Today, a strike by unionized public school teachers in West Virginia will end as union leaders and Governor James C. Justice have reached a deal. Governor Justice promised the state’s teachers and other school employees a 5 percent raise and that he would create a task force to address the problem of rising insurance costs for public employees. This would be a significant victory for unions at a time when the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in Janus on Monday. The New York Times reports.
On Monday, the Supreme Court also granted cert on a couple of employment related cases. In New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, the court will decide whether a dispute over applicability of the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exemption is an arbitrability issue that must be resolved in arbitration pursuant to a valid delegation clause; and (2) whether the FAA’s Section 1 exemption, which applies on its face only to “contracts of employment,” is inapplicable to independent contractor agreements.” In Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido, the court will determine whether, under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the same 20-employee minimum that applies to private employers also applies to political subdivisions of a state, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 6th, 7th, 8th and 10th Circuits have held, or whether the ADEA applies instead to all state political subdivisions of any size, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held in this case.
The EEOC and Estée Lauder have reached a deal in the EEOC’s first-ever lawsuit claiming that a company’s parental leave policy discriminated against new fathers. The policy had provided women with six weeks of paid parental leave for child bonding, on top of paid leave for childbirth recovery, but provided new fathers whose partners had given birth only two weeks of paid leave for child bonding. Reuters reports.
Daily News & Commentary
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November 25
In today’s news and commentary, OSHA fines Taylor Foods, Santa Fe raises their living wage, and a date is set for a Senate committee to consider Trump’s NLRB nominee. OSHA has issued an approximately $1.1 million dollar fine to Taylor Farms New Jersey, a subsidiary of Taylor Fresh Foods, after identifying repeated and serious safety […]
November 24
Labor leaders criticize tariffs; White House cancels jobs report; and student organizers launch chaperone program for noncitizens.
November 23
Workers at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority vote to authorize a strike; Washington State legislators consider a bill empowering public employees to bargain over workplace AI implementation; and University of California workers engage in a two-day strike.
November 21
The “Big Three” record labels make a deal with an AI music streaming startup; 30 stores join the now week-old Starbucks Workers United strike; and the Mine Safety and Health Administration draws scrutiny over a recent worker death.
November 20
Law professors file brief in Slaughter; New York appeals court hears arguments about blog post firing; Senate committee delays consideration of NLRB nominee.
November 19
A federal judge blocks the Trump administration’s efforts to cancel the collective bargaining rights of workers at the U.S. Agency for Global Media; Representative Jared Golden secures 218 signatures for a bill that would repeal a Trump administration executive order stripping federal workers of their collective bargaining rights; and Dallas residents sue the City of Dallas in hopes of declaring hundreds of ordinances that ban bias against LGBTQ+ individuals void.