LRI INK: SEIU Decerts, $30 Wages, Labor vs. Labour, Starbucks Bargaining

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Subject: LRI INK: SEIU Decerts, $30 Wages, Labor vs. Labour, Starbucks Bargaining

March 19, 2026

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An SEIU Mystery: Decertification Petitions Were Filed In Four Nevada Home Care Agencies On The Same Day

by Kimberly Ricci

A curious event is brewing in the Nevada desert.

On Mar. 9, workers at four home healthcare agencies in Las Vegas filed decertification petitions in a coordinated effort to remove SEIU Local 1107 as their exclusive bargaining representative. This development has gone unreported by the media, and the petitions were filed three days after the union staged a high-profile rally outside the agencies’ parent company's headquarters.

NLRB records show that the petitions were simultaneously filed across four Vida Senior Care-managed agencies with units totaling 391 workers: Avalon Home Health Care (28-RD-382731), Advanced Home Health Care (28-RD-382733), All About You Home Health Care (28-RD-382727), and A Caring Hand Home Healthcare (28-RD-382726). No docket activity beyond the initial filings exists, and as is customary, the names of those workers who filed these petitions are confidential.

A Rally Didn’t Help The Union’s Cause

Since Jan. 1, these home healthcare workers have been working under an expired contract. On Mar. 3, SEIU filed ULP charges against the agencies alleging refusal to bargain and bad faith bargaining. On Mar. 6, the union held a rally outside Vida's Las Vegas headquarters over stalled bargaining.

Then on March 9, those decertification petitions landed.

Neither SEIU nor Vida has publicly addressed this turn of events. For that matter, neither have the workers who filed those petitions. However, it’s likely that failed negotiations were the driving force behind the petitions, along with workers’ dissatisfaction with SEIU in general.

Decertification petitions require at least 30% of employees in a bargaining unit to sign a written statement indicating they no longer want union representation. In this situation, workers reached that threshold, indicating a groundswell of sentiment against the union among Vida workers.

Also worth noting: In the social media age, it’s not unheard of for workers to go public while gathering signatures to file a decertification petition. Yet it’s entirely understandable that the workers who filed these petitions chose not to go public, potentially out of fear of union intimidation, blacklisting, and being called a “scab.” Their secrecy will likely continue.

A Potential Blocking Charge Problem

The petitions face a significant procedural question: Will SEIU's pending ULP charges be used to block them? Previously, the Biden-era NLRB reinstated its blocking charge policy, giving regional directors the authority to suspend decertification elections on the basis of unresolved ULP charges, even before those charges are investigated or proven.

It’s not difficult to imagine how a union can use the blocking charge policy to its advantage in blocking a decertification vote, as has been reported with many Starbucks Workers United decertification efforts.

Furthermore, the Biden-era Board’s embrace of blocking charges, which allow unions to manipulate the process through ULP filings, remains a travesty upon employee choice.

For these reasons, that policy is now under direct legal challenge. The National Right to Work Foundation recently highlighted a case involving Quartz Corp. workers in North Carolina, who have asked the NLRB to overturn the blocking charge policy and return to the Election Protection Rule, which would keep the decertification process moving forward regardless of pending ULP charges.

Whether the current Board moves to restore the Election Protection Rule, and how quickly that happens, could determine whether these Nevada workers can proceed with a decertification vote.

Where The Story Could Go From Here

We should soon know whether SEIU will move to assert blocking charge rights in response to the decertification petitions. How the current NLRB chooses to treat blocking charges will shape what follows in the labor relations landscape of the Nevada desert.

For now, a group of home care workers in Las Vegas have signaled that they want out of their union, and neither side is talking about it.

Blog Post

Starbucks, Workers United May Head Back to the Bargaining Table

by Michael VanDervort

What happened:

Representatives of Starbucks and the union Starbucks Workers United, supported by Service Employees International Union, appear poised to resume negotiations after months of stalled talks over a first collective bargaining agreement.

The union has submitted a revised contract proposal to restart bargaining. According to reports, key elements include:

A $17 per hour minimum wage, down from earlier demands closer to $20
Annual wage increases of roughly 4%
Just-cause protections for discipline and discharge
Minimum staffing proposals, including expectations that stores operate with at least three workers on shift
Health and safety provisions
A framework aimed at addressing pending unfair labor practice disputes
Backpay demands for unionized baristas, tied to wage increases or benefits the union argues workers should have received during the bargaining period

For its part, Starbucks says it is ready to return to negotiations. The company has proposed resuming in-person bargaining on March 30 and continuing negotiations through April, according to company spokesperson Jaci Anderson.

