In its first opinion of the term, the Supreme Court unanimously (8-0) ruled in favor of the employees in Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido, holding that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) applies to all public employers regardless of employee he... More »
The employment status of Uber drivers has, to date, been considered in two Australian cases. In both cases, the Fair Work Commission (Australia’s national workplace relations tribunal), concluded that the drivers were independent contractors and thereby ineli... More »
The prison strike enters day nine, as the estimated 900,000 incarcerated laborers (out of a population of 2.4 million) demand “an immediate end to prison slavery.” Sarah Holder of City Lab, quoting ACLU National Prison Project’s David Fathi, breaks down the c... More »
In today’s Sunday Review for The New York Times, economic historian Louis Hyman argues that new technology companies like Uber and TaskRabbit did not create the gig economy but only took advantage of a decades-long shift to temporary work arrangements. He ana... More »
In the forthcoming September issue of Vanity Fair, Uber engineer-turned-Silicon Valley watchdog Susan Fowler examines the future of the gig economy. In her piece entitled, “What Have We Done?: Silicon Valley Engineers Fear They’ve Created a Monster... More »
Gig-economy-giants like Uber, Lyft, and Instacart are quietly lobbying California Democrats to reverse a groundbreaking court ruling protecting gig workers’ rights. In the LA Times, law professor Veena Dubal explains the stakes. In Dynamex, the California Supr... More »
California is using prison labor — including 58 incarcerated youth — to battle record-breaking forest fires raging across the state this week. As of 2015, more than more than 30 percent of California’s firefighters were incarcerated workers. Incarcerated firef... More »
The NLRB General Counsel has begun to implement parts of a 59-point plan announced in January to reorganize agency operations. In a memo to regional board directors sent on Monday, Associate to the General Counsel Beth Tursell detailed the immediate formation... More »
New York State’s Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board ruled that Uber drivers are employees, rather than independent contractors, for purposes of unemployment insurance and benefits. The Board wrote that “credible evidence establishes that Uber exercises suffi... More »
“Gig economy” or “online platform” companies that provide personal labor services—Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Handy, Instacart, Grubhub, and others—challenge American law’s system for classifying workers as “employees” or “independent contractors, As I explain in... More »
The Supreme Court struck a major blow to public sector unions yesterday. The Janus ruling held that the First Amendment prohibits states from requiring non-union members to pay so-called “agency fees” to the union that represents them. Sharon Block and Ben Sac... More »
On Tuesday, Washington governor Jay Inslee signed an executive order intended to mitigate the fallout from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Epic Systems. In the order, the governor instructs state agencies to contract only with businesses who can demonst... More »