On Sunday the Senate narrowly approved the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ sprawling domestic policy bill which some analysts have described as “one of the single biggest investments ever made on climate.” The final package, which emerged after months of grueling negotiations, is relatively moderate, having discarded many of the more transformative and redistributive elements of President Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better vision. Among other things, the Senate stripped the billions of dollars Biden’s original proposal would have allocated to the agencies charged with enforcing federal labor and employment laws. The omission prompted the union representing NLRB staff to unleash a string of vitriolic tweets lambasting Democrats for declining to seize this opportunity to increase the Board’s funding, which has remained stagnant for nearly a decade and plunged the agency into, in the words of the union, a “crisis.”

In the world of state 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 largest employment settlement in the history of the Big Apple. The money will be distributed to nearly 13,000 current and former Chipotle employees. In unveiling the agreement, mayor Eric Adams (D) expressed gratitude to SEIU 32BJ — a powerful local in the city — which had uncovered many of the underlying violations. The settlement thus demonstrates unions’ ability to enhance and safeguard working conditions for not only their members but all working people.

Lastly, Vox Media released a video essay on Tuesday exploring the collapse of union density in the private sector, which it ascribes chiefly to global economic trends, maximal employer resistance, and restrictive changes to federal labor law. The video offers a concise and compelling narrative, largely sympathetic to unions and workers, of the neoliberal policies that have unraveled the labor movement. But it is most significant in that it reflects — along with the other content Vox continues to publish concerning unions and unionization — the surge of interest in organized labor among many young progressives.