Today’s News & Commentary — February 14, 2018

On Monday, Local 33-UNITE HERE withdrew its petition to the NLRB to represent student teachers in 8 of the 56 departments of the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences at Yale University.  The micro-unit bargaining strategy, which allowed the union to define bargaining units at Yale as individual departments instead of the whole school, had been upheld by the NLRB in Specialty Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, 357 NLRB 934 (2011) but was overruled by the newly appointed Board in November.  The New York Times reports.

President Trump’s budget plan revealed on Monday adds and tightens work requirements for social safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and housing assistance.  Since the administration allowed states to impose work requirements for Medicaid last month, Kentucky has rolled out work requirements and 10 other states have asked to do the same.  The New York Times reports.

One reason employers should expand their sick leave pay is that incentivizing workers to come in sick actually hurts their bottom line.  As this year’s flu hospitalization rights are extremely high and the vaccine has been seen as less effective, sick workers must choose between forgoing their paycheck or going to work sick.  Doing the latter exposes other commuters and employees to illness.  A CDC study found that providing paid sick leave might decrease the overall number of workdays lost from sickness by nearly 4 to 11 million per year, resulting in $1-2 billion in savings.  Yet, about 28% of U.S. workers, concentrated in the lowest-income employees don’t have paid sick leave.  The Washington Post reports.

An associate director named Lauren Bonner has filed suit against Steven A. Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management LP claiming that the company had a level of structural sexism that led to a hostile workplace that enabled the sexist and misogynistic treatment of women.  IBM has sued its former Human Resources executive for violating her contract when she was recently hired by Microsoft and has sought to enforce her non-compete.  Preston Doerflinger, the interim director of Oklahoma’s health agency resigned yesterday when it emerged that his ex-wife had filed a victim statement that he had choked her in 2012.