OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

Editorials

friedrichs-opening-brief.pdf

June 18, 2017

[email protected]

Daily News & Commentary

Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all

May 24

A majority of House Representatives sign a discharge petition for the Faster Labor Contracts Act, and the House Transportation Committee adopts a railroad safety amendment in the Build America 250 Act.

May 22

U.S. employers spend $1.7B on union avoidance each year and the ICJ declares the right to strike a protected activity.

May 21

UAW backs legal challenge to Trump “gold card” visa; DOL requests unemployment fraud technology funding; Samsung reaches eleventh-hour union agreement.

May 20

LIRR strike ends after three-day shutdown; key senators reject Trump's proposed 26% cut to Labor Department budget; EEOC moves to eliminate employer demographic reporting requirement.

May 19

Amazon urges 11th Circuit to overturn captive-audience meeting ban; DOL scraps Biden overtime rule; SCOTUS to decide on Title IX private right of action for school employees

May 18

California Department of Justice finds conditions at ICE facilities inhumane; Second Circuit rejects race bias claim from Black and Hispanic social workers; FAA cuts air traffic controller staffing target.

OnLabor In The News

Wired

Hundreds of Video Game Workers Join New Union as Trump Attacks Labor Rights: Prof. Sachs on challenges to union organizing under the second Trump Administration.

Los Angeles Times

Column: How anti-union southern governors may be violating federal law: Ben Sachs quoted in a column about the anti-union governors' letter and the fragmentation of labor law; John Fry's post referenced on the question of whether state level card-check bans are preempted by the NLRA.

Fast Company

Amazon’s Labor Union is divided but closing in on electing leadership: Prof. Sachs on Amazon's use of legal roadblocks to delay negotiations.

Semafor

Unions’ picket power now extends to U.S. boardrooms: Prof. Block on the influence of labor unions on other playing fields.

Bloomberg Law

Boeing Talks Will Test Unions’ Sway as Labor Market Softens: Prof. Block on Boeing's labor negotiations with the International Association of Machinists.

More From OnLabor

From Pinkertons to Tech Bros: The Rise of the AI Scab

Mar 24, 2026 Jeffrey Vogt and Ruwan Subasinghe

When journalists at The Guardian went on strike over their employer’s attempts to sell the business in late 2024, they were probably not expecting to be among the first victims of strike-breaking by artificial intelligence. Over the course of the strike, members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) were flummoxed by the venerable paper’s “weird” headlines […]

Building Worker Power in a Precarious Federal Landscape: Funding Labor Organizations to Build Power

Mar 18, 2026 Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Paul Sonn

Labor unions and other worker organizations serve vital roles in our economy, protecting workers and fighting for their voice in the workplace and in politics. But despite skyrocketing public support for labor unions and surveys suggesting that large percentages of workers would join a union if they could, too many worker organizations lack adequate and stable funding needed to effectively achieve their missions of organizing workers, advocating for stronger labor protections, and facilitating strong implementation and enforcement of existing laws.

The Trouble with Policing Adjudicatory Rulemaking

Mar 16, 2026 Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

This month, two judges made a strong bid — perhaps the strongest of the century — to limit when agencies may make law through adjudication rather than rulemaking. In Brown-Forman Corp. v. NLRB, the Sixth Circuit declined to enforce a bargaining order that relied on Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, which announced a new standard for remedial bargaining […]

Employers Keep Trying to Impose Forced Arbitration on as Many Workers as Possible

Feb 17, 2026 Andrew Strom

In Flowers Foods v. Brock, for the third time in four years, the Supreme Court is deciding whether an employer may impose mandatory arbitration on a certain group of workers as a condition of employment. The reason for all this litigation is the Supreme Court’s 2001 five-to-four opinion in Circuit City v. Adams. Darin Dalmat has a recent post providing […]

Making Labor Law More Accessible with LLMs

Feb 13, 2026 Matt Bruenig

Shortly after OpenAI released its first large language model, GPT, to the public in late 2022, I began working on ways to use LLMs to make labor law more accessible. At that point, the only way to get information about the National Labor Relations Act or the National Labor Relations Board was either from a […]

Enjoy OnLabor’s fresh takes on the day’s labor news, right in your inbox.