Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sent an official letter to Joe Biden yesterday pressing the President to issue an order barring federal labor law transgressors from contracting with the federal government. Doing so would fulfill one of the President’s campaign pledges. In the letter, Sanders pointed out that in the past two decades, Amazon alone has received “thousands of federal contracts worth billions of dollars,” even though the firm has “engaged in illegal anti-union activity” and “spent over $4 million on consultant last year alone in an effort to prevent its warehouses from unionizing.” Moreover, Sanders underscored the importance of revitalizing organized labor in this era defined by “massive income and wealth inequality.” In conclusion, Sanders observed that “the federal government spends more than $600 billion each year on contracts to thousands of companies who employ more than 4 million contract workers.” These workers, like all working people, “deserve fair pay and benefits, safe workplaces, and the right to a union.” As Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders has scheduled a hearing for next week aimed at uncovering the scope of federal contracts currently awarded to firms engaged in unionbusting efforts, with particular focus on Amazon.

Reuters reported yesterday that the new independent labor union at General Motors’s largest plant in Mexico, the National Independent Union for Workers in the Automotive Industry (SINTTIA), is seeking a nearly 20 percent wage increase for the thousands of employees it represents. GM has balked at the proposal, countering with the much more modest figure of 3.5 percent. Taking advantage of the enhanced labor protections delivered by the 2020 North American trade agreement, as well as recent reforms to Mexican labor laws (which I described last year), employees at the GM facility expelled the plant’s company-union last year and, in a high profile election, selected the newly-formed and independent SINTTIA to serve as their bargaining representative. The landslide victory was celebrated by U.S. labor leaders. The existing contract between the parties expires on May 31, and union leaders have insisted that employees are willing to strike if a deal isn’t secured.

Fox Business offered some reflections this morning with respect to the “onslaught of unionization efforts across the nation.” The article pointed out that the number of election petitions filed with the Board increased 57 percent in the first six months of this year, which includes organizing drives at such iconic Fortune 500 companies as Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple. The writer reasoned that the surge in labor activity is ascribable primarily to the wage gap existing between corporate owners and managers and employees—not so much to low wages per se, which, he observed, firms have been raising in recent months. Although it’s certainly true that many workers are infuriated by the country’s staggering levels of economic inequality, wages for millions of working people remain far from sufficient to sustain a decent standard of living free from economic precarity. In any event, that Fox Business finds itself exploring the issue suggests that the resurgence of labor agitation across many sectors of the economy may be generating a degree of anxiety among corporate managers and investors.