Martin Drake is a student at Harvard Law School.
The U.S. may be facing its largest labor strike in decades, as the vast majority of UPS’s 260,000 Teamsters voted to strike if their union can’t reach an agreement with their employer, CBS News reports. The current UPS-Teamsters contract expires on July 31, 2018. The last strike by UPS workers, in 1997, lasted more than two weeks. As we’ve previously reported, the current bargaining comes in the midst of UPS attempting to modify scheduling in order to keep up with demand from the booming e-commerce sector.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 114 undocumented workers in a single operation this week, CNN reports. In an intense show of force against the migrant workers, around 200 ICE personnel were involved in the roundup. The majority of the workers were Mexican citizens. According to ICE administrators, this type of crackdown can be expected to continue.
Writing in the Guardian, Senator Bernie Sanders made a fervent call for solidarity with Disneyland workers who are fighting for a living wage. The senator describes how around one in 10 Disneyland workers report being homeless, and over two-thirds experience food insecurity. He pointed out that this situation is not unique—American wages are stagnant, and over 40 percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 “unexpected financial expense like a medical emergency or car repair.” Sanders writes that readers should not embrace our model of “ruthless capitalism,” and calls on Americans to join the workers fighting for better wages and conditions.
As if to exemplify the senator’s “ruthless capitalism,” California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has cited Bay Area businesses for over $10 million in wage theft, SF Gate reports. Half of that total comes from a single employer, Kome Japanese Seafood Buffet in Daly City. The allegations include violations of minimum wage and overtime laws, along with illegal confiscation of server’s tips.
The California wage theft news comes just as a new report from Jobs with Justice and Good Jobs First documents billions of dollars paid out in wage theft cases by some of the country’s largest companies since 2000. According to the report, Walmart alone has paid $1.4 billion in wage theft penalties in the new millennium. FedEx and Bank of America, and Wells Fargo all paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties for stolen wages. Those massive numbers come despite the fact that the vast majority of these cases are settled by the employers before trial, with trial verdicts deciding just 1.7 percent of the cases examined in the report.
Daily News & Commentary
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July 15
The Department of Labor announces new guidance around Occupational Safety and Health Administration penalty and debt collection procedures; a Cornell University graduate student challenges graduate student employee-status under the National Labor Relations Act; the Supreme Court clears the way for the Trump administration to move forward with a significant staff reduction at the Department of Education.
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