Melissa Greenberg is a student at Harvard Law School.
Yesterday, street protests erupted in numerous cities in France, including Lyon, Nantes, and Toulouse, in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to reform French labor law. The proposed reforms aim to ease rules for small businesses, loosen hiring and firing restrictions, and allow individual businesses to bargain over some issues at the company level rather than follow sector-wide rules. The unions reported that 60,000 people took to the streets, but the Paris police prefecture put the number of protesters near 24,000. French unions have had mixed responses to Macron’s plans for reform, and the General Confederation of Labor was the only union which asked its members to protest yesterday. Some demonstrators used this protest to criticize President Macron’s handling of other issues.
HuffPost reported on labor unions’ efforts to protect their immigrant members from deportation. Across the country, unions have hosted “know your rights trainings,” given immigrant workers legal help, assisted with demonstrations, and made a coordinated effort to include workplace protections for immigrants in collective bargaining agreements. These efforts demonstrate how unions have evolved on immigration issues and in some cases become “de facto immigrant rights groups.” Read more here.
Bloomberg reports that the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the United Steelworkers (USW) have ended their long-time partnership with Harley-Davidson Inc. citing concerns that the company is attempting to “‘systematically dismantle’ its hourly workforce.'” In a letter to the company, Robert Martinez Jr., the president of IAM, argued that Harley-Davidson has replaced full-time workers with temporary ones, outsourced production, and contributed to the reduction of American manufacturing jobs by building factories overseas. The unions reported that Matt Levatich, Harley-Davidson’s chief executive, said that he will continue to work with the unions on staffing matters.
Daily News & Commentary
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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
July 8
In today’s news and commentary, Apple wins at the Fifth Circuit against the NLRB, Florida enacts a noncompete-friendly law, and complications with the No Tax on Tips in the Big Beautiful Bill. Apple won an appeal overturning a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that the company violated labor law by coercively questioning an employee […]