Barnes & Noble

From Publishers Weekly:

The unionized staff of the Barnes & Noble location in Hadley, Massachusetts, staged a walkout on August 25 to draw attention to concerns over inadequate staffing. The B&N employees, represented by UFCW Local 1459, have filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint to address the staffing issues.

According to local news station WWLP, the walkout, which lasted from 2pm to 5pm, was attended not just by B&N staff but also members of the Western Mass Area Labor Federation, which includes unions such as the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and United Auto Workers Local 2322, as well as members of Trader Joe’s United and the River Valley Democratic Socialists of America.

In an interview with MASS LIVE, UFCW Local 1459 organizing director Drew Weisse said that approximately one dozen B&N employees participated in the walk out, adding that the store had 18 unionized staff at one time but is now down to 11 or 12. “This is an ongoing issue for staff,” Weisse told Mass Live. “The company sends management personnel from other stores rather than hiring replacement staff when someone quits.”

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

From Publisher’s Weekly:

Barnes & Noble workers at the Park Slope, Brooklyn, store filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on May 25, seeking representation from the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The news comes a little less than a month after workers at the flagship B&N store in Manhattan’s Union Square launched their own union drive, and on the same day as 15 workers at the B&N outlet in Hadley, Mass., voted unanimously to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1459. The Union Square B&N election is scheduled for June 7.

In a release, the RWDSU said that a majority of Park Slope workers had signed RWDSU authorization cards and that workers had asked B&N to voluntarily recognize the union “so that contract negotiations could commence swiftly.” The election, the union added, could be held as early as next month. There are more than 30 union-eligible workers at the store, including baristas, booksellers, cashiers, and maintenance staff.

“I have been working at this store for over a year, and I constantly see how our low wages affect me and my coworkers in what I can choose to afford each week,” Haruka Iwasaki, a senior bookseller at the Park Slope store, said in a statement. “There is an unfair balance in how much I am working and how much we are getting paid. I want all of us to experience full-time benefits like health insurance if we work full-time hours. For these reasons, we are coming together to create a better way to work at this place that we love.”

B&N workers organizing union drives at multiple stores have now launched new national social media accounts: @BNWorkers on Twitter and @BarnesandNobleUnion on Instagram.

Earlier this week, at the U.S. Book Show, B&N CEO James Daunt addressed changes to the company’s previous hierarchical employment structure, noting that the bookseller is focusing on providing better compensation and career development opportunities for bookstore employees. Virtual attendees responded to Daunt’s assertions in the online chat, asking why the company has not raised base pay.

Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly

PG says this sort of thing doesn’t work very well with discounted pricing at BN. He suspects the real beneficiaries of the unionization efforts will be independent bookstores. To the best of PG’s knowledge of the unionized locations mentioned in the OP, there are likely indie bookstore alternatives if customers don’t like what PG anticipates will be Barnes & Noble’s new pricing policy in unionized stores.

Barnes & Noble is also going to have tougher negotiations with traditional publishers regarding discounts from publishers’ “list price” if this sort of employee movement spreads along the many large cities on the Atlantic coast of the US.