
Andrea Hsu
Andrea Hsu is NPR's labor and workplace correspondent.
Hsu first joined NPR in 2002 and spent nearly two decades as a producer for All Things Considered. Through interviews and in-depth series, she's covered topics ranging from America's opioid epidemic to emerging research at the intersection of music and the brain. She led the award-winning NPR team that happened to be in Sichuan Province, China, when a massive earthquake struck in 2008. In the coronavirus pandemic, she reported a series of stories on the pandemic's uneven toll on women, capturing the angst that women and especially mothers were experiencing across the country, alone. Hsu came to NPR via National Geographic, the BBC, and the long-shuttered Jumping Cow Coffee House.
-
A barista-led labor movement has dealt challenges to coffee shop owners, and not just Howard Schultz. In Milwaukee, two independently owned cafés faced union drives with two very different outcomes.
-
Baristas at Starbucks as well as independently owned coffeehouses have driven a surge in union organizing. They see their activism as benefiting not just themselves, but working people broadly.
-
With the existence of a grass roots union at stake, the National Labor Relations Board is considering Amazon's objections to the Amazon Labor Union's historic victory.
-
The National Labor Relations Board is considering Amazon's objections to a union election that resulted in the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S.
-
Working from home isn't possible in many jobs, but in companies where it is, the return to office has become a point of tension between workers and their bosses.
-
On an investor call, Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz said the company was investing $1 billion to raise wages, enhance benefits and modernize stores. But unionized stores won't get some of that.
-
An Amazon sorting center on Staten Island in New York has voted against unionizing, a month after a larger Amazon warehouse across the street voted to join the Amazon Labor Union.
-
Starbucks workers have driven a surge in union election petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Unionizing has also picked up at colleges, non-profits and pot dispensaries.
-
Less than a month after the Amazon Labor Union unionized the first Amazon facility in the U.S., workers at a smaller warehouse across the street begin voting on whether to join the upstart union.
-
Once seen as among the most generous of employers, Starbucks is now grappling with disillusionment among its workers. Since December, 20 stores have unionized with more filing for elections every day.