
Greg Volynsky is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s News and Commentary, New Jersey advances a temp worker rights bill; Johns Hopkins doctoral students join a wave of unionized graduate students; canvassers systematically misrepresent a petition for a veto referendum on the California fast food workers bill; and strikes continue in the UK.
The New Jersey Senate approved a bill that would guarantee temp workers the same wage as ordinary workers, and create new transparency requirements for employers hiring temp workers. The bill passed the state Assembly four months ago, but voting in the Senate was postponed four times as business groups and temp agencies lobbied against it. Governor Murphy vetoed an earlier version of the bill, but is expected to sign the narrower measure into law.
On Monday and Tuesday, doctoral students at Johns Hopkins University overwhelmingly voted to unionize. The vote comes less than a month after Yale graduate students voted to unionize by a 10-to-1 margin, and Northwestern students voted to unionize by a 14-to-1 margin. In other graduate-student news, nearly 750 Temple University graduate students went on strike.
Governor Newsom signed the FAST Recovery Act in September, which would create a council to oversee labor practices in the fast-food industry. Last week, industry groups announced they had secured enough signatures to mandate a veto referendum. The L.A. Times reports canvassers systematically misrepresented the referendum petition to potential signers. Any canvasser who “intentionally makes any false statement concerning the contents, purport or effect of the petition” to potential signers commits a misdemeanor.
In the UK, strikes continue. The UK Department of Education estimates that more than 50% of state-funded primary and secondary schools in England are restricting attendance, including 8.9% of schools that are fully closed.
Daily News & Commentary
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March 31
Starbucks faces shareholder pressure for an independent review of worker rights; McDonald's workers appeal lawsuit over no-poach agreements; NYT employees take to twitter over stalled collective bargaining agreement; Seattle becomes the first American city to establish permanent paid sick and safe time benefits for gig workers; and Major League Baseball reaches a tentative collective bargaining agreement with minor league players.
March 30
Howard Schultz denied violating labor law, Florida’s anti-union bill passes the Senate, and screenwriters and journalists call for fair wages.
March 29
Former Starbucks CEO testifies today before a Sanders-led Senate committee, and Kansas City Apple store organizers file charges with the NLRB.
March 28
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Chipotle settles NLRB suit.
March 27
Striking Los Angeles school workers have reached a tentative deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District, law professors have filed an amicus brief to contest the use of arbitration in former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores’s employment discrimination lawsuit against the NFL, and the Senate HELP Committee gears up for Wednesday’s Howard Schultz testimony.
March 26
Shawn Fain wins runoff election for UAW president; Michigan Gov. Whitmer signs repeal of right-to-work