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How Mizzou Football Is Benefiting From State N.I.L. Laws

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A state law allows high school athletes to earn endorsement money as long as they commit to attending a public university in Missouri. It’s having an effect.In his four-year career as Missouri’s starting quarterback, Brady Cook has thrown for 7,603 yards and 43 touchdowns. He led the Tigers to a victory in last year’s Cotton Bowl. And even after an upset loss over the weekend, his team is in a position to compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff.Perhaps even more impressive is Cook’s real estate portfolio, which stretches from Missouri to Georgia to Texas and includes interests in a half dozen apartment complexes, a medical building and a retirement home. He chose his assets using the business acumen he developed at the University of Missouri, where he will receive a master’s degree in business administration in December. But the financing was thanks to his right arm.“I am not going to tell you what I make,” said Cook, whose name, image and likeness, or N.I.L., deals are estimated to be worth $1.2 million annually, according to several databases. “But I will say that I have learned more about the business of business in the last year than any other time in my life.”The University of Missouri’s Every True Tiger marketing agency distributes money to the school’s athletes.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesIt is the early days of the N.I.L. era, which allows college athletes to earn money from their athletic talents. But more than $1.7 billion is already flooding through this burgeoning economy — 80 percent of it via collectives, which funnel booster money to players.The University of Missouri has created one of the most transparent mechanisms to make sure its student-athletes get paid and paid well, with the help of the state Legislature. Most donor-funded collectives raise a majority of their dollars from boosters, but in Missouri, a state law has allowed the university to create and fund a marketing agency, called Every True Tiger, that distributes money to its athletes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Michigan Supreme Court Ruling to Raise Minimum Wage in the State

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    The ruling, raising the minimum wage and phasing out a lower wage for tipped workers, said legislators had acted improperly in dodging a referendum.The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that legislators had unconstitutionally subverted a voter-sponsored proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage.As a result of the 4-to-3 ruling, labor groups expect Michigan’s hourly minimum wage of $10.33 to increase by at least $2 in February, once the state treasurer calculates inflation adjustments. There will be subsequent cost-of-living increases through 2029.In addition, tipped workers, who currently can be paid as little as $3.84 per hour, will be subject to the same minimum as all other workers by 2029, putting Michigan on a path to be the eighth state to establish a standard wage floor for all workers.Labor activists and union groups celebrated the Michigan court’s decision.“We have finally prevailed over the corporate interests who tried everything they could to prevent all workers, including restaurant workers, from being paid a full, fair wage with tips on top,” Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage, a national nonprofit organizing group, said in a statement.Her group is directly cited in the case because of its involvement in gathering the necessary signatures from Michiganders in 2018 to invoke the ballot initiative and send the proposal to the Legislature, which Republicans led at the time.To prevent the wage increase proposal from reaching the 2018 general election ballot, a large cohort of restaurateurs — led by the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association — pushed the Legislature to simply adopt the proposal sponsored by One Fair Wage and other groups, which the Legislature did. Legislators then rolled back the law’s provisions after the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Could U.S. Toughness on Chinese Business Have Unintended Consequences?

