(NEW YORK) — Bob Iger is returning to The Walt Disney Company as its chief executive officer, effective immediately, the company announced Sunday night.
“We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic,” Susan Arnold, chairman of the board, said in a press release. “The board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the company through this pivotal period.”
Iger has agreed to serve as CEO for two years, according to the press release. He previously served as CEO from 2005 to 2020.
Chapek has stepped down from his position, the company said.
“Mr. Iger has the deep respect of Disney’s senior leadership team, most of whom he worked closely with until his departure as executive chairman 11 months ago, and he is greatly admired by Disney employees worldwide — all of which will allow for a seamless transition of leadership,” Arnold said.
Arnold will continue to serve as chairman of the board, the company said.
“I am extremely optimistic for the future of this great company and thrilled to be asked by the Board to return as its CEO,” Iger said in the press release. “Disney and its incomparable brands and franchises hold a special place in the hearts of so many people around the globe — most especially in the hearts of our employees, whose dedication to this company and its mission is an inspiration. I am deeply honored to be asked to again lead this remarkable team, with a clear mission focused on creative excellence to inspire generations through unrivaled, bold storytelling.”
The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of ABC News.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A number of Twitter employees appear to be on their way out after declining to accept an ultimatum from new company owner Elon Musk asking that they “commit or leave,” three sources told ABC News.
It is not yet known how many Twitter employees accepted Musk’s email request that they commit to being “extremely hardcore” or resign with three months severance, but all three sources told ABC News that dozens of Twitter employees are sending the “salute” emoji over the company’s Slack — presumably signaling their departure from the company.
“I did not accept [Musk’s] ultimatum,” one Twitter employee told ABC News. “Many of us didn’t. … Now we are just waiting for our access to be shut down.”
ABC News confirmed that several of the employees who did not agree to Musk’s request had a key role in targeting and disposing of misinformation and hate speech on Twitter.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk sent a companywide ultimatum on Wednesday morning that Twitter employees must commit or resign by Thursday evening, according to an email from Musk obtained by ABC News.
Bearing the subject line “A Fork in the Road,” the email from Musk on Wednesday said: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
For those who wished to be part of the “new Twitter,” Musk directed employees to “click yes” on the link in the email.
“Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET [Thursday] will receive three months of severance,” Musk said. “Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Space X, earlier this month began layoffs that cut roughly half of Twitter’s 7,500-person workforce.
Those laid off will receive compensation and benefits until the first week of January 2023, though the date may vary for employees. Affected employees were already locked out of their Twitter systems, such as email and Slack.
Musk, who said he overpaid for the platform at the purchasing price of $44 billion, faces pressure to boost the company’s profits. Earlier this month, he said the company was losing $4 million each day.
(NEW YORK) — With the traditional start of Christmas tree shopping about one week away, growers and retailers are telling customers to ready themselves for higher prices this year.
Tim O’Connor, the executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association, which supplies the Christmas tree to the White House and the vice president’s residence every year and represents 38 state and regional Christmas tree grower associations, said anyone interested in fresh trees should head out to the farm lot sooner than later.
“If you want to shop the Christmas tree farm, you really have to go early,” O’Connor told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “They’re popular and they will sell out. They have whatever trees they have available for that season and then they’re done. And they have been selling out every year early.”
The American Christmas Tree Association, whose members are Christmas tree manufacturers and retailers, is also encouraging shoppers to buy early as prices will rise as Christmas nears.
“Because inflation impacts absolutely everything, the industry is seeing increases in shipping costs, fertilizer, trucking, everything you can possibly think of, whether it be real or artificial trees. So I think consumers can expect to see anywhere from 5% to 20% increases across the board on artificial and live Christmas trees this year,” American Christmas Tree Association executive director Jami Warner told GMA.
Warner also said that shoppers may also see fewer tree options this holiday season.
“People are used to abundance and choice — and again, the choices will be limited but choose the tree that fits your lifestyle the best, be it real or artificial,” she said.
Inflation isn’t the only major issue affecting the Christmas tree industry this season. In some parts of the country, shoppers may notice there are fewer fresh trees due to drought conditions and climate change.
At Kadee Farm in Greenville, Texas, a town about 35 miles northeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region, owner Woody Woodruff said a drought that started in the spring decimated over 1,000 trees on his 53-acre farm, which grows Virginia pine trees.
