Morgan Sperry is a student at Harvard Law School and also serves as OnLabor's Social Media Director.
In today’s news and commentary, Shawn Fain takes on Tesla and the New York Times tech workers walk out.
As Tesla confronts its first-ever strike, which is taking place in Sweden, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain announced this week that the UAW is prepared to take on the electric vehicle giant and its notorious CEO, Elon Musk. “We can beat anybody,” Fain said in an interview last Thursday. While previous UAW-led efforts to unionize Tesla have failed, Fain pointed out that the union is under new, militant leadership: his own.
New York Times tech workers went on strike last week to protest the paper’s return-to-office policies. The Times Tech Guild—which consists of nearly 700 software engineers, data analysts, project managers, product managers and designers, who voted to unionize in March 2022—signed off early and protested outside of The Times’ building, seeking flexible work policies. Last year, the union filed a return-to-office-related complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, which was dropped after the Guild reached a contract deal with the newspaper in May. The Tech Guild has support from the New York Times Guild, which represents that majority of the Times’ newsroom workers.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.
September 9
Ninth Circuit revives Trader Joe’s lawsuit against employee union; new bill aims to make striking workers eligible for benefits; university lecturer who praised Hitler gets another chance at First Amendment claims.