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    Businesses fear that efforts to look tough on Beijing, which have the potential to be more expansive than moves by the federal government, could have unintended consequences.At a moment when Washington is trying to reset its tense relationship with China, states across the country are leaning into anti-Chinese sentiment and crafting or enacting sweeping rules aimed at severing economic ties with Beijing.The measures, in places like Florida, Utah and South Carolina, are part of a growing political push to make the United States less economically dependent on China and to limit Chinese investment over concerns that it poses a national security risk. Those concerns are shared by the Biden administration, which has been trying to reduce America’s reliance on China by increasing domestic manufacturing and strengthening trade ties with allies.But the state efforts have the potential to be far more expansive than what the administration is orchestrating. They have drawn backlash from business groups over concerns that state governments are veering toward protectionism and retreating from a longstanding tradition of welcoming foreign investment into the United States.Nearly two dozen mostly right-leaning states — including Florida, Texas, Utah and South Dakota — have proposed or enacted legislation that would restrict Chinese purchases of land, buildings and houses. Some of the laws could potentially be more onerous than what occurs at the federal level, where a committee led by the Treasury secretary is authorized to review and block transactions if foreigners could gain control of American businesses or real estate near military installations.The laws being proposed or enacted by states would go far beyond that, preventing China — and in some cases other “countries of concern” — from buying farmland or property near what is broadly defined as “critical infrastructure.”The restrictions coincide with a resurgence of anti-China sentiment, inflamed in part by a Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the United States this year and by heated political rhetoric ahead of the 2024 election. They are likely to pose another challenge for the administration, which has dispatched several top officials to China in recent weeks to try to stabilize economic ties. But while Washington may see a relationship with China as a necessary evil, officials at the state and local levels appear determined to try to sever their economic relationship with America’s third-largest trading partner.“The federal government in the United States, across branches with strong bipartisan support, has been quite forceful in sharpening its China strategy, and regulating investments is only one piece,” said Mario Mancuso, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis focusing on international trade and national security issues. “The shift that we have seen to the states is relatively recent, but it’s gaining strength.”One of the biggest targets has been Chinese landownership, despite the fact that China owns less than 400,000 acres in the United States, according to the Agriculture Department. That is less than 1 percent of all foreign-owned land.Such restrictions have been gathering momentum since 2021 after Fufeng USA, the American subsidiary of a Chinese company that makes components for animal feed, faced backlash over plans to build a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful interagency group known as CFIUS that can halt international business transactions, reviewed the proposal but ultimately decided that it did not have the jurisdiction to block the plan. However, the Air Force, citing the mill’s proximity to a U.S. military base, said this year that China’s involvement was a national security risk, and local officials scuttled the project.Since then, states have been developing or trying to bolster their restrictions on foreign investment, in some cases blocking land acquisitions from a broad set of countries, including Iran and North Korea. In other instances, they have targeted China specifically.The state moves, some of which also include investments coming from Russia, Iran and North Korea, have raised the ire of business groups that fear the rules will be too onerous or opponents who view them as discriminatory. Some of the proposals wound up being watered down amid the backlash.This year, Texas lawmakers proposed expanding a ban that was enacted in 2021 on the development of infrastructure projects funded by investors with direct ties to China and blocking Chinese citizens and companies from buying land, homes or any other real estate. Despite the support of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, the proposal was scaled back to prohibit purchases of just agricultural land, quarries and mines by individuals or companies with ties to China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. The bill ultimately expired in the Texas Legislature in May.In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has been pushing for legislation that would create a state version of CFIUS to review and investigate agricultural land purchases, leases and land transfers by foreign investors. Ms. Noem has argued that the federal government does not have sufficient reach to keep South Dakota safe from bad actors at the state level.The legislation failed amid pushback from farming groups that were concerned about restrictions on who could buy or rent their land, along with lawmakers who said it would hand too much power to the governor.One of the most provocative restrictions has been championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who is running for president. In May, Mr. DeSantis signed a law prohibiting Chinese companies or citizens from purchasing or investing in properties that are within 10 miles of military bases and critical infrastructure such as refineries, liquid natural gas terminals and electrical power plants.