On September 19, Seattle City Council passed the Secure Scheduling Ordinance, which requires major retail and restaurant establishments to provide a “livable schedule” to its employees. Workers at retail and restaurant businesses with 500 or more employees worldwide (and 40+ locations worldwide for restaurants specifically) will now have the right to two weeks’ advanced notice of their schedule, a right to request their desire shifts, a right to on-call pay, and will not be eligible for back-to-back closing and opening shifts. The ordinance covers employees who spend at least 50% of their work time physically in Seattle’s limits. The ordinance will go into effect on July 1, 2017.

The EEOC has voiced its support for the NLRB’s proposed broader test for joint-employer status in an amicus brief for Browning-Ferris Industries of California v. NLRB before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “The EEOC’s longstanding joint-employer test is relevant to the appropriate standard under the NLRA because Title VII is based upon the NLRA, the statutes’ definitions of ‘employer’ are virtually identical, and both Title VII and the NLRA are remedial in nature,” wrote the EEOC in its brief. The NLRB’s new proposed joint-employer test would be in sync with the EEOC’s. The “new” joint-employer standard is actually an “older” standard, one set out in NLRB v. Browning-Ferris Industries, 691 F.2d 1117 (3d Cir. 1982). The standard makes two or more employers joint employers where they are “employers within the meaning of the common law, and if they share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment.”

The 11th Circuit held 3-0 in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions that banning employees from wearing their hair as dreadlocks is not racial discrimination. The EEOC alleged that the “prohibition of dreadlocks in the workplace constitutes race discrimination because dreadlocks are a manner of wearing the hair that is physiologically and culturally associated with people of African descent.” The court ultimately decided against the EEOC’s interpretation on the grounds that hairstyle was not an immutable trait. However, the opinion acknowledged that “in the last several decades, there have been some calls for courts to interpret Title VII more expansively by eliminating the biological conception of ‘race’ and encompassing cultural characteristics associated with race.”

In the face of mounting opposition, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen delayed an interest-rate increase again to give the economy “more room to run.” While admitting the strengthening case for a rate raise, Yellen argued that it made sense to put off the raise amid signs that discouraged Americans who previously dropped out of the labor market are now looking for work. According to Bloomberg, the Fed also scaled back the number of hikes it expects next year, from three to two.

Hillary Clinton published a piece in The New York Times titled “My Plan for Helping America’s Poor.” After touting the progress made during President Obama’s terms —there are 3.5 million fewer people living in poverty in 2015 than just a year before, median incomes have risen by 5.2 percent, gains in household income levels, and gains made under the Affordable Care Act—the piece focused on the work still to do. In addition to promising investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, technology, small businesses, and clean energy, the op-ed focused on her plan to create more affordable housing. Secretary Clinton wrote that she would take steps such as expanding Low Income Housing Tax Credits, modeling an anti-poverty strategy on Congressman Clyburn’s 10-20-30 plan, and a focusing on minority communities as ways to remedy the current reality that “nearly 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience a year in poverty.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is undertaking an overhaul of his country’s labor laws, hoping to create millions of new jobs by making it easier to hire and fire employees. A part of his 2014 reform agenda, other legislative fights and union opposition have stalled his efforts thus far. According to Reuters, however, two key bills covering industrial relations and wages, are heading to the cabinet this month. More than a million workers went on strike on September 2 to protest against the policies, and it is also unclear how the laws would effect the nine out of ten Indians who are employed in the informal sector, where labor laws are rarely enforced.

According to a report published on Wednesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine data shows immigrants do not take American jobs and lower wages by working for less, with some caveats. Reported by The New York Times, the study showed little to no negative effect on wages, but did point out that teens who did not finish high school and immigrants from earlier generations may have felt some impact. It also showed that high-skilled workers have a positive effect on the economy. The report did show “more mixed” results when discussing the level of burden immigrants might have on the government’s budget in terms of services such as education.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx issued a policy paper that outlines 15 points he expects automakers to comply with as self-driving cars hit the road. The paper hits on four main points: what the vehicles need to do to be safe, what federal and state governments need to do, how the Department of Transportation will use existing regulatory tools, and what new regulatory tools may be needed. Self driving cars have the potential to render the employee or independent contractor question obsolete for Uber and other car service companies, and have already been introduced in some American cities.

On the same line of news, Uber announced plans to open a facility in Detroit to allow it to work more closely with car companies to develop its plans for a self-driving cab fleet. The company has not yet released specifics about the plan, including how many people it plans to employ there.

G.M. and Unifor, the private sector union for auto workers in Canada, reached a deal to avert a 3,900 person strike. The parties agreed to a deal in which G.M. closes one assembly line in Oshawa, Ontario but agreed to open another one, resulting in a net increase of jobs, and moved production of an engine from Mexico to another Ontario plant. If this contract is approved by workers, Unifor will use it as a template for upcoming negotiations with Ford Motor Co. and Fiat-Chrystler Automobiles.

Louise Matsakis at Motherboard profiles a shipping and packing warehouse, Quiet Logistics, that “employs” primarily robot workers.  Many of those interviewed said they do not envision robot workers entirely replacing human workers, but workers themselves are not convinced.