Wells Fargo Circles The Wagons Against Union Organizers

Plus: Lego wants to make those blocks in your couch American-made. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 18, 2023

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning.

Hear ye, hear ye! Blow the trumpets and unfurl the banners, for the new King has found his quiche!

In anticipation of King Charles III’s May 6 Coronation, Buckingham Palace has been hard at work selecting a crown (St. Edward’s), a concert lineup (Katy Perry, Andrea Bocelli, Take That) and, as of Monday, a royal signature dish for the crowning lunch. Behold, Charles’ “coronation quiche.” Palace officials describe it as “a deep quiche with a crisp, light pastry case and delicate flavours of spinach, broad beans and fresh tarragon. Eat hot or cold with a green salad and boiled new potatoes – perfect for a Coronation Big Lunch!” Just thinking about it has us hungry … for Burger King.

Morning Brief

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Is organized labor coming to big banking?

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Lego banks on the American South.

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Nielsen avoids its own cancellation.

Banks

Wells Fargo Fears the Union Boogeyman

It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for Wells Fargo … again.

According to internal documents reported by Bloomberg on Monday, the top dogs at the major bank — which ended up making lemonade out of last month’s banking run lemons — are growing increasingly spooked over yet another looming existential crisis: organized labor.

State of the Union(s)

From Apple and Amazon to Chipotle and Starbucks, union drives have been in 5th gear at some of America’s biggest companies. According to Wells Fargo’s own research, it’s a bona fide nationwide trend: “Employers are facing a significant resurgence in union organizing with election petitions increasing by nearly 60% in 2022,” read one slide in a PowerPoint presentation given by HR staffers to Wells Fargo executives seen by Bloomberg.

That same slideshow warned of “an increase in organizing activity” among Wells Fargo workers with the Communications Workers of America, a union that has long worked on adding tellers and personal bankers to its ranks of some 700,000 tech, telecom, and media laborers. The SF-based lender has now entered into something of a Cold War with the CWA:

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Having calculated the extra expense of a unionized workforce, according to Bloomberg, Wells Fargo’s upper brass have sketched out plans to pre-empt unionizing activity by dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on addressing employee “pain points,” like pay and health benefits.

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The CWA, meanwhile, has argued that the benefits of a unionized workforce at Wells Fargo would trickle down to an unexpected third party: customers. The bank is already embroiled in headline-grabbing customer-abuse scandals, and pro-union sentiment has been “most active” in the branch banking, operations, and home lending divisions.

A successful union drive would be CWA’s biggest win in the banking sector, but not its first. The labor group already represents some 125 employees at two credit unions as well as at Oakland-based community lender Beneficial State Bank.

Scooped: Wells Fargo isn’t the only company squaring off with labor organizers for the first time this week. Also on Monday, workers at Ben & Jerry’s flagship store in Burlington, Vermont filed for a union election with the backing of Workers United, the same union that won elections at hundreds of Starbucks locations. As one of the oldest sayings in materialist theory goes, “Before men can do anything else … they must first produce the means of their subsistence.” In this case, subsistence means a pint of Chunky Monkey.

– Brian Boyle

Manufacturing

Lego Building $1 Billion Factory In Virginia

(Photo credit: Alphacolor/Unsplash)

If you’re an American parent sick of stepping on Lego bricks in bare feet, look away now.

One of the few toy companies turning a profit at the moment, Lego wants to take advantage of retail momentum and America’s newfound interest in manufacturing growth. The Danish powerhouse announced on Monday that it’s going for a big sales push in the US, one week after breaking ground on a new $1 billion factory in Richmond, Virginia. After all, Lego is all about building things, and if America wants to start making stuff again, the Danes are here to help.

Brick by Brick

Although it’s a global household name, Lego has long enjoyed higher market penetration in its home continent of Europe than it has in the US, a discrepancy that is particularly dramatic in the American South. “On the east coast and in the north, we’re already very strong but it leaves a lot of potential elsewhere and we think we can succeed with that over the coming years,” COO Carsten Rasmussen told Bloomberg.