“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. DeSantis said when he signed the law, adding, “We are following through on our commitment to crack down on Communist China.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, signed into law one of the most provocative restrictions against Chinese investments.David Degner for The New York TimesBut the legislation is written so broadly that an investment fund or a company that has even a small ownership stake from a Chinese company or a Chinese investor and buys a property would be violating the law. Business groups and the Biden administration have criticized the law as overreach, while Republican attorneys general around the country have sided with Mr. DeSantis.The Florida legislation, which targets “countries of concern” and imposes special restrictions on China, is being challenged in federal court. A group of Chinese citizens and a real estate brokerage firm in Florida that are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state in May, arguing that the law codifies and expands housing discrimination. The Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” arguing that Florida’s landownership policy is unlawful.A U.S. district judge, who heard arguments about the case in July, said last week that the law could continue to be enforced while it was being challenged in court.The restrictions are creating uncertainty for investors and fund managers that want to invest in Florida and now must decide whether to back away from those plans or cut out their Chinese investors.“It creates a lot of thorny issues not just for the foreign investors but for the funds as well, because some of these laws try to make them choose between keeping investors and being able to invest in those states,” said J. Philip Ludvigson, a partner at King & Spalding. “It’s really a gamble for the states that are passing some of these very broad laws.”Mr. Ludvigson, a former Treasury official who helped lead the office that chairs CFIUS, added: “You might want to get tough on China, but if you don’t really think through what the second- and third-order effects might be, you could just end up hurting your state revenues and your property market while also failing to solve an actual national security problem.”The state investment restrictions also coincide with efforts in Congress to block businesses based in China from purchasing farmland in the United States and place new mandates on Americans investing in the country’s national security industries. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the measures in July, which still need to clear the House to become law.The combination of measures is likely to complicate diplomacy with China and could draw retaliation.“Officials in Beijing are quite concerned about the hostility to Chinese investments at both the national and state levels in the U.S., viewing these as another sign of rising antipathy toward China,” said Eswar Prasad, a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “The Chinese government is especially concerned about a proliferation of state-level restrictions on top of federal limitations on investments from China.”He added, “Their fear is that such actions would not just deprive Chinese investors of good investment opportunities in the U.S., including in real estate, but could eventually limit Chinese companies’ direct access to American markets and inhibit technology transfers.” More

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    Who Will Stand Up for Renters? Their Elected Representatives, Who Also Rent.

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    In California, legislators come out as tenants to form a renters’ caucus.When Matt Haney entered the California Legislature, he discovered he was part of a tiny minority: a legislator who rents.Mr. Haney has never owned property and, at 41 years old, has spent his adult life as a tenant. His primary residence is a one-bedroom apartment near downtown San Francisco. The rent is $3,258 a month. (He also paid a $300 deposit for Eddy and Ellis, two orange cats he adopted from a shelter during the pandemic.)“When I got there last year, it seemed that there were only three of us out of 120,” Mr. Haney said of the renters in the Legislature. “That’s a very small number.”Looking to highlight their renter status and the 17 million California households that are tenants — a little less than half the state — last year, Mr. Haney and two Assembly colleagues, Isaac Bryan and Alex Lee, founded the California Renters Caucus. A fourth Assembly member, Tasha Boerner, joined after the caucus was formed. The group added a state senator, Aisha Wahab, after she entered office this year.Mr. Haney said there was briefly a sixth, more politically conservative member who attended one meeting but never came back. It’s possible they have other colleagues who are renters and have yet to come out.