Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week


This week, we have a little something for everyone.  Whether you are you interested in equal pay matters, potentially new discrimination protections, or the possible expansion of labor unions in the tech field, I think the three articles listed below will provide readers with good reading material.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Files Gender Discrimination Suit

Two weeks ago, 28 team members of the U.S. Women’s National Team filed a gender discrimination suit against the U.S. Soccer Federation on the grounds that the U.S. Soccer Federation was engaged in “institutionalized gender discrimination” against the women’s team.  The suit alleges that the U.S. Soccer Federation has violated the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by paying members of the men’s soccer team more than their female counterparts for the same job responsibilities.  Of note, the U.S. Soccer Federation is the employer of both the men’s and women’s national teams. The suit seeks class action status, which, if granted, would allow any member of the women’s team that played since February 2015 to join the class.  Needless to say, the number of plaintiffs in this suit could extend well beyond the current 28.  It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.


West Virginia Democratic Senator (Currently) Withholding Support For LGBTQ Equality Act

Despite mounting pressure from fellow Democrats, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced on Monday that he was still not willing to support the Equality Act, which would extend federal protections to workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  He remains the lone holdout among Democrats.  His reason for withholding support?  He believes the Equality Act, as currently written, does not provide local officials that would be charged with enforcing the Act sufficient guidance for how to actually enforce it.  With that being said, Senator Manchin affirmed he supports equality for all workers and does not believe that discrimination of any kind should be tolerated.  Whether Senator Manchin can get to ‘yes’ on the Equality Act remains to be seen.   For the time being, however, he appears to be a firm ‘no’.


Kickstarter On the Verge Of Becoming First Major Unionized Tech Company

Benjamin Goggin over at Business Insider wrote a recent article in which he noted that employees at tech company Kickstarter are in the process of forming a union, after announcing intentions to do so this past Tuesday.  The union, Kickstarter United, aims to secure more rights for the company’s workers.  (For those unfamiliar with Kickstarter, the Brooklyn based company maintains a global crowdfunding platform.  In plain English, the company allows users to create and donate money to creative projects of other users, such as film, art, writing, and other related endeavors.  The company reports raising over $4 billion in donations from over 15.5 backers to fund approximately 257,000 projects.).  This unionization effort is noteworthy as the employees are seeking to make Kickstarter the first major unionized tech company.  At this time, it is unclear whether Kickstarter will recognize the union, only going so far as to say the company is interested in hearing the employees’ concerns.  Should the company fight the unionization effort, this could turn into a drawn out fight.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per