“At Starbucks, we are committed to all our partners, and where they have chosen union representation, we have been engaging in good faith bargaining,” Anderson said in a statement.

Since the organizing campaign began in 2021, more than 650 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize, but no comprehensive first contract has yet been finalized.

Why it matters:

We have written many times about the difficulty of reaching a first collective bargaining agreement.

Winning an election is one thing. Negotiating the first collective bargaining agreement is something else entirely.

Several elements usually need to come together before an agreement becomes possible:

Both parties must be willing to compromise
Both sides must arrive at a realistic understanding of what a settlement looks like

Even when negotiators reach that point, there is still one final hurdle.

The members of the bargaining unit typically must vote to ratify the agreement.

Up to this point, members of Starbucks Workers United have generally held higher (unrealistic!) expectations on financial outcomes, particularly around wages.

It is possible those expectations are beginning to shift. The limited operational impact of the union’s recent “Red Cup Rebellion” work stoppage may have helped to level member expectations about the union's current economic leverage with Starbucks.

The union’s backpay demands for baristas also highlight one of the central disputes in these negotiations: whether workers in unionized stores should receive retroactive compensation tied to improvements granted elsewhere in the company during the organizing fight.

Whether this latest proposal represents the beginning of a workable settlement remains to be seen. Time will tell.

Blog Post

The $30 Gambit: How Unions Use Legislatures To Do What They Can’t At The Bargaining Table

by Kimberly Ricci

Union organizing plummeted in 2025, and private sector union density is only 5.9%. Big Labor’s bad news continues with an embarrassing reality on union wages, and this is part of a long, painful slide, in which unions are also failing to win high-profile first contract battles.

Some unions, however, are attempting to overcome their lousy organizing by convincing lawmakers to do their bidding. They aim to “win” without winning a single election, and the labor lab of California showed employers what it looks like when a union manipulates an industry through legislation.

Now New York City is next with even higher stakes.

The California-Dreaming Template

As we have previously detailed, SEIU tried and failed for years to organize the fast-food sector. They then lobbied lawmakers to pass AB 1228, the FAST Recovery Act, which created an illusory union and raised minimum wage for fast-food workers from $16 to $20 per hour on Apr. 1, 2024.

The fallout was swift and, as the California Restaurant Association noted, "entirely predictable." Employers raised menu prices by up to 8% to absorb higher labor costs, and one Wendy’s franchisee found himself $20,000 over budget on a two-week payroll. Layoffs, reduced hours, and an automation wave followed, which ironically hurt workers by making them compete with technology that AB 1228 made necessary.

Now New York City: $30 Minimum Wage by 2030

In NYC, where the minimum wage is currently $17, unions launched a nearly identical strategy. The NYC City Council introduced Int. No. 757, pushed by Teamsters Local 804 and the Teamsters-affiliated Amazon Labor Union. The bill proposes to hike minimum wage to $30 per hour through two tiers:

Schedule 1 for employers with more than 500 employees:

- $20 on Jan. 1, 2027

- $23 on Jan. 1, 2028

- $26 on Jan. 1, 2029

- $30 on Jan. 1, 2030

Schedule 2 for employers with fewer than 500 employees:

- $19 on Jan. 1, 2027

- $21.50 on Jan. 1, 2028

- $24 on Jan. 1, 2029

- $27 on Jan. 1, 2030

- $29 on Jan. 1, 2031

After that, NYC’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will adjust the wage floor annually for inflation with no legislative vote required.

What NYC Employers Are Actually Facing

The projected math is sobering. Assuming a 40-hour week at $30 per hour, minimum wage workers would earn base compensation of $62,400 annually before benefits. For workers currently earning $17, that’s more than a 50% increase in under five years.

One small business owner, whose five restaurants and cocktail lounge employ 200 New Yorkers, warned that the bill will cause an unsustainable barrier to entrepreneurship: “It’s just going to get to the stage where a chef or a waitress or a bartender who has a dream of opening a restaurant—it’s just not possible.” Plainly, NYC is looking at a business model crisis.

Naturally, the Teamsters and ALU were front and center when the bill was announced at City Hall. NYC has at least 20 Amazon warehouses, and the motive isn’t hard to read. ALU wants credit for a “win” after unionizing just one warehouse four years ago, with no contract to show for it.

Employers, Take Note

This bill will not address NYC's notoriously high cost of living or doing business. It's also hard to imagine consumers embracing rising prices, which will leave employers to shoulder the difference.

