The Culinary Workers Union ratified a contract guaranteeing six months of benefits and severance for workers displaced by AI. That number is either a floor to build on or a ceiling that defines what workers can expect when the machines arrive. The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 represents approximately 60,000 hospitality workers across Las Vegas….
The city’s July 1 labor package is the most comprehensive expansion of worker protections in a single cycle in recent Chicago history. It is also a floor with a structural ceiling the city cannot move on its own. Effective July 1, 2026, Chicago implemented four simultaneous changes to its worker protection framework: a minimum wage…
Japan’s shunto wage negotiations are producing historic results. The workers whose wages are rising most are the ones inside the formal, unionized system. The ones outside it are somewhere else entirely. Japan’s spring wage negotiations — the shunto process, through which major employers and unions set compensation benchmarks for the year — are projected to…
There is still no federal rule that says an employer has to stop working someone once the heat index crosses a specific number. That gap is what workers are living inside of this week. As a heat dome pushes dangerous temperatures across half the country this holiday weekend, millions of outdoor and indoor workers, construction…
American workers just received the smallest slice of the economic pie ever recorded: 54.1% of national income in early 2026, the lowest labor share since the government started tracking the number in 1947, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Employment remains relatively strong. Corporate profits have recovered. Productivity has improved…
The dispute shows how public systems depend on outsourced workers whose labor becomes visible only when the delivery chain breaks. Teamsters Local 703 said in a June 26 statement that drivers and helpers at Open Kitchens, a food-service vendor that delivers meals to Chicago Public Schools and other Chicagoland customers, were forced to strike after…
The labor market does not have to collapse for workers to lose access. A slower hiring economy can close the first rung before anyone calls it a crisis. The Associated Press reported Thursday that U.S. employers added only 57,000 jobs in June, a sharp hiring slowdown that left the unemployment rate at 4.2% largely because…
Return-to-office policy is moving from management preference to contested workplace power. Gianluca Lo Nostro reported for Reuters that French unions staged rare strikes and protests at Airbus after the company moved to increase office attendance for white-collar staff from at least three days a week to four. The action followed a June 9 letter from…
Europe’s heatwave is being measured in records, closures and emergency alerts. The UK broke a June temperature record. France placed tens of millions under heat alerts. Italy reported heat-related deaths, power strain and agricultural pressure. But the most revealing part of the heat story is not only the temperature. It is who is expected to…
The degree was supposed to be the ticket. For the Class of 2026, the ticket keeps getting harder to redeem. The Class of 2026 is graduating into one of the most difficult entry-level labor markets in two decades. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.7% in early 2026 — higher than the national…