OnLabor

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Author:Sharon Block

Sharon Block is a Professor of Practice and the Executive Director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

State and Local Enforcement: Stepping Up and Filling In on Workers’ Rights

Oct 25, 2018 Sharon Block

The picture for robust protection of workers’ rights at the federal level is not a pretty one these days. In the Obama Administration, there were three basic components to our strategy to advance worker protections: (1) promulgate regulations that keep worker protection statutes up to date and relevant in today’s economy; (2) use enforcement resources […]

From the Mines to the Classrooms to the Statehouse: #RedforEd Teacher Walkouts

Sep 25, 2018 Sharon Block

Last week, the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School hosted an event with the National Education Association on the teacher walkouts that spread through red states from January to May 2018. We held this event to learn as much as possible about what motivated tens of thousands of teachers to stand up for […]

Joint Employer NPRM: Hy-Brand Returns

Sep 17, 2018 Sharon Block

Today, the National Labor Relations Board issued a proposed rule to change its joint employer standard. The proposed rule is the latest step in the Trump Board’s tortuous path to achieving its goal of replacing the Obama Board’s Browning Ferris Industries decision with a significantly narrower interpretation of joint employer doctrine. Background: In 2015, the […]

This Labor Day, A Clean Slate for Reform

Sep 3, 2018 Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs

As divided as we have become as a country, we arrive at this Labor Day with a shared national understanding: both economic and political power are wildly out of balance, with dire consequences for the vast majority of Americans who find themselves on the losing end of this imbalance. Wherever we live, and however we […]

Kavanaugh Nomination: What’s at Stake for Federal Sector Collective Bargaining

Aug 28, 2018 Sharon Block

If you can define success as preventing something bad from happening, the labor movement notched a victory Saturday morning for public sector collective bargaining rights. D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a strongly worded opinion, invalidating the Trump administration’s executive orders that sought to rewrite the rules for federal sector collective bargaining. When […]

New Work Towards a New Labor Law

Aug 16, 2018 Sharon Block

The New York Times editorial last week celebrating the landslide victory of the ballot initiative to repeal Missouri’s right-to-work (for less) law was entitled, “The Wind at Labor’s Back.” Those words haven’t been put together in that order in a long time, as we have witnessed a decades-long decline in the size, power, and vitality […]

Ten Steps Toward a More Competitive Labor Market

Jul 11, 2018 Sharon Block, David Seligman and Benjamin Elga

This piece was originally published by the Biden Forum. There is no doubt that workers’ bargaining power is on the decline. Workers aren’t seeing the increase in wages that they’ve been waiting for since the end of the Great Recession. Notwithstanding historically low unemployment numbers, wages for American workers in “production and nonsupervisory” positions actually […]

The Kavanaugh Nomination and Labor

Jul 10, 2018 Sharon Block

Yesterday, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh currently serves as a judge on the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was nominated to the D.C. Circuit by President George Bush in 2003 but was not confirmed until 2006. Prior to […]

CWS Surprise!

Jun 11, 2018 Sharon Block

Some of the hottest questions in labor policy over the past few years have been: how big is the “gig economy” or the “fissured workplace” or the “on-demand sector”? The Bureau of Labor Statistics gave its surprising answer to this question last week: smaller than it used to be. Some background: In 2016, the Department […]

Free Speech Rights: Public Employees v. Football Players

May 30, 2018 Sharon Block and Maddy Joseph

“[S]peech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 452 (2011) (citation omitted). Nearly every brief filed in Janus v. AFSCME advocating for the Supreme Court to invalidate as unconstitutional union fair share dues, including the Petitioner […]

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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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State and Local Enforcement: Stepping Up and Filling In on Workers’ Rights

From the Mines to the Classrooms to the Statehouse: #RedforEd Teacher Walkouts

Joint Employer NPRM: Hy-Brand Returns

This Labor Day, A Clean Slate for Reform

Kavanaugh Nomination: What’s at Stake for Federal Sector Collective Bargaining

New Work Towards a New Labor Law

Ten Steps Toward a More Competitive Labor Market

The Kavanaugh Nomination and Labor

CWS Surprise!

Free Speech Rights: Public Employees v. Football Players