Posts tagged contractors
Op-ed: This Labor Day marks 10 years of chaos for franchisees, contractors
September 1, 2025 // Franchises and contractors live in fear of the next anti-small-business administration, which is all but certain to shift the joint employer standard once again. But Congress can act now. The Save Local Business Act would codify the sensible standard in federal law.
Unions, contractors clash over proposal to require labor equity in Spokane projects
August 24, 2025 // Priority hires must either be a graduate from a state-certified pre-apprenticeship program; a veteran, person of color, woman, those formerly convicted of a crime, formerly homeless or a tribal member; or living in an area of the city with higher rates of poverty and lower rates of higher education and employment. “We do not believe the government should mandate or compel any firm to change its labor policies in order to perform these projects,” said Cheryl Stewart, executive director for the Inland Northwest Associated General Contractors, during a Monday reading of the proposal. “This law is not inclusive, it’s exclusive: over 85% of Washington’s workforce is non-union, and 98% of women- and minority-owned firms are non-union, and these contractors and their employees would be shut out or forced to change their labor policies.”
Hundreds of VOA employees set to be axed amid legal fight with Trump
May 19, 2025 // The VOA workforce includes roughly 1,350 employees. Full-time employees were not affected by the terminations, but there’s an expectation that those positions will be considered later, according to several people familiar with the situation who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Lake said 584 total employees were terminated across USAGM, which also includes the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. She didn’t provide a breakdown but said the majority were from VOA.
The strike against Amazon is over but Teamsters warn: ‘Stay tuned’
December 28, 2024 // The workers in Staten Island voted in favor of representation by the Amazon Labor Union in April 2022. However, even though the National Labor Relations Board certified that vote result, Amazon continues to challenge it in court and won’t recognize the win by a union. Amazon also does not believe that a vote by union members to shift from being represented by the ALU to being affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this year was legally binding. And while the Teamsters announced earlier this month that a majority of employees at San Bernardino signed cards saying they want to be in the Teamsters, there has been no formal vote held there.
Harris Pushes Gig Workers, Contractors into Corporate Jobs with New Rule
September 25, 2024 // America already has too few people working. If the employment rate were the same as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.9 million more people would be working today. The last thing Americans need is another regulation that makes it harder to make a living and to afford the rising cost of living. Although the Biden-Harris regulation has only been in effect since March, and it’s too early to fully study its effects, the employment-to-population ratio dropped by 0.3 percentage points between March and July. This decline represents a loss of 700,000 workers.
WIOA Reauthorization Draft Includes “Blacklisting” Provision, Violating Employers’ Due Process Rights
July 3, 2024 // The blacklisting provision, if implemented, would bar employers from WIOA funding based on findings that are still subject to appeal. As a result, an employer may be denied funding even though a court may rule on appeal that the employer did not violate the law. Efforts to blacklist employers from federal initiatives and funding began under the Obama administration when it issued Executive Order 13673, “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces,” in July 2014. The Executive Order called for the debarment or suspension of federal contractors from the federal procurement process for allegations of labor and employment law violations. A final rule and guidance implementing the Executive Order were issued in August 2016, but both were blocked from taking effect by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and by Congress via a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution.
The Delivery Business Shows Why Unions Are Struggling to Expand
May 29, 2024 // But the union has also suffered losses. Yellow, a trucking company that employed 24,000 Teamsters, shut down and filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Amazon and FedEx said they were confident in their approach to managing and compensating workers. Amazon said it had made investments that bolstered pay and benefits at its delivery contractors. FedEx said its nonunion model allowed it to quickly increase pay whereas UPS’s union employees were bound by the terms of five-year contracts.
Billionaire California growers battle farmworker union over biggest victory under new law
March 17, 2024 // Three workers, who now want their vote revoked, say they merely attended meetings and signed cards for the $600 relief payments and never wanted to join a union. They described feeling “tricked” and “lied to” by UFW organizers, while also pointing to the 3% dues that would be required by joining. They also struggled to recall specifics of when they met up with UFW organizers and if the cards they signed contained wording to make UFW their union bargaining representative.
This New Labor Rule Could Be Trouble for McDonald’s
October 5, 2023 // McDonald’s and other franchise companies have made it clear they believe the stakes are high. The “reality is that our business model is under attack,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said of possible joint-employer regulations in a speech at a franchising industry conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, in remarks he also published on LinkedIn. Changes by the NLRB, he said, would transform franchisees “from independent small-business owners to employees of the parent brands.” Heightened joint-employer liability could hurt the franchise model in two main ways, according to the International Franchise Association. One possibility, along the lines of what Kempczinski described, is that a franchisor would exert more control over the franchisees. That undercuts one of franchisors’ big selling points to potential franchisees—that they’re offering a path to running their own business, with all of the freedoms that provides. It could also add compliance costs, and potentially, legal and liability expenses. Those increased costs are also a frequent worry for franchisees, says restaurant consultant John Gordon, principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group. Franchisees typically pay franchisors a percentage of their sales, and their profit comes after those fees and their operating expenses. Franchisees are “justifiably afraid of the franchisor passing costs onto them that weren’t part of the franchise agreement,” he says, and wary of joint-employer liability for that reason.
In Philly, VP Harris details new labor rules for federal construction projects
August 9, 2023 // Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday, visited Philadelphia to announce changes to labor rules that could give higher wages to construction workers on federal projects. At the headquarters of labor union DC 21, in Northeast Philly, Harris detailed the Labor Department's first update in decades to the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, a law that requires the payment of prevailing local wages on public works.