Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LABOR NEWS—Busy unions: Amazon-related layoffs, OSU female athletes, Ohio public-sector strike, Microsoft XBOX workers, Tyson plant closures, (Aug 21, 2026)

By Pamela Wolf, J.D.

“Meatpacking workers urgently need to see long-term solutions in the beef industry to combat the record-low cattle herd... This requires a unified, proactive approach from both government and industry stakeholders.”

In separate developments, the Teamsters announced its challenge to Amazon’s alleged New York WARN Act violations, the AFL-CIO put its support behind United College Athletes Association (UCAA) and Oregon State University (OSU) women’s basketball players seeking union recognition, and the UAW announced its upcoming rally to layout next steps in its six-month-strike against Lorain County, Ohio, Job and Family Services. The UFCW also called for government and industry reform in the face of Tyson Foods facility closures, and Microsoft XBOX workers want the company to respect their critical role in identifying appropriate use cases for generative AI by negotiating a strong union contract.

Amazon’s “shell game” conceals NY WARN Act violations. The Teamsters, joined by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the Action Lab, and the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN) simultaneously released a report naming Amazon as the leading violator of the NY WARN Act and announced the union’s filing of a NY Labor Department complaint over those violations. The union is demanding that the Office of the Commissioner of Labor investigate Amazon’s control of its third-party contractors, or Delivery Service Partners (DSPs), and the company’s failure to follow the law. Amazon uses DSPs as shell corporations to shield itself from the legal responsibility the company owes to its workforce, according to the Teamsters.

The report demonstrates that since 2018, Amazon has closed 35 DSPs in the state, resulting in the loss of over 3,500 jobs. These losses make up an outsized percentage of layoffs across New York’s entire transportation and warehousing industry. A full 25 percent of all workers laid off in the industry since 2023 have been Amazon drivers, according to the report. A majority of Amazon drivers never received the advance notice required by law, and Amazon may owe as much as $11 million in back wages.

Most DSPs have Amazon as their only “customer,” so when Amazon terminates a contract, the entire DSP shuts down. The NY WARN Act requires private employers with more than 50 workers in the state to either provide severance or give workers at least 90 days advance written notice before mass layoffs affecting 25 people or more.

The Delivery Protection Act, which the Teamsters and their allies are campaigning to pass in New York City, would end Amazon’s subcontracting “shell game” and force the company to directly hire its drivers.

“This report, which shows frequent mass layoffs and WARN Act violations at Amazon’s captive DSPs, highlights that they are not bona fide independent businesses but pawns of a giant corporation that needs to be held accountable for their operations,” said Paul Sonn, State Policy Program Director at NELP. “New York City’s proposed Delivery Protection Act would do just that—and the city council should act swiftly to approve it.”

OSU women’s basketball team athletes want union recognition. The AFL-CIO and its Sports Council announced its solidarity with the UCAA, OSU women’s basketball team athletes, and the more than 100 women’s college basketball players across the country who have signed union authorization cards. After three years of organizing, the OSU workers filed with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, seeking recognition of their union. The AFL-CIO called it “the historic first-ever official union representation petition in women’s college sports.”

“The NCAA is a multibillion-dollar business that would not exist without the labor of college athletes who generate that profit,” said the AFL-CIO. Nonetheless, the NCAA has failed to protect the athletes and instead has fought against them while lobbying Congress for legislation granting an antitrust exemption that undermines college athletes’ rights and collective bargaining power—including the “Protect College Sports Act” under consideration in the U.S. Senate.

According to the AFL-CIO, collective bargaining guarantees that the athletes have a true voice in decisions that impact their lives, families and futures. “America’s unions are proud to support the courageous members of UCAA who are demanding a path to a better future, as they fight for the contract they deserve.”

County Job and Family Services workers poised to escalate strike. UAW Local 2192 members at Lorain County Job and Family Services in Ohio have been on strike for six months—what the union called “the site of the longest public sector strike in the history of Ohio.” UAW Local 2192 members knew what they were taking on by choosing to go on strike but felt they had no other choice if they wanted to solve the retention crisis and maintain quality services for Lorain County residents. In the face of what the union described as the County Commissioners’ lack of interest in bargaining in good faith, the union is putting the Commissioners on notice of “a significant escalation if the Union's calls for talks continue to be ignored.”

On Tuesday, August 25, Local 2192 members will hold a rally at the Lorain County Administration Building in Elyria to announce the next steps in their campaign for a better life.

After months of negotiating, with an expired contract, UAW Local 2192 members were done living a life in which they had to skip meals and enroll their own children in programs they helped administer for other families in need, according to the union. The union members have taken on a staffing crisis, a retention crisis, and a leadership crisis affecting more than their jobs in Lorain County.

