Jacqueline Rayfield is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s News and Commentary, Senator J.D. Vance joins Donald Trump’s campaign, targeting pro-labor voters, Project 2025 includes gutting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and Seattle Boeing workers prepare for a strike vote.
Senator J.D. Vance joined the Republican ticket as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee on Monday. While Vance has voiced support for unions during his career, his track record supporting labor law is mixed. Vance joined an autoworkers picket line in 2023 and claimed he is “not a fan” of right to work laws. In office, however, Vance opposed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which aimed to close gaps and expand worker protections under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Vance also rejected pro-worker nominees to the NLRB and voted against the NLRB’s expanded protections for employees of joint employers. Prominent labor leaders at Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Association of Flight Attendants voiced skepticism of Vance’s ostensibly pro-labor stance.
As the Republican party courts labor leaders, critics in the labor movement analyze how conservative policy will affect organized labor. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C., published Project 2025, a policy wish list for a Trump presidency. Critics point out that the plan includes initiatives to abolish overtime law, outlaw public sector unions, cut back on health and safety protections for workers, and eliminate the federal minimum wage.
In Seattle, Boeing workers prepare for a strike vote today. Union leadership say they hope a strong turnout for the vote will send a strong message to Boeing and the negotiating committee. Nearly 30,000 union workers are eligible to vote to authorize a strike when their contract expires on September 12. Their negotiating committee aims to win a 40% raise in their historic negotiation—the first for this group of workers in 16 years.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.