NYC Mayor Mamdani has made no secret of his willingness to sign the bill. The fallout in California was predictable and will be equally predictable in New York.

Blog Post

Labor or Labour? What U.S. Employers Can Learn From Canada's Labor Relations System

by Michael VanDervort

Phil Wilson recently sat down with John Mortimer, labor consultant and President of the Canadian LabourWatch Association, on The Left of Boom Show to look at how U.S. and Canadian labor law actually compare and the one thing that works on both sides of the border.

Americans tend to assume Canada is basically the U.S. with better manners and an extra "u" in labour. When it comes to labor relations, that assumption falls apart fast.

Fourteen Labor Laws, Not One

Canada doesn't have a single national labor relations statute. Each of the 10 provinces and 3 territories has its own labor law, employment standards, and labor board. The federal Canada Labour Code covers only a narrow band of industries: airlines, banks, telecom, and companies that cross provincial borders.

A Very Different Board

In the U.S., the NLRB functions as investigator, prosecutor, and adjudicator, a structure that's drawn constitutional challenges. Canadian boards operate more like courts. The union makes its case, the employer makes its case, the board decides. No regional office launches an investigation of a union-filed charge.

Board composition differs, too. Rather than a politically appointed panel that shifts every administration, Canadian boards draw practitioners from both management and union sides, with the chair alternating over time. It's not apolitical, but it's structurally less volatile.

Speed, Cards, and Votes

Think the NLRB's expedited election timeline is fast? Depending on the province, the gap between a union application (petition) and a board-run vote can be three days (Saskatchewan) or five (British Columbia, Ontario). Several jurisdictions also use card check. If a union hits the required card threshold, certification happens without a vote.

Decertification looks different too. In British Columbia, the window opens 12 months after certification and stays open permanently. In Manitoba, there's a window every year. Compare that to the U.S., where employees get a narrow 30-day window buried in a three-year contract cycle.

Density: Closer Than You Think

Canada's private-sector union density sits around 15%, higher than the U.S. at roughly 6%, but down from nearly 30% a few decades ago. Mortimer attributes part of the gap to mandatory full dues. There's no right-to-work equivalent in Canada, no opt-out. Every unionized employee pays full freight.

That guaranteed revenue, Mortimer argues, has made Canadian unions less accountable. They don't have to earn member loyalty the way unions in U.S. right-to-work states do. As Wilson pointed out, unions consistently report having to work harder to retain dues-paying members.

The Shared Bottom Line

For all the structural differences, the conversation kept returning to the same point: the best labor strategy isn't about gaming election timelines or navigating regulatory frameworks. It's about making work actually work.

Mortimer's experience points to operational frustration as the primary driver of union interest: broken equipment, bad scheduling, ignored suggestions, unsafe conditions. Unions don't gain traction because workers wake up wanting collective bargaining. They gain traction because someone's been asking for dock chocks for six months and nobody listened.

That's true in Saskatchewan and it's true in Ohio. The employers who treat union-free status as something they earn every day, by listening, responding, and running a competent operation, are the ones who keep it.

Catch the full conversation on The Left of Boom Show.

Blog Post

Friday Five: Strike Threats, AI Headaches, And The Story Behind Sean O'Brien's Awkward Endorsement

by Kimberly Ricci

A fee provision in Colorado’s Labor Peace Act is on the table. Again.

Last year, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have required mandatory dues deductions for every employee in a unionized workplace, even if they aren’t union members. Now, the state’s Democratic lawmakers are taking another pass with a similar bill, which Polis signaled he would also veto.

The Colorado House passed (42-22) this new bill, which would eliminate a unique second election requirement set up in the state’s 1943 Labor Peace Act. And it’s that second required election, which requires 75% approval to pass, that sets up a “union security agreement,” giving the green light for unions to take representational dues from all workers.

The state’s GOP lawmakers argued that removing the second election requirement would unduly remove money from non-members’ paychecks without “sufficient consent.” Clearly, Gov. Polis agrees, but for now, the bill will move on to the Senate.

Does AI lighten employees’ workloads? It’s complicated.

AI increases productivity, no doubt about it. Yet according to an 8-month study from workforce analytics platform ActivTrak, workers are not necessarily lightening their workloads or using that time for more “high-level, creative pursuits” with the new tools at their disposal. Yet.

According to the study, AI users’ times spent on “focused, uninterrupted work—the kind of concentration often required for figuring out complex problems, writing formulas, creating and strategizing—fell 9%.” This was due to workers picking up “broader scopes of tasks” with the time that they saved, possibly making these workers’ jobs feel more “intense.”

