Legislation in Washington state known as the strippers’ bill of rights, which advocates say includes the most comprehensive statewide protections in the nation, was signed into law on Monday.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed the measure, which creates safer working conditions for people in the adult entertainment industry and makes it possible for the clubs to sell alcohol.

A text time-stamped 1:19 a.m. early Wednesday read, “I think it’s over, man.” It was a Los Angeles–based colleague at The Messenger. He’d received an unanticipated direct deposit and the sum totaled his unused vacation days. I guess in addition to good weather they have some solid labor laws in California. In New York City, I was laid off without additional pay. Plus it was raining.

Employees who work overseas for U.S.-based companies are not protected by a federal law prohibiting retaliation against whistleblowers who raise concerns about violations of securities laws, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a bid by Christopher Garvey, a former top Asia-based lawyer for Morgan Stanley, to revive claims that he was forced to resign in 2016 after reporting alleged illegal activities that predominantly occurred outside the United States.

Delta Air Lines pilots voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if contract talks between the carrier and the union don’t lead to an agreement, the labor group said Monday.

A strike wouldn’t be immediate and it would require permissions from the federal National Mediation board. The Air Line Pilots Association union said it wants a contract, not a strike.

Covid derailed contract talks throughout the airline industry starting in 2020. Talks have since resumed, and the Delta pilot strike vote underscores the difficulty in getting agreements through.

For Umar Para – a 22-year-old photographer from the Indian union territory of Kashmir, the world’s most militarised zone – New Delhi, the national capital, was always the land of equal opportunity when he moved to the city seeking employment, last year. At least that’s what he was led to believe through the numerous shows and movies about the promise of the Great Indian Dream he’d grown up watching.

This is an unusually promising Labor Day for American unions — maybe the most hopeful for many decades — for several reasons. 

First, the annual Gallup poll released last week showed a 71 percent public approval rate for unions – the highest level since 1965. The sky-high approval rate is even more remarkable given the organizational weakness of organized labor. Unions currently represent just 10.3 percent of the American workforce.

Anewly released poll heading into Labor Day weekend shows a near-record 71% of Americans approve of labor unions, up from 64% just before the pandemic. Yet that Gallup poll stands in contrast to some raw math: Just 1 in 10 workers on U.S. payrolls are union members, half the level seen four decades ago.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, wants to bridge that gap – starting by adding a million new people to union ranks over the next 10 years. 

Labor unions are more popular than ever. A recent Gallup poll found support for unions at 71%, the highest it has been since Gallup started asking the question in 1965. 

They are enjoying a comeback thanks to highly visible organizing campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon, a tight labor market and concerns around COVID-19 in the workplace. But can their popularity last?

Faced with a wave of worker activism in its warehouses last year, Amazon paid anti-union consultants roughly $4.3 million in an effort to beat back union organizing campaigns, according to new filings with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Laws mean nothing if they cannot be enforced against people who violate them, which is why there is an entire branch of government — the judiciary — whose job is supposed to be applying the law to individual cases. But at least when it comes to employment law, the Supreme Court has spent the last two decades permitting most employers to immunize themselves from lawsuits through a practice known as “forced arbitration.”