Jason Vazquez is a staff attorney at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2023. His writing on this blog reflects his personal views and should not be attributed to the Teamsters.
Hundreds of workers at a critical port in the United Kingdom walked off the job on Tuesday, touching off a two week strike in demand of higher wages that threatens to pinch an already squeezed global supply chain. The work stoppage may preview a wave of labor tumult poised to convulse the British economy in the weeks ahead, as hundreds of thousands of disaffected workers across a sweeping range of sectors — from bus drivers to garbage collectors to railway operators to college lecturers — are preparing to strike amid the nation’s deepening cost-of-living crisis.
In the latest organizing news, workers at a Home Depot store in Philadelphia filed an election petition on Monday covering a unit of nearly 300 retail employees. The organizing drive reflects a recent surge of “independent unionization,” as embodied in the recent triumphs of the Amazon Labor Union, Starbucks Workers United, Trader Joe’s Union, Apple Retail Union, Chipotle United, REI Union, and Geico United, to name a few.
Home Depot remains the world’s largest home improvement retailer. Should the union, Home Depot Workers United, prevail in the upcoming election, the Philly store would become the first of the company’s more than 2,000 U.S. locations to unionize.
In employment law news, New Jersey’s labor enforcement agency announced Tuesday that Chipotle Mexican Grill has agreed to pay $7.7 million to settle “widespread and persistent violations” of the state’s child labor laws. The news surfaces on the heels of a similar announcement in New York City, which last month entered into a $20 million agreement — the largest in the city’s history — with Chipotle to settle wage and hour violations, as I outlined here.
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 […]