Maddy Joseph is a student at Harvard Law School.
The June jobs report was released this morning. There’s coverage here and here. In anticipation of the report, coverage in major papers this week remarked on the economy’s continued slow expansion and the slower-than-last-year jobs growth in the first five months of 2017.
The Department of Labor filed a brief defending most of its fiduciary rule, which was developed during the Obama Administration and partially implemented on June 9. The Department of Labor did not defend the rule’s anti-arbitration condition “[i]n light of the position adopted by the Acting Solicitor General” in NLRB v. Murphy Oil. See some of our previous coverage of the fiduciary rule here.
In Uber news, the New York Times details the mounting evidence that the company deducted far more than it has acknowledged from drivers’ earnings to pay New York State taxes that were supposed to be paid by passengers.
Yesterday, the New York Times had an editorial about stagnating wages and rising income inequality. Citing a recent NBER Working Paper, the editorial explained: “As workers lose ground, inequality deepens, because money that would flow to wages tends to flow instead to those at the top of the income ladder.” The Times argued that “[u]pdated overtime pay standards would raise pay broadly in the service sector, as would closing the gender pay gap, through better disclosure of corporate pay scales, anti-discrimination legislation and litigation.”
The changing U.S. job market also got some attention. The New York Times analyzed “How the Growth of E-Commerce is Shifting Retail Jobs.” And the Washington Post covered a new survey of Americans’ earnings from popular “gig economy” platforms, including Airbnb and Uber.
Daily News & Commentary
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December 22
Worker-friendly legislation enacted in New York; UW Professor wins free speech case; Trucking company ordered to pay $23 million to Teamsters.
December 21
Argentine unions march against labor law reform; WNBA players vote to authorize a strike; and the NLRB prepares to clear its backlog.
December 19
Labor law professors file an amici curiae and the NLRB regains quorum.
December 18
New Jersey adopts disparate impact rules; Teamsters oppose railroad merger; court pauses more shutdown layoffs.
December 17
The TSA suspends a labor union representing 47,000 officers for a second time; the Trump administration seeks to recruit over 1,000 artificial intelligence experts to the federal workforce; and the New York Times reports on the tumultuous changes that U.S. labor relations has seen over the past year.
December 16
Second Circuit affirms dismissal of former collegiate athletes’ antitrust suit; UPS will invest $120 million in truck-unloading robots; Sharon Block argues there are reasons for optimism about labor’s future.