In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB applies labor rights to detained migrants; former Trump NLRB lawyers join transition team; Amazon accused of union-busting at Whole Foods; and new film documents holiday strikes at Amazon.

The NLRB has issued unfair labor practice complaints against GEO Group, a private company that maintains immigrant detention centers. As I covered in July, detainees at GEO have gone on strike in California to protest low wages (as little as $1 per day) and mistreatment at the facilities. The ULP charges accuse GEO of retaliating against strikers, including by placing them in solitary confinement. The complaint is notable for its application of federal labor rights to workers living in government detention. Detained workers help fight fires in California, and many feel compelled to accept low-paying work in order to afford phone calls and commissary items.

The two head NLRB lawyers appointed to set the federal labor agenda during the first Trump administration are set to play a role in the second. Peter Robb, the agency’s previous General Counsel under Trump, and Alice Stock, who was Robb’s deputy, are leading the incoming Trump administration’s NLRB transition work. President Biden fired Robb swiftly after being inaugurated in 2021, and Trump is widely expected to do the same to current General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, whose ambitious pro-union agenda under Biden has garnered fervent supporters and detractors from unions and industry, respectively. Robb and Stock’s involvement in the transition complicates the prospects for labor during Trump’s second term: while Trump’s selection of Teamsters-backed Lori Chavez-DeRemer as nominee for Labor Secretary (covered by Otto here) signaled a potential opportunity for unions, it is not yet clear whether her selection is an outlier or a sign of more to come.

Amazon has deployed its union-avoidance playbook at Whole Foods, according to Philadelphia grocery workers who will vote in late January to decide whether to form the chain’s first union, affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers. A majority of the store’s workers signed union authorization cards in the fall, and union supporters decry the warehouse-ization of their work at Whole Foods, including the increased use of data-driven production quotas. Free food appears to be a cornerstone of the company’s anti-union appeals, including sandwiches and chips offered in an attempt to keep workers from attending a union rally on Monday.

A newly released short film documents the holiday strikes that the Teamsters conducted at Amazon warehouses in New York (covered at the time by Holden and Otto). Produced by the filmmakers behind Union, an Oscar-shortlisted movie about the Amazon Labor Union drive in Staten Island, the new short is titled Local One. Footage in the new film includes the New York Police Department arresting an Amazon delivery driver and a leader from a New York Teamsters local.