“There’s gonna be a lack of trees this year. In the South, which includes Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, there’s some tree growers that are all down in those states that experienced drought conditions and therefore it’s gonna be a little more difficult to get the trees that we needed,” Woodruff told GMA.
Woodruff explained that in addition to drought, businesses like his have also been hit by higher prices.
“We all use diesel fuel or gasoline, that was more expensive this year,” the 55-year-old farm owner said. “Our fertilizers, some of them more than doubled [in price] this year. And so that really took a toll … and that was nationwide. So that took a toll on anybody that is in the farming industry trying to grow Christmas trees.”
To make up for the lost sales, Woodruff plans on trucking in trees from other areas, including Michigan and states in the Pacific Northwest and the Carolinas.
“Of course those trees are going to be more expensive. So the consumer is going to pay more this year when they go to find a live tree,” Woodruff continued. “And if you go to any of the big box stores, I’ve noticed that their artificial trees have really skyrocketed as well. That’s again due to inflation and shipping.”
Overall, Woodruff estimated that customers could see as much as a 30% increase in Christmas tree prices compared to last year.
For now, though transportation costs has been “outrageous” at times, Woodruff said it’s a necessary expenditure, and he’s not worried in the long term.
“We’re eating as much of the cost as we possibly can and still staying in business,” Woodruff added. “Everything’s gonna work out as it should. Is it, you know, sickening to sit here and look at all of my lost trees that have died, that I have spent 25 years growing? Absolutely. But I think it’ll all come back. You just have a positive outlook and just keep trudging ahead. … You can’t cry over spilt milk.”
Both the NCTA and ACTA representatives say there should still be plenty of Christmas trees for everyone interested at the end of the day, real or artificial.
“We always say there’s a tree for every family,” O’Connor said. “There are trees for different budgets too. So if you really are concerned about price, you know, yes, it won’t be the most beautiful tree on the lot perhaps but there’ll be a tree that fits your price range, that when you bring it home, you’ll enjoy it in your home.”
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of shuttered blood testing company Theranos, is set to be sentenced on Friday for defrauding investors.
The sentencing marks the latest development in a legal saga that has turned the former billionaire entrepreneur into an emblem of Silicon Valley malfeasance.
Holmes faces a sentence of 20 years for each of four counts, but legal experts expect the sentences to be served at the same time, giving her a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Holmes’ legal team requested no more than 18 months in prison in a court filing last week. In fact, a lighter sentence involving house arrest and community service would prove sufficient, her attorneys argued.
Prosecutors appealed for Holmes to be sentenced to 15 years in prison, calling it “one of the most substantial white collar offenses” in Silicon Valley history.
“She repeatedly chose lies, hype and the prospect of billions of dollars over patient safety and fair dealing with investors,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach wrote in the request last Friday. “Elizabeth Holmes’ crimes were not failing, they were lying.”
Last week, Holmes’ legal team submitted 130 letters of support, including a note from personal friend Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who said Holmes “has within her a sincere desire to help others, to be of meaningful service, and possesses the capacity to redeem herself.”
Regardless of the sentence, Holmes and her family will face ongoing hardship as a result of widespread criticism of Holmes, her legal team said. “[T]here is no avoiding the scorn that accompanies Elizabeth Holmes,” Billy Evans, her husband, said in the court filing.
Holmes, 38, was convicted in January on four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy while at the helm of Theranos. The verdict followed a four-month trial that detailed Holmes’ trajectory from a Stanford University dropout in 2003 to a star business leader on the cover of Fortune magazine little more than a decade later.
Ultimately, her downfall began in 2015 amid investigations from journalists and regulators over the medical company’s faulty product, which claimed to provide accurate information from tests using just a finger-prick of blood.
A year later, as the company struggled, Forbes downgraded its assessment of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0. Facing charges of massive fraud from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Holmes agreed to forfeit control of Theranos in 2018.
That year, federal prosecutors indicted Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’ former lover and Theranos’ chief operating officer, on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, alleging that the two business leaders knowingly misled investors and patients about the effectiveness of the company’s product.
Holmes was found guilty on four of the 11 charges, as jurors decided she had lied to investors in an effort to raise money on false pretenses. Holmes was found not guilty on four counts centered on defrauding patients and the jury could not reach a verdict on counts pertaining to the deception of investors.
