Senator Williams with local Starbucks Workers United employees on the one-year anniversary of their first union in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pa. − June 14, 2024 − Senator Lindsey M. Williams released this statement following the Supreme Court decision restricting the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) ability to protect workers exercising their rights.
“As someone who was illegally fired for attempting to form a staff union and who had to go to the National Labor Relations Board to uphold my rights, I’m appalled but not surprised by today’s Supreme Court decision ruling in favor of corporate interests over workers.
I have proudly supported Pittsburgh area Starbucks workers since the beginning of their organizing campaign. Those brave workers have been illegally retaliated against, including some of them even being fired, for exercising their right to organize their union.
While the Court’s decision makes it harder for workers to keep their jobs while their employers break the law, workers will continue to organize and fight back against the corporations who make it harder for them to do their jobs with dignity. Workers will continue to fight back because the deck has always been stacked against them. Companies have always had more money, more power, more influence than their workers.
Decisions like these are hard because it feels like someone is hitting you when you are already on the ropes. It is why I support legislation to strengthen the rights of workers to organize and have introduced legislation in Pennsylvania to make striking workers eligible for Unemployment Compensation. I want workers to know that there are people in their corner and that they are not fighting alone.
I’m going to keep calling out corporate greed everywhere I see it: in coffee shops, at giants like UPMC who don’t want to pay for the healthcare of their own workers, and even in the efforts by Pennsylvania’s richest man to make money off of our students. And if workers are on a picket line, I will be right there with them.”