If you don’t know about the Powell Memo, you should. And, if you’ve heard of it, but haven’t read it, you ought to read it. The Powell Memo, written in 1971 by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell to the Chairman of the Education Committee of the U.S. C... More »
Last spring, we promised to share information about the project we’ve launched at Harvard Law School, “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law Reform.” On Labor Day, we laid out our vision for this ambitious project... More »
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... More »
Louis Brandeis famously wrote “publicity is justly recommended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” We now live in a world where citizens, armed with c... More »
I wrote about the now-infamous case where Brett Kavanaugh dissented from an opinion upholding a fine by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) against SeaWorld after a killer whale lived up to its name by killing a trainer. As a result of th... More »
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... More »
The Trump appointees on the NLRB have proposed a new “joint employer” rule that they claim will foster “predictability and consistency.” But, it is readily apparent that the proposed rule will not accomplish these goals. The proposed rule will, however, resul... More »
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 dec... More »
Earlier this month, Missourians reminded us that there were a lot of pro-union Trump voters. Some of these voters just care more about other issues, but others probably don’t realize how much Trump is trying to strip away the few rights workers have under ou... More »
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, inval... More »
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, a... More »
In ruling on a case involving the rights of telephone company employees to wear union t-shirts while they were working, Brett Kavanaugh began his opinion with the observation that “common sense sometimes matters in resolving legal disputes.” But, as the case ... More »