Since her conviction, Holmes has filed three unsuccessful requests for a new trial, citing freshly available evidence. She has remained free on bail. Holmes confirmed last week she is also pregnant.
The latest request for a new trial earlier this month centered on a visit to Holmes’ house by former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff. During the trial last year, Rosendorff testified for six days, saying that Holmes was aware the company’s product yielded inaccurate test results but still sought its continued use on patients.
Lawyers for Holmes argued that Rosendorff privately expressed guilt to Holmes over his depiction of the company during the trial. Ultimately, Rosendorff reaffirmed the veracity of his testimony and the judge dismissed the request for a new trial.
The sentence on Friday will be handed down by Judge Edward J. Davila at a federal courthouse in San Jose, California.
Balwani awaits sentencing after being convicted on 12 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy.
Earlier this month, he was granted a three-week delay in his sentencing hearing. He is now scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 7.
(NEW YORK) — Amazon’s layoffs will continue into the new year, CEO Andy Jassy said in a new memo Thursday.
The announcement comes a day after the tech company began layoffs of workers on its devices team, which focuses on products like its voice-operated Alexa, according to a memo from Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices and services.
“This year’s review is more difficult due to the fact that the economy remains in a challenging spot and we’ve hired rapidly the last several years,” Jassy said Thursday.
Decisions on the latest Amazon role reductions will be shared in early 2023, Jassy said. It is not yet certain how many jobs will be impacted, though the reductions will impact Amazon’s stores and People Experience and Technology Solutions organizations, he said.
The move adds the company to a list of major tech firms that have imposed job cuts in recent weeks, including Facebook-parent Meta and Twitter.
Limp’s memo did not provide details on the scale of the layoffs, but the job losses arrive at a time when the company typically expands its workforce during the busy holiday season.
“We continue to face an unusual and uncertain macroeconomic environment,” Limp’s memo said. “After a deep set of reviews, we recently decided to consolidate some teams and programs.”
“In cases where employees cannot find a new role within the company, we will support the transition with a package that includes a separation payment, transitional benefits and external job placement support,” the memo added.
The layoffs follow major job cuts at other big tech firms, as industry titans retreat from record sales attained during the pandemic, when billions across the world were forced into isolation. Customers stuck at home came to rely on delivery services like e-commerce and virtual connections formed through social media and videoconferencing.
However, persistent recession fears, rising interest rates and a shift back toward a pre-pandemic lifestyle have crunched the tech sector.
Under new owner Elon Musk, Twitter laid off roughly half of its 7,500-person workforce, citing losses of about $4 million each day.
Days later, Meta announced that it would cut about 11,000 employees, which amounts to roughly 13% of its workforce. The company reported a second consecutive quarter of declining sales last month.
Lyft, Netflix, Coinbase, Salesforce, Microsoft and Snap are among a slew of other tech companies that have cut workers this year.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq has fallen more than 25% in 2022. Shares in Amazon are down 18% this year.
Third-quarter earnings released by Amazon last month fell short of analyst expectations for revenue, sending the stock down 13% in extended trading on the day of the announcement.
(WASHINGTON) — The Tennessee attorney general said he is looking into whether consumer protection laws were violated after Ticketmaster botched the rollout of Taylor Swift concert tickets.
“We have received complaints about the sale process, and we have previously looked into antitrust allegations involving Ticketmaster and Live Nation. We want to make sure that there are no issues here that merit legal response,” Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told reporters Wednesday, according to a transcript of the press conference obtained by ABC News.
Swift is hitting the road for the first time since the pandemic started on her “Eras Tour” and demand for tickets including the three shows in Nashville, Tennessee, have never been higher. Users reported waiting in a virtual line for hours without being able to purchase tickets when it was their turn. Ticketmaster has since cancelled Friday’s regular sale of tickets due to “ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
Skrmetti said there are a few specific issues his office is looking at, in particular the representations made with the presale code fans were given to buy tickets with.
“If there were any representations made with respect to the process in advance, that could be an issue,” he said. “We’re talking about a company with an extremely dominant market share.”
Under a previous settlement with Ticketmaster, it allows the attorney general to get information that is otherwise not public regarding the company’s business practices. He did say it was worth looking at whether or not Ticketmaster and Live Nation are a monopoly.
