In today’s news and commentaries, thousands of hotel workers across the country vote to authorize strikes; New Jersey enacts whistle blower protections for immigrant workers; and DOL enters into settlement agreement with poultry processing plant following the death of teenage worker.

Thousands of hotel workers with Unite Here in 7 cities across the U.S.—Baltimore, Boston, Honolulu, Greenwich, New Haven, Providence, and San Francisco—voted to authorize strikes at Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Omni properties as contract negotiations remain unresolved. Additional strike votes are upcoming for hotel workers in Oakland, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle. Unite Here and the workers are calling for wage increases, fair staffing, and a reversal of COVID-era cuts.

New Jersey’s state government enacted legislation to protect immigrant workers who try to report or expose labor violations at their workplaces, imposing civil penalties on any employer who discloses or threatens to disclose a worker’s immigration status to conceal unlawful employment practices. Under the law, a boss who threatens a worker based on their immigration status in order to pressure the worker not to complain or report a wage violation will be subject to fines. The first offense carries a fine of up to $1,000, the second offense carries a fine of up to $5,000, and additional offenses bring fines of up to $10,000. All collected fines will go to the state Labor Department’s Division of Wage and Hour Compliance for enforcement and administration costs. 

The Department of Labor has entered into a settlement agreement with a Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, requiring the company to pay $164,814 in fines and implement enhanced safety measures to protect their workers. The settlement follows an OSHA investigation into the company’s failure to use required safety procedures that resulted in a teenage worker being fatally caught in a machine as they cleaned it in July 2023. DOL investigators had also previously found “oppressive child labor” at a Mar-Jac plant in Alabama, “namely children working on the kill floor deboning poultry and cutting carcasses.”