labor law — Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

The ABCs of Worker Misclassification: Protecting The Labor Rights of App-Based Drivers

In November 2020, Californians voted to pass Proposition 22 (Prop 22), a ballot initiative to exclude ride-hail and food-delivery app-based workers from practically all employee rights under state law, including the right to a minimum wage, expenses reimbursement, and unemployment compensation. [1] The ballot initiative was largely a response to California Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which required companies to extend employee classification to some gig workers who previously held independent contractor (IC) status.

Fatima AhmadOctober 12, 2022worker misclassification, labor law, employment law, gig workers, workers’ rights

Nestle USA v. Doe I and the Future of Corporate Accountability

An estimated 168 million children between the ages of 5-17 are presently engaged in some form of child labour or enslaved labor globally, with millions subjected to bonded labour, child soldiering, or sexual exploitation. Though this atrocity occurs within many spheres, the chocolate industry is an infamous perpetuator. Between 2013 and 2017, over 1,000 children working in cocoa agriculture in areas of medium and high cocoa production were victims of forced labour at the hands of someone outside their family. And this number fails to account for the hundreds of children forced to labor by their parents and other relatives. Working on plantations that annually supply 60% of all cocoa to transnational companies such as Nestle and Cargill, children in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are overworked, brutally treated, and deprived of their education.

Alison QiJanuary 17, 2021corporate accountability, child labour, labor law

Labor Rights in the 21st Century: Classifying Gig Economy Workers Under U.S. Labor Laws

Over the past decade, companies such as Uber, Grubhub, and TaskRabbit have disrupted pre-existing markets and transformed the dynamics of the U.S. economy. By developing Internet-based platforms, they have matched the skills of workers with the customers in demand for certain services, enabled workers to partake in short-term engagements, and established hands-off relationships between employers and workers. Changing the structure of the economy as we know it, these companies have given rise to the emerging “gig” economy, a labor market with over 600,000 U.S. workers that has flourished and only shows promising future growth.[1]