The Virginia factory marks the first-ever Lego facility in the US, though it does have three Legoland theme parks stateside. Previously its America-bound bricks were all made in its Mexico facility, which also will be expanding. The Danish company isn’t the only one to be wrapping itself in the red, white, and blue:

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Clean tech and semiconductor companies have committed to roughly $200 billion in manufacturing projects – almost doubling spending in the sector since the previous year – since the Biden Administration introduced a garland of subsidies last year with the Inflation Reduction Act, per an analysis by the Financial Times.

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About a third of those projects come from foreign investors, most notably allies in Asia including Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, who may be using the subsidies to diversify their supply chains to be less reliant on China.

Going Green to Yellow Figurines: The IRA and the green jobs it could create were seen as a big opportunity for Virginia, which has struggled with a decline in jobs thanks to coal production in the state falling 70% since 1990. Lego’s arrival is a signal that the manufacturing hoopla may be spreading beyond the green sector, although the toy company is also making climate consciousness a big part of its messaging. Lego says its Virginia facility, which is slated to open in 2025, will be carbon neutral.

– Isobel Asher Hamilton

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Media

Nielsen Scores Critical Accreditation Renewal

Nielsen knows a thing or two about cancellations and renewals. It just never expected to be living life as a reboot.

Some 19 months after seeing its key accreditation canceled by the Media Rating Council (MRC), the television rating agency scored a renewal Monday. But is it enough to return Nielsen to its primetime glory days?

Rate-Keepers

Like the indecipherable later seasons of Lost, Nielsen lost the plot somewhere along the way. The rating agency had long been the gold standard of tracking TV viewer habits, until viewer habits completely shifted, leaving Nielsen in the analog stone age. Networks, who rely in part on Nielsen ratings to sell ads, had long griped that the agency failed to adequately track viewers watching streams and simulcasts on non-TV devices.

Tensions between Nielsen and TV networks finally boiled over in the Spring of 2021, after an audit of the agency’s metrics revealed that it undercounted audiences by as much as 6% for nearly a whole year. In September of that year, the MRC stripped Nielsen of its accreditation. Though back on the air, the former industry standard now faces plenty of competition that popped up in its absence:

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Last year, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery both announced they would offer ad buyers measurements from Nielsen alternatives VideoAmp, Comscore, and iSpot.tv.

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Those two studios as well as Fox, NBCUniversal, and TelevisaUnivision launched a joint industry committee earlier this year. Its goal is to vet and certify a whole slew of new audience-measurement technologies that can serve as a key and transparent system for advertisement relations — which is increasingly important as digital platforms embrace advertising in addition to subscriptions.

Think Local: The MRC’s decision Monday, crucially, applied only to Nielsen’s national TV tracking. It did not reinstate Nielsen’s local-market TV measurement license after concluding the agency has not done enough to improve audience-measurement technologies in the space. In other words, there’s no unified metric for tracking who’s watching the local weatherman.

– Brian Boyle

Extra Upside

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iBank: Apple launches savings accounts with 4.15% interest rates.

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Knickel and Dimed: Want Knicks playoff tickets? It’ll cost you. A lot.

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Just How Smart is Big Tech Getting? Google is working on a “page-based prediction of user intent,” leveraging machine learning to predict your next click. Translation? Instead of waiting for your pointer finger to make its move, Google will serve you an overlay with what you (may) be after. If one thing should be clear, the sands of the tech landscape are shifting faster than ever before. You can stay ahead of it all with Patent Drop, which has more detail on this story and much more.

Just For Fun

Do the wave.

Catch my drift.

Disclaimer

*According to data from NCREIF Total Farmland Index

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing in alternative assets such as farmland involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principle, and is not suitable for all investors. There is no assurance any investment will achieve its objectives. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against loss.

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