Mental health care workers at Kaiser Permanente decided to postpone their planned strike when the company’s CEO Bernard Tyson passed away yesterday. Tyson was 60 years old and passed in his sleep. The strike was planned in response to the poorly resourced and overburdened mental health care division. Starting today, workers would have shut down mental health services at 100 Kaiser clinics in California for five days. The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUWH) , the union representing Kaiser’s employees, released a statement explaining the decision: “Our members dedicate their lives helping people through tragedy and trauma, and they understand that a strike would not be appropriate during this period of mourning and reflection.” NUWH has not released a new date for the start of the strike.
Workers for Virginia’s largest transit service, the Fairfax Connector, voted to begin striking as early as today. As employees of Transdev, a contractor of DC’s transit agency, they earn $12 less per hour than their counterparts who do the same work yet are employed directly by the city without the additional layer of a contractor. In addition to higher wages, Fairfax Connector workers are also demanding safer working conditions after a chemical leak on a bus left a driver ill. Transdev responded by terminated the workers’ health insurance. The strike, when it begins, will impact 30,000 commuters.
A Los Angeles Times article discusses the record high demand for contracted seasonal farm workers in California and recent legal cases that aim to protect these H-2A visa-holders from unfair labor practices.
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September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.
September 9
Ninth Circuit revives Trader Joe’s lawsuit against employee union; new bill aims to make striking workers eligible for benefits; university lecturer who praised Hitler gets another chance at First Amendment claims.
September 8
DC Circuit to rule on deference to NLRB, more vaccine exemption cases, Senate considers ban on forced arbitration for age discrimination claims.
September 7
Another weak jobs report, the Trump Administration's refusal to arbitrate with federal workers, and a district court judge's order on the constitutionality of the Laken-Riley Act.