In today’s news and commentary, the MIT graduate student union avoids strike, SINALTRAINAL clashes with Nestlé over suspended plant workers in Columbia, and the DOL seeks to raise unemployment insurance job-seeking requirements. 

On Tuesday evening, graduate student workers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have called off a planned strike after reaching a tentative contract agreement with the university, union leaders. The deal follows a strike authorization vote on October 22, in which 93 percent of the 1,708 ballots cast favored a walkout. Members of UE Local 256 have been without a contract since June and had cited wages, affordable health care, and protections for international workers as key issues. Workers argued the university’s offers had not kept pace with rising on-campus housing costs. MIT’s endowment, meanwhile, stands at $29.2 billion, among the five largest in the country. Now, union leaders say the walkout is postponed until members have voted on the deal. The terms were not immediately released. The union’s roughly 3,000 members will vote on ratification, which university administrators said they expect to wrap up by November 15. Graduate workers at MIT won their first contract in 2023, about a year and a half after voting to unionize. The pending agreement would be their second.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s food workers’ union SINALTRAINAL accused the Swiss corporation Nestlé of discriminating against its members after the company suspended 501 employees at two plants hit by the August 10 earthquake. According to the union, Nestlé suspended 221 workers at its Dos Quebradas plant in Risaralda department and 280 at Bugalagrande in Valle del Cauca after the quake halted production. The plants were operating at about 40 percent and 90 percent of pre-quake capacity, respectively, but the suspended workers had not been brought back and were not being paid. SINALTRAINAL petitioned the Ministry of Labour, initially received no reply, and on October 28, workers at the Bugalagrande plant began a hunger strike. The strike ended after the Ministry of Labor, Nestlé, and SINALTRAINAL announced an agreement on November 6. Under it, 86 workers at Bugalagrande will be reinstated on a schedule. Some are covered by Colombia’s Substantive Labor Code, which entitles employees to full pay during periods of inactivity caused by the employer.

Finally, the Trump administration has proposed a federal rule that would require people applying for or collecting unemployment benefits to complete at least five distinct job searches each week, an increase from what all but four states ask today. The Department of Labor unveiled the proposal Monday, with publication in the Federal Register on Tuesday. The department said a national floor would make eligibility requirements consistent, improve program integrity, and strengthen workers’ attachment to the labor market. It argued that differing state rules confuse applicants. States would have the ability to tailor the precise requirements using point systems based on local labor markets. Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Project criticizes the move, saying the rule would be overly onerous and disadvantage applicants who already struggle to navigate the benefits system. She warns that nearly all states would need to revise claimant intake forms and technology, and that many would have to rewrite their laws. The public will have 60 days after publication to comment on the proposal.