The New York Times reports that NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio signed an executive order on Tuesday that expanded the city’s living wage law, “covering thousands of previously exempt workers and raising the hourly wage itself, to $13.13 from $11.90, for workers who do not receive benefits.” The order covers employees of commercial tenants on projects that receive more than $1 million in city subsidies. Yet the move also has symbolic power, as state lawmakers prepare to debate whether the Mayor should have the power to raise the citywide minimum wage as well. “Administration officials cast the move as an extension of other policies aimed at reducing the wide gap between rich and poor, like the expansion of paid sick leave and the mayor’s long-term plan to build more affordable housing.”
The Wall Street Journal opinion page is critical of several French unions that went on strike last week after two workers were suspended without pay for drinking rum punch while operating train signals. The piece notes that while labor protests are nothing new in France, this strike comes as President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls are trying to reform the country’s labor laws, and are considering various changes to unions’ power and a possible end to the 35-hour work week.
Reuters reports that Hyundai Motor Corp. reached a tentative deal with its South Korean labor union, potentially resolving disputes and ending strikes that had carried on longer than expected. The union had resumed a partial strike last week after the company bid $10 billion for a plot of land in Seoul on which it planned to build a headquarters and automotive theme park. According to the article, “its winning bid sent shares in the company plunging.”
Daily News & Commentary
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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 […]