On Sunday the Senate approved the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ sprawling social spending bill that may amount to “one of the single biggest investments ever made on climate.”

The final package is relatively moderate in many respects, stripping several of the more transformative and redistributive aspects of President Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better vision. Among other things, the Senate removed the billions of dollars in funding which Biden’s original proposal would have channeled to the various federal agencies charged with enforcing labor and employment laws. This omission prompted the union representing NLRB staff to unleash a stream of tweets blasting congressional Democrats for bypassing an opportunity to increase the Labor Board’s funding, which has remained stagnant for nearly a decade. The agency’s persistent budget shortfalls, the union says, have plunged it into “a crisis.”

Shifting to employment law enforcement, New York City announced on Tuesday that it has secured a $20 million agreement with Chipotle Mexican Grill to settle hundreds of thousands of alleged violations of the city’s wage and hour laws. The eye-catching sum — the largest worker settlement in the history of the Big Apple — will be distributed to nearly 13,000 current and former Chipotle employees. In unveiling the agreement, mayor Eric Adams expressed gratitude to SEIU 32BJ, which had uncovered many of the underlying violations. In this way, the settlement demonstrates unions’ important capacity not only to improve working conditions for their members but to strengthen and vindicate the rights of all working people.

Vox Media released a video essay on Tuesday exploring the collapse of union density in the private sector, which it attributed primarily to global economic trends, maximal employer resistance, and restrictive changes to federal labor law. The video succinctly describes the neoliberal forces that have unraveled the labor movement, presenting a narrative largely sympathetic to unions and workers. Yet it is most significant in that it reflects — along with the other  content Vox continues to release regarding unions and unionization — the surge of enthusiasm for organized labor among many young progressives.