- Union Petitions Filed with NLRB Have Doubled Since 2021
- Home Depot’s Corporate Staff Must Work a Store Shift Each Quarter
- Dell Mandates Global Sales Team Return to Office Five Days a Week
- Boeing to Cut 10% of Workforce
Union Petitions Filed with NLRB Have Doubled Since 2021
As reported by The Associated Press, petitions by workers for union representation doubled during President Joe Biden’s administration. The figures were released Monday, Oct. 14 by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
There were 3,286 petitions filed with the government in fiscal 2024, up from 1,638 in 2021. This marks the first increase in unionization petitions during a presidential term since Gerald Ford’s administration, which ended 48 years ago.
The NLRB also reported its field offices received a total of 24,578 cases last fiscal year, the most in more than a decade.
Despite the recent increase in union elections, the share of U.S. workers represented by unions has remained at the lowest levels in the country’s modern history, according to Reuters. Only about 11% of American workers overall and 6% of private-sector employees have union jobs, compared with more than 30% of all workers in the 1940s and 1950s.
Home Depot’s Corporate Staff Must Work a Store Shift Each Quarter
According to a report in Forbes, all Home Depot corporate employees, including senior management and remote workers, will be required to complete an eight-hour shift at one of the company’s retail stores every quarter, starting in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Home Depot, one of the largest retailers in the United States with over $150 billion in annual revenue and 450,000 employees, is reviving this practice after it was suspended during the pandemic due to safety concerns.
“We need to stay connected to the core of our business, so we can truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day,” Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said in a memo to staff.
Dell Mandates Global Sales Team Return to Office Five Days a Week
On Sept. 30, global sales team employees for Dell Technologies were ordered to return to the office full time. The business is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.
According to a memo seen by Reuters, the change is to leverage collaborative environment and “grow skills”, which requires the team to be in the office. “Working remotely should be the exception rather than the routine,” the memo said.
The field representatives from the sales team are expected to spend five days a week with customers and partners, or in the office. The team was previously required to work from the office for three days per week, according to the memo.
The sudden announcement left working parents scrambling to find childcare, according to a Business Insider report.
A Dell spokesperson told BI the global sales team was required to make their best effort to make it into the office or to a customer or partner location while they made changes in their personal lives to get back to the office full time.
“We emphasize flexibility and encourage team members to collaborate with their managers to accommodate their specific needs during this transition,” the spokesperson said.
Boeing to Cut 10% of Workforce
As reported by CNN, aircraft maker Boeing plans to cut 10% of its total staff “over the coming months.
“Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told staff in an Oct. 11 memo.
Ortberg, who started in his role two months ago and has been dealing with a month-long strike by 33,000 hourly workers, did not give the number of jobs that would be cut, although as of the start of the year Boeing had 171,000 employees worldwide, with 147,000 of those in the United States.
Boeing had already announced it was instituting rolling unpaid furloughs for a large share of its nonunion employees to try to save cash during the strike by members of the International Association of Machinists union. Those furloughs called for the affected employees to be off work one week out of every four. The layoff decision means the next furlough cycle will not happen.
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