The Amazon Labor Union withdraws its petition for an election at a southern California warehouse, after losing an election at a New York warehouse last week (Matt Day/Bloomberg)

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon increases its average starting pay for front-line US staff to $19+/hour, up from $18/hour; warehouse and delivery workers will earn $16/hour to $26/hour  —  – Amazon is bumping its average starting pay for warehouse and delivery workers to more than $19 an hour, up from $18 an hour, the company said Wednesday.

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
The Labor Department releases a nonbinding proposal to classify US gig workers as employees and not independent contractors  —  A proposed rule, long awaited by labor activists, would make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors.

Jules Roscoe / VICE:
The NLRB files a complaint against Amazon CEO Andy Jassy for allegedly violating labor law with comments he made to CNBC and Bloomberg earlier in 2022  —  Andy Jassy told CNBC that Amazon thinks employees would be “better off” without a union.  A new NLRB complaint alleges that violated labor law.

Edward Graham / Nextgov:
Trellix: county election workers in two states noted a surge in malicious emails ahead of their primaries, trying to phish users or get them to download malware  —  Research conducted by cybersecurity firm Trellix found that county election workers in Arizona and Pennsylvania saw an increase …

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu says the company is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering” and plans to open a new gaming studio in Southern California  —  At TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu dropped two bits of news about the streaming giant’s foray into games.

Julia Love / Bloomberg:
In NLRB complaints, the Alphabet Workers Union claims some contract workers were fired for supporting a union and faced retaliation after pushing for benefits  —  Contract workers at Google’s data centers allege that they were fired for supporting a union and faced retaliation after pushing …