Wage theft comes in many forms and affects all industries. On May 11, the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) and the state Attorney General’s office filed a wage and hour lawsuit against Spokane-based cannabis retailer Lovely Buds for failing to pay workers the over... (Read More)

Have you been injured at work? Did you apply for workers’ compensation, or are you still waiting for your settlement? Have you found yourself asking why workers’ comp takes so long to settle? As with any legal process, it can take time and patience. There isn’t a cookie-cutter, one-size-fi... (Read More)

A Seattle Starbucks became the city’s only company-owned store to unionize following a unanimous vote announced by the National Labor Relations Board on March 23. Workers at the Starbucks at Broadway and East Denny Way in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood join their colleagues in Buffalo, Ne... (Read More)

Victims of the fatal crane collapse that killed four people at a Google job site in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood in 2019 were awarded more than $100 million by a jury on March 15. The verdict was for cases brought by the families of a 19-year-old Seattle Pacific University student an... (Read More)

Employees in Washington state will no longer be forced to keep quiet about workplace mistreatment, once Governor Jay Inslee signs off on new legislation limiting non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements. On March 3, Washington lawmakers voted the measures into to law via House Bill 1795, k... (Read More)

The personal information of more than 650,000 licensed professionals may have been exposed in a cybersecurity breach of a Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) database. The DOL temporarily shut down its Professional Online Licensing and Regulatory Information System (POLARIS) on Jan. 24... (Read More)

More than 60 million American workers are about to be freed from forced arbitration clauses that prevent them from filing sexual harassment and sexual assault claims against their employers.  The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which will become law once i... (Read More)

After months of uncertainty around whether large employers would be required to vaccinate or test their employees on a weekly basis, the Supreme Court settled the matter by blocking a mandate that formed a key element of the Biden administration’s plan to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.  The man... (Read More)

Starbucks employees in Seattle are following the lead of colleagues in upstate New York who became the coffee company’s first employees to successfully unionize. Workers at the Starbucks at Broadway and East Denny Way in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood filed a petition on December 20 with... (Read More)

Government workers, health care employees and educators who forfeited their jobs rather than comply with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate were told not to count on state unemployment benefits.  But nearly two months since the October 18 vaccination deadline has passed, m... (Read More)