Posts tagged National Labor Relations Act
Trucking industry reacts to Trump administration move to protect independent contractors
September 5, 2025 // According to the ATA, for more than 90 years, independent contractors have played a vital role in trucking, providing flexibility for drivers and capacity for the supply chain. More than 350,000 professional truck drivers choose to run their own businesses, set their own hours, and chart their own routes.
California Tries Another Tack to Crush Ridesharing
August 4, 2025 // The latest legislative effort is Assembly Bill 1340, which passed the full Assembly in June and was approved by the Senate Transportation Committee in early July. It would allow drivers to unionize and “promote collective bargaining rights for transportation network drivers and state intent that the state action antitrust exemption apply to … drivers and their representatives.” Democrats couldn’t kill the industry quickly, so they’ll try to destroy it slowly via collective bargaining.
New York State Looks to Take Over Labor Law Enforcement Amidst Uncertainty at the NLRB
June 26, 2025 // With mounting uncertainty about the lack of a quorum and near term future of the National Labor Relations Board (the “NLRB” or the “Board”), New York State legislators are attempting to usurp the powers delegated to the Board by Congress.
Labor board denies union election for O’Connell Children’s Shelter residential staff
April 4, 2025 // “This campaign, it’s already been delayed by like six months, and at this point, if we were to appeal with all of the crazy stuff happening at the federal level and in the NLRB right now, due to the Trump administration, they’ve already got a backlog of appeals to go through, and we just don’t know how much time it could actually be and if it would be worth it,” she said. This was the fourth union campaign Smith said she’s worked and the first one where she’s seen supervisory taint stall unionization efforts. She and her colleagues were shocked by the decision.
Trump fires EEOC and labor board officials, setting up legal fight
January 29, 2025 // Due to existing vacancies, Wilcox's ouster leaves the board with just two members, short of the quorum it needs to adjudicate even routine cases. (The board, when fully staffed, has five members.) With this move, Trump has effectively shut down the NLRB's operations, leaving the workers it defends on their own, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.
Legal Update: Three Major NLRB Updates Pose New Challenges for Employers
December 9, 2024 // Employers must remain diligent in staying abreast of these recent shifts in labor law and policy, especially on the cusp of an administration change. While GC Abruzzo’s term appears likely to end early in 2025, and the Board majority could flip in 2025 or 2026, the new Republican administration’s position on labor policy remains unclear, especially in light of the recent nomination of a pro-labor nominee to lead the Department of Labor.
The Highest Stakes Commentary: Kim Kavin
October 16, 2024 // In this version of the ABC Test, Part B states that a person can only be a legally operating independent contractor if: The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business. That line has been an unmitigated income- and career-destroyer for Californians in more than 600 professions. It hit everyone from comedians who could no longer perform at comedy clubs to translators who could no longer provide translation services for translation companies to freelance writers who could no longer write articles for publishers. Owner-operator truckers are still battling in the courts and trying to explain how it could decimate the supply chain, with the threat of taking so many self-employed truckers off the road. The damage to people’s livelihoods was so significant that within a year—just one year—of AB5 going into effect:
US orders Starbucks to reopen 2 New York stores company shut down after workers unionized
September 18, 2024 // Last year, the NLRB called on Starbucks to reopen 23 stores that labor advocates say were shuttered in response to workers unionizing. The locations spanned multiple major US cities, including Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle, where Starbucks is headquartered, among others.
Strike On Time: Cornell UAW Workers Strike on Student Move-In Day
August 19, 2024 // As students and their families arrive at Cornell for the start of the academic year, the strike threatens to disrupt essential campus operations, including dining services, facilities maintenance, and other critical functions. The decision to strike follows a strike authorization vote that passed with 94% approval from the union's approximately 1,200 members, including custodians, groundskeepers, cooks, food service workers, greenhouse workers, gardeners, and mechanics. The last time UAW workers at Cornell went on strike was 43 years ago in 1981, when the union and the university ratified their first contract.
Commentary: Why Labor Strikes Are Likely to Take Off under a Harris-Walz Administration
August 14, 2024 // It is worth noting that the United Auto Workers (UAW) want to unionize the employees of Musk’s electric-car company, Tesla. Fain was paid $228,872 as head of the UAW in 2023; the twelve “top officers are paid in excess of the [sic] $200,000 and hundreds more earn six figures, putting them in the top 5 percent of US income earners.” It is also worth noting that the “total dues-paying membership of the UAW fell by 13,000 last year to 370,000, down from 383,000 in 2022.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average autoworker is paid $30.78 per hour and works 41 hours per week, adding up to about $66,000 per year.