Skip to main content

What I’ve Been Reading This Week


I think it might have been appropriate to title this something along the lines of “What I’ve Been Reading This Week:  Corporate Edition”.  As readers can see from the below, there are a few developments over at Starbucks and Amazon over the past few days, in relation to relevant employment and labor law matters.  Both articles are worth a read, if for no other reason than to see how some employers are managing workplace issues in light of recent current events.

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



Earlier this morning, CNBC reported that Starbucks had reversed course and decided to allow its employees to wear Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) apparel and accessories in the workplace.  In recent days, Starbucks had placed a prohibition on its employees wearing or displaying anything affiliated with BLM while at work.  However, after receiving a wave of backlash by critics who pointed out that the company allowed employees to wear and display support for LGBTQ causes, Starbucks has changed its policy.  Perhaps they did not want to get into a prolonged battle over workplace apparel, as In-N-Out Burger had?



Jaclyn Diaz over at Bloomberg Law wrote an article recently in which she recognized that Amazon has noticeably bulked up its workplace safety team in recent months.  Since the start of the year, Amazon has hired twenty people for in house counsel and adviser roles, with a focus on bolstering the company's workplace safety and labor and employment litigation section.  Earlier this week, I had noted that Amazon (along with other employers) was under fire for claims that the company had not taken appropriate steps to protect its workers from the coronavirus pandemic.  While these hires were made before the coronavirus pandemic really took off, it is worth noting that Amazon is moving to aggressively shore up its team to deal with potential workplace safety issues going forward.

Comments

Post a Comment

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
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more