Vail Kohnert-Yount is a student at Harvard Law School.
Amazon’s nationwide delivery network is made up of hundreds of small companies that exert tremendous pressure on drivers to deliver hundreds of packages, one almost every two minutes, for a flat rate each eight-hour shift. Buzzfeed investigated the resulting “chaos, exploitation, and danger” from Amazon’s seemingly single-minded focus on getting packages to customers on time. As Amazon’s delivery network has jettisoned safety protocols used by other delivery services including FedEx and UPS, drivers and those who share the roads with them have experienced rampant legal violations, injuries, and even death.
Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn admitted to violating Chinese labor law in the world’s largest iPhone factory, according to a new report from China Labor Watch. Bloomberg reported on CLW’s latest report, which revaled findings from undercover investigators who worked for years in Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant. As of August, half of workers at the Zhengzhou iPhone factory were temporary workers, five times the legal maximum of 10%. Apple has repeatedly faced criticism for poor working conditions in its supply chain.
The Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act is slated for markup by the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon. Introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the FAIR Act would ban forced arbitration of employment, consumer, antitrust or civil rights disputes.
The New York Times investigated how ghostwriting papers for American college students has emerged as a lucrative online industry, particularly overseas. But as foreign writers, many of whom are from countries with many English speakers such as Kenya, India, and Ukraine, increasingly join the industry, some sites selling academic writing have begun to tout their American bona fides, “in a strange twist on globalization and outsourcing.” One ghostwriting website listed “bringing jobs back to America” as a key goal. Although U.S. writers typically charge more per page, they claim to offer more passable writing products, without suspiciously foreign spellings or idioms.
Daily News & Commentary
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March 13
Republican Senators urge changes on OSHA heat standard; OpenAI and building trades announce partnership on data center construction; forced labor investigations could lead to new tariffs
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 […]