The Commissioners purportedly have chosen to disregard the state's fact-finding process and fight their own workforce instead of solving the problem; their inaction has forced residents to pay the price as critical service failures mount. Many County residents are in limbo trying to fill needed prescriptions, nursing home residents are not getting reimbursements processed, the county health system is under strain, and elder abuse investigations are falling behind, according to the union. “Nevertheless, the Union has repeatedly called for good-faith negotiations and compromise between the parties for the good of Lorain County.”

UAW Local 2192’s fight has the full backing of the International UAW, from its organizing and bargaining strategies department to its political arm, all the way to the President's office. JFS workers hear their clients' pleas for a settlement, even if the Commissioners pretend not to, the union said.

XBOX workers seek to protect human creativity, job quality. Microsoft XBOX workers negotiating their first union contract found that generative AI is a significant sticking point with management, according to the CWA. The union pointed to a new survey of video game workers, which found the workers who develop beloved video game franchises are determined to protect human creativity and job quality from corrosive uses of AI.

CWA-represented XBOX workers are the developers, artists, engineers, producers, user researchers, and customer support staff behind some of the video game industry’s most profitable games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and more.

Survey findings. The survey was conducted by the CWA in collaboration with researchers at Cornell University and Western University. It surveyed 759 video game workers about generative AI, including hundreds at Microsoft XBOX studios. This preliminary report summarizes findings from respondents who identified their employer as a Microsoft XBOX studio (209 respondents) and those who identified their employer as a non-Microsoft studio (155) and excludes respondents who did not provide their employer:

• A majority of workers expressed concern that AI would be used to replace some or all parts of their jobs, with 40 percent extremely concerned and another 20 percent moderately concerned.

• Microsoft studio respondents were significantly more likely than workers at other video game companies to report risks of layoffs within the next two years driven specifically by automation and outsourcing. More than 54 percent of Microsoft workers felt that automation- or outsourcing-related layoffs were somewhat or very likely, compared to less than 35 percent of workers at other studios.

• Among those respondents who use generative AI, a majority agreed that it creates additional work correcting mistakes (59 percent), while 50 percent agreed that it makes work more stressful and 56 percent disagreed that it improves the quality of games.

• Regarding the degree of worker influence over the use of generative AI, Microsoft respondents reported less influence compared to non-Microsoft respondents. Only 27 percent of respondents from Microsoft studios reported having high levels of influence over how they used generative AI tools in their work, compared to 42 percent from non-Microsoft studios.

• The issues of highest concern across all survey respondents, with over 70 percent reporting they were ‘extremely concerned,’ were ethical: concerns with AI stealing intellectual property and having a negative environmental impact.

“As XBOX workers ramp up their public mobilizations calling for Microsoft to bargain more constructively, these survey findings demonstrate workers are the conscience of the video game industry, the CWA said. “XBOX workers are calling on company leaders to embrace a high-road approach to the development and implementation of [generative AI] that centers workers and the quality of the games that they take such care to produce.”

Tyson plant closures. In response to Tyson Foods’ intention to close its Joslin, Illinois, plant, a case-ready facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and put its Pasco, Washington, plant up for sale, the UFCW and UFCW Local 1546 released a statement. “The closure of the Tyson Foods beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, this week follows a troubling downward trend in the meatpacking industry and greatly impacts the livelihoods of our union brothers and sisters who worked for this company, like a tornado ripping through the community,” said Local 1546 President and UFCW International Vice President Robert O’Toole.

Local 1546 represents over 2,000 workers at the Tyson Foods beef plant in Joslin. The local, which has “a long-standing and proud union partnership with Tyson Foods,” said it was “extremely disappointed” that it did not receive advance notice of the closure. Given the opportunity, the union and company could have sat down and found an economic solution to keep the plant operating, according to the local.

“We remain committed to doing everything in our power, including working closely with our legislative and community allies and our state and local union affiliates, to provide the necessary resources to ease them through this unfortunate transition,” O’Toole said.

Beef industry challenges. UFCW International President Milton Jones noted the impact of plant closures on rural communities over the past year. “Thousands of workers lose their jobs, families are faced with uncertainty, and a local economy is left without a major employer.”

“Meatpacking workers urgently need to see long-term solutions in the beef industry to combat the record-low cattle herd, or else cuts to workers’ hours and plant closures will continue,” Jones continued. “This requires a unified, proactive approach from both government and industry stakeholders. The USDA and the Trump administration must offer realistic solutions to these headwinds, and industry giants must be creative with their operations to keep workers working, as JBS did in Souderton, Pennsylvania.”

Companies: Amazon; Teamsters; AFL-CIO; UCAA; Oregon State University; NCAA; Lorain County, Ohio, Job and Family Services; UAW; UAW Local 2192; Microsoft XBOX; CWA; Tyson Foods; UFCW; UFCW Local 1546

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