New York City’s Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 endorsed Mayor Bill De Blasio’s proposed Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX)—a sixteen-mile, 24/7 streetcar planned to run along the East River. The project is controversial in part because of how expensive it would be. John Samuelson, TWU’s president, said that the project would facilitate “several hundred jobs.”
Yesterday, Teamsters working at Vistar Foodservice’s distribution facility in Ontario, CA began an unfair labor practice strike. Vistar delivers food to movie theater chains throughout southern California. The strike was undertaken in order to protest Vistar’s decision to give some workers a raise, but withhold a raise for others.
On Friday, the D.C. Circuit upheld the NLRB’s revision to the formula it uses to calculate backpay awards to workers who have been unlawfully terminated. The D.C. Circuit panel ruled, unanimously, in the case against King Soopers (a division of the Kroger supermarket company) that King Soopers had to pay a former employee’s “search-for-work” expenses. The rule laid down by the Board requires the NLRB’s general counsel to demonstrate that the unlawfully terminated employee’s expenses are reasonable. Philip A. Miscimarra, who Trump appointed Chairman of the NLRB this past spring, was the lone dissenter in the NLRB’s 3-1 ruling. In Miscimarra’s view, the rule would produce a windfall to claimants whose interim earnings equal or surpass the sum of their lost earnings and search-for-work expenses.
On Wednesday, the EEOC will meet, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Age Discrimination and Employment Act (ADEA). The meeting will feature speakers like Laurie McCann of the AARP Foundation Litigation, and Jacqueline James of Boston College’s Center for Research and Education. The Commission will consider the state of age discrimination and the future challenges it poses. Also on Wednesday, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce will hold a hearing on three Republican bills: The Employee Rights Act (which we have previously discussed); The Workforce and Democracy Fairness Act; and The Employee Privacy Protection Act.
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April 18
Disneyland performers file petition for unionization and union elections begin at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee.
April 18
In today’s Tech@Work, a regulation-of-algorithms-in-hiring blitz: Mass. AG issues advisory clarifying how state laws apply to AI decisionmaking tools; and British union TUC launches campaign for new law to regulate the use of AI at work.
April 17
Southern governors oppose UAW organizing in their states; Florida bans local heat protections for workers; Google employees occupy company offices to protest contracts with the Israeli government
April 16
EEOC publishes final regulation implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee gear up for a union election, and the First Circuit revives the Whole Foods case over BLM masks.
April 15
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of bakery delivery drivers in an exemption from mandatory arbitration case; A Teamsters Local ends its 18-month strike by accepting settlement payments and agreeing to dissolve
April 14
SAG-AFTRA wins AI protections; DeSantis signs Florida bill preempting local employment regulation; NLRB judge says Whole Foods subpoenas violate federal labor law.