FEBRUARY 23, 2021 — Hiring discrimination is pervasive within temporary employment agencies that serve warehouses and factories, Chicago-area workers’ rights organizations said Tuesday in releasing a study documenting practices that allegedly hurt Black or Latino applicants.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 — Activists looking to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped employees — a practice that they say keeps workers in poverty, encourages sexual harassment and leads to racial discrimination — are taking a new approach in their campaign to end the two-tiered wage system in America: They’re arguing the lower tipped wage, sometimes as little as $2.13 an hour, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

MAY 22, 2020 — While restaurant owners around the country beg lawmakers to offer them financial relief and assistance to comply with legally mandated orders to temporarily close their dining rooms in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus, only a few national chains are doing anything to ensure all of their hourly workers physically and economically survive the pandemic.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 — An overhanging sign still reads “Bizarre” and the first two vowels are still flipped quixotically, but the rolling gate has remained shut since early June. The bartenders are now suing the shuttered bar. “I don’t know how they’ve been able to get away with it, but they never paid their employees,” one bartender told Bushwick Daily wishing to stay anonymous. They had joined five other coworkers in a lawsuit, filed in federal court earlier in August, demanding over $100,000 in unpaid wages. “The owners made it a living hell to work there,” they said.

APRIL 25, 2019 — Balentine is one of two Black workers who filed racial discrimination charges against Walmart this week, alleging that the company’s background check policies had a disparate impact on African Americans in the Elwood facility. Between 100 and 200 other African American workers may have been affected, according to Chris Williams, an attorney with the National Legal Advocacy Network, which filed the complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

MARCH 26, 2019 — Williams filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), arguing that the workers’ non-economic strike about discrimination and unfair treatment is protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the law governing private sector employees’ collective bargaining rights. He said this situation is a ​“pretty clear-cut violation” of NLRA Section 8(a)(1) prohibiting interference with the right to organize and Section 8(a)(3) concerning adverse actions like a lockout.