“Being a renter is not necessarily something people project or put on their website,” Mr. Haney said.That much seems to be changing. From cities and statehouses to U.S. Congress, elected officials are increasingly playing up their status as tenants and forming groups to push for renter-friendly policies.Politics is about being relatable. Candidates pet dogs and hold babies and talk about their children. Given how many families are struggling with the cost of housing and have lost hope that they could ever buy, it makes sense that elected officials would now start talking about being tenants.London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, talks frequently about her rent-controlled apartment in the city’s Haight-Ashbury district. Lindsey Horvath, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors — the powerful body that oversees a $43 billion budget and more than 100,000 employees — predicates discussions of housing policy with her status as a renter.In June, federal legislators followed California with a renter caucus of their own, although that one has looser criteria. Representative Jimmy Gomez, who is chair of the Congressional Renters Caucus as well as a Democrat from Los Angeles, said instead of actual tenants his group targeted members from renter-heavy districts, even if they own a home, as he does.“Good elected officials are going to fight for their constituents, no matter what,” Mr. Gomez said.Besides, he added, the strictest definition of “renter” can obscure economic insecurity. His parents, for instance, were homeowners who never made more than $40,000 combined and lived in inland California without air conditioning. Other people own nothing but rent a $7,000-a-month penthouse.“Are they considered the same?” he said.When asked how many of his colleagues did not own a home, Mr. Gomez said, “My gut is that it’s less than 10.”The five members of the Renters Caucus: from left, Isaac Bryan, Tasha Boerner, Matt Haney, Aisha Wahab and Alex Lee, at the Capitol Building in Sacramento, Calif.Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesIn addition to advancing Democratic priorities like subsidized housing and tenant protections, these legislators are making a bet that being perceived as a pro-renter is politically advantageous in an era in which a growing number of Americans are renting for longer periods, and often for life. Mr. Haney and Mr. Gomez both describe their caucuses — subsets of legislators organized around a common purpose — as a first for their bodies. Which is easy to believe.Homeownership is synonymous with the American dream. It is supported by various federal and state tax breaks and so encoded in the American mythology and financial system that historians and anthropologists assert that it has come to symbolize a permanent participation in society. The underlying message is that renting is temporary, or should be.“There is a pretty foundational bias against renters in American sociological and political life,” said Jamila Michener, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell. “So when policymakers say, ‘Hey, this is an identity that’s relevant, and one we are willing to own and lean into,’ that’s significant.”About two-thirds of Americans own their dwellings, and survey after survey shows that the aspiration of owning a home is no less potent today than it was for previous generations. But the number of renters has grown steadily over the past decade to about 44 million households nationwide, while punishing housing costs have migrated from coastal enclaves to metropolitan areas around the nation.More salient to politicians, perhaps, is that renters are increasingly well-off — households that make more than $75,000 have accounted for a large majority of the growth in renters over the past decade, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. At the same time, the struggle to find something affordable has escalated from lower-income tenants to middle-income families that in past generations would very likely have owned their homes.In other words, renter households are now composed of families much more likely to vote. And after a pandemic in which homeowners gained trillions in home-equity wealth while renters had to be supported with eviction moratoriums and tens of billions in assistance, the fragility of their position has been made clearer.“As cost burdens show up in places where we don’t expect it, there seems to be more political momentum around addressing these problems,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.By organizing around an economic condition, lawmakers are embracing a concept that renter advocates refer to as “tenants as a class.”The idea is that while renters are a large and politically diverse group — low-income families on the edge of eviction, high-earning professionals renting by choice, couples whose desire for suburban living but inability to afford a down payment has made single-family house rentals one of the hottest corners of the real estate business — they still have common interests. Those include the rising cost of housing and the instability of being on a lease.“It’s a lens that I don’t think has been captured in the same way as race, gender, age, ability, et cetera,” said Mr. Bryan, the California Assembly member and renters’ caucus member whose district is in Los Angeles. “I’m excited to be among the first five legislators in California history to develop what the political consciousness is around this status.”That the ranks of tenants also include legislators, albeit not many of them, is one of the points California lawmakers said they wanted to make by forming the renters’ caucus. It also plunged them into the surprisingly thorny question of who is and is not a tenant.Does the list include lawmakers who rent a dwelling in Sacramento but own a house or condominium in their district, a criterion that would qualify a good chunk of the Legislature? The group decided no. How about Mr. Lee, the Assembly member and renters’ caucus member, whose district residence is his childhood bedroom, in a home his mother owns? He doesn’t own property, so sure.Despite having only five members, the California Renters Caucus, like the state it represents, is racially diverse but dominated by Democrats (there are no Republicans in the caucus). Its members are white, Black and Asian. Mr. Lee is a member of the Legislature’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus. Ms. Wahab is the first Muslim American elected to the California Senate.Politically speaking, the outlier is Tasha Boerner, who lives in the San Diego suburb Encinitas and is the caucus’s more conservative member (as California Democrats go). Despite being the group’s longest-serving member in the Legislature, Ms. Boerner, 50, was initially not identified as a tenant by her colleagues on the renters’ caucus.