To continue Jacqueline’s coverage of the UPS Teamsters’s August 1 strike, UPS has bowed to the strike pressure and agreed to return to the bargaining table next week with 340,000 workers. “We are pleased to be back at the negotiating table next week to resolve the few remaining open issues. We are prepared to increase our industry-leading pay and benefits,” UPS said in a statement on Wednesday. The pending strike has been estimated to be one of the costliest in the country in at least a century, topping $7 billion for a 10-day work stoppage. 

Google is required to negotiate with YouTube contract staff, according to an NLRB ruling on Wednesday. Concluding that Google jointly employs a group of Texas Youtube workers, the Board ruled that Youtube and Google share the duty to bargain with Alphabet Workers Union, which was unanimous voted and certified represent these workers. Google can challenge the NLRB’s joint employer finding in federal courts, but it first must intentionally refuse to bargain to trigger a separate unfair labor practice case.

A whistleblower lawsuit by an ex-Google AI engineer moves ahead as a California state judge tentatively denied the company’s motion to dismiss the wrongful termination and whistleblower claims. Satrajit Chatterjee, previously a senior engineering manager at Google, alleges in the complaint that he was fired for threatening to report to the CEO that the company had exaggerated the ability of the company’s proprietary AI technology in an effort to defraud shareholders. Google can contest the ruling at a hearing today before the judge issues a final order.