Bookstore News
The regional Tattered Cover bookstore chain has filed for voluntary bankruptcy, and announced plans to close three of their seven stores in Colorado, and cut at least 27 staff positions (out of about 100 employees total). The locations closed are in McGregor Square in Denver, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. The company lost more than $660,000 in 2023, and owes over $1 million to publishers. For more, see the story in Publishers Weekly: <www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/93453-tattered-cover-files-for-bankruptcy.html>.
The move toward more unionization continues, with Barnes & Noble employees in San Jose CA and Bloomington IL voting to form unions. In November 2023, all the employees at the Bloomington location voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, while 90% of eligible staff at the Almaden Plaza shop in San Jose voted to join United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 5. They join three other unionized B&N stores in the US; two in Brooklyn NY plus the campus store at Rutgers University.
B&N has announced plans to open over 50 locations in 2024, after opening more than 30 in 2023. For the 2024 openings, three will be relocations while the rest are “new-to-market or in markets we exited at an earlier time/date due to lease expirations.” They have 604 locations as of this writing, and expect to end 2023 with 610. They hope to end 2024 with 645 or 650 stores open.
In November 2023, the Powell’s Bookstore union in Portland OR voted to reject a proposed contract from management, though they had accepted it tentatively in October. In a November 9 vote, 62% of the voters rejected the agreement because they were unhappy with the increase in starting wages and pay raises. The union said, “While the Local 5 bargaining team endorsed a ‘yes’ vote, we are a democratic organization and the membership has the final say. The ILWU Local 5 bargaining team has reached out to the Powell’s team to resume bargaining ASAP, and to continue working toward an 8th contract that honorsworkers’ contributions to the company’s success and enables workers to survive – a contract that workers will vote to approve. We’re confident that contract is attainable, and that Powell’s can afford it.” Powell’s owner and president Emily Powell said the rejected proposal “represented our best offer.” Management and the union have now filed unfair labor practice charges against one another with the National Labor Relations Board.
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