On Tuesday, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team—the reigning world champions—reached a $24 million settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation. The settlement resolves a class action the players filed in 2019 alleging violations of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII. The legal controversy began nearly six years ago, when, in 2016, five star players filed a complaint with the EEOC alleging pay discrimination. The players withdrew that complaint in 2019 and filed a lawsuit in federal court, which was dismissed a year later on the grounds that “the statements offered by Plaintiffs are insufficient to establish a genuine dispute that WNT players are paid at a rate less than the rate paid to MNT players.” That decision was appealed to the Ninth Circuit, and Tuesday’s settlement, which includes millions of dollars in backpay for dozens of players and a pledge from U.S. Soccer to equalize salaries, was announced less than two weeks before hearings on the matter were scheduled to begin.

Although the historic rerun union election at the Amazon packaging facility in Bessemer, Alabama began less than three weeks ago, RWDSU, the union seeking certification, revealed on Tuesday that it has already filed three unfair labor practice charges against the firm. The charges are predicated on allegations that Amazon removed union literature from employee breakrooms, adopted a policy restricting employee access to the facility, and compelled employees to attend “captive audience meetings.” The third is likely the most interesting to labor adherents. Captive audience meetings, today a staple of employers’ sophisticated antiunion efforts, are not expressly protected by the NLRA, and in its early years the Board proscribed them as unlawfully coercive. In the wake of the Taft-Hartley amendments, however, the agency reversed course and repudiated its earlier ruling. In short, then, captive audience meetings are presently permitted as a matter of Board caselaw, a precedent which RWDSU is urging the current Board to reexamine.

In the latest on the “Starbucks unionization wildfire” blazing across the nation, Starbucks employees in Phoenix, Arizona, who initiated an organizing effort last month, recently alleged in a ULP charge that store management ran afoul of the NLRA by surveilling, disciplining, and discriminating against union supporters. As Kevin observed over the weekend, unionization drives have now been instituted in more than 100 Starbucks locations across the country. The coffee giant has responded by shelling out gobs of cash to antiunion law firms and repeatedly transgressing federal labor law.