The battle for the gig economy’s future is underway in California. The fight is over a proposed bill – AB5 – that would classify many gig workers, including Uber and Lyft drivers, as employees for purposes of California employment law. Should AB5 be enacted, g... More »
Section 13 of the National Labor Relations Act says that “[n]othing in this Act shall be construed so as to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike.” The Supreme Court has instructed that this protection should be given a “generous... More »
This week, Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (HR 3760 and S 2112). The bill provides a number of important protections for domestic workers. The bill corrects several historical e... More »
With gridlock in Congress the norm for the foreseeable future, the federal regulatory process has taken on greater importance as a policy tool. But relying on the regulatory process to advance progressive, pro-worker policy is problematic. The modern federal... More »
In her second post on the Uber/Lyft drivers’ association, Veena Dubal rightly celebrates the success of the recent Uber/Lyft work stoppages. The example of workers, who have no labor or employment law rights, engaging in the kind of collective action that she... More »
Last year, Ben and I flagged concerns about the breadcrumbs that the Supreme Court dropped in its opinion in Epic Systems v. Lewis on the path to narrowing the National Labor Relations Act’s protection for concerted activity. A recent filing by the Board’s Ge... More »
As OnLabor covered last week (here and here), the Department of Labor recently issued an “opinion letter” finding that the workers deriving income from an unnamed “virtual marketplace company” are independent contractors and not employees covered by the Fair L... More »
Earlier this month, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it again would wade into the murky waters of whether charter schools are employers under the National Labor Relations Act. The question that the Board has put before itself this time, howev... More »
Yesterday, Ben and Adrienne sounded a note of caution about the Supreme Court’s opinion in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, which in many ways constitutes a rare win for workers at the Court. They found a potential long-term problem for Title VII in the origi... More »
This week, United Teachers Los Angeles called their first strike in decades. While the parties are negotiating over wages and staffing, a central issue in the dispute is the much bigger question of underfunding of the public school system. Teachers are askin... More »
Last spring, we promised to share information about the project we’ve launched at Harvard Law School, “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law Reform.” On Labor Day, we laid out our vision for this ambitious project... More »
The picture for robust protection of workers’ rights at the federal level is not a pretty one these days. In the Obama Administration, there were three basic components to our strategy to advance worker protections: (1) promulgate regulations that keep worker... More »