“No one ever called my office because I’m a white mom living in Encinitas,” she said. “They thought, ‘She must be a homeowner.’”Ms. Boerner frequently disagrees with her colleagues about the efficacy of policies like rent-control, she said, though she voted for a statewide rent cap several years ago. She is also more skeptical of the state’s efforts to speed construction by taking land-use control from cities, and she voted against a bill that effectively ended single-family zoning in the state.And yet Ms. Boerner is also a lifetime renter who has moved three times since assuming office. Her current home is a three-bedroom apartment that she shares with her two children and her ex-husband, in part because it’s cheaper than if the parents had separate places.“Families who rent come in all shapes and sizes, and what I hope to bring is a little diversity,” she said. “We have disagreements, as any caucus does, but coming together and saying, ‘Hey, this is a demographic who matters’ — that is the importance.” More

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    Franchisers, Facing Challenges to Business Model, Punch Back

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    Discontented franchisees have found allies among state legislators and federal regulators in pushing for new laws and rules, but change has been slow.When you visit a McDonald’s, a Jiffy Lube or a Hilton Garden Inn, you may assume you’re visiting one business. More likely, you’re actually visiting two: the operator of that particular location, known as the franchisee, and the larger company that owns the intellectual property behind it, or the franchiser.Conflict is inherent in that relationship, but it has hit a boil in recent months, as franchisees say they’re being squeezed out of the profits their business generates through new fees, required vendors and constraints on their ability to sell.On Monday, the Government Accountability Office released a report finding that franchisees “do not enjoy the full benefit of the risks they bear,” citing interviews with dozens of small-business owners who said they lacked control over basic operations that determined their ability to earn a profit.They’ve found a sympathetic ear in the Biden administration and in several state legislatures, giving rise to a growing wave of proposals to limit the power of franchisers.Franchisers have been largely successful in heading off new laws and rules, which the chief executive of McDonald’s, Chris Kempczinski, has described as an existential threat.“The reality is that our business model is under attack,” he said in February at the convention of the International Franchise Association, a trade group for franchisers, franchisees and franchise suppliers. “If you’re not paying attention to these pieces of legislation because you think they don’t impact you, think again.”The chief executive of McDonald’s says the franchising industry’s business model is “under attack” because of a push for new laws and rules.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesFranchising has been a feature of American capitalism for decades, allowing brands to grow quickly using investment from entrepreneurs who commit their own capital in exchange for a business plan and a logo that consumers might recognize. The Federal Trade Commission requires franchisers to disclose factors including start-up costs and the company’s financial performance to those considering buying a franchise, and some state laws govern considerations like transfer rights.But much of the relationship is largely unregulated — changes a franchiser can make to contracts, for example, and which vendors can be required.Keith Miller, a Subway franchisee in California who has become an advocate for franchisee rights, said the lack of oversight had given rise to an increasing number of disputes. “There’s more of a squeeze on the franchisees than ever,” he said. Franchisees’ royalty payments used to cover things like marketing, new menus and sales tools, he added, but “now you seem to have to pay for your services.”The franchise industry says that its business model remains beneficial to individual owners, and that additional regulation would protect substandard franchisees at everyone else’s expense. Matthew Haller, chief executive of the International Franchise Association, cited a 2021 survey by the market research firm Franchise Business Review in which 82 percent of franchisees said they supported their corporate leadership.But legislative battles at the state level reflect rising tension.Hotel franchisees, squeezed by lost revenue during pandemic lockdowns, say they have also been hurt by the hotel brands’ loyalty programs, which require the hotelier to rent rooms at a reduced rate. A bill in New Jersey that would limit those loyalty programs, as well as rebates that brands can collect from vendors that franchisees are required to use, faces fierce opposition from the American Hotel and Lodging Association. In a