UPFRONT BIBB, GRIFFIN ANNOUNCE CITY ABORTION POLICIES POST-ROE, INCLUDING “REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FUND” CLEVELAND MAYOR JUSTIN BIBB and City Council President Blaine Griffin announced last week a suite of city policies related to reproductive healthcare. The policies emerged, they said, from weeks of discussion in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. These policies are circumscribed by a commitment to non-enforcement and non-prosecution. In the first announced policy, City Prosecutor Aqueelah Jordan has pledged that neither she nor any city attorney will participate in charging abortionrelated crimes. She effectively joins Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley and other district attorneys nationwide in refusing to deploy court resources to prosecute private medical decisions. Cleveland police personnel, too, will not waste time and energy investigating abortion-related criminal charges. These will now become “the lowest priority for the use of City resources, including personnel, time, and funds,” a press release announcing the policies said. In terms of its own resources, Bibb and Griffin say that they are currently working together to introduce legislation that will create a $100,000 Reproductive Freedom Fund. This city money would be used to cover the costs of Cleveland residents seeking abortions out of state. As Scene has previously written, these expenses include not only the cost of the procedure itself, but travel, lodging and potentially childcare and lost wages. The fund would be geared toward travel costs. Both Bibb and Griffin affirmed their support for abortion as healthcare and access to abortion as a human right. “We must do everything in our power to defend a woman’s right to choose what happens with her own body - not allow government or activist judges that control,” said Griffin, in a press release. Two additional policies relate to the human resources department. The city affirmed, as Bibb did weeks ago, that Cleveland HR will continue to “explore the city’s options” for employee health
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Clevelanders came out in droves to oppose drastic new abortion restrictions.
insurance plans. They are still making efforts to determine if all city plans cover elective abortions out-of-state. Additionally, the city has committed to not sharing employee related to pregnancy status, including information that identifies a doctor or patient, except in the cases of medical emergency. This non-disclosure commitment is to ensure that pregnancy-related information is not wielded against employees in the prosecution of abortion crimes. Lastly, the city says that is drafting an amicus brief in the case currently before the Ohio Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban. “As we hear about more and more extreme measures being considered at the state level, my administration will continue to look at all possible options—executive, administrative, legislative, and from the bully pulpit,” said Mayor Bibb, in the release. “Reproductive rights are human rights, and I am committed to protecting those rights to the maximum extent that I can.” -Sam Allard
| clevescene.com | July 27-August 9, 2022
University Circle Starbucks is 4th in Cleveland, 200 th in Nation to Unionize The University Circle Starbucks on Euclid Avenue is the fourth location of the popular coffee shop to unionize in Northeast Ohio. The National Labor Relations Board tallied the votes late last week and announced that workers there voted 11-9 to form a union. The University Circle store follows in the footsteps of counterparts at W. 6th Street downtown, Mayfield & Lee in Cleveland Heights, and Clifton Boulevard, near the Cleveland/ Lakewood border. The location is now the seventh Starbucks store in the state of Ohio to unionize. And Starbucks Workers United, the union representing stores across the country, noted that no store that has filed for a union election in the state has lost. But the University Circle election was more contentious than the previous three in Cleveland, where unions were voted on unanimously. In University Circle, a string of recent terminations and threats, alongside slashed hours for
Photo by Madeline Fening
employees known to be supporting the union and constant anti-union messaging from management, jeopardized the result for the union’s supporters. “They pulled out everything to try to union-bust us, and we still won,” said Ken Walker, a former shift supervisor who was fired in recent weeks. “I was written up for things that I didn’t do, and they fired me two or three days after we filed charges against the company with the NLRB. This victory shows that Starbucks’ retaliation won’t work. Workers are stronger than Starbucks’ union-busting tactics.” In recent weeks, workers and their organized labor allies have been demonstrating at locations across town to protest union-busting. Rallies at the W. 6th location and at the University Circle location precipitated the latest NLRB votes. The University Circle vote is also a significant milestone for Starbucks organizing efforts nationally. It is the 200th store to form a union since December 2021, when a Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York became the first to do so, launching a national wave that has not yet
