Category: Industry News

With wage and hour lawsuits becoming increasingly common across the country, there was little reason for the lawyers at Amazon.com’s Seattle headquarters to be surprised when one landed on their doorstep recently. But they may have been concerned to learn that their newest legal adversary is “Sledgehammer Shannon” Liss-Riordan, a Boston attorney who gained legal fame by beating corporate giants like FedEx and Starbucks in just these kinds of contests.

The new lawsuit against Amazon is similar to one of Liss-Riordan’s best known cases—a suit against FedEx that charged the company was misclassifying delivery drivers as independent contractors when the workers were, as a matter of law, regular employees. Liss-Riordan won that fight and, this year, FedEx announced that it would give up on a series of related legal fights and pay $240 million to some 12,000 drivers in 20 states.

A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday ordered striking pilots back to work immediately at cargo airline ABX Air, whose major customers include DHL and online retailer Amazon.com Inc.

ABX said in a statement it expects flights to resume immediately.

The U.S. Postal Service reported Tuesday a multibillion-dollar loss for a 10th-straight year, as government-mandated benefit expenses overshadowed a fourth year of revenue growth.

For the year ended Sept. 30, the net loss widened to $5.6 billion, from $5.1 billion in the same period a year ago. The government-sponsored mail carrier has now recorded a combined $62.4 billion in losses over the last 10 years. The annual losses the post office has reported since fiscal 2007 have ranged from a low of $2.8 billion in 2008 to a high of $15.9 billion in 2012.