Jon Weinberg is a student at Harvard Law School.
While the O’Connor settlement awaits approval, Uber has made a series of changes designed to appeal to drivers. The New York Times reports that “drivers can more easily pause ride requests” and that drivers can now be paid instantly. Uber will also start rides two minutes after drivers arrive at a user’s location and work with partners to provide driver tax advice and discounts on rides, auto maintenance, and cellphone data plans.
The NLRB’s standard for determining appropriate bargaining units survived Fifth Circuit scrutiny in a closely-watched case. According to Bloomberg BNA, with its ruling in Macy’s, Inc. v. NLRB, “the Fifth Circuit became the fourth appeals court to enforce NLRB rulings based on the board’s 2011 Specialty Healthcare decision.” Under this standard, “if employees in the proposed unit constitute a readily identifiable group sharing a community of interest…such a finding [of a bargaining unit] can be overcome only if the employer establishes that the proposed unit excludes other workers who share an “overwhelming community of interest” with the employees covered by the union’s petition.”
DeflateGate’s impact off the football field was the subject of an amicus brief filed by 11 labor law and labor relations professors urging the Second Circuit to re-hear the case. As CBS notes, the professors argue that “[NFL Commissioner Roger] Goodell “improperly exercised his authority as an arbitrator” in upholding [Tom] Brady’s four-game suspension for his alleged role in DeflateGate. Their brief, like others filed this week, presents Brady and Goodell’s case as one with far-reaching, negative implications for future labor disputes.”
Finally, an adjunct professor writes in The Washington Post that “unionizing adjuncts has done nothing to meaningfully change the contingency nature of adjunct employment,” instead concluding that the “system of adjuncts carrying higher education on their backs needs a complete overhaul, and it will take more than the incremental improvements that union organizing can achieve.”
Daily News & Commentary
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March 12
EPA terminates contract with second-largest union; Florida advances bill restricting public sector unions; Trump administration seeks Supreme Court assistance in TPS termination.
March 11
The partial government shutdown results in TSA agents losing their first full paycheck; the Fifth Circuit upholds the certification of a class of former United Airline workers who were placed on unpaid leave for declining to receive the COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons during the pandemic; and an academic group files a lawsuit against the State Department over a policy that revokes and denies visas to noncitizens for their work in fact-checking and content moderation.
March 10
Court rules Kari Lake unlawfully led USAGM, voiding mass layoffs; Florida Senate passes bill tightening union recertification rules; Fifth Circuit revives whistleblower suit against Lockheed Martin.
March 9
6th Circuit rejects Cemex, Board may overrule precedents with two members.
March 8
In today’s news and commentary, a weak jobs report, the NIH decides it will no longer recognize a research fellows’ union, and WNBA contract talks continue to stall as season approaches. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers cut 92,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent. A loss […]
March 6
The Harvard Graduate Students Union announces a strike authorization vote.