January 22nd 2022
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President Joe Biden’s ambitious pro-worker agenda is confronting a cruel legislative reality. Thanks to the Senate filibuster—a parliamentary maneuver that blocks legislation indefinitely barring a 60-vote override—Democrats’ razor-thin Senate margins make it...
Yesterday marked a momentous occasion in the nation's history, as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris were inaugurated president and vice president, respectively. Shortly after their swearing in, President Biden wasted little time carrying out...
The New York Times acquired an internal Department of Labor memo issued on September 24 instructing heads of DOL enforcement agencies not to use issued labor violation citations as the basis for press releases. The memo, issued by Deputy Secretary Patrick Pizzella,...
Protests over the death of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans rocked the nation this week and intensified this weekend following racially charged comments by the President. While unions in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement have often been...
COVID-19 has laid bare the consequences of years of noncompliance with and underenforcement of employment laws. Misclassified workers have been denied paid sick time and leave to which they are entitled under a number of states’ laws. Because gig-companies have...
As Sharon recently covered, in January the National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel announced a proposal to overhaul the agency’s long-standing structure of local offices. Though some details remain sketchy, reports suggest that the idea is to consolidate the existing 26 regions into a smaller number of “districts.” Regional directors, now classified as Senior Executive Service personnel with broad authorities, would be demoted and required to funnel various decisions to a new layer of managers reporting directly to the General Counsel in Washington, D.C.
Fighting the dangers of tobacco, seeking redress for homeowners during the mortgage crisis, and most recently standing up against the Muslim ban – state attorneys general have long been at the forefront of efforts to protect the well-being of the people of their states. In recent months, progressive state attorneys general have emerged as some of the nation’s foremost champions of civil rights and of humane, sensible policy in the face of declining protection at the federal level. As income inequality grows and too many American workers struggle to get a fair deal in our economy, the role of state attorneys general in enforcing statutes that protect workers’ economic interests has taken on new importance. To build on the energy and expertise of these public servants, under the auspices of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, we recently hosted attorneys from the offices of 11 state attorneys general last week to discuss strategies and best practices for enforcing labor laws
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...