Jon Weinberg is a student at Harvard Law School.
2017 could be a tough year for labor unions at the state level. According to NPR, Kentucky has become the nations’s 27th “right-to-work” state, and Missouri and New Hampshire could join it in February. New Hampshire would become the first “right-to-work” state in the Northeast. Advocates in New Hampshire claim that “right-to-work” will entice businesses to relocate to the state, while opponents assert that “right-to-work” creates free rider problems and constitutes political reprisal against unions for supporting Democrats.
At the federal level, things might not be much better. The Washington Examiner reports that two Republicans will introduce national “right-to-work” legislation tomorrow. President Trump’s purported support has “right-to-work” advocates optimistic, despite previous failures in Congress.
With respect to President Trump’s agenda, unions are prepared to fight. Per Bloomberg BNA, “labor groups representing immigrants, women, blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans vowed collective action against President Donald Trump at a rally in Washington Jan. 27” and “[Representatives from AFL-CIO constituency groups] promised grass-roots organizing with regional union chapters to protect immigrants and union workers and to ensure sanctuary cities remain.”
Unions are not the only parties concerned about Trump’s labor and employment agenda. Forbes notes that “tech firms may soon need to find new recruiting ground to the fill high-paying positions that President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to make a core part of his plan to create more jobs and put ‘America first.’ Trump is reportedly considering a draft proposal to overhaul the current work visa program that Silicon Valley uses to bring tens of thousands of temporary workers into the U.S. from other countries each year.”
Finally, For The Win published the story of Kyle Johnson, a minor league baseball player “among four active minor league players attempting to join a lawsuit against Major League Baseball, its teams, and the MLB Players Association, and the first active player involved in the case to speak about it publicly.” The lawsuit “seeks to apply the terms of the Fair Labor Standards Act — i.e. minimum wage — to minor league players, who earn as little as $1100 a month at the rookie level, only get paid during the season, and do not receive overtime pay.”
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.