Leora Smith is a student at Harvard Law School.
The Guardian reports that the Fight for $15 mid-south organizing committee is suing the Memphis police for engaging in a “campaign of harassment” against its members. According to the article, the lawsuit alleges that police officers “followed organizers home after meetings, ordered workers not to sign petitions and blacklisted organizers from city hall.” It also alleges that city permit laws have been disparately enforced against Fight for $15 demonstrations, which have mostly black participants, while other demonstrations with majority white participants have not faced the same sort of scrutiny and intervention. The organizing committee says that the police surveillance and interference began in 2014 , after fast-food workers in Memphis took park in a nationwide walkout.
In other lawsuit news, a North Carolina Uber driver, Martin Dulberg, recently filed a class action claim against the company. Dulberg alleges that, due to a change in the way Uber calculates fares, drivers are consistently underpaid. Drivers are supposed to be paid 80% of each fare according to their agreement with Uber. This is a novel claim against Uber, which has faced other class actions on different grounds, including that it misclassifies drivers as independent contractors. Read more of OnLabor’s Uber coverage here.
Meanwhile, a Federal Judge in Colorado just granted a motion for class certification in a forced labor case against GEO Group, a private prison company. GEO Group runs a detention center in Colorado that imprisons people who are threatened with deportation. Former detainees allege that the company violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act when it forced them to work for low or no wages while they were detained. The class includes anyone who was held in the detention center since October 2004, and could include up to 60,000 people.
And in related news, on Wednesday 22-year-old Daniela Vargas was arrested after she spoke publicly about her family’s recent arrest and detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents. Vargas had been protected by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program because she arrived in the United States before she was 16 years old. Though President Trump has not canceled DACA, and has expressed some support for its goals, his orders give ICE officials broad discretion that allow them to detain DACA recipients like Vargas.
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
July 14
More circuits weigh in on two-step certification; Uber challengers Seattle deactivation ordinance.
July 13
APWU and USPS ratify a new contract, ICE barred from racial profiling in Los Angeles, and the fight continues over the dismantling of NIOSH
July 11
Regional director orders election without Board quorum; 9th Circuit pauses injunction on Executive Order; Driverless car legislation in Massachusetts
July 10
Wisconsin Supreme Court holds UW Health nurses are not covered by Wisconsin’s Labor Peace Act; a district judge denies the request to stay an injunction pending appeal; the NFLPA appeals an arbitration decision.
July 9
the Supreme Court allows Trump to proceed with mass firings; Secretary of Agriculture suggests Medicaid recipients replace deported migrant farmworkers; DHS ends TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras
July 8
In today’s news and commentary, Apple wins at the Fifth Circuit against the NLRB, Florida enacts a noncompete-friendly law, and complications with the No Tax on Tips in the Big Beautiful Bill. Apple won an appeal overturning a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that the company violated labor law by coercively questioning an employee […]