Several dozen former and current players on the U.S. women’s national soccer team — the reigning world champions — secured a $24 million payment from the U.S. Soccer Federation on Tuesday, settling a bitter battle over allegations of gender discrimination that had smoldered for years.

The players filed a federal lawsuit in 2019 alleging that the Federation’s disparate pay practices violated the Equal Pay Act and Title VII. The district judge dismissed the suit a year later, finding that the players’ evidence was “insufficient to establish a genuine dispute that WNT players are paid at a rate less than the rate paid to MNT players.” While the dismissal stripped much of the their legal leverage, the player’s managed to extract, on top of millions in backpay, the core relief they sought: a pledge from U.S. Soccer to equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams.

The historic rerun union election unfolding at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. began barely three weeks ago yet the union has already filed a series of unfair labor practice charges alleging that, among other things, the company removed union literature from breakrooms, restricted employee access to the facility, and compelled employee attendance at captive audience meetings.

The third charge is interesting. While in its early years the Board outlawed captive audience meetings, it reversed course in the wake of Taft-Hartley amendments. In the decades since, the coercive tactic has emerged as a hallmark of employers’ sophisticated antiunion strategies. RWDSU, the independent union attempting to organize Amazon’s Bessemer facility, is urging the Board to revisit this doctrine.

In the latest on the “Starbucks unionization wildfire” blazing across the nation, a unit in Phoenix, Ariz. which began organizing last month filed unfair labor practice charges yesterday alleging that management has been unlawfully surveilling and disciplining union supporters.

As Kevin observed over the weekend, unionization efforts have erupted at more than 100 Starbucks locations across the country, and the company has responded by shelling out millions to antiunion law firms and, as the allegations in Phoenix appear to typify, repeatedly transgressing federal labor law.