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News & Commentary

October 21, 2016

Vivian Dong

Vivian Dong is a student at Harvard Law School.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) voted yesterday to approve a slew of regulations targeting workplace violence in California hospitals and care facilities.  These regulations originated in 2014 legislation sponsored by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. California Secretary of State and former State Senator, Alex Padilla, carried the legislation on CNA and NNU’s behalf.  The new rules make California the state with the strongest workplace violence prevention regulation in the nation.  Health care workers experience non-fatal workplace violence five to twelve times more frequently than workers in other jobs.  NNU has also petitioned the U.S. Department of Labor to issue a similar protective standard.

The New York Times today published an article on the phenomenon of “work-campers” in the United States, people who live and travel in their trailers from campground to campground looking for seasonal work.  Work-campers are from diverse class backgrounds, but most are semi-retired baby boomers looking for warm weather and low-commitment work.

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Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 3)

In Ruelas v. County of Alameda, the Supreme Court of California denied pretrial detainees’ state minimum wage claim, reasoning that section 4019.3 of the state’s Penal Code — capping jail laborers’ wages at two dollars per day — instead governed.  The first part of this three-part series discussed the California Supreme Court’s holding and reasoning.  The second part gave a history of California’s constitution and jail labor in the state, concluding that the two-dollar daily wage cap could not have applied to plaintiffs, who were pretrial detainees performing unpaid labor for a corporation.  

Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 2)

In Ruelas v. County of Alameda, the Supreme Court of California held that pretrial detainees forced to labor for a corporation are ineligible for a minimum wage under the state’s Labor Code.  The court construed Penal Code section 4019.3 broadly, interpreting it as incompatible with California’s Labor Code. The court concluded that the Penal Code prevents pretrial detainees from earning more than two dollars per day for their labor, absent a local ordinance.  

How Three Simple Labor Laws Helped Unions Organize Amazon and UBER in Canada

In early July,  the British Columbia Labour Relations Board (BCLRB) certified UFCW-Canada as the bargaining representative for over 500 UBER drivers in the province’s capital city of Victoria.  A few days later, the BCLRB issued another decision that certified the union Unifor (formerly the Canadian Auto Workers) for a bargaining unit of hundreds of employees employed at an Amazon distribution centre […]

Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 1)

Pretrial detainees in Santa Rita Jail are forced to labor for Aramark, a food-preparation company that provides meals to third parties outside of the jail. Neither Aramark nor the county pays detainees for their labor.  In 1990, California amended its constitution to allow companies to contract with prisons — facilities run by the state or federal government that detain convicted offenders — for labor, so long as prisoners were paid comparable wages to non-inmate laborers.  

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