Morgan Sperry is a student at Harvard Law School and also serves as OnLabor's Social Media Director.
In today’s news and commentary, Cambridge coffeeshop Darwin’s Ltd. re-opens as a worker-owned collaborative, and the Supreme Court grants cert in another forced arbitration case.
After closing last year in response to its employees’ attempted unionization, Darwin’s Ltd.—located in OnLabor’s hometown of Cambridge, MA—has re-opened as a worker-owned collaborative. On September 12, approximately nine months after Darwin’s shut down mid-union negotiations, four former Darwin’s employees launched the Circus Cooperative Cafe at Darwin’s former Putnam Ave location. The employee-owned cooperative welcomes hires to become “worker-owners” after six months of employment, and is committed to extending to its workers a say in business decisions and a share of profits.
The Supreme Court has granted cert in yet another forced arbitration case. Last week, the Court announced that it would hear oral arguments in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St. LLC, the third case in four years to consider the scope of the Federal Arbitration Act’s exception for transportation workers. In 2019, the Supreme Court held in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira that independent contractors can qualify for the transportation worker exemption (meaning that they can not be compelled into forced arbitration). Then, in 2022, the Court in Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon extended the exemption to airplane cargo loaders. Now, in Bissonnette, the Court will consider whether a transportation worker must work for a company in the transportation industry in order to be exempt from the FAA. Opponents of forced arbitration are advocating for a more expansive holding, wherein even transportation workers affiliated with private fleets can qualify for the exemption.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
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.