Category Archives: Workers’ Issues

‘Tragic Outcome’ for Gig Workers as California Supreme Court Hands Win to Uber, DoorDash

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“Today’s ruling only strengthens our demand for the right to join together in a union so that we can begin improving the gig economy for workers and our customers,” the case plaintiff said.

By Brett Wilkins Published 7-25-2024 by Common Dreams

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other members and allies of the California Gig Workers Union rally outside the California Supreme Court in San Francisco on May 24, 2024. (Photo: SEIU 1021/X)

Labor advocates on Thursday decried a ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s affirmation of a state ballot measure allowing app-based ride and delivery companies to classify their drivers as independent contractors, limiting their worker rights.

The court’s seven justices ruled unanimously in Castellanos v. State of California that Proposition 22, which was approved by 58% of California voters in 2020, complies with the state constitution. Prop 22—which was overturned in 2021 by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in 2021—was upheld in March 2023 by the state’s 1st District Court of Appeals.

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‘Economic and Moral Failing’: It’s Been 15 Years Since Last Federal Minimum Wage Hike

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“Voters understand that raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, even if their elected officials in state legislatures and Washington, D.C. remain inactive.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-24-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

Former U.S. President Barack Obama had been in office for just over six months when the federal minimum wage was raised to a paltry $7.25 an hour—where it remains today, 15 years later.

Wednesday marked exactly a decade and a half since the federal wage floor was last lifted, an occasion that advocates used to tout state-level pay hikes and make the case for a long-overdue national increase, particularly as the nation’s billionaires and corporations do better than ever.

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CFPB Aims to Protect Workers From Paycheck Advance Fees

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“The CFPB’s actions will help workers know what they are getting with these products and prevent race-to-the-bottom business practices,” said the director of the bureau.

By Julia Conley. Published 7-18-2024 by Common Dreams

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra. Screenshot: CNBC

With inflation rising in recent years, driven by corporate greed according to numerous analyses, the number of people in the U.S. who have relied on paycheck advance products has skyrocketed—but a rule introduced Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is aimed at ensuring that lenders who provide these products are transparent with financially struggling workers about the fees they can incur.

The CFPB proposed a rule clarifying that paycheck advances, sometimes marketed as “earned wage” products, are consumer loans and are therefore subject to the Truth in Lending Act.

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Teamsters President Urged to Cancel Republican Convention Speech

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One Teamsters official warned the union leader’s scheduled appearance “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-12-2024 by Common Dreams

Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) in 2023. Photo: Teamsters

Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien is facing mounting internal pressure to cancel his planned speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, with the union’s vice president at large accusing the labor leader of kowtowing to a viciously anti-worker party and a GOP presidential hopeful whose first four years in the White House were marked by open attacks on the labor movement.

John Palmer, the Teamsters’ vice president at large, wrote in an op-ed in New Politics earlier this week that O’Brien’s scheduled appearance at Donald Trump’s invitation “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

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‘Monumental’: Advocates Applaud Federal Rule to Protect Workers From Extreme Heat

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The administration has established that “every worker in America has the right to shade, water, and rest while working in temperatures that could kill them,” a labor leader said.

By Edward Carver. Published 7-2-2024 by Common Dreams

Screenshot: FOX13 Now

Labor advocates celebrated on Tuesday following the Biden administration’s announcement of a proposed rule to protect workers from extreme heat—the first national workplace heat safety standard.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor, published the rule, which the administration says would protect about 36 million indoor and outdoor employees from heat-related injuries and illnesses. It follows similar regulations that five states have approved in recent years.

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‘Gift to Corporate Greed’: Dire Warnings as Supreme Court Scraps Chevron Doctrine

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“Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today’s decision,” said one advocate.

By Jake Johnson. Published 6-28-2024 by Common Dreams

The Supreme Court. Photo: Public Domain

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority delivered corporate polluters, anti-abortion campaigners, and other right-wing interests a major victory Friday by overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, a deeply engrained legal precedent whose demise could spell disaster for public health and the climate.

The high court’s 6-3 ruling along ideological lines in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce significantly constrains the regulatory authority of federal agencies tasked with crafting rules on a range of critical matters, from worker protection to the climate to drug safety.

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Project 2025: How Trump Win Would Imperil Worker Organizing Gains Under Biden’s NLRB

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The right-wing agenda “offers a playbook for how an administration could jeopardize the NLRB’s ability to protect organizing workers.”

By Julia Conley. Published 6-20-2024 by Common Dreams

Just before oral arguments in an American Federation of Government Employees’ lawsuit against the Trump administration, AFGE and other unions rally to protest the Trump administration’s anti-union executive orders. in 2018. Photo: AFGE/flickr/CC

With longtime labor lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo at the helm of the National Labor Relations Board, serving as general counsel, the Biden administration has worked to reverse the decadeslong trend in the U.S. of weakened labor laws—achieving a high rate of workers voting to join unions, requiring thousands of workers to be reinstated at their jobs after being illegally fired for organizing, and increasing the number of workers who are eligible to unionize.

But as the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned in an analysis published on Thursday, all that progress and more could be erased if former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the November election, were to win a second term in the White House—enabling him to put the right-wing plot Project 2025 into action.

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US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad’s Murder of Banana Workers

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“The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed,” said one attorney, “but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-11-2024 by Common Dreams

Then-AUC commander Carlos Castaño is seen here with some of his paramilitary fighters. Photo: Carlos Castaño Gil/Facebook

In what case litigants are calling the first time an American jury has held a U.S. corporation legally liable for atrocities abroad, federal jurors in Florida on Monday found that Chiquita Brands International financed a Colombian paramilitary death squad that murdered, tortured, and terrorized workers in a bid to crush labor unrest in the 1990s and 2000s.

The federal jury in West Palm Beach, Florida found the banana giant responsible for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and awarded eight families whose members were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary group $38.3 million in damages.

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As India Swelters, Experts Say Deadly Heat Is Growing Public Health Emergency

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“How much evidence is enough for action?” asked one expert as temperatures soared to over 120°F in New Delhi and 16 people died in Bihar.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 5-30-2024 by Common Dreams

When the water tanker arrives in Delhi. Screenshot: Licypriya Kangujam/X

As a record heatwave scorches large swaths of India, killing 16 people in Bihar state, climate scientists warned Thursday that extreme heat fueled by the worsening climate emergency poses a fast-growing threat to public health and human survivability.

The Indian Meteorological Department said temperatures soared to over 120°F in recent days in New Delhi. The agency said it is investigating an all-time high reading of 127.2°F in the capital on Wednesday that may be attributable to a sensor error. If the reading is accurate, it would mark the highest temperature ever recorded in India.

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‘Sad Day for Free Speech’: Media Matters Layoffs Follow ‘Thermonuclear’ Attack by Elon Musk

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“This is how free speech is actually chilled—vengeful dipshit billionaires,” said one media executive, after more than a dozen staffers let go from nonprofit watchdog whose mission is to combat right-wing disinformation and propaganda.

By Jon Queally. Published 5-24-2024 by Common Dreams

Elon Musk, CEO of X, SpaceX and Tesla. Photo: Daniel Oberhaus/flickr//CC

Just months after mega-billionaire Elon Musk launched what he termed a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for America, the nonprofit media watchdog outfit announced a round of punishing layoffs Thursday which it in part attributed to the financial strain imposed by the legal battle it now faces.

What triggered Musk’s initial outrage in November was MMFA reporting about “pro-Nazi content” on the social media platform X, owned by Musk, appearing alongside ads by prominent corporations in the content stream shown to users.

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