Deanna Krokos is a student at Harvard Law School
This week, Eater published the account of Miriam Wojtas, a bartender working in Seattle during the covid-19 pandemic. Grounded in the bartender’s experience, the piece contextualizes and reifies some of the most pressing concerns about the pandemic. Miriam took the job after being laid off from another food-service position at the height of Seattle’s outbreak, in response to the unpredictable, unresponsive, and unbelievably slow unemployment insurance process. The bar’s owner, after facing months of lock-down and a major disruption in cash-flow, sought less-experienced workers less likely to ask for fair wages or point out health and safety risks. Wojtas describes working in a packed bar without the necessary gloves, soap, and sanitizer necessary to even pretend the infection risk was abated. Though she issued an anonymous report to the county health department, after being discouraged by OSHA’s less-than-clear website, Wojtas ultimately quit the job to protect herself.
The piece highlights the issue of worker voice during a pandemic, and how front-line workers most likely to notice safety risks are the least empowered to remedy them. For more on this, see the Clean Slate Project’s recent report, “Worker Power and Voice in the Pandemic Response.”
This week, Google’s parent company Alphabet entered into a settlement committing $310 million to diversity and equity initiatives, ending forced arbitration of discrimination and harassment claims, limiting the company’s use of non-disclosure agreements, and promising other changes demanded by workers and labor unions. In 2018, 20,000 workers walked out to protest a toxic workplace culture and management’s mishandling of employee complaints laid bare by executive Andy Rubin’s $90 million exit package, awarded although he faced serious sexual harassment claims. Importantly, these worker concerns were taken up and represented by Alphabet shareholders, Northern California Pipe Trades Pension Plan and Teamsters Local 272 Labor Management Pension Fund, who brought Alphabet to court for breaching a fiduciary duty by tolerating this “culture of concealment.” Alphabet announced that some key reforms, including the authority granted to an independent audit board, will extend beyond Google to 11 subsidiary companies like Verily and Waymo.
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
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 […]
July 7
LA economy deals with fallout from ICE raids; a new appeal challenges the NCAA antitrust settlement; and the EPA places dissenting employees on leave.
July 6
Municipal workers in Philadelphia continue to strike; Zohran Mamdani collects union endorsements; UFCW grocery workers in California and Colorado reach tentative agreements.