Macy's Retail, Macy's Furniture Galleries, and Budget Clearance House - Bargaining Update #1
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On Tuesday, March 3, and Wednesday, March 11, our Union Bargaining Team met with management to begin contract negotiations.
At our first session we were joined by a Union member from the Macy's Budget Clearance House (which is part of the Furniture Galleries contract) as management recently announced that they would be closing at the end of March. Since this will result in the layoff of all of the Budget Clearance House workers, we are working to secure benefits like severance pay and a clear system for transfers to other stores, or for workers who would like to re-apply in the future.
Because of this store closure, our Bargaining Team also spent time focusing on the layoff and transfer language within our Retail and Furniture Galleries contracts. Our layoff proposals included:
Workers who are going to be laid off will be provided a list of all regional job openings and will have preference for positions over any other external hire
Severance pay—which would be calculated based on our years of service here at Macy's—as well as language which would aim to extend our health care coverage for a few months following a layoff
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, management rejected almost all of these proposals for our Union contract and shared their own set of initial proposals, which included nearly doubling the required hours of work for flex colleagues and placing restrictions on workers transferring within Macy's if you have been employed for less than six months or have discipline within the last six months on file.
We responded to management by rejecting their proposals that flex colleagues' hours should be so drastically increased, and that restricting workers from transferring concerned us because the reason for the transfer might be issues with a manager or coworker—making a bad situation worse by denying the request. Also not all discipline meets the just cause standard in our contracts, so denying a transfer would amount to further unjust consequences.
We also made a proposal regarding members' rights to Union representation during investigatory or fact-finding meetings at work. While the right to representation is a core Union benefit that exists in federal law, we have seen more and more of our coworkers be disciplined without having a fact-finding meeting first, as well as a number of situations involving the asset protection team at Macy's keeping our coworkers past the end of their shifts to question them, without Union Reps present! Our proposal included that management:
Needs to give advance notice if meetings are investigatory
Must notify us that we have the right to have a Union Rep or Steward with us
Schedule meetings so that they won't reasonably extend past the end of our shift
Allow us the opportunity to have a language interpreter with us, so questions can be understood and responded to thoroughly!
Management did not formally respond to this series of proposals by the end of the day on March 11, but we are looking forward to continuing this discussion at our next scheduled bargaining date, March 25, where our Bargaining Team will be presenting management with a few of our wage and commission proposals!
"We're quite early into this process—but we're all excited and determined to win a strong contract!"
— Samantha Wilson, Macy's Bellingham
