The White House announced that President Biden has renewed his nomination of Jessica Looman, a former labor lawyer and union official, to lead the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division. Biden nominated Looman in July after Senate Republicans rejected his initial pick. And, proving undeterred, the Senate Republicans also blocked Looman’s nomination earlier this month. Since she currently serves as WHD’s principal deputy administrator, she will continue to lead the agency, which is tasked with enforcing the FLSA and other federal employment statutes, as she awaits confirmation.

In an interesting piece published yesterday, the New York Times explores the accelerating movement to organize the video game industry.  The industry is expanding rapidly — it employs hundreds of thousands of people and, as the piece observes, generates more revenue than “music, U.S. book publishing, and North American sports combined.” But it has been plagued by swirling allegations of exploitative conditions, sexual discrimination, and workplace harassment. And in recent years these conditions have driven developers to seek union protections. Units have formed unions at a string of Activision Blizzard and Microsoft studios this year and, according to the reporting, organizing activities continue to unfold at dozens of other locations.

In local news, Harvard Law School has launched the Center for Labor and a Just Economy, a research and policy center aiming to reimagine federal labor law in ways that would empower working people and help construct a more equitable political economy.  The Center’s directors insist that new policy ideas are urgently necessary to take advantage of this moment, as the pandemic has unleashed a potent surge of labor unrest. “We are looking to develop — in collaboration with folks from across the labor movement, academia, worker advocacy — new strategies for empowering workers so that the economy and our democracy will be more fair,” explained executive director Sharon Block. “The mission of the center is to reimagine American labor laws to enable working people to rebuild the economy and politics in a more equitable fashion,” echoed faculty codirector Benjamin Sachs.