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Time is ticking on one of the last pro-labor vestiges of the Obama administration. The National Labor Relations Board is set to make its case against contract language used by Uber to prevent collective action against allegedly abusive bosses. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the Board could join plaintiffs in proceedings set to be held on Sept. 20. The case comes weeks before a Supreme Court clash over similar impositions on workers, and months before President Trump will have the opportunity to…

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A proposed $13.7 billion takeover of Whole Foods Market, by the world’s largest online retailer, was approved by federal trust-busters on Wednesday. With regulatory hurdles now cleared, Amazon said it intends to finalize the deal sometime later this year, giving the tech giant an opportunity to bolster its grocery delivery services. Consumer advocates worry that Amazon could leverage its robust supply chain and soon-to-be acquisition of more than 465 Whole Foods stores to dominate the burgeoning home grocery delivery industry. The development would strengthen its…

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Donald Trump’s private and political career has been colored by several accusations of blatant racism, but it was the President’s recent defense of white supremacists and neo-Nazis that forced CEOs to finally distance themselves from the administration. Two White House panels, staffed with CEOs of top companies, were abruptly disbanded on Wednesday by President Trump, whose hand was forced by several high-profile resignations in the wake of the President’s reaction to the racist violence in Charlottesville, Va. The CEO of the mining company 3M, Inge Thulin,…

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An aide to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos could be in prison for violating ethics rules, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on Wednesday. Robert Eitel, a senior counselor to DeVos, was simultaneously employed earlier this year by both the Department of Education and Bridgepoint Education, an operator of for-profit colleges. Warren said that Eitel’s agency work on student debt rules between February and April might run afoul of the criminal code. “This set of rules applied to the [sic] Mr. Eitel from the day of…

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Senator Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass.) fired off letters to CEO’s of the nation’s top financial firms, calling on them to publicly reveal their positions on a lobbying effort in their name aimed at striking down new consumer protections. In her missive, Warren noted that interest groups that represent the firms, like the US Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Associated, and the Financial Services Roundtable, have been ginning up support to repeal a recently-implemented Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule against forced arbitration. The rule, which…

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Any effort to green the economy in the coming years could encounter even greater resistance from the dirty energy industry: its stakeholders are growing in number. The United States is set to become a net-exporter of natural gas this year, according to an Energy Information Administration blog post published on Wednesday. The capacity of the US to ship liquid natural gas (LNG) abroad is only expected to increase in the coming years, too, with five export terminals currently under construction. Americans have, on average, been net…

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