Welcome in, today is Tuesday, September eighth, and we begin with the labor board's top lawyer naming the precedents she wants overturned. Following our earlier report on the August twenty-sixth memo from the National Labor Relations Board's General Counsel, a Foley Hoag analysis carried by Mondaq puts the count at more than a dozen Biden-era decisions Crystal Carey intends to challenge. That analysis says she has already filed briefs seeking reversals on severance agreements, work rules and captive-audience meetings, which moves the shift out of a memo and into live cases. Her filed positions also cover dress codes that limit union insignia, employer predictions about the consequences of unionizing, and a return to the contract coverage test for unilateral changes, giving management-rights clauses more room. Per that same analysis, she intends to take up mandatory bargaining orders, dues checkoff after a contract expires, discipline for misconduct during protected activity, and reduced financial remedies. Practitioner reaction stresses that nothing has changed yet, that regional offices are still directed to prosecute under existing precedent, and that non-unionized employers would feel handbook and severance reversals hardest. Also today, Next has won its appeal in a long-running equal pay case. Personnel Today reports the Employment Appeal Tribunal found the retailer's use of market forces amounted to a legitimate aim, a finding that reads straight into how employers defend pay differences between different roles. That report describes the outcome as a landmark victory and carries the finding rather than the tribunal's full reasoning. Practitioners lean toward treating it as consequential well beyond retail, on the read that restoring market forces, recruitment and retention as a legitimate defence resets how comparable-pay claims are argued across sectors, not only shop floor against warehouse. A caveat runs alongside the approval: some frame the outcome as settling the equal pay question while leaving low pay across retail untouched, and expect that pressure to resurface by another route. Separately, Personnel Today argues that the Mobley versus Workday lawsuit is the reason to keep humans, not software, in charge of recruitment. That piece says the case carries ramifications for HR leaders globally and casts fresh light on the risks of relying on artificial intelligence, and the question underneath it is where liability sits when a vendor's system screens candidates. Industry reaction reframes the exposure: some practitioners argue the risk is not automated screening itself but screening that cannot show its reasoning, and a related concern is that retained logs prove little if job descriptions, scoring thresholds and knockout questions were edited without versioning. A recurring note is the bind, that adopting these tools carries new liability while holding back marks the function as the brake. Now, to the hiring picture. Announced US job cuts rose nearly sixty percent from July to August, while staying significantly below the same month last year, according to HR Executive. Which way that reads depends on the comparison taken, and it leaves planners weighing a monthly jump against an annual decline. Reaction leans toward treating part of the volume as substitution by automation rather than ordinary restructuring, with a counterpoint that activity-based productivity measures are a weak basis for headcount decisions. A recurring observation is that the aggregate hides a sharp split by sector, with information and white-collar roles shedding while construction, specialty trades and manufacturing keep adding. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Building on the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections we covered, Yahoo Finance reports utilities lead every sector to twenty thirty-five at nine point eight percent growth, with solar generation up one hundred fifty-three percent. The Fair Work Agency has named six hundred fifty-eight employers for national minimum wage underpayments, among them B and Q, Five Guys and several NHS trusts, per Personnel Today. Mondaq reports the Second Circuit on September second refused to enforce the board's twenty twenty-two Tesla dress-code standard, restoring a balancing test for employers in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. Personnel Today and HRD Canada report Jaguar Land Rover is expected to open an extensive redundancy programme, with thousands of jobs in question amid global competition. And finally, a judge ruled Amtrak's relaxed pandemic-era leave practice did not cover a plaintiff's unexplained absences, per HR Dive, in a case that turned on documentation.