In today’s news and commentary: port workers begin their strike, Amazon loses fight to keep lawsuit against NLRB in Texas, the Teamsters reach a tentative agreement with Hertz, and the New York City construction industry advocates for mental health safety training. 

Today, port workers across the East and Gulf Coasts launched their strike after their contracts expired at midnight, marking the first time that the port workers have gone on strike since 1977. The strike, which includes 45,000 dockworkers from Maine to Texas, is anticipated to pose major disruptions to the nation’s economy. The strike has shut down operations at 36 different ports and is likely to result in shortages of consumer and industrial goods.

On Sunday, a federal judge in Texas ruled to transfer Amazon’s lawsuit against the NLRB to Washington, DC. Earlier this month, Amazon sued the NLRB after the board upheld a union election of workers at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in New York. Amazon’s lawsuit alleges that the NLRB illegally interfered in the union election and that the board’s structure violates the Constitution. Amazon filed the lawsuit in Texas, where three other federal judges have recently ruled that the NLRB’s structure likely violates the Constitution. However, the judge overseeing Amazon’s case rejected the company’s claim that the matter had sufficient ties to Texas and ruled that the case should be transferred to D.C., where the NLRB is headquartered. The judge also declined Amazon’s request to block the NLRB from deciding whether Amazon must bargain with the unionized warehouse workers. In response, Amazon is poised to appeal the ruling to the Fifth Circuit, which recently held that the SEC’s structure violates the Constitution.  

Yesterday, the Teamsters announced that the union had reached a tentative agreement with Hertz Global, narrowly avoiding an impending strike. Last week, Hertz Teamster members, who are seeking higher pay, voted to launch a strike if the union did not reach an agreement by Monday. While it remains to be seen whether the union members will ratify the tentative contract, a strike of nearly 3,000 workers at Hertz has been averted for now.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the city’s largest contractor association is leading the charge for implementing mental health safety training for construction workers. Mental health and substance abuse concerns are prevalent in the construction industry: The industry has the second highest rate of suicide among all industries, and in 2022, construction workers were 17.2 times more likely to die from a drug overdose than from a fatal work injury. The Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) is seeking to mitigate these issues by advocating for legislation that will implement mental health training in the workplace. The BTEA is also pushing for OSHA to make mental health-related programming a mandatory component of workplace safety trainings.