Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer published an op-ed in today’s N.Y. Times, in which he outlined the Democratic Party’s “better deal” for American workers. The three stated goals of the new agenda are to increase pay, reduce expenses, and provide workers with tools for the new economy. Democrats will announce policy proposals to stop prescription drug price gouging, strengthen antitrust laws, and give tax credits to employers that are training workers for unfilled jobs.
On Sunday, San Antonio officials discovered at least 39 people packed into a tractor-trailer that was parked at a local Walmart. Eight men were already dead, and another died later in the hospital. The victims were as young as 15 years old, and authorities claim that they were transported across the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an immigrant smuggling operation.
As California’s farmers face shortages in immigrant labor, the L.A. Times reports that they are racing to replace workers with robots. The $47-billion agricultural industry is aiming to remake itself with technological innovation so as not to risk losing entire crops that are grown so labor-intensively that they will be hard to sustain. According to a Pew Research Center study, the net flow of workers across the U.S.-Mexico border reversed in 2005, at a rate that accelerated through 2014. Even as wages for crop production in California have increased at a higher rate than the state average, native-born Americans are not interested in filling the positions left open by a dwindling supply of new immigrant labor.
Likewise, the Wall Street Journal reports that retailers and logistics companies are testing robotic “pickers” in their distribution centers to help them keep up with growth in online sales. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, last year U.S. e-commerce revenues hit $390 billion, which is nearly twice as much as e-commerce revenues in 2011. This explosive growth has led to hundreds of thousands of additional jobs, but labor shortages are becoming more common. Bringing in robots to pick items off shelves and pack them for shipping could help meet the pressure to ship faster and cut the labor cost of fulfilling online orders by twenty percent.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
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.