
Jason Vazquez is a staff attorney at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2023. His writing on this blog reflects his personal views and should not be attributed to the IBT.
An unprecedent heat wave continues to scorch the West Coast, and employers in the agricultural industry have been scrambling to harvest their fields before crops wither in the blistering heat. As a result, the region’s agricultural laborers—who already find themselves subjected to highly exploitative conditions—have been pushed even harder in recent days. Thousands of fruit pickers have reportedly been working up to twelve hours a day, and many of them are deprived of access to breaks, shade, or water and pressured to continue toiling even when they are feeling sick, overheated, or dehydrated. In recent days, many farmworkers have contracted heat-related illnesses—and some, tragically, have died.
Labor groups in California have attempted to take advantage of the terrible conditions existing in the Golden State’s agricultural fields to galvanize public support for the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, a bill introduced in the California legislature earlier this year which, animated in large measure by the exploitation of “essential workers” so vividly displayed during the Covid pandemic, would empower a fast food sector council to establish industry-wide standards for wages and working conditions. On Tuesday, for instance, labor groups in the state coordinated a demonstration at a fast food franchise at which workers had walked off the job to protest triple digit temperatures in the facility.
This morning, President Biden nominated Jennifer Sung, a former labor lawyer and union organizer, to the Ninth Circuit. The news is timely, given Jon’s recent observation on this blog that Biden has faced criticism from some progressives for nominating management-side lawyers, prosecutors, and corporate attorneys to the federal bench. Although the president has so far appointed several former public defenders and civil rights lawyers, Sung’s nomination constitutes his first of a union-side labor lawyer.
Daily News & Commentary
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July 14
More circuits weigh in on two-step certification; Uber challengers Seattle deactivation ordinance.
July 13
APWU and USPS ratify a new contract, ICE barred from racial profiling in Los Angeles, and the fight continues over the dismantling of NIOSH
July 11
Regional director orders election without Board quorum; 9th Circuit pauses injunction on Executive Order; Driverless car legislation in Massachusetts
July 10
Wisconsin Supreme Court holds UW Health nurses are not covered by Wisconsin’s Labor Peace Act; a district judge denies the request to stay an injunction pending appeal; the NFLPA appeals an arbitration decision.
July 9
the Supreme Court allows Trump to proceed with mass firings; Secretary of Agriculture suggests Medicaid recipients replace deported migrant farmworkers; DHS ends TPS for Nicaragua and Honduras
July 8
In today’s news and commentary, Apple wins at the Fifth Circuit against the NLRB, Florida enacts a noncompete-friendly law, and complications with the No Tax on Tips in the Big Beautiful Bill. Apple won an appeal overturning a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that the company violated labor law by coercively questioning an employee […]