OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

Author: Benjamin Sachs

Unconstitutionality Tech Worker Activism Presents Opportunities for Building Worker Power

In relative terms, U.S. tech-worker activism is booming. Over 80 percent of the workplace actions taken by tech workers in the past decade have occurred since 2019, according to a recent report from Collective Action in Tech, an organization that documents worker organizing efforts in the tech industry. In 2021 alone, tech workers engaged in nearly 70 workplace actions. That’s an astonishing figure compared to 2012, when they engaged in only one.

If Degrowth Is Coming, What Does It Propose for Workers?

In 2015, countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change rallied around preventing the rise in average global temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. With an average rise of 1.5–2.0 degrees, scientists predict 70–90% loss of coral reefs globally, an explosion of natural disaster–related deaths, and displacement of up to 1.2 billion people by 2050.

The Strike Zone—U.S. Soccer Labor Agreements Install Equal Pay Can Be A Potentially Long Headline That Wraps To Several Lines

The United States Soccer Federation has agreed to new, landmark collective bargaining agreements with the unions representing the men’s and women’s national soccer teams. The CBAs, which will run through the end of 2028, end a contentious period of dispute over remuneration with the women’s team, which had argued in a well-publicized lawsuit that they were deprived of equal pay in comparison to their male peers.

Paving the Way for Rideshare Cooperatives

The rideshare industry is plagued with concerns over worker exploitation. Though rideshare companies promise drivers autonomy and flexibility, they more often deliver meager wages, a lack of employment benefits, and opaque decision-making processes that can result in sudden changes in pay rates or deactivation from platforms. The platform cooperativism movement calls for a simple solution to these challenges: cut out the Silicon Valley middlemen and give drivers direct ownership and control over the apps through which they sell their labor.

Access to Fertility-Insurance Coverage for LGBTQ Employees Post-Bostock

Fertility benefits are on the rise in American employee benefits packages. In vitro fertilization (IVF) coverage rose steadily in the last five years for both medium and large employers. Facebook and Apple were first movers in covering egg freezing in 2014. Now, employers like Salesforce and Spotify offer surrogacy coverage up to $80,000. LGBTQ couples, however, have found themselves excluded from coverage for the fertility treatments that are being extended to their heterosexual counterparts.

Tenants’ Right to Organize: The Regulation of Tenants’ Unions in San Francisco

“It’s a union at home. . . . We’re all workers who can unionize at work. Now we can unionize at work and at home.” These words, from a tenant and organizer of a local San Francisco tenants’ union, epitomize the potential impact that tenants’ unions can have on the lives of renters. In much the same way that labor unions harness collective worker power to improve wages and working conditions, tenants’ unions have served that same function in housing, focusing renters’ collective power to improve rental rates and housing conditions. An estimated 109 million Americans live in rental housing, and that figure is primarily comprised of working-class people. Renters are often unable to induce landlords to maintain living conditions in a timely manner if at all, and renters in most jurisdictions have no say in the rental rates and other lease terms that landlords choose to include.

A New Royalty: The Future of Compensation in the Visual Art Industry

50 years ago, world-renowned artist David Hockney sold his painting, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” for an inflation-adjusted price of $124,000. In 2018, that same painting re-sold for a record-breaking $90.3 million; unfortunately for Hockney, he did not receive a single penny from the re-sale. When asked about it, Hockney acknowledged that the art industry had already burned him multiple times: just six months after he first sold this same painting in 1972, the buyer flipped it for $344,000.

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