On Tuesday the International Brotherhood of Teamsters swore in a new General President, Sean M. O’Brien, who decisively defeated the candidate backed by outgoing General President James P. Hoffa, shattering the Hoffa dynasty’s reign over the union.

Mr. O’Brien, the president of a powerful Teamsters local in Boston for 16 years, cast himself as a reform candidate, espousing a militant and grassroots approach to organizing and bargaining that secured him the endorsement of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. His tenure could upend the national economy, as he has committed to aggressively organizing Amazon employees and many insiders predict his administration will unleash a highly disruptive strike against UPS — the nation’s largest unionized employer — when their contract expires next year. As CNN concluded, Mr. O’Brien may be “poised to shake up the US economy in a way no one else has in recent memory.”

Oxfam America released a new report this week examining “the crisis of low wages in the United States.” It uncovered that over 50 million workers in the U.S. economy — incredibly, nearly a third of the workforce — earn less than $15 per hour, a striking 90 percent of whom are not, as conservative rhetoric often presumes, teenagers. The report underscores the essential services low-wage workers provide our communities, “caring for our loved ones, transporting and harvesting our food, stocking our shelves, and delivering our packages.” Although millions of these workers “live in poverty and anxiety,” it notes that our economy and society would swiftly “grind to a halt” without their labor.

In the latest on the “Starbucks unionization wildfire” ripping across the nation, the NLRB announced yesterday that employees at a store in Seattle, the coffee giant’s hometown, unanimously voted to join Starbucks Workers United last week, becoming the 7th Starbucks store in the nation — and first on the West Coast — to do so.