Vail Kohnert-Yount is a student at Harvard Law School.
More than 1,200 students at 17 universities have signed a pledge not to take jobs with Palantir, a big data analytics company, until it drops its software development contracts with ICE. Under the name #NoTechForICE, the campaign is modeled on similar efforts from the 1960s, when students targeted recruiters for Dow Chemical to protest the company’s sale of napalm during the Vietnam War. As part of its recruitment strategy, Palantir often directly pays universities thousands of dollars a year to reach their students via campus information sessions, career fairs, faculty advisors, and access to student resumes or projects.
Three days after California passed AB 5, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott sued Instacart, alleging that its shoppers’ tasks are “directly within the course of Instacart’s business model,” which would require the grocery delivery company to classify them as employees under the new bill. “Companies like Instacart cannot deprive their employees of the basic job protections guaranteed under state law by calling them independent contractors,” Elliott said in a statement. “We are seeking restitution for the workers who’ve been exploited in the past, and we are also demanding that Instacart start legally classifying its workers.”
At a rally for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held today in Houston, Texas, President Trump cited a controversial job training “pledge” program spearheaded by his daughter as a major accomplishment. In exchange for pledging new or pre-existing employee training opportunities—largely unconstrained by rules or close oversight—companies often get “face-time” with senior Trump administration figures. The vice president and at least ten cabinet-level officials have all held events with companies that have signed Ivanka Trump’s job pledge.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.