“I know the Department of Justice and the states took a hard look at the Ticketmaster Live Nation merger and secured a consent decree that was theoretically going to reduce the antitrust risks,” he said. “If we’re seeing a situation where people are trying to use the service and aren’t getting the product that they’ve paid for, the product that they were promised, that could be an indicator that there’s not enough competition in the market. We just need to take a closer look.”
Ticketmaster responded Thursday to the criticisms it has faced over its handling of the Verified Fan presale, which opened earlier this week and noted that over 2 million tickets were sold in a single day for Swift’s shows on Tuesday.
“The biggest venues and artists turn to us because we have the leading ticketing technology in the world – that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and clearly for Taylor’s on sale it wasn’t. But we’re always working to improve the ticket buying experience. Especially for high demand on sales, which continue to test new limits,” the statement said.
Ticketmaster said that it would “improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”
Ticketmaster also canceled the Friday public sale of “Eras Tour” due “to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”
Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010 and in 2019 the company paid fines pertaining to the company violating the agreed upon terms of DOJ consent decree during the final merger.
“Despite the prohibitions in the Final Judgment, Live Nation repeatedly and over the course of several years engaged in conduct that, in the Department’s view, violated the Final Judgment,” a press release by DOJ said in 2019. “To put a stop to this conduct and to remove any doubt about defendants’ obligations under the Final Judgment going forward, the Department and Live Nation have agreed to modify the Final Judgment to make clear that such conduct is prohibited.”
As part of the updated 2019 settlement, the company agreed to have the Justice Department’s antitrust division monitor the companies’ practices.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also critical of the merger after seeing reports people couldn’t get tickets to Swift shows.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in,” she tweeted Tuesday. “Break them up.”
If the company was found to be in violation of consumer protection laws, they could be the subject of fines and a court order to not engage in similar practices.
“This is a company that we’ve looked at in the past,” Skrmetti said. “This is a company that’s been the subject of numerous complaints going back decades. And there may be other people who are interested, but this is something that we are interested in to make sure that they’re treating consumers fairly.”
The reason Skrmetti is doing this, he said, is because music is an important part of the local economy.
“It’s not just a matter of fans who are or being harmed by this potentially. There are a lot of people involved in concert production and concert promotion in this area,” he said. “The ramifications of it are more significant here than elsewhere. The other thing is there are different AGs with different bandwidths and different opportunities.”
Attorney General Skrmetti said he is “curious” about the company’s planning given the widespread announcement of the tour.
(NEW YORK) — Ticketmaster is pulling the plug on the general-public ticket sale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour that was set to take place Friday, Nov. 18.
The company tweeted Thursday: “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ has been cancelled.” It remains unclear whether the general sale will be rescheduled.
The announcement comes after backlash from Swift fans who experienced long waits and “error” messages when trying to purchase tickets during a “verified fan” pre-ticket sale Nov. 15.
Samantha Miller said she knew scoring tickets for Taylor Swift’s 2023 “Eras” tour for her 13-year-old daughter wouldn’t be easy, but she said her experience with Ticketmaster left her stressed, angry and empty-handed.
“The whole thing was like a bad joke,” Miller told ABC News. The New York City mom said she made sure to register her daughter’s name, email address and contact number a week before pre-sale tickets were available, so Ticketmaster could vet her “Swiftie” (as the popstar’s fans are called) and confirm she was a “verified fan” and not a third-party ticket reseller.
Despite having a special code from Ticketmaster to access tickets, Miller was stuck waiting in an online queue for four hours before seeing the below message pop up on her computer screen:
“We’re sorry! Something went wrong on our end and we need to start over. Broken things are a drag — our team is on it so it doesn’t happen again.”
At the same time, tickets that were selling for between $49 and $449 each, were already being listed on resale sites like StubHub for as much as $22,700 per ticket. West Coast fans had to wait an extra three hours as Ticketmaster delayed those sales to help ease traffic on its site.
Despite the glitches, Ticketmaster says it sold 2 million tickets for Swift’s first stadium concert tour in five years — the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day. Unfortunately for Miller, she wasn’t one of the lucky ones. She had to eventually abandon her efforts to “get back to my day job” and said she feels “guilty” about not being able to secure the tickets for her daughter.
