Emily Miller is a student at Harvard Law School.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Labor plans to roll out a new pilot program next month in which employers may avoid civil penalties for wage and hour violations in exchange for voluntarily reporting their infractions to the federal government. Under the program, which is expected to run for a six month trial period, employers would still owe any back wages to employees who were underpaid, and any employee who accepted back wages would waive their right to sue their employer for the violation. Although DOL has argued that such a program will encourage voluntary auditing by employers and facilitate compliance with the law, the program faces opposition from the National Employment Law Project; Judi Conti, the federal advocacy coordinator for NELP called it a “get out of jail free card” for employers.
The nation’s labor unions are finding themselves at the center of next week’s special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th District, according to the Boston Herald. The election will be the first of several in 2018 to test whether the Democratic Party can regain the support of working class voters such as those in the Distract, which Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points. President Trump will be speaking to the voters this Saturday, just days after he announced his plan to impose a steel tariff to save the domestic steel industry. Before Trump won the election in 2016, the region, which has over 17,000 steelworkers, had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Yesterday, United Airlines announced that they would “press the pause button” on proposed changes to their compensation plan in response to an outcry from United employees who signed online petitions protesting the changes. Last week, United announced they would be replacing employees’ quarterly incentive payments with the chance to enter a lottery in which workers, selected at random, could receive cash or other prizes. United’s prior, incentive-based program, rewarded flight attendants, pilots, and gate agents for meeting certain goals, while the lottery based program would reward far fewer employees, selected at random from a list of those with perfect attendance.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.
September 9
Ninth Circuit revives Trader Joe’s lawsuit against employee union; new bill aims to make striking workers eligible for benefits; university lecturer who praised Hitler gets another chance at First Amendment claims.
September 8
DC Circuit to rule on deference to NLRB, more vaccine exemption cases, Senate considers ban on forced arbitration for age discrimination claims.
September 7
Another weak jobs report, the Trump Administration's refusal to arbitrate with federal workers, and a district court judge's order on the constitutionality of the Laken-Riley Act.