After Nine Years, the Labor Board Says Fired Starbucks Barista Should Get His Job Back

After Nine Years, the Labor Board Says Fired Starbucks Barista Should Get His Job Back

By Josh Eidelson
六月 27, 2014 2:04 下午 EDT

Your blogger was one of the organizers in the NYC GMB at the time.  I'm glad Joe was vindicated, after all this time. He's always been a hero to me. DBT

Nearly a decade has passed since Joe Agins Jr., a union organizer, was fired from his job as a barista at Starbucks , after he got into a scuffle with a manager that ended with both men yelling obscenities. Agins took his case to the National Labor Relations Board, and now, after much consideration, the federal authorities have determined he should get his job back.

“It’s been, definitely, a very, very long wait,” says Agins, who has worked stints as a Walmart employee, a personal-care assistant, and a temp between stretches of unemployment. (He has also had two children and left New York for Massachusetts.)

That nine-year saga started in November 2005, when Agins became a public and prominent supporter of efforts by the Industrial Workers of the World to organize his and other stores. According to the NLRB (pdf), Agins and other workers showed up at their store on their day off wearing union buttons—an act of protest after being told they couldn’t wear them at work. Ifran Yablon, an assistant manager at a different Starbucks, showed up on his time off, too, and started asking Agins about his button. Soon things got heated, and that was when Agins said, “You can go f— yourself, if you want to f— me up, go ahead, I’m here.” Starbucks fired Agins three weeks later, citing his use of profanity.

Agins brought charges to the NLRB accusing Starbucks of illegally punishing him for union activism, and in 2009, the board ruled against the coffee chain, finding Agins’s actions weren’t “so egregious” as to forfeit labor law protection for engaging in union organizing. Starbucks took its case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 2012, the court kicked the case back to the NLRB after finding that the 1979 precedent the NLRB had used failed to account for problems with an employee, even an off-duty one, cursing in front of customers rather than just in front of other employees.

After considering the issue for an additional two years, the NLRB’s new decision finds that Agins’s firing was illegal no matter what the circumstances surrounding the swearing, because there was ample evidence that Agins’s union activism contributed to the decision to get rid of him. The NLRB noted that Starbucks didn’t punish some other employees for equivalent cursing—including Yablon, the manager—and that a memo about Agins’s dismissal specifically cited that he “strongly support[ed] the IWW union.”

Agins, who now does maintenance and housekeeping work for a rehab facility, says he “absolutely” wants to pick up his career with Starbucks, although he’d like to get a job in Worcester rather than at his old store in Manhattan. Starbucks, though, could still appeal, kicking off another round of legal deliberation. In an e-mail, a Starbucks spokesperson said, “We’re currently evaluating the Board’s decision to determine next steps.”

Happy Birthday IWW

IWW

The ‪#‎IWW‬ was founded on this day in 1905 (followed by a 12-day long Convention!) Read more here: http://www.iww.org/history/founding. Happy 109th Birthday to us!

Taiwan Protest Leaders Blocked From Visiting Hong Kong

Lin Fei-fan, center, one of the protest leaders denied entry to Hong Kong, at a demonstration outside the Taiwan hotel where China's top cross-strait official, Zhang Zhijun, was meeting with his local counterpart, Wang Yu-chi.

MANDY CHENG / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

By AUSTIN RAMZY and ALAN WONG

JUNE 25, 2014

A group of protest leaders from Taiwan was barred from traveling to Hong Kong to participate in a forum on democracy, which the event organizers called a sign of the Chinese government’s concerns about the push for more open elections in Hong Kong.

The activists are leaders of the Sunflower Movement, the protesters who occupiedTaiwan’s Legislature for nearly a month this spring over efforts by Taiwan’s governing party, the Kuomintang, to push through a trade bill with China.

Lin Fei-fan, Chen Wei-ting and Huang Kuo-chang had planned to attend a forum next Monday by the New School for Democracy, a group that promotes political reform in China. They also had wanted to attend a protest march next Tuesday. ​”We suspect that this is deliberate political suppression by the Chinese Communist Party and the Hong Kong government,​” they said in a Facebook posting.

Andrew To, director of the New School for Democracy, said a fourth participant from Taiwan, Lin Chi-hua, was also blocked from coming.

Hong Kong immigration representatives would not comment specifically on the case. Decisions on whether to allow entry to Hong Kong are made “in accordance with the Hong Kong law and prevailing immigration policies,” the Hong Kong Immigration Department said in a written statement.

The move to bar the visitors comes as activists in Hong Kong are trying to pressure China’s central government to give Hong Kong residents more say in choosing the leadership of their semiautonomous city. An informal 10-day referendum, begun last Friday, which asked participants to choose among three proposals on how to elect Hong Kong’s chief executive, has received more than 700,000 votes. Hong Kong officials and Chinese state media have criticized the poll as invalid.

Joseph Cheng, a political science professor at City University of Hong Kong and a New School for Democracy organizer, said the group has sought to develop ties with activists in Taiwan as a way of increasing pressure on the Chinese government. China considers self-ruled Taiwan to be part of its territory, and in recent years Beijing has pushed for increased trade and cultural relations with Taiwan.

Zhang Zhijun, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, arrived in Taipei on Wednesday for a four-day trip, the highest-level visit by a mainland official. Mr. Zhang’s itinerary includes visits to several cities in the south of Taiwan, where pro-independence sentiment runs strongest. Political analysts say that Mr. Zhang’s trip, which follows a landmark visit to China by his Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Yu-chi, in February, will be focused on trying to improve China’s image in Taiwan and researching why its trade overtures have been met with suspicion on the island.

