Morgan Sperry is a student at Harvard Law School and also serves as OnLabor's Social Media Director.
In today’s News and Commentary, hot labor summer is in full force as Starbucks workers, actors, screenwriters, and UPS drivers remain locked in labor disputes.
Starbucks Workers United is on a national bus tour to bring attention to Starbucks’ 2,000+ federal labor law violations and refusal to negotiate with unionized stores. The workers seek just cause employment protections, improved health and safety standards (including zero tolerance of sexual harassment), increased wages, predictable and regular scheduling, high quality healthcare, and expanded access to medical, parental, and personal leave (plus the right to take leave for union work).
Starbucks workers have also been sounding the alarm regarding some stores’ restriction of Pride month decorations amidst renewed attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Currently, more than 300 Starbucks stores are unionized across 38 states and DC. Just this week, workers at the Chicago Roastery—the largest Starbucks store in the world—filed for an NLRB union election.
The entertainment industry continues to reel after movie and TV actors joined striking screenwriters on the picket lines Friday. The historic simultaneous SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have helped launch today’s labor movement into the zeitgeist as Hollywood’s biggest stars use their platforms to discuss exploitation, CEO overpay, the gig economy, the future of AI, and what work post-COVID should look like.
As Swap reported, 340,000 UPS workers are prepared to strike—and, on Sunday, Teamsters President Sean M. O’Brien asked the White House not to intervene. The union continues to push for air conditioning in trucks, ending the existing two-tier wage system, and wage increases for part-time workers. The strike would be one of the largest single-employer strikes in US history.
Daily News & Commentary
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June 6
In today’s news and commentary, Governor Jared Polis directs Colorado’s labor agency to share information with ICE; and the Supreme Court issues two unanimous rulings including exempting a Catholic charity from paying unemployment compensation taxes and striking down the heightened standard for plaintiffs belonging to a majority group to prove a Title VII employment discrimination […]
June 5
Nail technicians challenge California classification; oral arguments in challenge to LGBTQ hiring protections; judge blocks Job Corps shutdown.
June 4
Federal agencies violate federal court order pausing mass layoffs; Walmart terminates some jobs in Florida following Supreme Court rulings on the legal status of migrants; and LA firefighters receive a $9.5 million settlement for failure to pay firefighters during shift changes.
June 3
Federal judge blocks Trump's attack on TSA collective bargaining rights; NLRB argues that Grindr's Return-to-Office policy was union busting; International Trade Union Confederation report highlights global decline in workers' rights.
June 2
Proposed budgets for DOL and NLRB show cuts on the horizon; Oregon law requiring LPAs in cannabis dispensaries struck down.
June 1
In today’s news and commentary, the Ninth Circuit upholds a preliminary injunction against the Trump Administration, a federal judge vacates parts of the EEOC’s pregnancy accommodation rules, and video game workers reach a tentative agreement with Microsoft. In a 2-1 decision issued on Friday, the Ninth Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction against the Trump Administration […]