The week-long strike by transit workers in Philadelphia, which shut down the city’s transit system and could have reduced voter turnout, has ended.  According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the four-year contract between Transportation Workers Union Local 234 and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority covering 4,738 workers must still be formally approved, but SEPTA will resume some operations today and full operations tomorrow, Election Day.  Details of the agreement have yet to be released.  SEPTA had considered pursuing an injunction to enjoin the strike on Election Day, and eventually unsuccessfully sought a court order to enjoin the strike completely.

A federal court has ruled that the EEOC correctly interprets Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit LGBT workplace discrimination, in one of the first cases brought by the agency under its interpretation of the law.  Buzzfeed notes that Judge Cathy Bissoon of the Western District of Pennsylvania found in denying a Motion to Dismiss in EEOC v. Scott Medical Health Center, P.C. that “there is no more obvious form of sex stereotyping than making a determination that a person should conform to heterosexuality.”  She further wrote that “forcing an employee to fit into a gendered expectation — whether that expectation involves physical traits, clothing, mannerisms or sexual attraction — constitutes sex stereotyping and, under Price Waterhouse, violates Title VII.”  The case will now move forward.

Chicago may be the “Second City,” but its federal court fielded the fifth-most wage-and-hour lawsuit filings in America last year.  Per Crain’s Chicago Business, in the Northern District of Illinois “542 lawsuits were filed in 2015 alleging an employer violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.”  The number of filings was exceeded only by courts in New York, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.  Furthermore, “wage and hour lawsuits rose 117 percent in Chicago between 2011 and 2015, mirroring a national uptick.”

In other news, NPR reports on how poverty-level wages for US child care workers may explain high industry worker turnover, while The New York Post features a program which assists autistic workers with job placements.