In Today’s News and Commentary, Philadelphia municipal workers approve new contract after strike, chocolate multinational businesses escape liability in child trafficking suit, and Missouri rolls back paid sick leave.

On Monday, Philadelphia’s AFSCME District Council 33 approved a new contract deal after a week-long vote. As Miriam and Finlay previously reported, Philadelphia’s largest municipal union went on strike for the first time in nearly 40 years after contract negotiations broke down at the end of June. AFSCME District Council 33 is the lowest-paid of the city’s four municipal unions and the only one with a majority-Black membership. Though the union consists of more than 9,000 members, only about 15% of the membership voted: 1,535 members voted in favor of the deal while 838 voted against it. Notably, this deal eliminates the possibility of a city worker strike for at least the next three years, which encompasses the period when a new deal must be negotiated. Francis Ryan, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, suggested that the lack of participation could mean members were unhappy with the proposed contract. Labor journalist Kim Kelly had similar remarks in her article about the human cost of the eight-day strike, concluding that “something’s still rotten in the city of Philadelphia” because Philly workers went out on strike only to come back with a deal that nobody seems to like.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to revive a proposed class suit brought by eight former child laborers against Nestlé, Hershey, and other cocoa importers under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Abusive and extractive practices in the cocoa-growing industry on West African farms have been well documented, and trafficking survivors have increasingly resorted to civil litigation in search of justice and accountability. The Coubaly v. Cargill Inc. Plaintiffs, all of whom are Malian citizens forcibly taken to and made to work in Côte d’Ivoire, originally filed this lawsuit back in February 2021. The District Court granted the cocoa importers’ motion to dismiss for lack of standing in 2022, concluding that the Plaintiffs did not “connect the defendants to any specific cocoa plantations,” let alone the plantation on which the Plaintiffs had worked as children. The Plaintiffs faired no better in their appeal. Judge Walker penned the opinion, underscoring a lack of causation between the cocoa importers’ alleged supply chain venture and the forced labor. He explained, “the Plaintiffs needed to plausibly allege specific facts showing that the Importers sourced cocoa from the farms where they worked — either directly or through intermediaries. It’s not enough to allege only that some Importer might (or might not) have bought cocoa from a farm at a time that a Plaintiff might (or might not) have been forced to work there.”

Lastly, Missouri’s brief experiment with paid sick leave has come to an end. As I wrote in May, organizers ran a successful campaign and ballot initiative last year wherein 58% of Missouri voters approved mandatory paid sick leave. Business groups swiftly lobbied to overturn this law, arguing that it would cost jobs. On July 10, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed the repeal of the law, which will officially take effect on August 28. Constituents have decried the repeal in local news outlets as a “slap in the face” and a “betrayal of representative democracy.” Missouri organizers have pledged to continue the fight, and Richard von Glahn, policy director for Missouri Jobs with Justice, has submitted a proposed ballot initiative to the secretary of state that would reinstate the repealed provisions. And Quinn Yeargain, an Assistant Professor of Law at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School who specializes in state constitutional law, has urged organizers to file a lawsuit and argue “that the repeal of their initiated ballot measures violates two separate enumerated rights (or powers) under the Missouri Constitution.” Professor Yeargain remarked that “splitting the legislative power between the elected legislature and the people is meaningless if the legislature can repeal whatever the people adopt.” Out of the three states (Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska) that approved paid sick leave measures last year, only Alaska’s remains unchanged by state lawmakers.