New guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tells employers to take more factors into consideration when choosing to screen employees for Covid-19. Until this change took place, employees could legally screen workers on-site across the board, Bloomberg explains. Now, employers will have to prove that testing employees is a “business necessity,” based on factors like community transmission, workforce vaccination status, and some working conditions. The EEOC enforces federal workplace nondiscrimination laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which protects workers from certain medical examinations or inquiries. The updated standard calls on employers to make and individualized assessment to determine whether such testing is warranted consistent with the requirements of the ADA.

On Wednesday a panel of the National Labor Relations Board  agreed to review a regional director’s June decision finding that more than 250 truckers qualify as employees under federal labor law. This legal interpretation has the potential to be extended to ride-share drivers and other gig workers. The Teamsters union has been working to organize truckers, arguing that their employers, STG Logistics and XPO Logistics Inc., misclassified the workers as independent contractors in order to make them legally ineligible to bargain for better wages and working conditions. The vote count  originally scheduled for July 15 will be postponed and the ballots impounded until the board reaches a decision, Bloomberg reports.

The number of US workplaces where employees have started to organize unions grew this year to the highest level in six years, the Wall Street Journal reports. In the first half of the year, 1,411 workplaces filed petitions with the NLRB, representing about a 79% increase from the same period in 2021. This comes as public opinion about organized labor has taken a favorable turn

Around the world, calls from IndustriALL Global Union and local affiliate union Garteks have fallen on deaf ears in Indonesia. Manufacturer PT Tainan Enterprises Indonesia, which produces clothes for GAP, Ann Taylor and Macy among others, are refusing to reinstate three union leaders fired last year for forming a factory-level union in North Jakarta. IndustriALL alleges that during discussions, Tainan Enterprises Indonesia concealed a recommendation made by the Indonesian Ministry of Manpower on 24 December 2021 that the three union leaders be reinstated.

IndustriALL also reports that the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), which represents more than 100,000 workers, won wage increases above inflation across most sectors. The collective agreement was signed in the National Bargaining Council of the Leather Industry of South Africa on Monday. South African law allows for collective agreements that meet certain requirements to be extended to non-party employers who in turn will pay agency fees. Union leadership plans to request extension of the new wage agreements to non-party employers.