Google announced Friday that it is releasing a course aimed at teaching one million Americans how to use artificial intelligence tools. As part of the rollout, the tech giant also announced that its charitable arm, Google.org, The new AI skills course will be available for 49 on Coursera, a for-profit online course provider. The announcement comes after Google scrapped its rules requiring suppliers and staffing firms it works with to provide good pay and benefits to their employees - along with laying off thousands of employees despite turning record profits. Google announced two new initiatives: One is a self-paced course on AI skills, the other is a grant program for AI job skills training.

Hollywood's striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA actors' union have filed a grievance with the United States's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Comcast's NBCUniversal, accusing the company of blocking a picket area. The unions said on Tuesday that NBCUniversal infringed its freedom to picket and endangered its members by obstructing a public sidewalk next to the company's studio lot in California with an ongoing construction project. The WGA's complaint said NBCUniversal "forced picketers to patrol in busy streets with significant car traffic where two picketers have already been struck by a car". SAG-AFTRA said members had been forced "to picket at the unsafe crowded location, exacerbating the dire public safety situation to interfere with striking members' right to engage in the protected, concerted activity of picketing and patrolling outside the employer's premises during a lawful strike". Hollywood actors joined film and television writers on picket lines for the first time in 63 years last week as they demanded higher streaming-era pay and curbs on the use of artificial intelligence.

I'm back home from Apple and happy to be back from the high double-digit heat (but it was a dry heat!). I got a strong response from last week's newsletter, wherein we discussed questions around robotic delivery. Always nice to be reminded that people are, in fact, reading this thing we put out into the world every week. One reader brought up the question of safety in relation to delivery'bots -- specifically, for those people who have expressed concerns around having strangers deliver food to their front door. I'd add some privacy concerns around the robot's data collection into the mix as well.

In late January, that group of workers filed a petition with the NLRB for a union election after parent company Activision Blizzard missed a deadline set by the group to voluntarily recognize the nascent union, named the Game Workers Alliance. Activision Blizzard contested the filing, arguing that any union at the Wisconsin-based Raven would have to encompass all of the studio's approximately 230 employees -- a far broader swath of workers than just the quality assurance team. The NLRB's decision rejected that argument, finding that the set of quality assurance testers was an appropriate bargaining unit.

Nintendo isn't the only gaming company being investigated by the NLRB over union-busting allegations. Activision Blizzard, the company behind games like Call of Duty and "World of Warcraft," faces multiple complaints for preventing employee union activity and surveilling and threatening employees. The NLRB is currently weighing in on a labor dispute between the employer and employees at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision. A decision is expected within the next few weeks.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has accused Google of illegally firing two workers who took part in labor organizing activities. The agency also claimed Google spied on employees who planned protests and that it has policies that dissuade workers from union organizing. Those alleged actions violate workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act, according to the NLRB. Google told NPR in a statement that it supports the protected labor rights of workers. However, it claimed the employees at the heart of the NLRB's complaint carried out actions that constituted "a serious violation of our policies and an unacceptable breach of a trusted responsibility." The company fired four employees last year in the wake of protests, but the NLRB only took up two of their cases.

This Employment Law This Week Monthly Rundown features a recap of the biggest employment law trends from 2018 and a look ahead at what's to come in 2019. Specifically, this episode includes the following: 1. #MeToo Movement in the Workplace For employers, 2018 was the year of #MeToo. While the movement began in the fall of 2017, last year, it touched every aspect of employment law--from harassment training to arbitration. Jennifer Gefsky (Member of the Firm, Epstein Becker Green): "I think if the #MeToo movement taught us one thing, it's that employers face significant liability and risk in the event that allegations are made against any employee or supervisor or the highest-level executive at the company." In 2019, we can expect to see more legislative action, particularly in the area of equal pay, where much of the #MeToo focus has shifted.

The recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that effectively reinstated the Obama era's over-reaching joint employer regulation is a perfect example of how the left plays by its own set of rules. The joint employer rule made headlines in 2015 when the NLRB, under President Obama, rewrote the definition of what the government considered a "joint employer." Traditionally, a joint employer was an employer who shared direct control over an employee's workplace or employment with another employer. The idea was that since all employers shared and exercised similar and immediate control over employees, all should be responsible for making sure the employees had safe and reasonable working conditions. It also meant all joint employers were responsible for mistakes or bad behavior at their businesses.