Maddy Joseph is a student at Harvard Law School.
Airline and airport workers are organizing and striking this holiday season. Earlier this week, the European budget airline Ryanair agreed to recognize cabin crew and pilot unions who were threatening a strike. Now, Ryanair is under investigation by at least two parliamentary committees for its treatment of workers, who have reported being charged fees for basics like uniforms and have alleged that the airline is skirting minimum wage laws.
Some food service workers at O’Hare walked off the job yesterday. The workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 1, have been working on an expired contract since August and want their employer, HMSHost, to provide higher wages and more affordable heath care.
Meanwhile, Jet Blue flight attendants filed for a union election earlier this month. Sarah Jaffe analyzes the organizing drive for the New Republic. At Dissent‘s Belabored podcast, Jaffe and co-host Michelle Chen talked to Transportation Workers Union international president John Samuelson about the Jet Blue effort.
The Communication Workers of America and several workers sued several companies, including Amazon and T-Mobile, in federal court in San Francisco for targeting employment ads on Facebook at only younger workers. The suit alleges that the practices violated California age discrimination laws. Experts speculate that the ads may also violate the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
The Atlantic has a feature on the racial effects of automation, which builds on a recent Brookings Institution panel about building an inclusive workforce after digitalization. The article predicts that Latinos will be hardest hit by automation, as robots are likely to spread first to dangerous jobs in which Latinos may be overrepresented.
In its December issue, Seattle Magazine profiles SEIU 775 and its president David Rolf, major forces behind Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.
September 9
Ninth Circuit revives Trader Joe’s lawsuit against employee union; new bill aims to make striking workers eligible for benefits; university lecturer who praised Hitler gets another chance at First Amendment claims.