Top 10 Stories This Week:

FEATURED

REI Pledges to not open Black Friday, will still pay employees

REI will be sacrificing one of its top business days when it closes its 143 retail stores on Black Friday to encourage customers to spend time outside, and give employees a break, read more.

WHAT'S NEWS THIS WEEK 1. UFCW Local 1500 Members Raise Over $60k in One Month to Battle Leukemia-Lymphoma, Breast Cancer It's gotta be some kind of record. Great job! 2. What decline in Unions means for next generation's income One study finds kids who grew up in union families earn more when they enter the workforce.

3. McDonald's Fights to Pay Workers Less McDonald's and the government are battling over how much control the corporation exerts on its franchises. The government says McDonald's controls the working conditions and payment of employees at stores operated by franchisees, which make up about 90 percent of McDonald's stores. But McDonald's disputes the claim, arguing its franchisees are independent operators.

4. New York's Much Needed New Task Force to Combat Worker Exploitation Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an initiative to combat worker exploitation in New York, including investigations focused on employers who are serial offenders, along with the creation of a hotline for reporting worker abuse.

5. Top 100 CEOs in US are sitting on a $5 billion Retirement Nest Egg Forget retirement worries: once a fat cat, always a fat cat. The top 100 chief executive are sitting on pension pots worth $4.9bn (£3.2bn) – equal to the total retirement savings of 116 million of the poorest Americans, according to a study released by the Institute of Policy Studies on Wednesday.

6. It's Halloween, How About Some Union-Made Candy For Your Trick-or-Treaters? Notable favs: Sour Patch Kids (are you serious?), Tootsie-Roll (classic), Baby Ruth (just for the Mets tonight).

7. A&P Puts Brand, Banners, Data Up For Sale For all archived A&P bankruptcy updates head here.

8. In Depth Read: The Life & Death of an Amazon Temp-Worker

9. Brooklyn Warehouse Workers Fight to Form a Union...End Discrimination Raising banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain camera store. - See more at: http://labornotes.org/2015/10/brooklyn-warehouse-workers-fight-form-union-end-discrimination#sthash.Ap6mgKsJ.dpuf Raising banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain camera store Raising banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain camera store. - See more at: http://labornotes.org/2015/10/brooklyn-warehouse-workers-fight-form-union-end-discrimination#sthash.Ap6mgKsJ.dpuf Raising banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain camera store. - See more at: http://labornotes.org/2015/10/brooklyn-warehouse-workers-fight-form-union-end-discrimination#sthash.Ap6mgKsJ.dpuf Raising banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain camera store. - See more at: http://labornotes.org/2015/10/brooklyn-warehouse-workers-fight-form-union-end-discrimination#sthash.Ap6mgKsJ.dpuf

STATISTIC OF THE WEEK via NYC Central Labor Council

One worker was killed and another severely injured in a partial building collapse this morning in Manhattan.  There have been 7 worker deaths on non-union construction sites since September alone.  The correlation between the amount of non-union construction around the City and the staggering level of injuries and fatalities is one that must be addressed by City officials and developers.