Posts tagged ftc
Kroger e-commerce center workers vote to join Teamsters
May 23, 2024 // “We expected better from these two longtime Teamster employers. Clearly, they are more interested in guaranteeing big payouts for management,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement at the time of that announcement. Last December, the Teamsters urged the Federal Trade Commission to reject Kroger and Albertsons’ plan to sell hundreds of stores and other assets to assuage antitrust concerns surrounding their proposed combination.
How changes to ‘noncompete’ agreements and overtime could affect workers
April 26, 2024 // They’ll also have to determine how they will budget for the extra pay for overtime. Small businesses will have the toughest time. “Some are going to have to cut workers,” Hollis said. “Others will have to cut hours from existing workers. “Some are going to have to raise prices, and some probably won’t be able to figure out a way to make it economically work and wind up having to shut down, unfortunately.”
US bans worker ‘noncompete’ agreements as business groups vow to sue
April 24, 2024 // But the agency's two Republican commissioners, Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson, said federal law does not allow the commission to adopt broad rules prohibiting conduct that it deems anticompetitive. “We are not a legislature,” Ferguson said. “I do not believe we have the power to nullify tens of millions of existing contracts."
Commentary: Biden’s FTC Seeks To Protect Union Workers Through M&A Challenge
March 25, 2024 // For Kroger and Albertsons, the FTC claims that the companies aggressively compete with one another to hire and retain grocery workers, principally through collective bargaining negotiations with unions. The FTC claims that this competition results in higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for employees. The proposed acquisition would eliminate or greatly curtail this competition, threatening the ability of hundreds of thousands of grocery store workers to secure stronger contracts with improved wages and benefits.
How the Kroger-Albertsons merger could impact union workers, if it happens
March 5, 2024 // Antitrust experts have said that if the FTC lawsuit derails the merger, it could set a new precedent. It could also help cement the power of unions in the grocery industry and enable them to organize other workplaces. Perhaps more importantly, it goes beyond the more immediate concerns associated with a merger—such as layoffs—and raises broader questions about the long-term effects of undermining the right to strike for unionized workers. “I think it shows an innovative and creative approach,” Lieberwitz says. “The FTC’s concerns are, of course, broader, but this is a response that looks at the ways in which unionized workforces are essential to the welfare of labor and the labor market.”
Pro-Worker, Not Pro-Union
January 31, 2024 // What the Right has often overlooked in this debate is that the protection of independent-worker status can be coupled with a revamping of worker-benefit options. Lack of benefits is frequently cited as the main drawback of independent work. Republicans could burnish their pro-worker credentials, while protecting businesses from reclassification and other draconian left-wing policies, by proposing a flexible benefit setup for contractors and gig workers that has features similar to a SEP-IRA. It would use a system of employer contributions while giving workers the ability to make pre-tax contributions of their own. The funds could be used for benefits such as paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, or even health insurance, some of which could be purchased through newly created worker-benefit exchanges that act as brokerages for the benefits. Benefit-flexibility concepts can be applied as well to retirement savings, even those of noncontract workers. The current system largely relies on employer-based retirement plans, but many workers find it difficult to roll old retirement accounts over to new jobs. That has led to a proliferation of abandoned “orphan” accounts. Automatic portability for retirement accounts would make it possible for more workers to take their accounts with them to new jobs. Also due is a nuanced rethinking of noncompete agreements in labor contracts. While libertarian notions of the freedom of contract have long led right-leaning policy-makers to resist the imposition of restrictions on contractual arrangements, recent years have seen more free-market proponents question the efficacy of noncompetes with respect to their impact on worker freedom and earnings.
Congress Should Protect Federal Workers from Union Coercion
August 10, 2023 // Any other business enterprise attempting to sell nearly irrevocable memberships without disclosing the terms up front would swiftly find itself in the sights of federal regulators. Just last month, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in federal court for “failing to clearly and conspicuously disclose all material terms of the transaction” before signing people up for Prime memberships and “failing to provide a simple cancellation mechanism.” It’s time unions started playing by the same rules. The Paycheck Protection Act, just introduced in Congress by Representative Eric Burlison (R., Mo.), would increase union accountability by ending the collection of union dues via payroll deduction by federal agencies. Given the ubiquity and ease of electronic payment methods, there is simply no good reason to force taxpayers to subsidize a dues-collection system for a private, politically divisive special-interest group.
7-Eleven, Franchisees Renew Battle Over What Defines a Worker
July 26, 2023 // The franchisees say a lower court wrongly concluded that they don’t perform services for the company and refused to apply Massachusetts’ “ABC test” for determining whether those who run the stores are employees or independent contractors, contradicting a 2022 state high court answer to a certified question earlier in the suit’s judicial odyssey. The c-store chain urges the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to leave the lower court’s decision in place. The lawsuit, 7-Eleven’s lawyers said in their appellate brief, is an attempt to turn the state’s independent contractor law “into something it was never intended to be—a tool for business owners, like Plaintiffs, to recover as ‘damages’ three times the value of their business’s operating expenses, including their payroll and the fees they pay for their franchise rights.”
Frank Ricci: Five Years After Janus
June 30, 2023 // Following the decision and decreased national interest, laws meant to obscure union members’ rights have been adopted. As a result, public sector union management across the country has hesitated to inform employees of their rights, fearing they will receive charges from local labor boards. At the state level, unions have used their political clout to ban captive audience meetings where the employer shares their position on a topic and to bar management even from attending union orientation sessions. This allows the unions to utilize so-called “dark patterns” — techniques that lock members into deliberately deceptive contracts designed to deprive them of their rights.
Noncompete clauses ‘chill’ worker rights and are usually illegal, NLRB lawyer says
May 31, 2023 // General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, appointed by Biden in 2021, wrote that noncompete clauses — which generally prevent people from immediately moving to one of their employer's rivals — "tend to chill" workers' rights under federal law, specifically Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the ability to collectively organize and agitate for improved working conditions. A person barred from moving to another company in their chosen profession, at least for a set amount of time, is less likely to fight for change at their current employer, Abruzzo argued in the memo, issued Tuesday, knowing that could well make them a target for termination; employers likewise have little reason to fear that disgruntled workers will be snatched up by a competitor, thus reducing the latter's bargaining power.