A recent Third Circuit decision applies the case law on public employees and the First Amendment to appointed state judges, and raises interesting questions about how to design a judicial selection system that both respects the First Amendment and promotes cou... More »
On Thursday, Illinois state lawmakers passed a bill that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. The $15 minimum wage was a campaign staple and top legislative priority for Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, who announced in a statement t... More »
The federal government shutdown is precipitating a wave of lawsuits and talk of sick-outs and strikes. That should be no surprise when approximately 400,000 federal employees are being required to work without pay. Wait, “required.”? Talk of being “forced” or ... More »
Minimum wages are rising across the country. On Sunday, San Francisco’s minimum wage reached $15 an hour for all businesses, the highest rate of any major U.S. city. (Seattle’s $15 minimum in effect last year applies only to large businesses with 501 or more e... More »
This week, the NFL announced a new policy punishing players who “take a knee” in protest of police brutality and racism during the national anthem. The new policy requires all players on the field to “stand and show respect” for the fla... More »
Friday was a big day for unionization efforts in New England. Late in the afternoon, election results revealed that Harvard University teaching and research assistants had voted to unionize. During the election held on April 18 and 19, 1,931 ballots were cast... More »
In the weeks ahead, we’ll be sharing more about a project that Sharon and I are launching at Harvard Law School, “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law.” With support from the Ford Foundation and joined by a wide ... More »
Arizona teachers began voting on whether to strike on Tuesday afternoon. While Republican Governor Doug Ducey has agreed to a 20% pay raise for teachers by 2020, many teachers have criticized the plan for not including pay raises for support staff and for fai... More »
The Washington Post reports that Target has agreed to a $3.74 million settlement with black and Latino job applicants who claimed that the company’s criminal background check policy was discriminatory. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund had filed a class action law... More »
For the last forty years, a determined attack on our democracy has been funded by a small cadre of right wing billionaires. The leaders of this effort are determined to ensure that the decisions of government benefit the corporations and the wealthy, and they... More »
Less than two years after having finally been recognized as the inspiration for J. Howard Miller’s iconic “We Can Do It!” World War II poster, Naomi Parker Fraley–the “true” Rosie the Riveter–died at age 96 on January ... More »
This post follows up on our prior post, which focused on the complex provisions of the proposed Senate tax bill. This post discusses some of the key concerns that have been expressed about the new tax bill. (Again, we focus here on the Senate version of the pr... More »
February 17th, 2019