Federal labor regulators accused Starbucks on Wednesday of illegally closing 23 stores to suppress organizing activity and sought to force the company to reopen them. A complaint issued by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board argued that Starbucks had closed the stores because its employees engaged in union activities or to discourage…
When Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, takes the stage at his postmeeting news conference on Wednesday, investors and many Americans will be keenly focused on one question: When will the Fed start cutting interest rates? Policymakers raised borrowing costs sharply between March 2022 and July, to a 22-year high of 5.25 to 5.5…
Punctuating a year of major gains for organized labor, Microsoft has announced that it will stay neutral if any group of U.S.-based workers seeks to unionize. Roughly 100,000 workers would be eligible to unionize under the framework, which was disclosed Monday by Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, Liz Shuler, during a forum…
Inflation data released on Tuesday showed that price increases remained moderate in November, the latest sign that inflation has cooled substantially from its June 2022 peak. That’s likely to keep the Federal Reserve on track to leave interest rates unchanged at its final meeting of the year, which takes place this week. The Consumer Price…
The Biden administration announced on Monday that BAE Systems, a defense contractor, will receive the first federal grant from a new program aimed at shoring up American manufacturing of critical semiconductors. The company is expected to receive a $35 million grant to quadruple its domestic production of a type of chip used in F-15 and…
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is expected to announce on Monday a plan to invest $1 billion to expand chip research activities in Albany, N.Y., as the state aims to continue as a global semiconductor center. The plan is expected to create 700 new permanent jobs and retain thousands more, and includes the purchase…
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More than a year and a half after Amazon workers on Staten Island voted to form the company’s first union in the United States, the company appears to be taking a harder line toward labor organizing, disciplining workers and even firing one who had been heavily involved in the union campaign. The disciplinary actions come…
A national lobbying group has retracted its startling estimate that “organized retail crime” was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting. The group, the National Retail Federation, edited that claim last…
The U.S. economy continued to pump out jobs in November, suggesting there is still juice left in a labor market that has been slowing almost imperceptibly since last year’s pandemic rebound. Employers added 199,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, while the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 percent, from 3.9 percent. The increase…
