On Tuesday, the Missouri supreme court struck down a 2018 state statute designed to dismantle public sector collective bargaining. The law dramatically constrained the activities of government unions — complicating the certification process, requiring regular renewal of certification and dues checkoff authority, and virtually eliminating the ability to strike or picket, among other things. As the law’s sponsors made clear, these restrictions were a step toward “the ultimate goal of right to work,” which Missouri voters decisively rejected in a ballot initiative the same year the invalidated law, essentially reproducing the language of the failed referendum, was introduced in the state legislature. The statute cynically carved out “public safety” unions, which the court concluded ran afoul of the state’s constitutional equal protection guarantee.

A report released Tuesday by the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a coalition of major unions, finds that Amazon employees are injured at nearly twice the rate of other warehouse workers. The report attributes this disparity to the intense productivity targets Amazon imposes on the millions of people working in its fulfillment centers, which are central to its business model. Somewhat poetically (or perhaps tragically), the report coincides with the surfacing of leaked pamphlets revealing that Amazon refers to its warehouse employees as “industrial athletes” and instructs them to “prepare their bodies” for intense toil. While the company’s vicious unionbusting tactics managed to suppress the historic union drive in Bessemer, it is inevitable that the degrading and dangerous conditions the SOC report exposes will continue to spawn organizing efforts.

On Tuesday a powerful coalition of California unions preemptively endorsed Governor Newsom in the recall election he appears increasingly likely to face later this year. Yet the state’s labor leaders do not uniformly support Newsom. The president of the largest public sector local in the state, SEIU 1000, refused to endorse the Governor, citing the steep wage cuts he imposed on state workers last year, in an effort to shore up a pandemic-induced budget shortfall. (Newsom has promised to restore the wages.) The president of SEIU California joined the coalition, however, voicing opposition to what he characterized as a “destructive, costly and distracting recall.”