BY JOSEFA VELASQUEZ
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE
The City, NYC

The retail giant is challenging NLRB certification, and a second vote at a nearby warehouse looms ahead. That’s all before anyone sits down at the bargaining table to discuss a contract.

Aside from Amazon’s objections to the vote, it could be a long road to getting the company and the ALU to agree on a contract. While the NLRB requires employers to bargain in good faith once the...

By Rachel Reed
HLS News Staff
Harvard Law Today

New research suggests that federal incentives should be redesigned to support secondhand purchasers — typically less affluent households — to achieve cars’ emissions savings.

Subsidies offered by the federal government for the purchase of new electric vehicles (EVs) may actually increase total greenhouse gas emissions without similar aid for secondhand buyers, concludes a new study led by Ashley Nunes, Ph.D., a fellow at...

By Camille Squires
Quartz

On March 31, Washington became the first state in the US to guarantee rideshare drivers receive a minimum wage. But, crucially for the rideshare companies, workers will remain classified as independent contractors, not employees. Uber and Lyft insist that this independent contractor status is what gives rideshare drivers the flexibility they seek in the job, but it also frees the companies from other responsibilities of employers, like providing overtime pay and health insurance.

...

Max Zahn 
Yahoo Finance

In the coming days, the Amazon Labor Union may face a challenge from Amazon over the legitimacy of the election results that, if successful, could overturn the outcome. If the union survives that potential challenge, it will enter negotiations with the company over the contours of a union contract at the facility that will likely stretch on for months.

If Amazon foregoes a challenge of the results or the...

By Anna Kramer
Protocol

Amazon workers have voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history in the United States, securing a sweeping and unexpected victory in a National Labor Relations Board election for a group of around 8,000 workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

"Amazon is a corporation with massive essentially unlimited resources which it has deployed to stop workers from exercising their right to organize, and that nonetheless the workers have been able to...

 By Josh Eidelson
Bloomberg

Overall U.S. unionization declined last year, despite 2021’s wave of prominent strike authorizations, mass resignations, and other organizing efforts. But Smalls’s win signals that there’s an opening for workers, one that many others are now more likely to explore. “The psychological and symbolic importance of a win can’t be overstated,” says Sharon Block, a former Obama Labor Department policy chief who now directs Harvard Law School...

By HLS News Staff
Harvard Law Today

Sharon Block, a labor policy expert who most recently served as acting administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Biden administration, has been appointed professor of practice at Harvard Law School, effective July 1.

Block, who currently serves as the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, first joined HLS in 2017, where, with Professor ...

Benjamin Sachs
OnLabor Blog

I am so happy to share with OnLabor readers the news that Sharon Block is returning to Harvard Law School as a professor of practice and the Executive Director of the Labor and Worklife Program. Sharon’s return is a great boon for labor law at Harvard and an incredible opportunity for us to consider the future of LWP, including the Clean...

Sharon Block
OnLabor Blog

I think it is fair to say that based on President Biden’s first State of the Union (SOTU) address, the state of labor’s interests in the Biden Administration is strong. Even before President Biden entered the House Chamber Tuesday night, Biden sent a signal about how central the labor movement is to his presidency. Starting with President Reagan, presidents have used invitations to sit with the First Lady during SOTU as symbols of their values. ...

By Noam Scheiber and Kellen Browning
New York Times

Lawmakers have passed legislation granting benefits and protections, but allowing Lyft and Uber to continue to treat drivers as contractors.

Worker advocates worried that other states would try to replicate the legislation. “I hope Governor Inslee seeks additional analysis of its potential impact,” said Terri Gerstein, a workers rights lawyer at Harvard...

David Kroman
The Seattle Times

Now, a year after Seattle's minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers took effect, state legislators are considering a similar floor of pay and benefits for drivers statewide. The bill, House Bill 2076, has already cleared the House and a key committee in the Senate.

If passed, drivers would gain a guaranteed minimum per ride that would increase at the same pace as the state's minimum wage, which is currently $14.49. They would also begin accruing paid sick time, become eligible for workers compensation, and gain access to an appeals...

Meghan McCarty Carino
Marketplace

The state of Washington could be on its way to adopting a law with big implications for the gig economy. State lawmakers have passed a bill that offers ride-hailing drivers some new benefits. The bill bars them from being classified as employees.

Washington is the latest state to grapple with providing rideshare driver benefits – like sick leave and minimum pay — while still giving drivers flexibility over their schedules. 

While the bill provides some benefits, they fall short of those afforded to employees...

Larry Beeferman
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance

Despite an increasing focus on company disclosures about workforce-related policies and practices, little attention has been given to very important issues of worker voice: the opportunity and ability of workers to speak out and up about their experience at the workplace and how what they say is heard, discussed, and acted upon. At its core, worker voice is identified with freedom of association, unions, and collective bargaining. However, it may take other forms: directly, by solicitation of...

BY TERRI GERSTEIN
The American Prospect

When Proposition 22, the (sadly, successful) initiative to strip gig workers of rights, was on the California ballot in 2020, there was immense news coverage and analysis. As gig companies like Uber and Lyft prepare similar attempts across the country, with the goal of ensuring their workers remain non-employees, a similarly high-profile fight is brewing in Massachusetts, where worker, environmental, and racial justice advocates have formed a coalition to gear up for a major battle as a similar measure comes before voters in November...

by Gali Racabi
OnLabor Blog

On December 9, the European Commission issued a package of proposed regulations of platform work. This legislative initiative came after a long period of lobbying, consultation, and research by business groups, unions, and academics on the problems emerging from the entry of platforms into European Union labor markets.

From a U.S. perspective, the...