LABOR
Chipotle’s US union dissolves without securing a labor contract
The Teamsters union has forfeited its rare union foothold at a Michigan Chipotle restaurant following more than three years without securing a contract, showing the steep challenges for US unions even at companies where workers voted to organize. In an email last month, a local Teamsters president informed the US National Labor Relations Board that the union “officially withdraws and disclaims interest” in representing Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. employees at the Lansing location — the burrito chain’s first and only unionized US restaurant. The message, obtained by Bloomberg News through the Freedom of Information Act, means Chipotle will no longer be legally required to recognize or negotiate with the union, which employees voted 11-to-3 to join in August 2022. In the following years, organizers were unable to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the company. The agency’s general counsel office alleged in 2024 that Chipotle engaged in illegal anti-union tactics, including withholding raises from the store’s staff and telling workers that the union was keeping their pay frozen. It said Chipotle also punished a pro-union employee to discourage activism. This month, the company agreed to settle the government’s allegations by compensating some workers whose wages had been frozen and removing discipline from an employee’s file, records obtained via FOIA show. The company didn’t admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. “Even though we believe that we have acted lawfully at all times, we chose to voluntarily settle an outstanding charge with the NLRB,” Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs officer Laurie Schalow said in an emailed statement. “We believe this resolution is in the best interest of our team members and allows us to move forward constructively.” — BLOOMBERG NEWS
TRAVEL
Uber moves toward becoming an ‘everything app’ with hotel bookings powered by Expedia
Uber is expanding into a different side of the travel business: hotels. The ride-hailing and delivery company said Wednesday that users of its app can now book hotel rooms. Uber is using hotel listings provided by Expedia Group, a booking service that works with 700,000 hotels and other properties globally. More than 1 million vacation rentals from Vrbo — which is owned by Seattle-based Expedia — will be added to the app later this year, the company said. Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, said hotel booking is a big step toward San Francisco-based Uber’s goal of becoming an “everything app” that serves many customer needs. Uber, which was founded in 2009, launched Uber Eats for restaurant deliveries in 2015 and expanded with grocery deliveries in 2020. “Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps. AI is in the air and they’re all trying to figure out, how does AI help me or does it not help me?” Kansal told The Associated Press. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.” Any Uber app user will be able to make hotel reservations. But Uber One members, who pay $9.99 per month for zero delivery fees and other perks, will get a 20 percent discount off a rolling list of 10,000 hotels plus 10 percent back in Uber credits they can use to book rides, Kansal said. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
ENERGY
US gas prices climb further as effects of war reverberate
Oil prices surged to a new wartime high Wednesday as the disruption to Persian Gulf energy supplies persisted. The effects are being felt far beyond the region, with the average price of US gasoline also at a record high since the start of the war in Iran. The main international oil price, known as Brent crude, jumped nearly 8 percent, largely because investors were worried that the impasse in US-Iran talks could last for a while. That could keep Persian Gulf energy products from reaching the rest of the world for weeks or, in a worst-case scenario, months. The price of Brent crude for June delivery, a soon-to-expire contract that investors trade based on their expectations for where prices are headed in the near future, rose to nearly $120 a barrel, setting a fresh high since the first US-Israeli strikes in Iran. This contract traded for about $95 a barrel two weeks ago and $72 just before the war started. US gasoline prices, which tend to track the price of crude oil but with a lag, rose again Wednesday, jumping to a national average of $4.23 a gallon, a fresh high since the start of the war in Iran. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by 42 percent, according to the AAA motor club. Diesel prices have increased even more quickly and stood at $5.64 on Wednesday, up 50 percent since the start of the war. — NEW YORK TIMES
TECH
Meta accused of failing to keep children off Instagram and Facebook in Europe
Meta has failed to implement needed safeguards to keep children younger than 13 off Instagram and Facebook in violation of a European Union online safety law, officials said Wednesday. Meta does not have an adequate system to identify and remove the accounts of the children who flout the social media giant’s age limits, the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, said in a preliminary ruling. Without changes, Meta could face fines and other penalties. Regulators said Meta appears to be violating the Digital Services Act, a law passed in 2022 to force social media companies to police their platforms more aggressively. The company was found to lack effective controls to check the accuracy of a person’s self-declared date of birth when setting up an account, making it easy to sidestep rules meant to keep children under 13 off the social media sites. Regulators said Meta’s tool for reporting minors is “difficult to use and not effective,” with up to seven steps required just to access the necessary form. After a minor is reported for being under 13, the company often does not follow up and the user can keep using the service without any kind of review, regulators said. Across the EU, evidence suggests roughly 10 percent to 12 percent of children under 13 are accessing Instagram and Facebook, according to regulators. Meta said it disagreed with the commission’s findings, calling age-verification an “industrywide challenge.” “We’re clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older and we have measures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age,” the company said in a statement. “We continue to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will have more to share next week about additional measures rolling out soon.” — NEW YORK TIMES
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI targets Musk’s trustworthiness in cross-examination
Elon Musk, in his second day of testimony in his blockbuster trial against OpenAI, on Wednesday said that he was “a fool” to fund the company, and that its other founders duped him into believing it would remain a nonprofit instead of the vast commercial success it later became. Musk, who helped found OpenAI in 2015, pushed his case that the founders of the artificial intelligence company always intended for it to be a nonprofit. “I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,” he said. “I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding to create what would become an $800 billion company.” Musk, under cross-examination from an OpenAI lawyer, has grown combative, drawing an interruption from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. “The classic answer to a yes-or-no question is not so simple,” Musk said. “For example, if you ask the question, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’” Gonzalez Rogers cut him off, saying, “No, we’re not going to go there.” In his questioning, OpenAI’s lead counsel, William Savitt, has aimed to show that before leaving OpenAI, Musk was interested in turning the lab into a for-profit company. He has tried to paint a picture of Musk as someone who wants to wield outsize influence over his companies to have complete control, a point made to undercut Musk’s continuous assertions that no one individual should be in control of OpenAI and certainly not in control of artificial intelligence. Musk left the startup three years later after a power struggle with his co-founders. The public launch of ChatGPT catapulted OpenAI to commercial success in 2022. Musk is seeking more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest financial partner. He is also asking the court to remove OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, from the board, and to stop its recent shift to operate as a for-profit company. — NEW YORK TIMES