Approaching holidays, retailers start to obey worker protection laws

Barnes & Noble workers from unionized stores in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Hadle, Massachusetts delivered stacks of letters to company management. | RWDSU

NEW YORK—Some New York state retailers are already following the spirit of a new union-pushed state law mandating they protect their workers against violent customers and dangerous confrontations, even though the measure has yet to be implemented.

So says the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a semi-independent UFCW sector. RWDSU was the prime mover of the measure this year in the state legislature, and Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it.

The law, and the action it prompted, points out the importance of state and local governments for workers. They can be “laboratories of democracy” as the great pro-worker Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said a century ago—and step forward when the federal government can’t or won’t.

The New York law mandates retailers large and small craft plans and train employees in how to defuse confrontations with customers and how to summon security personnel fast. Large retailers must install alert buttons below the counter at point-of-sale registers which workers can push to activate help. A prior California law, the nation’s first, is slightly weaker: It only recommends retailers install the alert buttons, but includes the other New York provisions. Both have state enforcement.

Though the New York Labor Department is still writing the regulations to implement the law, some retailers, who followed the action in Albany, are moving on their own, RWDSU Communications Director Chelsea Conner said.

“Union employers already follow that bill,” Conner elaborated during a November 13 Zoom press conference with retail workers. The workers urged customers to be patient with long lines and occasional shortages during the busy holiday season.

“And in our contracts, we have a number of stipulations” for protection on the job “that the law covers,” Conner added. Once the rules are written and “the law is in effect, we will let everyone, union and non-union, know about it and let everyone make sure employers are subject to its regulations.”

Angry customers confront workers because retailers understaff their stores, or shipments of goods are inadequate, slowed by the supply chain, or a combination of those factors, the workers reported.

The problem is especially acute during the holiday season, when stores stay open late, and at round-the-clock convenience stores—a largely unorganized sector where RWDSU and other unions often campaign for unionization and the safeguards a contract brings.

“There’s no question the scheduling provisions, safe staffing requirements, and safety measures workers can and have won in union contracts go a long way” towards preventing the problems that prompted RWDSU to lobby for the law, union President Stuart Appelbaum said in a statement.

“But employers can, and should, do more to protect their workers, and non-union workers face even greater challenges without the protections of a contract,” said Appelbaum. He urged retail customers to be patient with workers during the holiday season and to support workers—such as employees at monster bookseller Barnes & Noble—who are campaigning for a contract. Those workers staged a picket line at its main Manhattan store on November 14.

“My union siblings that work in the big corporate bookstore Barnes & Noble are still fighting for their first union contract and don’t have these protections making this busy time especially stressful,” said Local 1102 member Kathryn Harper, a senior bookseller at McNally Jackson, a smaller specialized New York bookstore.

REI worker Margaux Lantelme of Chicago reinforced Appelbaum’s point during the Zoom press conference. Workers at her supposedly progressive customer-friendly retailer of outdoor sporting goods unionized with RWDSU a year ago because management doesn’t live up to its own credos, but short-staffs and underpays them. It also doesn’t protect them from threats on the job.

Lantelme produced another reason for the shortages, the short-staffing, and the customer anger: Corporate greed, as employers seek to get the most work out of the lowest-paid employees and don’t really care about the customers, either.

“This is a frenzied time, and a contract can alter that,” Lantelme said in answering a reporter. “People work longer hours and with next to no breaks.” She blames the system for making the customers angry, too.

“The impatience and rudeness from the customers are forces of our hyper-individualistic, capitalist, consumerist society,” Lantelme explained. “People walk into shops and restaurants and have a level of entitlement, no matter how overworked the employees are.

“Things like overnight shipping” rather than stocking the store with enough goods for the customers, “have been normalized” along with “exploitation of low-wage workers” by firms “who put profits first.

“Having a union is paramount” for preventing exploitation and for protection from irate customers, too, she concluded.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

---

CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.