This does not signal disaster on any level. Instead, it sounds like a result of “early days” of workplaces feeling out how to comfortably integrate AI. However, the study does provide fruit for reflection.

In other AI news, Meta has acquired Moltbook, the social network platform where AI chatbots can talk about their human overlords. Oh boy.

Will 40,000 University of California grad workers strike?

Nobody can answer that question yet, at least not publicly.

Two weeks ago, UC graduate students voted to authorize a UAW strike that could take 40,000 workers off the job. Since that time, union officials haven’t clarified game plans after the current contract expired on Mar. 1.

Some history: Back in 2022, the UAW waged the “largest” higher-ed strike in U.S. history, including around 36,000 UC grad student workers and 12,000 additional employees. The strike ran for six weeks and ended with $43,000 grad student base pay, as opposed to union demands for $54,000.

Note: UC grad student workers are capped at 20-hour workweeks, so their salaries reflect their part-time status.

Meanwhile, unionized Harvard grad student workers will soon hold a strike authorization vote as their contract negotiations continue.

The first major doctors’ strike could also be looming.

In 2022, primary care physicians (PCPs) at Allina Health in Minnesota unionized with Doctors Council-SEIU as part of a 650-worker unit including physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Three years later, they didn’t have a first contract, and the doctors picketed in between appointments before going on a 1-day strike in Nov. 2025.

These PCPs have now authorized an open-ended strike with further negotiations scheduled for Mar. 16.

However, can doctors ethically go on strike? The American College of Physicians (ACP) Ethics Manual clearly states, “Physicians should not engage in strikes, work stoppages, slowdowns, boycotts [that could] limit or deny services to patients that would otherwise be available.”

Doctors Council hasn’t issued a comment on this ethical tenet, although the union’s actions on the matter speak for themselves.

A brief history of Sean O’Brien’s endorsement of Sen. Mullin.

This isn’t a particularly useful labor-related story, but it’s Friday, and some entertainment isn’t a terrible thing.

Back in 2023, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) entered into a "screaming match" during a Senate HELP Committee hearing. This followed the owner of Broken Arrow-based Mullin Plumbing discussing how Teamsters organizers had lurked outside his business to intimidate workers.

During that argument, O’Brien called Mullin “a greedy CEO” and told him to “quit the tough guy act…you know where to find me. Anyplace, anytime, cowboy.” The two then challenged each other to “stand your butt up,” which carried the context of Mullin’s status as an ex-MMA fighter.

All of that was water under the bridge last October during another HELP Committee hearing, where Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) welcomed the Teamsters president after the pair collaborated on a so-called “Pro-Worker Framework,” and O’Brien and Mullin seemed to be fine with each other.

Mullin offered, “I guess everybody’s surprised to see Sean and I on the same page… I’d like to call you my friend.” And O’Brien answered, “For the record, I’m not a hugger, but I’ll shake your hand.”

This week, O’Brien endorsed Mullin for Homeland Security secretary. In doing so, O’Brien proclaimed, “[I]f anyone is willing to stand their butt up to protect America, it’s Markwayne Mullin.” Well then.

Blog Post

About Labor Relations INK

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Contributing editors for this issue: Greg Kittinger, Michael VanDervort, and Kimberly Ricci.

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LRI Consulting Services, Inc. exists to help our clients thrive and become extraordinary workplaces. We improve the lives of working people by strengthening relationships with their leaders and each other. For over 40 years, LRI Consulting Services, Inc. has led the labor and employee relations industry, driven by our core values and our proven process, the LRI Way.

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Subject: LRI INK: SEIU Decerts, $30 Wages, Labor vs. Labour, Starbucks Bargaining

A Rally Didn’t Help The Union’s Cause

A Potential Blocking Charge Problem

Where The Story Could Go From Here

What happened:

Why it matters:

The California-Dreaming Template

Now New York City: $30 Minimum Wage by 2030

What NYC Employers Are Actually Facing

Employers, Take Note

Fourteen Labor Laws, Not One

A Very Different Board

Speed, Cards, and Votes

Density: Closer Than You Think

The Shared Bottom Line

A fee provision in Colorado’s Labor Peace Act is on the table. Again.

Does AI lighten employees’ workloads? It’s complicated.

Will 40,000 University of California grad workers strike?

The first major doctors’ strike could also be looming.

A brief history of Sean O’Brien’s endorsement of Sen. Mullin.