Vail Kohnert-Yount is a student at Harvard Law School.
Instacart workers are asking customers of the grocery delivery app to participate in a two-day nationwide boycott next week. Organizers of the boycott have one demand: that the company restores its default tip amount to 10%. Thousands of workers staged a three-day national strike in November, demanding the app restore the 10% default tip, which it abandoned in 2016. Instead, the company slashed bonus pay—which comprised up to 40% of shoppers’ earnings—just two days later. Many of the app’s 130,000 “shoppers” have reported that their pay dropped by more than half last year. Workers are now asking customers to tweet under the hashtag #DeleteInstacart on January 19, and to email Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta on January 20, asking him to restore the 10% default tip.
The top lawyer at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is resigning after multiple accounts surfaced regarding his inappropriate workplace relationships. David Drummond, recently the subject of a misconduct investigation by Alphabet’s board, said that his departure is unrelated. In 2018, the New York Times reported on Drummond’s extramarital affair with an employee in an investigation of Google’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims. “Drummond’s persistence at the top of the management chain was something of a running joke in the wake of the walkout,” Claire Stapleton, a former Google employee who co-organized the historic employee-led walkout to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment claims, told Recode. “It made it almost impossible to believe Google management was taking the issues seriously.”
This month, Illinois’s Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act went into effect, which requires employers to provide notice and get consent to use artificial intelligence in job interviews. Companies must notify applicants that artificial intelligence will be used to consider their “fitness” for a position and explain how their AI works and what “general types of characteristics” it considers when evaluating candidates. Besides requiring applicants’ consent to use AI, the law also seeks to protect job applicants’ privacy by limiting who can view an applicant’s recorded video interview and requiring that companies delete any video upon an applicant’s request. The law, among the first of its kind in the U.S., does not require that employers provide an alternative interview method.
Last week, Starbucks announced that it would offer employees free subscriptions to the mindfulness app Headspace. However, some employees are asking Starbucks to take more meaningful action to promote workers’ well-being, namely by increasing staffing and pay. In recent weeks, Starbucks workers have recirculated a petition demanding that Starbucks address understaffing and “sinking morale.”
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
April 21
Bryan Johnson’s ULP saga before the NLRB continues; top law firms opt to appease the EEOC in its anti-DEI demands.
April 20
In today’s news and commentary, the Supreme Court rules for Cornell employees in an ERISA suit, the Sixth Circuit addresses whether the EFAA applies to a sexual harassment claim, and DOGE gains access to sensitive labor data on immigrants. On Thursday, the Supreme Court made it easier for employees to bring ERISA suits when their […]
April 18
Two major New York City unions endorse Cuomo for mayor; Committee on Education and the Workforce requests an investigation into a major healthcare union’s spending; Unions launch a national pro bono legal network for federal workers.
April 17
Utahns sign a petition supporting referendum to repeal law prohibiting public sector collective bargaining; the US District Court for the District of Columbia declines to dismiss claims filed by the AFL-CIO against several government agencies; and the DOGE faces reports that staffers of the agency accessed the NLRB’s sensitive case files.
April 16
7th Circuit questions the relevance of NLRB precedent after Loper Bright, unions seek to defend silica rule, and Abrego Garcia's union speaks out.
April 15
In today’s news and commentary, SAG-AFTRA reaches a tentative agreement, AFT sues the Trump Administration, and California offers its mediation services to make up for federal cuts. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing approximately 133,000 commercial actors and singers, has reached a tentative agreement with advertisers and advertising agencies. These companies were represented in contract negotiations by […]