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Author:Maia Usui

Maia Usui is a student at Harvard Law School.

The Right to Disconnect

Mar 7, 2017 Maia Usui

In the digitally connected workplace, it’s not easy to be “off the clock.” Email — coupled with the widespread use of smartphones — has made many employees available at a moment’s notice. In the United States, one in three full-time workers check their work email “frequently” outside of normal working hours. Many report checking their […]

February 19, 2017
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

After the embarrassing withdrawal of his last nominee, Andrew Puzder, President Trump’s new pick for Labor Secretary — Alexander Acosta, a “well-respected public servant” — might look like a safe choice. As the President has pointed out, Acosta has a strong track record: he has already won Senate confirmation for three previous positions, as a senior official in […]

February 5, 2017
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

The weekend started with some good news, with an above-expectations jobs report released Friday. January saw 227,000 new jobs and modest wage growth; average hourly wages were up 3 cents at $26. President Trump has already claimed credit for the strong numbers, predicting that job growth will “continue, big league,” under his administration. Meanwhile, federal workers who want […]

January 22, 2017
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

Only a few days into the Trump presidency, and speculation is rife: what will the new President do next? In his first few hours in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the Affordable Care Act — and he is expected to take similar executive action “on a nearly daily basis” for the next month to […]

January 8, 2017
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

The last jobs report for 2016 came out Friday, marking 75 months of consecutive job growth under the Obama administration. December saw 156,000 new jobs and wage growth of 2.9%; unemployment held steady at 4.7% (up slightly from 4.6% in November). The report is consistent with the Fed’s outlook for continued gains in the labor market in 2017, according […]

December 25, 2016
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

Undocumented workers have an equal right to workplace protections, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In a decision issued earlier this week, the IACHR held that undocumented workers should be compensated for workplace injuries — notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, which denied undocumented workers full remedies under federal labor law. […]

December 11, 2016
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

Trump’s Labor Secretary pick — Andy Puzder, a fast-food CEO opposed to raising the minimum wage — is still drawing criticism. Politicians have chimed in; Senator Elizabeth Warren has called the appointment “a slap in the face for every hardworking American family.” The Atlantic takes a closer look at the controversial choice. One puzzling aspect of Trump’s pick, […]

November 27, 2016
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

In the wake of the recent election, unions — which spent over $100 million campaigning against Donald Trump — now have some tough questions to face. Republicans are eager to build momentum on right-to-work legislation (a conservative Supreme Court pick will no doubt help), and President-elect Trump is expected to roll back much of the Obama administration’s labor-related reforms — including the Department of […]

Picking the New Secretary of Labor: A Backgrounder on Andrew Puzder

Nov 21, 2016 Maia Usui

This post is part of a series on the candidates we understand to be under consideration for Secretary of Labor. President-elect Donald Trump met this weekend with Andrew Puzder, one of his rumored candidates for Secretary of Labor. Like Trump, Puzder is a Washington outsider: he’s the longtime CEO of CKE Restaurants, the company that owns fast-food […]

November 13, 2016
News & Commentary

Maia Usui

The postmortem continues, as commentators seek to understand the reasons behind Donald Trump’s win this week. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Professor Michael Kazin argues that the decline of unions had an important role, creating an institutional vacuum that left white working-class workers vulnerable to Trump’s brand of populism. NPR breaks down the numbers, suggesting that the GOP’s […]

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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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