Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. He is also faculty director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law, employment law, and law and social change, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School. From 2002-2006, he served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C. Professor Sachs graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, and served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the New York Times and elsewhere. Professor Sachs received the Yale Law School teaching award in 2007 and in 2013 received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School. He can be reached at [email protected].
In an interview published last week in Seminarian Casual, Justice Alito offered some important remarks about work-life balance. Asked how he has managed to balance “work and family life,” Alito answered:
I have been fortunate to have jobs that allowed me to control my work schedule to a very great degree. As an appellate judge, I have had to work very long hours, but I have largely been able to choose when and where I have done my work. I think I attended just about every one of my kids’ athletic events, concerts, and school programs. That often meant saving my work for late at night and weekends, but I was able to do that. Very few people today have this luxury, and it is hard for busy people to balance work and family life. Our society needs to do a better job of making this possible.
As OnLabor readers will be aware, unions play a critical role in making possible the kind of life that Alito rightly celebrates. Evidence for this union effect is available here, here, here, here and here. Alito himself has the capacity to enable unions to play this role, and thus to ensure that our society does a better job allowing more of us to balance work and family life.
(Thanks to Andrew Strom for calling this to our attention.)
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October 13
Chicago hotel workers remain on strike; a coalition of Democratic states sues the Labor Department over canceled unemployment insurance grants; the Federal Labor Relations Authority establishes a new mediation framework for federal worker disputes.
October 12
Workers at the Obama Foundation begin organizing; MLB submits its latest collective bargaining agreement proposal; Brigham & Women's nurses postpone strike.
October 11
UAW President Shawn Fain succeeds in his reelection bid, and Spanish unions call for a general strike.
October 9
DHS proposes a $100k fee for the foreign grad employment program; Trump suspends tech company access to green card program; and private equity perpetuates poor working conditions for home care workers.
October 8
NLRB judge finds UPS unlawfully restricted union insignia; Harvard graduate workers authorize second strike; OSHA orders Union Pacific to pay $300,000 in damages in whistleblower case.
October 7
DOL scraps plan to remove decades-old wage-and-hour guidance from federal regulations; New York enacts personnel records access law; Starbucks loses bid to dismiss Workers United trademark suit.