Maddy Joseph is a student at Harvard Law School.
The New York City Council passed the country’s first law requiring ride-hailing apps like Uber to offer in-app tipping. New York’s in-app tipping requirement was first proposed to the City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission this spring in a petition by the Independent Driver’s Guild that garnered over 11,000 signatures.
Also this week, Uber’s long-awaited in-app tipping feature, which it announced late last month, went live nationwide.
California’s agriculture industry is turning to automation in an attempt to make up a growing labor shortage. As immigrant farmworkers age, the LA Times reports, they are not being replaced in the workforce. In response, the $47-billion industry has sought to shift from labor-intensive crops to those that can be harvested mechanically.
A new report by the Century Foundation advocates that “it is the time for unions and their allies to return to the rights-based rhetoric and constitutional legal strategies that preceded the passage of the National Labor Relations Act and the development of our current labor law regime.” The report outlines ten rights that should make up labor’s Bill of Rights.
The Upshot has an analysis of the two recent studies on Seattle’s minimum wage. The analysis suggests that the job losses seen in the University of Washington study, which it attributed to the minimum wage increase, might instead “reflect the limitations of studying a single experiment . . . . [S]ome sort of control group is needed.” See some of our previous coverage of the studies here.
Daily News & Commentary
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December 22
Worker-friendly legislation enacted in New York; UW Professor wins free speech case; Trucking company ordered to pay $23 million to Teamsters.
December 21
Argentine unions march against labor law reform; WNBA players vote to authorize a strike; and the NLRB prepares to clear its backlog.
December 19
Labor law professors file an amici curiae and the NLRB regains quorum.
December 18
New Jersey adopts disparate impact rules; Teamsters oppose railroad merger; court pauses more shutdown layoffs.
December 17
The TSA suspends a labor union representing 47,000 officers for a second time; the Trump administration seeks to recruit over 1,000 artificial intelligence experts to the federal workforce; and the New York Times reports on the tumultuous changes that U.S. labor relations has seen over the past year.
December 16
Second Circuit affirms dismissal of former collegiate athletes’ antitrust suit; UPS will invest $120 million in truck-unloading robots; Sharon Block argues there are reasons for optimism about labor’s future.