Southwest Airlines and its pilots union have reached a tentative deal on a new, five-year labor contract that would raise wages 50% over the next several years and increase retirement benefits, reports The New York Times.
The union’s board unanimously approved the deal, which it said was worth $12 billion, on Dec. 20, sending it to the more than 11,000 union members, who have until Jan. 22 to cast a vote.
Other pilots unions have achieved big gains, according to the Times. In March, pilots at Delta Air Lines approved a contract that would boost wages 34% over several years. Pilots at American Airlines this summer approved a contract that grants them a 46% raise, and pilots at United Airlines approved a 40% pay increase.
All three contracts included improvements to vacation and retirement benefits and greater protections against last-minute reassignments. Southwest’s deal will include similar improvements. The new contracts at the big airlines have also increased pressure on smaller carriers to improve pay and benefits to keep pilots from leaving for larger employers.
If approved, the new Southwest deal would extend through December 2028. The contracts at Delta, American and United are all in effect through at least 2026.
U.S. Economy Adds 216,000 Jobs in December
The U.S. labor market ended 2023 on a high note, adding 216,000 jobs in December.
CNBC reported that December’s jobs report showed the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. Payroll growth showed a sizeable gain from November’s downwardly revised 173,000. October also was revised lower, to 105,000 from 150,000, indicating a slightly less robust picture for growth in the fourth quarter.
The report, along with revisions to previous months’ counts, brought 2023 job gains to 2.7 million, or a monthly average of 225,000, down from 4.8 million, or 399,000 a month, in 2022.
The hiring boost came from a gain of 52,000 in government jobs and another 38,000 in health care-related fields such as ambulatory health-care services and hospitals. Leisure and hospitality contributed 40,000 to the total, while social assistance increased by 21,000 and construction added 17,000. Retail trade grew by 17,000 as the industry has been mostly flat since early 2022, the Labor Department said.
On the downside, transportation and warehousing saw a loss of 23,000.
“Jobs growth remains as resilient as ever, validating growing skepticism that the economy will be ready for policy rate cuts as early as March,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, told CNBC. “Indeed, the recent run of labor market data generally points in one direction: strength.”
Activision to Pay $50 Million to Settle Workplace Discrimination Lawsuit
As reported by Reuters, Activision Blizzard Inc. will pay roughly $50 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit by a California regulator that alleged the video game maker discriminated against women employees, including denying them promotion opportunities and underpaying them.
California's Civil Rights Department (CRD) had sued the "Call of Duty" maker after two years of investigation over allegations that it routinely underpaid and failed to promote female employees and condoned sexual harassment.
The CRD will withdraw the allegations of systemic sexual harassment, according to the settlement agreement, seen by Reuters. The remaining allegations resolved by the agreement included that Activision discriminated against women, including by denying promotion opportunities and paying them less than men for doing substantially similar work, the CRD said in a statement.
Activision will take additional steps to ensure fair pay and promotion practices and provide monetary relief to women who were employees or contract workers in California between Oct. 12, 2015 and Dec. 31, 2020, as part of the agreement, which is subject to court approval, the CRD statement said.
Pizza Hut Franchisees in California to Lay Off More Than 1,200 Delivery Drivers
Two Pizza Hut operators in California are eliminating their in-house delivery services at hundreds of stores, resulting in more than 1,200 driver layoffs, according to Business Insider.
The layoffs, effective throughout February, affect Pizza Hut delivery drivers across California, including at Sacramento, Palm Springs and Los Angeles locations. The Pizza Hut franchisees are reducing staff as fast-food chains in the state brace for a new law that increases worker pay to $20 an hour in April.
A second Pizza Hut franchisee, Southern California Pizza Co., and its affiliates are also discontinuing its in-house delivery services and laying off about 841 drivers, according to a WARN Act notice from Dec. 1. The company operates dozens of stores in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
Customers will have to rely on third-party delivery apps to get Pizza Hut delivered from these locations. Most Pizza Hut restaurants in the state work with third-party delivery apps, such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and GrubHub.
In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the FAST Act into law. It called for the minimum wage for fast-food workers to increase to $22 an hour in 2023. But corporate chains such as McDonald's, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A and franchise-advocacy groups fought the law. A coalition of restaurant-industry organizations said the law could raise costs for fast-food restaurants by $3 billion. They rallied to get a referendum on the ballot.
A new law, AB 1228, replaced the FAST Act in 2023, and the minimum-wage increase for fast food workers was changed to $20 an hour. The new law was viewed as a compromise between the labor unions representing fast-food workers and the restaurant industry.
The law affects 557,000 fast food workers at 30,000 restaurants in California.
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