According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Postal Service violated federal law by pressuring managers to approve employees’ requests for time off last year to campaign for Hilary Clinton. While federal workers can use their time to off to campaign or donate to candidates, by directing managers to approve the time off even though they may be understaffed, the Postal Service showed a workplace bias ... More »
Workers at the Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi should have a big decision to make within the next couple of weeks – whether they want to be represented by the UAW and start a new chapter in their relationship with their employer. The UAW petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election to represent the thousands of Nissan employees at the Canton plant. The Board approved th... More »
NPR reports that state minimum wage preemption laws are on the rise. 27 states currently have laws prohibiting cities from raising their minimum wage above the state minimum. In Missouri, the last state to pass one of these measures, a minimum wage preemption law will go into effect on August 28th. When this law takes effect, St. Louis’s $10 minimum wage ordinance will no longer be operative. ... More »
Charlotte Garden is an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law. To the extent there was ever doubt on this point, it is now clear that the Trump Administration will not prioritize robust enforcement of employment law mandates. One key example: the Department of Justice’s decision not to support the NLRB’s individual arbitration rule before the Supreme Court. (The NLRB will represe... More »
Tufts Medical Center nurses returned to work yesterday, ending a four-day lockout. As we recapped this weekend, the Massachusetts Nurses Association struck last Wednesday in the midst of a contract dispute. Tufts hired replacement nurses, whose five-day contracts led to the lockout. The Boston Globe raises the possibility that patient care worsened during the strike and lockout. Despite Mayor ... More »
When the statements of a United States Senator lead to the conclusion that he is either ignorant or acting in bad faith, I think the more charitable approach is to assume that the Senator is simply uninformed. And, after watching Senator Lamar Alexander, the Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pension (“HELP”) Committee at the hearing on President Trump’s nominees to the Nationa... More »
Today marks the beginning of President Trump’s “Made in America week,” a Trump administration effort to promote products made in the United States. This afternoon, the White House will feature a “Made in America” showcase of products from all 50 states. On Wednesday, President Trump will give a speech on the importance of domestic manufacturing, and on Saturday, the President will visit Virginia t... More »
Once simply the subject of academic books and articles, Universal Basic Income (UBI)—wherein the state provides a uniform cash grant to every citizen without a means test or work requirement—has seemingly become de rigueur for progressive activists. In their thoughtful and interesting posts, Andy Stern and Brishen Rogers talk about why and how UBI proponents should support labor law reform. Howeve... More »
On Wednesday, nurses at Tufts Medical Center went on strike. This marks the first nurses’ strike in Boston in over 30 years and, according to the union, the largest in Boston’s history. Approximately 1,200 members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association participated. The strike comes on the heels of 15 months of failed contract negotiations between the nurses’ union and the medical center. The... More »
I’ve been reading Alex Rosenblat’s excellent work on Uber, and want to emphasize one of her findings, a finding that is highly relevant to the employment question but one that we haven’t highlighted sufficiently on the blog. (For other coverage of Rosenblat’s findings, see here). In a paper co-authored by Luke Stark, Rosenblat describes what she calls Uber’s “bl... More »