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White House Summit on Worker Voice

Oct 6, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

I’m heading to D.C. tonight to participate in a panel at tomorrow’s White House Summit on Worker Voice. The panel (which includes Mark Barenberg from Columbia Law School, Dorian Warren of the Roosevelt Institute, and Rep. Bobby Scott) will focus on how the law might change to better facilitate worker voice. As I see it, this […]

Guest Post: A Further Observation about Justice Scalia and Friedrichs

Oct 5, 2015 Catherine Fisk

Catherine Fisk is Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine. Given Justice Scalia’s consistent view that public employees have minimal free speech rights, doctrinal consistency should require him to reject the First Amendment challenge to union fair share fees in Friedrichs. As Professor Sachs points out, Justice Scalia (joined by Justice Kennedy) […]

An Observation about Justice Scalia and Friedrichs

Oct 1, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

In the run-up to the oral argument in Friedrichs we’ve paid a lot of attention to Justice Scalia’s concurrence in Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass’n. But, to date, we’ve largely ignored another Scalia opinion that deserves much more attention. That opinion is Justice Scalia’s dissent in Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois. The question in Rutan was whether the First Amendment allowed Illinois to […]

Amazon's new "Independent Contractors"

Sep 29, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

As Jon wrote in the News and Commentary this morning, Amazon has started a new delivery service called “Amazon Flex.” The service, as the WSJ reports, will allow people to “sign up for shifts through an app that prompts them to fetch packages from mini-warehouses and take them to customers’ homes in as little as one hour.” The […]

1099 as Antitrust?

Sep 29, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

There’s an interesting post up on interfluidity arguing that independent contractor status should be awarded selectively, in a manner designed to incentivize competition in the gig economy. The basic idea is that there is a substantial risk that gig economy firms like Uber will become monopolists because of a particular kind of cycle, or “network effect.” The […]

New NLRB Decision on Independent Contractors

Sep 28, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

Last week, I argued that the “flexibility” of gig-economy jobs can comfortably coexist with a legal determination that those jobs are held by “employees” rather than by independent contractors. I emphasized that “workers can choose when and how much to work, and can even work without immediate supervision, and still be employees within the meaning of the […]

Gig News: Uber Drivers Claim Uber's Arbitration Policy Violates N.L.R.A.

Sep 28, 2015 Jon Weinberg

The Wall Street Journal reports that two Uber drivers have filed claims with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the company’s arbitration policy violates the National Labor Relations Act. The drivers are represented by Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lead attorney in the major Uber driver classification suit in federal court in California. As for this […]

Uber: Employee Status and "Flexibility"

Sep 25, 2015 Benjamin Sachs

There is a common trope in the debate about Uber that deserves clarification. The claim, commonly made, is that if Uber drivers were to be deemed employees – rather than independent contractors – the drivers would lose the flexibility that defines their jobs. Thus, NYU business professor Arun Sundararajan (who’s done important work on the gig economy) argues that if the drivers are […]

Gig News: Another California Agency Finds Uber Driver an Employee

Sep 21, 2015 Jon Weinberg

Earlier in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that another California regulatory agency found an Uber driver to be an employee rather than an independent contractor: The California Employment Development Department last month ruled that a former driver for Uber acted more like an employee than a contractor because the company controlled “every aspect” of […]

Opening Brief Filed in Friedrichs

Sep 4, 2015 Juhyung Harold Lee

Earlier today, counsel for petitioners filed their opening brief in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. According to petitioners, fair-share arrangements create a “regime of compelled political speech [that] is irreconcilable with [the Supreme] Court’s decisions in every related First Amendment context, as well as its recent recognition of ‘the critical First Amendment rights at stake’ […]

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OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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