On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on Wells Fargo’s sham account case. As the New York Times reports, Wells Fargo employees created nearly two million fake accounts to pad their sales numbers. At the hearing, senators noted that top executives had faced no real consequences, while the bank’s lowest-paid workers had “borne the brunt of the punishment.” As Senator Elizabeth Warren put it to John G. Stumpf, Wells Fargo’s chief executive, “Your definition of accountability is to push this on your low-level employees. This is gutless leadership.”
Forbes reports that 21 states have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Labor to block its new overtime rule. The suit, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, alleges that the rule is in contravention of the Tenth Amendment and the APA. Most of the states party to the lawsuit have also joined lawsuits seeking to block other Obama administration rules, including the challenge to DACA, the Clean Water Rule, and the Clean Power Plan.
According to
Politico, the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in
Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc. has served as a catalyst for state legislation protecting pregnant workers from workplace discrimination. In
Young, the Court held in favor of a pregnant UPS worker who alleged that she had been denied pregnancy-related accommodations as required by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Although the holding was a narrow one, it seems to have prompted legislative action. Emily Martin, general counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, explained that since the decision, “we’ve seen even more bipartisan support for the notion that pregnant workers … should be entitled to very reasonable accommodations at work.”
A Thai court has found a British labor activist, Andy Hall, guilty of criminal defamation and violating cyber crimes law. The charges came in connection with his work on a 2013
report accusing Natural Fruit, a Thai-based company, of violating its workers’ rights. Hall was originally sentenced to three years in prison and fined $4,300, but the judge suspended his sentence. Still, human rights advocates are worried that the case will seriously hinder efforts to investigate and monitor workers’ rights abuses in Thailand. Coverage is available at the
New York Times,
Human Rights Watch, and
Jurist.
Daily News & Commentary
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April 19
Alabama and Louisiana advance anti-worker legislation; Mercedes workers in Alabama set election date; VW Chattanooga election concludes today.
April 18
Disneyland performers file petition for unionization and union elections begin at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee.
April 18
In today’s Tech@Work, a regulation-of-algorithms-in-hiring blitz: Mass. AG issues advisory clarifying how state laws apply to AI decisionmaking tools; and British union TUC launches campaign for new law to regulate the use of AI at work.
April 17
Southern governors oppose UAW organizing in their states; Florida bans local heat protections for workers; Google employees occupy company offices to protest contracts with the Israeli government
April 16
EEOC publishes final regulation implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee gear up for a union election, and the First Circuit revives the Whole Foods case over BLM masks.
April 15
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of bakery delivery drivers in an exemption from mandatory arbitration case; A Teamsters Local ends its 18-month strike by accepting settlement payments and agreeing to dissolve