A new DOL Secretary is in the house:
This week, word dropped that Lori Chavez-DeRemer would no longer lead the Labor Department, likely to the disappointment of Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien, who enthusiastically endorsed her nomination. This departure arrives over three months after the New York Post reported that Chavez-DeRemer was under internal investigation by the DOL’s Office of Inspector General for alleged travel fraud, alleged boozing during work hours, and an alleged “‘inappropriate’ relationship with a subordinate.” This situation led to multiple staffer dismissals, and the DOL is moving on.
Chavez-DeRemer’s deputy Keith Sonderling has stepped into the role of acting labor secretary, and as Politico suggested, this promotion came as a surprise to nobody within the department. The publication quotes CHRO Association Senior Labor and Employment Counsel Roger King in pointing toward Sonderling’s readiness for the job: “His job title considerably understates his importance on labor and employment matters to the administration.” Meanwhile, CNBC reports that Chavez-DeRemer will soon be interviewed as part of the ongoing probe into those allegations.
The high cost of nursing turnover stays high:
The 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, which gathers data from over 500 U.S. hospitals, confirms what many suspected about the difficulty in recruiting and retaining registered nurses.
Last year, it cost each hospital an average of $5.19 million to manage RN turnover, with the national average for RN turnover rate being 17.6% (with the highest turnover being 22.5% for behavioral health specialty nurses). From there, each turnover of an RN costs an average of $60,090, and it takes an average of 56-102 days to recruit an experienced RN replacement. Healthcare industry publications are taking note of this report, and we can expect more follow-up analysis to come.
Those Starbucks contract negotiations? Still messy:
Not too long ago, Starbucks Workers United publicly downgraded their contract demands, which now include a more realistic and sustainable $17 minimum wage for baristas, at the bargaining table. This seemed to signal that a national bargaining framework was on the near horizon, and the company agreed to revive negotiations.
Unfortunately, those positive vibes didn’t last long, and the union recently filed a ULP for alleged bad-faith bargaining. We also noticed that SWU broke its pattern of saving up batches of petitions for end-of-month dumps because they began filing again earlier this month with 16 petitions for representation elections so far in April. And in what feels like a symbolic move, workers at the very first Starbucks to ever exist, at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, filed a petition last week.
In related news, the NLRB will reevaluate the Biden Board’s 2024 decision about Starbucks’ conduct during SWU’s nationwide organizing drive. Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a remand after finding that the company "applied the wrong test" in 2024 when attempting to determine whether the company coercively subpoenaed shift supervisors regarding communication with SWU organizers. As the Fifth Circuit wrote, “The Board did not undertake the required totality-of-the-circumstances analysis” of employer conduct, so stay tuned for how this case turns out.
The current state of the joint employment shuffle:
This week, the DOL’s joint employer proposal prompted questions on whether it could possibly survive the courts. The proposal aims to create a single standard while evaluating four factors–which would “weigh the economic reality of the potential joint employer’s control, direct or indirect, over the employee”--that would apply under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.
Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling added that the DOL wants to establish “clarity” with a standard that would “give businesses more confidence to invest in partnerships, help employees understand their rights, and make the department’s investigations more efficient.”
However, the proposed standard resembles the 2020 version that was struck down by a federal judge who found it to be “inconsistent with the FLSA.” Yet Bloomberg Law’s analysis points toward labor and employment attorneys differentiating this proposal to be better “primed to withstand the kind of judicial review that struck down its predecessor.” How so? The new version would weigh the four factors by considering an employer’s “reserved” control, rather than evaluating only by “actual” control.
Meanwhile, the NLRB recently reinstated its 2020 joint employer standard, but it's also complicated. Yes, the Board revived how businesses must exercise “substantial direct and immediate” control over core workplace conditions, shared with another business, before they can be classified as a joint employer. However, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ order for the Board to reaffirm Browning-Ferris regarding one employer showed that the NLRB won’t be the final word on liability for this subject, either.
What are Gen Z’s workplace strengths?
HR Dive took notice of research from AI screening platform Cangrade on Gen Z workers’ biggest workplace strengths. These workers possess high emotional intelligence and stress management skills, and they also want meaningful communication from leadership and to feel a sense of belonging. The latter subject is vital for leaders to note, since Gen Z-ers are prone to seeking third-party representation if they don’t find that sense of community in the workplace.
The report further suggests that Gen Z and millennial workers are equally well-suited to collaborative projects and in self-driven capacities. At the same time, the workers in this study were less likely to exhibit high critical thinking skills. Yet their relationship-building talents make them excellent candidates for client- and customer-facing roles. HR pros who want to become Gen Z whisperers would do well to read the rest of the study.