Similar scenarios played out for thousands of disappointed Swift fans, renewing calls from activists and lawmakers to split up Ticketmaster and the concert promoter Live Nation, which merged in 2010.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday that he is looking into whether consumer protection laws were violated after Ticketmaster botched the rollout of Taylor Swift tickets.
“We have received complaints about the sale process, and we have previously looked into antitrust allegations involving Ticketmaster and Live Nation. We want to make sure that there are no issues here that merit legal response,” Skrmetti said, according to a transcript of the news conference obtained by ABC News.
Consumer advocates say the Taylor Swift ticket debacle underscores the pitfalls of consolidation in the ticketing industry. The combined company, which controls 70% of primary ticketing and live event venues, has been accused of abusing its market power by hiking up ticket prices and adding on arbitrary fees.
House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Ticketmaster a monopoly and said the merger with Live Nation should never have been allowed. “They need to be reigned in… Break them up,” she tweeted.
Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal tweeted that Swift’s tour sale is “a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near-monopoly.”
Congressman David Cicilline, D-R.I., added his voice to the chorus, calling the excessive wait times and fees “a symptom of a larger problem” at “an unchecked monopoly.”
Politicians are not the only ones targeting Ticketmaster. A consortium of organizations, including the American Economic Liberties Project and Sports Fans Coalition are lobbying to end the company’s hold on the ticketing industry with their Break Up Ticketmaster campaign.
In a statement to ABC News, Ticketmaster said, “Even when a high demand on sale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed. For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years. While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.” Ticketmaster added that, “Every ticket was sold to a buyer with a Verified Fan code.”
The pandemic wreaked havoc on the live music industry as concerts and festivals were canceled and companies were forced to handle hoards of refunds. As a result, Live Nation’s revenue for the second quarter of 2020 was down 98% from the previous year.
Since then, the industry has roared back as fans flock to live entertainment again, and concert tickets prices have jumped nearly 20% from pre-pandemic levels.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The new FTX CEO brought into shepherd the company through bankruptcy proceedings said he has never seen such a “complete failure” of corporate controls in his career, including during the Enron scandal.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” John Ray, who also oversaw the Enron bankruptcy proceedings said in a court filing on Thursday. “From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
The former CEO of the crypto-exchange platform Sam Bankman-Fried has received scrutiny over the handling of the company after it filed for bankruptcy last month, from the Justice Department and state and federal regulators, according to previous court filings.
In 2001, Houston-based energy corporation Enron filed the biggest bankruptcy claim in U.S. history, and many of its executives were sent to prison for securities fraud.
Ray said FTX corporate funds were used to purchase executives and advisers houses in the Bahamas.
“In the Bahamas, I understand that corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisers,” Ray said. “I understand that there does not appear to be documentation for certain of these transactions as loans, and that certain real estate was recorded in the personal name of these employees and advisers on the records of the Bahamas.”
Ray says that Bankman-Fried claimed to have millions of users, which hasn’t been verified by his team.
“The FTX.com platform grew quickly since its launch to become one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Mr. Bankman-Fried claimed that, by the end of 2021, around $15 billion of assets were on the platform, which according to him handled approximately 10% of global volume for crypto trading at the time. Mr. Bankman-Fried also claimed that FTX.com, as of July 2022, had “millions” of registered users. These figures have not been verified by my team,” Ray said.
He said he also has “substernal concerns” about the financial filings of the company.
“Although the investigation has only begun and must run its course, it is my view based on the information obtained to date, that many of the employees of the FTX Group, including some of its senior executives, were not aware of the shortfalls or potential commingling of digital assets. Indeed, I believe some of the people most hurt by these events are current and former employees and executives, whose personal investments and reputations have suffered. These are many of the same people whose work will be necessary to ensure the maximization of value for all stakeholders going forward,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Hundreds of Starbucks employees went on strike Thursday, amid the coffee chain’s busy holiday season, to protest working conditions and push company leaders to recognize workers’ unionizing efforts at stores nationwide and meet them at the bargaining table.
The protest took place on Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, as the company rolled out its annual holiday themed red cups and gave out limited-edition reusable versions of the cups to customers ordering holiday or fall beverages.
More than 1,000 members of the Starbucks Workers Union picketed outside of over 100 stores across the country for what they called the “Red Cup Rebellion.”
