Instacart is firing every employee who voted to unionize | Hacker News Reader

Instacart is firing every employee who voted to unionize

theverge.com

54 pointsjbredeche19 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25862948

Which is a group of 10 out of 2,000 impacted. Talk about burying the lede.

It's illegal to fire one employee for organizing, let alone ten. But given how this is a tiny part of a much larger layoff, it's an uphill fight (if there's even a "there" there).

It is, but it's much easier to get it past the National Labor Review Board when it represents 1/200th of the people fired.

Going to be hard to get a retaliation judgement on this one IMO (FWIW, I'm pro-labor and think this move sucks, just stating the realities of today's workplace)

> UFCW told Motherboard the layoffs will impact nearly 2,000 of the company’s 10,000 grocery store workers.

Just a coincidence that every single one of them is gone then?

If they were randomly distributed perhaps, but it seems like they just cut a location. All these people work at a particular grocery store.

I would say yes.

1. They're all at one location.

2. They're laying off ~20% of their workers.

So is the story that 10 people voted to unionize, and they are part of layoffs that affect 2000 people?

The title makes it sound like they were targeted.

Was Instacart so scared of unions that they burned 1990 good employees to get rid of 10 trouble makers? Or is this just standard operations?

Misleading title?

"the layoffs will impact nearly 2,000 of the company’s 10,000 grocery store workers"

So, not just those who voted to unionize then?

That's not misleading. The title, as worded, does not state or imply that only those who voted to unionize were fired.

It very much does

Am I reading this right that "every employee who voted to unionize" refers to a total of 10 people, out of 2,000 who are being laid off? Or are those 10 just one example of a local union, but many others are among the 2,000?

If "every employee who voted to unionize" means 10 people, I'm pretty much surprised that they were able to unionize at all. To form an union, don't you have to have the majority of the workers or something like this? (I'm not in the US, pardon for my lack of knowledge)

The article mentions they joined United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546, who according to their website are 1.3 million strong. With those numbers they could conceivably make Instacart address the issue.

Am I missing something? 10 unionized employees out of 2,000 total being laid off?

I didn't catch any mention of any evidence they were specifically targeted. I didn't read super thoroughly either, though. Is there a smoking gun?

Seems like organizations exploit those organizational benefits - moving as a whole, against less organized opponents, denying the goal to unionize, i.e. get more organized. It would be interesting to have laws against that?

So 10 are unionized and they are laying off 2000?

“ The news could have a chilling effect on other organizing efforts by Instacart employees across the country. The company’s leadership has already shown its hostility toward organizers, running a union-busting campaign that included bringing in managers to the grocery store in Skokie to convince workers to vote against the union.”

Sounds like the NLRB and DoJ needs to get involved here.

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