Teamsters members at the supermarket Costco across the United States voted by an overwhelming 85 per cent margin on Thursday to authorise a national strike.
Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said: ‘The vote is a direct result of the company’s continued failure to bargain constructively and refusal to present a fair contract offer that reflects the company’s record-breaking profits.
The Costco Teamsters National Master Agreement, covering more than 18,000 Costco workers, expires on January 31.
‘Our members have spoken loud and clear — Costco must deliver a fair contract, or they’ll be held accountable.
‘From day one, we’ve told Costco that our members won’t work a day past January 31 without a historic, industry-leading agreement.
‘Costco’s greedy executives have less than two weeks to do the right thing.
‘If they refuse, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves when our members go on strike.’
Last week, hundreds of Costco Teamsters nationwide organised protests in preparation for a potential strike. Last Tuesday, Teamsters in Hayward, California, and Sumner, Washington held demonstrations. Last Wednesday, Costco Teamsters held a rally on Long Island. Last Thursday, hundreds held a protest in in San Diego, California.
Costco recently reported $254 billion (£205.78 billion) in annual revenue and $7.4 billion (£6.087 billion) in net profits — a 135 per cent increase since 2018. Yet, despite these record gains, the company refuses to meet the Teamsters’ demands for fair wages and benefits that reflect the company’s enormous success.
Bryan Fields, a Costco worker in Baltimore and member of Teamsters Local 570 said: ‘We are the backbone of Costco.
‘We drive its success and generate its profits. We hope the company will step up and do right by us, but if they don’t, that’s on them. The company will be striking itself.’
Meanwhile, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released the following statement in response to President Trump’s reinstatement of Schedule F, which Trump created in his first term as president, that seeks to reclassify hundreds of thousands of federal employees so they can later be fired and replaced with cheap labour jobs
Schuler said: ‘President Trump’s attack on federal workers began on his first day in office.
‘Schedule F is a bureaucratic name for a simple idea Trump created during his first term and laid out as a priority in Project 2025: he is setting the table to clear out the hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans who make our government actually work and replace them.
‘Let’s be clear about who these federal workers are that Trump wants to be able to remove without due process.
‘They are the people who make sure our families get their Social Security retirement and disability checks, protect our airports and passengers, inspect our food to ensure it’s safe to eat, and help survivors of disasters — like the North Carolina floods or California fires —get the support they need to rebuild.
‘85 per cent of them live outside our nation’s capital (Washington DC) in towns and cities across every state in the country. Federal workers are our co-workers, friends and neighbours.
‘Without skilled and experienced federal workers, Americans’ basic, fundamental needs are at risk.
‘The labour movement won’t allow this attack on federal workers without a fight.
‘We will bring workers from every industry across our country together to stand with federal employees and turn back this directive. To America’s federal workers today and every day: We have your backs.’
Elsewhere, a group of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina, are seeking to form another unionised warehouse at Amazon in the US.
Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (Cause) filed to hold a union election at the warehouse, which, despite Amazon claiming they were ‘very sceptical’ the group would have enough legitimate signatures for the petition, was approved by the National Labour Relations Board.
The election to represent 4,300 workers at the 700,000 square foot warehouse in the suburbs of Raleigh is scheduled to be held from 10th to 15th February.
The union has been organising since early 2022 at the warehouse, pushing for better pay, improved paid time off, better scheduling, improved accommodations for workers with injuries or disabilities, and respect on the job.
Ryan Brown, a co-founder of the group, who worked at the warehouse for five years until he was sacked in December, explained he was inspired by seeing Amazon workers publicly speak out during the first union election at Amazon in the US in 2021 at a Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse.
In early 2022, Brown said he spoke out against being ordered to work in a department in the warehouse known for Covid-19 outbreaks, and began speaking with a co-worker with similar concerns about the workplace. They decided to start organising for improvements.
The group faced significant challenges, especially as a grassroots organisation in a ‘right-to-work’ state, where employees can receive full union representation without paying union dues.
He said assistance from the Southern Workers Assembly and Black Workers for Justice in North Carolina had been pivotal in getting the union vote organised.
Insulin price law suit by SEIU
THE Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that provides health benefits to nearly a half-million workers — including many in the state of Ohio — has filed nearly identical lawsuits against the biggest insulin makers and against the pharmacy middlemen that decide whether to cover the drugmakers’ products.
The suits accuse the huge companies of conspiring to raise the cost of the lifesaving medicines in order to boost their profits.
The SEIU sued in US District Court in New Jersey on behalf of more than 400,000 members.
Then the Ohio Labourers District Council and the Ohio Contractors Insurance fund, which are also affiliated to the SEIU, representing 81,000 workers, filed a nearly identical suit in the same court.
Both took the health companies to task, accusing them of using their dominance to unlawfully jack up prices on a product that many diabetics can’t survive without.
The Federal Trade Commission in September filed a suit making similar allegations.
Each of the middlemen being sued – CVS Caremark, OptumRx and Express Scripts – is part of a conglomerate that also owns a major health insurer — Aetna, UnitedHealth and Cigna, respectively.
The pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, work on behalf of those and other insurers to facilitate drug claims and together, they control access to nearly 80 per cent of the insured people in the United States.
The SEIU stated: ‘Insulin, which today cost manufacturers as little as $2 (£1.62) per vial to produce, and which were priced at $20 (£16.21) per vial in the 1990s, now range in price from $300 (£243.15) to over $700 (£567.36). This is unacceptable, and means that working people cannot afford to treat health conditions which are easy to treat and for which they have been drugs available for decades.’
Insulin is widely available and simple to administer, but is now prohibitively expensive, meaning people can’t get it and that leads to severe illness and potentially death if for example a diabetic went into a coma.
