Luke Hinrichs is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s news and commentaries, nearly 60,000 University of California workers represented by a pair of unions initiate strike, FTC forms Joint Labor Task Force, and DoorDash reaches settlement with New York AG’s Office to pay $16.8 million in restitution for wage theft practice.
Thousands of University of California (UC) healthcare, research, and technical workers went on strike Wednesday morning amid contract negotiations and alleged unfair labor practices. About 37,000 UC service and patient care workers represented by AFSCME Local 3299 began a two-day strike. AFSCME’s contract expired in 2024, and negotiations on a new agreement have been ongoing for the past year. At the same time, roughly 20,000 UC health care, research and technical professionals represented by University Professional and Technical Employees, UPTE-CWA Local 9119, initiated a three-day strike. UPTE’s contract expired at the end of October, and negotiations also remain ongoing for over eight months.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson, appointed by President Trump, has directed the FTC to form a Joint Labor Task Force focused on investigating deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive employer labor practices. The Task Force will target no-poach, non-solicitation, or no-hire agreements; wage-fixing agreements; noncompete agreements; labor-contract termination penalties; labor market monopsonies; gig economy harms; deceptive job advertisements; occupational licensing requirements; and misleading franchise offerings. Aligned with the Trump Administration’s attack on DEI initiatives, the Labor Task Force is also charged with addressing “[c]ollusion or unlawful coordination on DEI metrics.” The initiative signals a bipartisan continuation of the Biden Administration’s focus on labor antitrust harms.
The New York attorney general’s office announced that it has reached a settlement with DoorDash in which the gig economy employer will pay $16.8 million in restitution to Dashers for withholding earned tips. DoorDash announced it ended its wage theft practice in 2019. The restitution is set to be dispersed to as many as 63,000 workers impacted by the wage theft. DoorDash has reached similar settlements of $11.25 million in Illinois and $2.5 million in Washington, D.C.
Daily News & Commentary
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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.
September 8
DC Circuit to rule on deference to NLRB, more vaccine exemption cases, Senate considers ban on forced arbitration for age discrimination claims.