statement, the association’s chief executive, Chip Rogers, said the bill would “completely undermine the foundation of hotel franchising by limiting a brand’s ability to enforce brand standards.”Laura Lee Blake, the chief executive of the 20,000-member Asian American Hotel Owners Association, said hoteliers had reached desperation. “There comes a point when you’ve tried and tried to meet with the franchisers to ask for changes, and they refuse to listen,” she said.In Arizona, legislation introduced to enhance franchisees’ ability to sell their businesses and prevent retaliation from franchisers if they band together in associations has also faced resistance. The bill was approved by two committees in February and March, but the International Franchise Association hired two lobbying firms to fight it. In a Republican caucus meeting, opponents attacked the legislation as a “sledgehammer” that would bring the government into private business relationships. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Anastasia Travers, a freshman Democrat, said she was taken aback by how quickly opposition snowballed, and ultimately gave up on it for the 2023 session.“Time has not been my friend,” Ms. Travers said.A similar bill in Arkansas, which the International Franchise Association initially said would be “the most extreme franchise regulation of any state,” was amended to strip entire sections, including one that would have prevented franchisers from imposing any requirement that “unreasonably changes” the financial terms of the relationship as a condition of renewal or sale.After the bill was slimmed down — leaving provisions such as one restoring the existing statute, which had been rendered ineffective by a subsequent law, and another requiring the franchiser to establish material cause before terminating the franchise — the industry group withdrew its opposition, allowing swift passage.A Subway location in New York. “There’s more of a squeeze on the franchisees than ever,” said Keith Miller, a Subway franchise owner in California.Carlo Allegri/ReutersIn an email to supporters before the votes, the franchise association’s vice president for state and local government relations, Jeff Hanscom, credited the Arkansas agribusiness giant Tyson Foods for being “instrumental in negotiating this outcome.” Tyson Foods did not respond to a request for comment.At the federal level, franchisers may face greater challenges.The Biden administration is moving on two fronts. One is the Federal Trade Commission, which issued a request in March for information about the ways in which franchisers control franchisees. The initiative could result in additional guidance or rules — putting the industry on high alert.The second front is the National Labor Relations Board, which has proposed making it easier for franchisers to be designated as “joint employers” that would be liable for the labor law violations of franchisees if they exerted significant control over working conditions. Franchisers maintain that this would “destroy” the business model, because it would subject them to unacceptable risks.Franchisers attribute the flurry of activity to union influence. The Service Employees International Union, in particular, has long fought to get McDonald’s designated as a joint employer so it would be easier to mount an organizing effort across the chain, rather than store by store.Robert Zarco, a Miami lawyer retained by an association of 1,000 McDonald’s owners, said that to avoid the joint-employer designation, and the extra liability it would bring, franchisers could choose to weaken their grip on franchisee operations.“If the company wants to not be considered a joint employer, it’s very simple to fix,” he said. “Unwind all those excessive controls that they have implemented that are outside of protecting the brand and the product and service quality.”The franchise association’s federal lobbying spending hit a high of $1.24 million in 2022, alongside millions more spent in recent years on federal elections, and doesn’t include money spent by the individual franchise brands.The high stakes are evident in other ways, as well.The Franchise Times, a 30-year-old independent trade publication with six editorial employees, writes about day-to-day events in the industry: acquisitions, executive leadership changes, technology trends. When strife arises, such as lawsuits and bankruptcies, it writes about those, too.The publication’s legal columnist, Beth Ewen, wrote several stories this year about Unleashed Brands, a portfolio of franchises that has drawn lawsuits from franchisees. In response, the company published a markup of one of Ms. Ewen’s stories in red pen font with “DEBUNKED” stamped across the top. (The organization had given similar treatment to an article about the company by The New York Times. Both publications stand by their reporting, and Unleashed did not ask for corrections.)In March, a new website popped up at the address “NoFranchiseTimes.com.” Its front page was devoted to an attack on what it called “editorial bias,” “denigrating the businesses that support their publication.”It called for the publication’s advertisers — which include law firms, vendors and brands — to cancel their purchases.Michael Browning Jr., the chief executive of Unleashed Brands and a member of the International Franchise Association’s board, emailed the trade group’s membership saying that while he had not created the website, he supported its message and thought the group should revoke The Franchise Times’s membership. Mr. Browning did not respond to a request for further comment.The association declined to revoke the membership, and the publication says its advertising revenue is up from last year. But to Ms. Ewen, a 35-year veteran of business reporting, the episode shows that the industry is trying to divert attention from real problems — and that some members are playing hardball.“They’re trying to hit at our business model and our ability to keep going,” she said. “There’s a lot of people spending a lot of time trying to get us and others to stop doing these stories.” More

