OnLabor

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News & Commentary

November 6, 2023

Morgan Sperry

Morgan Sperry is a student at Harvard Law School and also serves as OnLabor's Social Media Director.

In today’s news and commentary, Shawn Fain takes on Tesla and the New York Times tech workers walk out.

As Tesla confronts its first-ever strike, which is taking place in Sweden, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain announced this week that the UAW is prepared to take on the electric vehicle giant and its notorious CEO, Elon Musk. “We can beat anybody,” Fain said in an interview last Thursday. While previous UAW-led efforts to unionize Tesla have failed, Fain pointed out that the union is under new, militant leadership: his own. 

New York Times tech workers went on strike last week to protest the paper’s return-to-office policies. The Times Tech Guild—which consists of nearly 700 software engineers, data analysts, project managers, product managers and designers, who voted to unionize in March 2022—signed off early and protested outside of The Times’ building, seeking flexible work policies. Last year, the union filed a return-to-office-related complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, which was dropped after the Guild reached a contract deal with the newspaper in May. The Tech Guild has support from the New York Times Guild, which represents that majority of the Times’ newsroom workers.

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Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 3)

In Ruelas v. County of Alameda, the Supreme Court of California denied pretrial detainees’ state minimum wage claim, reasoning that section 4019.3 of the state’s Penal Code — capping jail laborers’ wages at two dollars per day — instead governed.  The first part of this three-part series discussed the California Supreme Court’s holding and reasoning.  The second part gave a history of California’s constitution and jail labor in the state, concluding that the two-dollar daily wage cap could not have applied to plaintiffs, who were pretrial detainees performing unpaid labor for a corporation.  

Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 2)

In Ruelas v. County of Alameda, the Supreme Court of California held that pretrial detainees forced to labor for a corporation are ineligible for a minimum wage under the state’s Labor Code.  The court construed Penal Code section 4019.3 broadly, interpreting it as incompatible with California’s Labor Code. The court concluded that the Penal Code prevents pretrial detainees from earning more than two dollars per day for their labor, absent a local ordinance.  

How Three Simple Labor Laws Helped Unions Organize Amazon and UBER in Canada

In early July,  the British Columbia Labour Relations Board (BCLRB) certified UFCW-Canada as the bargaining representative for over 500 UBER drivers in the province’s capital city of Victoria.  A few days later, the BCLRB issued another decision that certified the union Unifor (formerly the Canadian Auto Workers) for a bargaining unit of hundreds of employees employed at an Amazon distribution centre […]

Ruelas v. County of Alameda — California Pretrial Detainees Denied Minimum Wage for Corporate Labor (Part 1)

Pretrial detainees in Santa Rita Jail are forced to labor for Aramark, a food-preparation company that provides meals to third parties outside of the jail. Neither Aramark nor the county pays detainees for their labor.  In 1990, California amended its constitution to allow companies to contract with prisons — facilities run by the state or federal government that detain convicted offenders — for labor, so long as prisoners were paid comparable wages to non-inmate laborers.  

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