‘A very hostile climate for workers’: US labor movement struggles under Trump

Key Highlights

• Organizers won a vote to form a union for the very first time in one of the grocery chain’s 530 US stores. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, which has spent years quashing unionization efforts within its sprawling empire.
• This result amounted to another blow in the tech giant’s armor. Workers at Starbucks had shown in the preceding years how – in the face of heavy resistance from a determined multinational employer – one such victory could set the stage for hundreds more.
• A new wave of momentum had taken hold in the US labor movement.“We are excited to begin the next chapter of this journey,” declared the Workers of Whole Foods Center City Philadelphia.
• Once they had turned the page, however, the chapter proved slow and arduous. Trump fires senior labor board official in ‘unprecedented and illegal’ moveRead moreJust one week before the Whole Foods union ballot result came through, Donald Trump returned to the White House.
• On his watch a crucial federal agency overseeing the US labor force has been “crippled”, according to insiders – and the new wave of momentum waned. Excitement gave way to frustration in Philadelphia.