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    California Senate Passes Bill Reining In Amazon Labor Model

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    The bill would curb production quotas at Amazon and other companies that critics say are excessive and force workers to forgo bathroom breaks.In the latest sign of the growing scrutiny of Amazon’s labor practices, the California State Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would place limits on production quotas for warehouse workers.The bill, which passed the Senate 26-to-11, was written partly in response to high rates of injuries at Amazon warehouses. The legislation prohibits companies from imposing production quotas that prevent workers from taking state-mandated breaks or using the bathroom when needed, or that keep employers from complying with health and safety laws.The Assembly, which passed an initial version in May, is expected to approve the Senate measure by the end of the state’s legislative session on Friday.“In the Amazon warehouse space, what we’re trying to take on is this increased use of quotas and discipline based on not meeting the quotas, without a human factor in dealing with a reason why a worker might not make a quota,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the bill’s author, said in an interview last week.Gov. Gavin Newsom had not indicated before the vote whether he would sign the bill, but his staff was involved in softening certain provisions that helped pave the way for its passage.Experts said the bill was novel in its attempts to regulate warehouse quotas that are tracked by algorithms, as at Amazon, and make them transparent.“I believe one of Amazon’s biggest competitive advantages over rivals is this ability to monitor their work force, prod workers to work faster and discipline workers when they fail to meet quotas,” said Beth Gutelius, research director at the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois Chicago.“It’s unprecedented for a bill to intervene like this in the ways that technology is used in the workplace,” added Dr. Gutelius, who focuses on warehousing and logistics.Business groups have strongly opposed the bill, complaining that it will lead to costly litigation and hamstring the entire industry even though it is primarily intended to address labor practices at a single company.Amazon has not commented on the bill but has said that it tailors performance targets to individual employees over time based on their experience level and that the targets take into account employee health and safety. The company has emphasized that fewer than 1 percent of terminations are related to underperformance.The bill would require Amazon and other warehouse employers to disclose productivity quotas to workers and regulators, and would allow workers to sue to eliminate quotas that prevent them from taking breaks and following safety protocols.While it is unclear how big an impact the bill would have on Amazon’s operations, limiting the company’s hourly productivity quotas would probably affect its costs more than its ability to continue next-day and same-day delivery.“I think it’s all about money, not about what the system is set up to handle,” said Marc Wulfraat, president of the supply-chain and logistics consulting firm MWPVL International. “If you said to me, ‘Bring the rate down from 350 to 300 per hour,’ I’d say, ‘OK, we need to add more people to the operation — maybe we need 120 people instead of 100.’”A report by the Strategic Organizing Center, a group backed by four labor unions, shows that Amazon’s serious-injury rate nationally was nearly double that of the rest of the warehousing industry last year.“They would say, ‘Always pivot, never twist,’ all this stuff you’re supposed to do,” said Nathan Morin, who worked in an Amazon warehouse in California for more than three years packing and picking items before leaving in December. “But it’s oftentimes impossible to follow the proper body movements while also making rate.”The company has vowed to improve worker safety and said it had spent more than $300 million this year on new safety measures.Amazon is under growing pressure from unions and other groups over its labor practices. A regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has indicated that it is likely to overturn a failed union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama on the grounds that the company improperly interfered with the voting.The objections to the election were brought by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which spearheaded the organizing campaign.The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which backed the California bill and whose local officials have helped to derail a tax abatement for Amazon in Indiana and approval for an Amazon facility in Colorado, has committed to providing “all resources necessary” to unionize Amazon workers.“This is a historic victory for workers at Amazon and other major warehouse companies,” Ron Herrera, a Teamsters official who is president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement. “These workers have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic, while suffering debilitating injuries from unsafe quotas.” More