In Christian Labor Ass’n v. City of Duluth, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota has held that an independent union — along with three businesses and two independent workers — have standing to sue three Minnesota cities and a public sanitary district for project labor agreements which allegedly run afoul of the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The project labor agreements at issue require non-members to pay fees to the building trade unions to work on publicly-funded projects; this, the District Court held, may violate the Supreme Court’s holding that mandatory union fees violate the First Amendment rights of public workers.
The Ninth Circuit has permitted a proposed class action Title VII suit to proceed against Nevada’s Chicken Ranch brothel, lifting a temporary stay on the proceedings while the brothel applied to have the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determine whether the brothel was an “employer” under the Civil Rights Act. The Court of Appeals declined to review. The case involves two black employees of the brothel who claim that they were harassed, retaliated against and denied equal job rights throughout their employment at the brothel. The pair seeks to represent themselves and other similarly-situated workers. The case is Byars v. W. Best LLC.
In light of record-high temperatures across the United States, OSHA has indicated that it is “seriously considering emergency rulemaking” on “Heat Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings.” While the agency’s development of a nonemergency standard is underway, it has not scheduled a request for information on the rule until October.