“How is everybody doing?” Mr. Zhang said in Taiwanese upon his arrival, local news media reported. Unification supporters welcomed Mr. Zhang, while pro-independence groups protested his arrival and said they plan to hold demonstrations at each stage of his visit.

Those pushing for greater openness in Hong Kong elections have taken inspiration from the protests in Taiwan, where demonstrators who occupied Taiwan’s Legislature and took to the streets of Taipei this spring said they were wary of China’s growing influence. The phrase “Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow Taiwan,” has been repeated by activists in both places as a warning about the clout of China’s ruling Communist Party, Mr. Cheng said.

“It appears the Chinese authorities are very, very sensitive to these exchanges between the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and the pro-democracy movement in Taiwan,” Mr. Cheng said.

Direct Action 5-5 (in Mandarin)

Unemployment rate falls to 3.85 percent, its lowest level since May 2008: DGBAS

RECOVERY:The jobless rate right may rise after new graduates hit the job market, but the improvement is clear. Average wages also rose 4.73% from a year ago

Taiwan’s unemployment rate fell to 3.85 percent last month to reach its lowest level since May 2008, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

The figure represents improvements of 0.06 percentage points from 3.91 percent in April and 0.21 percentage points from 4.06 percent in May last year, the agency said in its monthly report.

It was the second consecutive month the jobless rate has fallen below 4 percent since the global financial crisis in 2008, the agency said.

The seasonally adjusted rate — a more accurate indicator of the long-term employment trend — also fell, shedding 0.05 percentage points from April to 3.99 percent last month, the report said.

The number of employed rose 12,000 to 11.05 million last month from a month earlier, with the number of unemployed down 6,000 month-on-month to 443,000, an indication that the job market has improved, DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.

However, Lo remained cautious about the unemployment situation in the near future, as a new round of college graduates will start entering the job market from this month, with these first-time jobseekers expected to raise the unemployment rate over the next few months.

“Historical data shows that the jobless rate in June usually remains higher than that in May,” Lo told a press conference.

However, 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) public relations director Daniel Lee (李大華) said demand for workers has been relatively strong this year, which may help slow the seasonally rising pace of the unemployment rate over the next few months.

The DGBAS report also said that the average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to a record-level NT$37,871 in the first four months of the year, an increase of 1.37 percent from the previous year.

The overall average monthly wage, including bonuses and compensation, rose 4.73 percent to a new high of NT$53,769 in the January-to-April period, compared with the same period in the previous year, the report said.

However, the increase in the average wage was still lower than the pace of the consumer price index.

After adjusting the average for inflation — which climbed 1.01 percent year-on-year in the first four months — the real average wage, including bonuses and compensation, totaled NT$52,087, which was still less than the NT$52,810 recorded during the same period in 1998, the report said.

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Import of Chinese agricultural products harmful to domestic industries

By Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

An alliance of groups against establishing free economic pilot zones protests outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times

Several academics, farmers and civic groups yesterday said that the government’s plan to allow agricultural products to be imported from China to free economic pilot zones for food processing would seriously harm the nation’s agriculture and farmers.

With the draft special act governing the proposed free economic pilot zones to be reviewed during the ongoing extra legislative session, academics, farmers and civic group members protested in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, criticizing the draft act for allowing “value-added agriculture” to take place in the zones.

The Taiwan Rural Front said five articles in the draft act would seriously damage the nation’s agricultural output value and sustainability, ruin the credibility of “made in Taiwan” (MIT) products, as well as endanger consumers’ food safety if they are passed.

The nation’s food self-sufficiency rate stands at about 30 percent, which is relatively low compared with other nations, the group said, adding that self-sufficiency rates of about 70 percent in the UK, nearly 90 percent in Germany and about 42 percent in Japan, show that these free-trade nations still view domestic agriculture and food safety as important issues.

National Chung Hsing University economist Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said the articles about value-added agriculture would allow banned agricultural products to be imported from China and processed in the zones and sold as MIT products.

Although Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) has said 830 agricultural products from China are still prohibited, they would be allowed to enter the pilot zones and be processed as products for export under the the current pilot zone plan, Chen Chi-chung said, adding that other products made with Chinese agricultural ingredients can still be sold in the domestic market.

“If agricultural products are allowed to be imported under zero-tariff, then what food-processing company would still choose to use domestic food ingredients?” Chen Chi-chung asked.

Jang Show-ling (鄭秀玲), professor and chair of National Taiwan University’s Department of Economics, said if the products made of imported ingredients can bear the MIT brand for marketing, it may ruin the credibility of MIT products and endanger food safety, which may even be harmful to the nation’s food-processing industry in the long run.

National Taiwan University Department of Agricultural Economics chairman Roger Woo (吳榮杰) said the contents of the draft act are “cruel” to farmers and only beneficial to a small number of people.

Wu Chia-ling (吳佳玲), a rice farmer from Yilan County, said allowing food products made with Chinese agricultural ingredients to be sold under the MIT brand would force Taiwanese farmers to endorse agricultural products from China.

Hung Hsiang (洪箱), a watermelon farmer from Miaoli County, said Taiwanese farmers can process their grow and process their own food products, but the government is incapable of protecting domestic agriculture, so farmers want Chen Bao-ji to step down as minister.

They also urged the government to exclude articles related to “value-added agriculture” from the draft special act governing the proposed free economic pilot zones.