Time and again over the past few years, as he fought to protect his coworkers at Bobcat’s North Dakota plant, William Wilkinson faced two obstacles. One was the company. The other was a federal government that, instead of fulfilling its duty to safeguard workers, helped management exploit them. Within hours of taking office on January …
President Joe Biden has long branded himself as a union guy, Joe from Scranton who represented the worker. The reality of his policies—especially as a senator from credit card company mecca Delaware—and his personnel decisions has been more mixed. But the early signs from his presidential administration have many labor advocates and progressive economists excited. First …
Last Friday, representatives from the Retail Workers (RWDSU) went before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Region 10, seeking a quick union certification election. The election is to determine whether a majority of the employees at the newly opened Amazon Fulfillment Center (BHM1) in Bessemer—a small of suburb of Birmingham, Alabama—want union representation. Amazon was represented …
BAmazon Union: Anticipating the Battle in Bessemer, Alabama Read More »
The Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ended 2019 by rolling back another round of Obama-era regulations and handing down a number of pro-employer decisions. One of those rulings restricts workers from wearing union buttons and other pro-labor insignia. The Organization United for Respect at Walmart (Our Walmart) had challenged a company policy limiting the size of …
Trump’s NLRB Quietly Makes It Riskier To Wear Union Schwag at Work Read More »
Donald Trump’s conflict-of-interest-plagued National Labor Relations Board handed McDonald’s a big win in the fight over whether the company shares responsibility for workers and working conditions in most of its restaurants. The board allowed a $170,000 settlement between McDonald’s franchisees and workers, overruling an administrative law judge who had said the settlement was inadequate. The lone Democrat on …
Trump appointees hand McDonald’s a win in labor case, this week in the war on workers Read More »
Giant balloons apparently terrify Peter Robb, who is Donald Trump’s hand-picked general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Big balloons shaped like rats, cats, pigs and cockroaches so frighten Robb that he has used his office to take extraordinary steps to outlaw them. He won’t criminalize the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. The …
The U.S. Department of Labor plans to propose a rule that would reexamine worker classification, redefining who is given certain labor protections and who is not. The boom of the so-called gig economy — as seen in ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft and others like TaskRabbit and DoorDash — have raised questions about whether people …
The Donald Trump-appointed National Labor Relations Board dealt a major blow last week to workers being exploited by companies misclassifying them as independent contractors. Whether a worker is an employee has long been determined by a number of factors, including how much control the employer exerts over things like work hours and conditions. The NLRB, …
Over the last few decades, a growing number of American workers have effectively lost many of their labor rights because of the way their bosses structure the employment relationship. These workers are contractors who are hired by one company but work for another: the Hyatt Hotel housekeepers who actually work for Hospitality Staffing Solutions, the Microsoft tech workers who actually …
On October 6, the Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican federal appellate judge accused by multiple women of sexual assault, to the Supreme Court. In light of the allegations—which include attempted rape—the opposition to Kavanaugh has been dominated by concerns about the impact he will have on the lives of women. In addition …
Kavanaugh Is Terrible on Workers’ Rights—And That’s Anti-Woman, Too Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
