OnLabor

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Author:Leora Smith

Leora Smith is a student at Harvard Law School.

Political Strikes: What Can Workers Do to Protect Themselves?

Mar 1, 2017 Leora Smith

On January 28, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance called an hour-long work stoppage as a way to express their opposition to President Trump’s Executive Order banning immigration from seven Muslim majority countries and suspending refugee intake. A week later, Yemeni-American bodega owners in New York City protested the Order by closing their businesses and […]

February 17, 2017
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

President Trump has announced his new nominee for Labor Secretary and it is Alexander Acosta. According to the Washington Post Acosta currently serves as Dean of Florida International University, and formerly served as Supreme Court Justice Alito’s law clerk, when Alito sat on the U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Acosta previously held the role […]

February 3, 2017
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

In New York City, Yemeni bodega owners went on strike yesterday, shuttering around 1000 stores from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump’s Executive Order banning entry to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries, and suspending admission of refugees. One bodega owner taped a piece of paper to the glass […]

January 20, 2017
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

Buzzfeed reported yesterday that Andy Puzder, President-Elect Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary, has been blocking workers’ rights advocates on Twitter. In recent weeks Puzder has blocked the Twitter accounts of the National Employment Law Project, the Fight for $15, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and others. Those […]

January 6, 2017
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

In The American Prospect Professor Alan Draper writes about the correlation between the decline of union membership and the rise of right-wing populism. Draper notes that Michigan and Wisconsin, traditionally Democratic states which flipped in the Presidential election, are two of the three states that have experienced the sharpest decline in union density in the […]

December 23, 2016
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

Buzzfeed reports that a vineyard owned by President-elect Donald Trump’s son recently submitted requests for six H-2 foreign worker visas, creating yet another potential conflict of interest for the incoming administration. The Labor Department, which will be overseen by Trump’s appointees, is responsible for approving or denying the request. Businesses affiliated with Trump have applied […]

December 9, 2016
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

In a policy move that might be unprecedented, Portland city council voted on Wednesday to tax public companies whose CEOs make more than 100 times the median salary of their workers. In other innovation news, legislators in Canada’s smallest province – Prince Edward Island – just voted unanimously to pilot a Universal Basic Income. On a related note […]

November 25, 2016
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

A heartfelt, quick reminder that the Thanksgiving mythology is an immigrant mythology. While many of us probably enjoyed produce from the California Valley as part of Thanksgiving dinner, The New York Times reports that a health and poverty crisis continues to harm California farmworkers and their families. Though farms in the California Valley are producing crops at […]

November 11, 2016
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

Politico reported yesterday on the lack of union support for the Democratic presidential ticket, which outperformed the Trump campaign by only 8% in union households (households with at least one union member), which is the narrowest margin since 1984. Support among union members themselves was likely higher than that from union households, but some speculate […]

October 28, 2016
News & Commentary

Leora Smith

A new report from Maina Kiai, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and associations, looks at the weakening of workers’ rights protections around the world with a focus on the most marginalized workers: global supply chain workers, informal, domestic and migrant workers. The report examines how the current state […]

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OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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Political Strikes: What Can Workers Do to Protect Themselves?

February 17, 2017

February 3, 2017

January 20, 2017

January 6, 2017

December 23, 2016

December 9, 2016

November 25, 2016

November 11, 2016

October 28, 2016