Union leaders sent a mass email to media and union members with details of the strike, which it described as the “biggest coordinated national action taken by union Starbucks stores in the campaign’s history.”
The email stated that the strike was a “response to Starbucks’ union-busting tactics and refusal to bargain,” and noted that striking workers would be “handing out red Starbucks Workers United union cups to customers instead.”
As customers headed in to order coffee and get their hands on the collectible holiday reusable cups, many baristas said they would walk out in protest.
“Despite being the face of the company, Starbucks partners are underpaid, forced to run perpetually understaffed stores, and don’t have consistent schedules they can rely on,” the union email stated. “Conditions like these are what lead Starbucks partners nationwide to begin their unionization efforts seeing the private jets and million-dollar bonuses the company can afford to provide their executives with. Now, Starbucks partners are demanding the right to organize a union free of intimidation and fear.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders voiced his support for the group’s efforts on Twitter Thursday morning.
“I’m proud to stand with Starbucks workers on strike today across the country. CEO Howard Schultz is illegally union busting and firing workers for organizing. Mr. Schultz, it is time to recognize the stores that unionized and negotiate with workers in good faith,” he wrote.
Michelle Eisen, a worker from the first unionized Starbucks store in the U.S. at Elmwood Ave. in Buffalo, New York, wrote in the email that workers are “organizing for a voice on the job and a true seat at the table.”
“Starbucks has left behind the very values that drew many of us to the company in the first place. You cannot be pro-LGTBQ, pro-BLM, pro-sustainability, and anti-union,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Seattle-based coffee chain told ABC News the company was aware of the scheduled union demonstrations at a small number of their U.S. stores.
“In those locations where partners choose to participate, we respect their right to engage in lawful protest activity – though our focus has been, and continues to be, on uplifting the Starbucks experience for our partners and customers,” they said. “We remain committed to all partners and will continue to work together, side-by-side, to make Starbucks a company that works for everyone.”
Additionally, the spokesperson clarified that “counter to what the union has shared, Starbucks has continued to engage Workers United representatives in a good faith effort to move the bargaining process forward.”
“As a result of our efforts, we’ve shown up to more than 50 bargaining sessions across the country and have another 60 scheduled in the coming weeks,” they said.
Starbucks Workers United, which represents over 260 locations and nearly 7,000 workers, has formed more new unions in a 12-month period than any U.S. company in the last 20 years.
In September, Starbucks said it had sent out letters to 234 stores to schedule bargaining sessions the following month. “We look forward to these negotiations and hopefully setting dates and securing locations for contract bargaining.”
However talks broke down after union members asked to allow some workers to join bargaining sessions over Zoom, with company officials walking out of those sessions only minutes after they had begun, citing federal regulations.
“The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) prohibits any party from making recordings or transcripts of contract negotiations because such actions ‘inhibit the free and open discussion necessary for conducting successful bargaining,’ ” the company wrote in a statement on Oct. 28.
Union members also issued a statement at that time. “Workers across the country were planning on presenting a set of core non-economic proposals that workers debuted on social media over the past few weeks,” they wrote. “The Union will be filing a new NLRB charge over the Company’s latest refusal to bargain in good faith.”
The National Labor Relations Board has issued 39 official complaints against Starbucks, encompassing over 900 alleged violations of federal labor law, according to the union.
(WASHINGTON) — Tyson Fresh Meats has recalled about 93,697 pounds of raw ground beef products, saying it may be contaminated with “extraneous materials, specifically reflective mirror-like material,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Wednesday.
The affected ground beef was produced on Nov. 2 and shipped to retail locations in Texas, including H-E-B grocery stores, according to the agency.
The three recalled items include 5- and 10-pound packages of Hill Country Fare ground beef 73% lean/27% fat with a best before or freeze by date of Nov. 25, 2022, and 5-pound containers of H-E-B Ground Chuck Ground Beef 80% lean/20% fat.
The recalled products have establishment number “EST. 245E” on the seam of the container, the FSIS said.
“The problem was discovered when the firm notified FSIS that they received consumer complaints reporting findings of ‘mirror-like’ material in ground beef products purchased from grocery stores,” the FSIS said.
The agency and company told consumers not to eat the contaminated ground beef.
“These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase,” FSIS state in the recall.
There have been no confirmed reports of injury or illness from the recalled beef.
