In today’s news and commentary, sex workers in Nevada fight to become the nation’s first to unionize; industry groups push the NLRB to establish a more business-friendly test for independent contractor status; and the UFCW launches an anti-AI price setting in grocery store campaign.

Last week, 74 sex workers at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada, filed an NLRB representation election petition with the Communications Workers of America. The bargaining unit includes all full time, part time and on call courtesans. Sheri’s Ranch argues that the workers are independent contractors and therefore should not have the right to unionize. If the Board rejects the employer’s defense and allows the election to proceed, a majority vote for the CWA would mean the first ever successful sex worker union organizing drive. (Not to be confused with the dancers in Los Angeles who in 2023 became the first ever unionized strippers in the U.S.) The workers’ main concerns surround the latest contract that management imposed on them which grants the brothel power of attorney over the sex workers and broad intellectual property rights over content workers produce on their own time—separate from the brothel—such as online content. (I previously wrote about how “power of attorney” was used by modeling agencies as a predatory contractual provision before the New York’s Fashion Workers Act banned the practice.)

Today, a coalition of employers, businesses groups, and trade associations filed a rulemaking petition with the NLRB, suggesting that the Board adopt a more business-friendly test to determine whether a worker is an independent contractor or not. If the Board accepts the rulemaking petition, White House regulatory lawyers could ultimately decide what legal test applies because of Trump’s February 2025 executive order that directed federal agencies to submit proposed and final regulations for presidential approval—and potential amendment—before official promulgation. The current employment classification test comes from the Biden-era NLRB decision in Atlanta Opera, Inc. (2023), which held that certain common-law factors dictate the independent contractor analysis. Notably, the Atlanta Opera Board “expressly rejected the holding of the SuperShuttle Board that entrepreneurial opportunity for gain or loss should be the “animating principle” of the independent-contractor test.”

Lastly, the United Food and Commercial Workers announced a national campaign aimed at passing state legislation to ban companies from using artificial intelligence to analyze mass consumer data for the purposes of implementing dynamic price setting. The announcement came on the same day that Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced union-backed legislation that would ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores, require stores to disclose when they use facial recognition software, and prohibit electronic shelf labels.