers at the Wilmington facility, which opened in 1967. The union lost a vote among 110 workers at the warehouse in Tarboro in 2024, and filed for an election at a fiber optic plant in Winston-Salem in June but then called off the vote to take more time to shore up support.

The union will be looking to use the momentum from its Michigan win to encourage North Carolina workers to stand up to the union-busting and win a union at plants that are essential to the ambitions of the world’s most powerful tech companies.

The landmark collective bargaining agreement went into effect on July 1, nearly two years after workers won union representation, joining Unifor Local 252, motivated by low wages and unsafe working conditions.

As punishment two years ago, Walmart bumped the pay of every logistics worker in Canada—except those who unionized. This was an effective maneuver to halt further union drives.

“Walmart gave all the wage increases to all the non-union folks, and everything fell apart,” said Angela Drew Kimelman, a Unifor organizer who worked on organizing campaigns at multiple warehouses, including one in Cornwall, near Montreal.

But now, the new contract prevents Walmart from raising wages at other warehouses without doing the same at this one. The unionized workers have received a matching raise, and back pay for the months when other warehouse workers received raises that they didn’t.

Unifor has restarted its organizing efforts at other Ontario warehouses.

‘QUITE THE EYE-OPENER’

In past union drives, Walmart has closed facilities rather than deal with a union. So far, no such threat has emerged for this warehouse.

Instead, two months into the contract, members are moving forward with contract education and implementation, for both workers and the boss.

For the first time, the workers have the protections of a contractual disciplinary procedure. “If you’re at another distribution center and they walk you out, you’re pretty much on your own, at the mercy of the employer,” said Rodolfo Pilozo, a 30-year Walmart worker and member of Unifor’s organizing and negotiations committees.

Kathryn Cespite, an eight-year worker at the warehouse, acted as an interim steward with a co-worker in the contract’s first week. “That was quite the eye-opener,” she said. A manager tried to discipline a worker without letting him tell his side of the story.

STALLING TACTICS

It took 18 months of negotiations to reach a deal. Walmart used stalling tactics, like offering very few dates for negotiations.

“I believe they were intentionally trying to drag out the process, and frustrate the membership into decertifying us,” said Shayne Fields, Unifor’s lead negotiator. There was a decertification petition, he said, and workers reported that Walmart was covertly supporting it, but it never got much traction.

The company also brought in temp workers, implying a threat to replace union workers.

“Walmart was feeding people a lot of misinformation,” Cespite said. “I let the union representatives know what was being said in meetings, and then the union was able to counter it.

“They were taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge about what unions are,” she said. “One of the challenges we’re running into is that a lot of the people don’t have any experience with unions and don’t know what it’s all about.”

Now that the contract is in place, “we have two years to educate ourselves and others,” said Pilozo. “It’s not just the president of Local 252, or of the national union. It’s us, collectively; we can make changes.”

WHY WALMART GAVE IN

Ontario’s labor laws helped. The law includes a conciliation process for first contracts. First there’s mediation, and then disputes can move to settlement through arbitration. Unifor’s lead negotiator, Fields, filed the paperwork to move that process forward, which started an external clock that pressured Walmart to settle.

Geography also helped. Labor scholar Benjamin Fong argues it would be “a huge pain for Walmart” to relocate this regional distribution center, which serves most of Ontario and Quebec, because the area is hemmed in by the Great Lakes and the layout of Toronto. Walmart already closed its distribution centers in Quebec, which has even stronger labor laws.

Walmart worker Simon Hayford thinks the company settled because executives were worried about more warehouses joining the union, and they didn’t want to draw more attention to the unionized one. He and Pilozo have been participating in Unifor’s efforts to organize other Walmart warehouses.

“I’ve talked with some of the other warehouse guys, and they say ‘We’re making the same money so why would we do it?’” Hayford said. But he anticipates the other benefits the contract provides, like an improved safety committee and protection against unfair terminations, will show the value of the union over time.