Vivian Dong is a student at Harvard Law School.
Congress will need to pass a stopgap spending measure to avoid a government shutdown next Saturday. Democrats are seeking to use the measure to pass a Congressional version of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which offers some protection to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. Some Republicans, including President Trump, have shown some interest in striking a deal on DACA with Democrats. But they do not want action on DACA through a government funding bill.
Florida inmates are marking today, Martin Luther King Day, as the start of a months-long protest against unpaid prison labor. Their primary grievance is from last year, when inmates had to work unpaid as clean-up crews in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. But inmate organizers are also protesting against being forced to cook, clean, and maintain their own prisons for no pay. The inmates behind the effort, dubbed Operation PUSH, are spread throughout Florida’s prisons. Florida has the third-largest prison system in the United States, with approximately 97,000 inmates. Unlike some other states, which pay inmates a nominal wage for their labor, Florida’ Department of Corrections mostly pays inmate workers nothing.
Since 2006, the number of workers employed directly by the utility industry has declined 10% — from 550,000 to 505,000. This comes as coal and nuclear power plants around the United States are closing. These coal and nuclear plants, many of which are outfitted with older technology, cannot compete against cheaper sources of energy like natural gas plants, solar, and wind. But these latter, more efficient energy sources do not require as many workers. According to BW Research Partnership, a workforce consultancy, it takes about five times as many workers to generate a megawatt hour of electricity from a coal power plant as from a wind farm. This year, Vistra, an electricity producer, will open up one of the largest solar farms in Western Texas. The farm will employ two people, possibly part time.
Daily News & Commentary
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September 16
In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB sues New York, a flight attendant sues United, and the Third Circuit considers the employment status of Uber drivers The NLRB sued New York to block a new law that would grant the state authority over private-sector labor disputes. As reported on recently by Finlay, the law, which […]
September 15
Unemployment claims rise; a federal court hands victory to government employees union; and employers fire workers over social media posts.
September 14
Workers at Boeing reject the company’s third contract proposal; NLRB Acting General Counsel William Cohen plans to sue New York over the state’s trigger bill; Air Canada flight attendants reject a tentative contract.
September 12
Zohran Mamdani calls on FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup; the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement opens a probe into Scale AI’s labor practices; and union members organize immigration defense trainings.
September 11
California rideshare deal advances; Boeing reaches tentative agreement with union; FTC scrutinizes healthcare noncompetes.
September 10
A federal judge denies a motion by the Trump Administration to dismiss a lawsuit led by the American Federation of Government Employees against President Trump for his mass layoffs of federal workers; the Supreme Court grants a stay on a federal district court order that originally barred ICE agents from questioning and detaining individuals based on their presence at a particular location, the type of work they do, their race or ethnicity, and their accent while speaking English or Spanish; and a hospital seeks to limit OSHA's ability to cite employers for failing to halt workplace violence without a specific regulation in place.