Posts tagged laid off
Prominent Architecture Firm Is Accused of Illegally Ousting Employees
January 21, 2026 // The case comes amid a recent burst in union organizing in fields not traditionally associated with organized labor: tech workers, magazine journalists, doctors and pharmacists. Many see unions as a way to address a sense of lost autonomy and control, skimpy compensation or conflicts with management over the direction of their companies.
Starbucks to pay $38.9 million settlement after it violated New York’s labor laws
December 2, 2025 // According to the settlement made public on Monday, Starbucks will pay $35.5 million to the 15,000 current and former employees who worked at the company's stores between July 2021 and July 2024. The settlement will give each of these workers $50 each week to resolve the alleged violations of the city's Fair Workweek ordinance. “With this landmark settlement, we’ll put tens of millions of dollars back into the pockets of hard-working New Yorkers and reinforce every New Yorker’s right to a reliable schedule, full hours, and basic dignity,” Adams said in a statement. Additionally, Starbucks will shell out $3.4 million in civil penalties and fees, and the settlement guarantees employees laid off during recent store closings will get a chance to get reinstated at other company locations, according to the announcement.
Condé Nast Accused of ‘Illegal Firings’ of Union Employees Who ‘Demanded Answers’ About Layoffs, Teen Vogue Shutdown; Company Says Staffers Engaged in ‘Extreme Misconduct’
November 10, 2025 // Condé Nast characterized the sequence of events differently. The company said in a statement, “Extreme misconduct is unacceptable in any professional setting. This includes aggressive, disruptive, and threatening behavior of any kind. We have a responsibility to provide a workplace where every employee feels respected and able to do their job without harassment or intimidation. We also cannot ignore behavior that crosses the line into targeted harassment and disruption of business operations.
The future of white-collar work may be unionized
October 10, 2025 // “The way layoffs happened at Google, where it wasn’t clear what the reason for people getting laid off was, definitely created a sense of job insecurity and mistrust,” says Parul Koul, a software engineer at Google and president of the Alphabet Workers Union. Another driver has been artificial intelligence threatening to replace entry-level knowledge work. Few white-collar industries epitomize the challenge of integrating AI into workflows more than the practice of law. While many legal experts say AI will have a transformative impact by automating repetitive research tasks, some also fear it will dilute entry-level associate roles at law firms.
NY sisters who own DQ franchise hit with $6M lawsuit for paying workers every 2 weeks — they helped change the loophole but it was too late for them
October 10, 2025 // New York's Frequency of Pay law (2) requires “manual workers” to receive their pay on a weekly basis. It’s a law that the sisters said they’d never heard of, which is why they paid their employees biweekly — a process that they said was never flagged by anyone, including during an audit conducted by the state’s Department of Labor. Robey told CBS that the lawsuit was “ridiculous,” adding, “we knew we paid every employee every dime that they were owed." But her sister noted that the former employee, who’d been laid off, “would say all the time, 'I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you,' and she did.”
Two years after the UAW strike
September 26, 2025 // Two years ago, tomorrow (September 26, 2023), then-President Joe Biden became the first president to participate in a striking worker picket line. The occasion was the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against General Motors. Biden addressed the UAW members outside the Willow Run parts center near Detroit, Michigan.
Amazon Teamsters Face New Challenges in NYC
September 10, 2025 // “The Cemex decision does two key things: one, institutes a new modified…doctrine that facilitates card check recognition; and two, lowers the threshold for when the Board will issue a bargaining order without holding an election,,” the law firm said in the post. The Teamsters spokesman said the union has had successful card check actions at more than 20 DSPs But in February, NLRB Acting General Counsel William B. Cowen issued a memo withdrawing earlier guidance on several earlier legal opinions, including the Cemex decision. That would seem to shut off the NLRB–which currently does not have a quorum but is awaiting Senate confirmation of two White House nominees–from approving a card check filing as a means to gain union recognition by Amazon or any employer…unless a full Republican-majority NLRB rules Amazon is a joint employer with the DSPs.
Laid-off Denver employees must give up right to sue to get severance
August 24, 2025 // Laid-off employees are being told that to receive severance, they must sign a legal waiver within 30 days — 45 days if they're over age 40 — giving up their right to sue the city. Between the lines: Johnston ran for mayor in 2023 as Denver's progressive favorite, drawing key endorsements from labor unions. Now, as his administration shields the city from legal fallout because of the cuts, some local union leaders and social justice advocates say he's betraying city staff.
More Than 150,000 Federal Workers Accepted Trump’s Resignation Incentives
August 6, 2025 // A new government estimate, along with a study by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, provides a long-awaited window into the scale of the departures.
JPMorgan Chase CFO issues stern warning to employees
May 20, 2025 // During JPMorgan Chase’s annual Investor Day presentation, the company’s CFO, Jeremy Barnum, said that managers have recently been instructed to wind down hiring, pushing them to work better with their current employee headcount, according to a recent report from Business Insider. "At the margin, we're asking people to resist head count growth where possible and increase their focus on efficiency," said Barnum.