Holden Hopkins is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s News & Commentary, concerns about AI-based discrimination in hiring, Boston hotel workers on strike, and more women of color are obtaining leadership roles in their unions.
The EEOC has raised concerns to federal lawmakers about the potential for AI to be used to facilitate discrimination in hiring job candidates according to reporting by Bloomberg Law. The agency cited a number of cases as emblematic of the problem, including companies which had used AI-hiring software to systematically exclude certain candidates on the basis of age, gender, and nationality.
The report raised concerns over the growing dependence on “AI to manage the workplace has the potential to outpace our nation’s capacity to ensure that they are deployed in a manner that comports with federal anti-discrimination laws.” In order to combat this trend, an accompanying letter from the agency’s head of legislative affairs stressed the need for “resources to keep pace with the use of these increasingly sophisticated tools and their potential impact on equal employment opportunity.”
Amid the ongoing strikes against Hilton that Esther reported on, two Boston area Hilton hotels are now the subject of open-ended strikes. On Friday, workers walked off the job at the Hilton Boston Logan and Boston Park Plaza hotels after the company failed to meet the union’s demands. UNITE HERE Local 26 represents the workers, who say they will not return to work until Hilton agrees to a new contract that includes higher pay and better working conditions.
New reporting shows that Black and Latine women are increasingly obtaining leadership roles in their unions. While women make up about half of union membership, the rates of representation in leadership for women, and especially women of color, has lagged behind. But over the past five years, more and more top leadership positions have gone to women. Most notably, this has included the top leadership of some of the country’s largest unions, including SEIU, NEA, National Nurses United, and the AFL-CIO.
This increase in representation has also corresponded with unions focusing more attention on the race-gender pay-gap, parental leave, harassment policies, and other issues which may have been overlooked by previous generations of union leadership.
Daily News & Commentary
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May 9
Philadelphia City Council unanimously passes the POWER Act; thousands of federal worker layoffs at the Department of Interior expected; the University of Oregon student workers union reach a tentative agreement, ending 10-day strike
May 8
Court upholds DOL farmworker protections; Fifth Circuit rejects Amazon appeal; NJTransit navigates negotiations and potential strike.
May 7
U.S. Department of Labor announces termination of mental health and child care benefits for its employees; SEIU pursues challenge of NLRB's 2020 joint employer rule in the D.C. Circuit; Columbia University lays off 180 researchers
May 6
HHS canceled a scheduled bargaining session with the FDA's largest workers union; members of 1199SEIU voted out longtime union president George Gresham in rare leadership upset.
May 5
Unemployment rates for Black women go up under Trump; NLRB argues Amazon lacks standing to challenge captive audience meeting rule; Teamsters use Wilcox's reinstatement orders to argue against injunction.
May 4
In today’s news and commentary, DOL pauses the 2024 gig worker rule, a coalition of unions, cities, and nonprofits sues to stop DOGE, and the Chicago Teachers Union reaches a remarkable deal. On May 1, the Department of Labor announced it would pause enforcement of the Biden Administration’s independent contractor classification rule. Under the January […]