News & Commentary

May 5, 2021

Jason Vazquez

Jason Vazquez is a staff attorney at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2023. His writing on this blog reflects his personal views and should not be attributed to the Teamsters.

On Tuesday, the Clean Slate for Worker Power, a project developed by Harvard Law School faculty Benjamin Sachs and Sharon Block, released a comprehensive report designed to fundamentally reimagine the labor law regime in ways that would enable working people to build countervailing economic power.

Aimed at addressing the duel crises of economic and political inequality, the report poses the basic question: what would labor law look like if, starting from a clean slate, it was designed to empower working people to construct an equitable democracy and economy?  The report — the product of months of intensive collaboration with union leaders, academics, and other stakeholders — outlines a sweeping series of policy reforms. These include, among other things, establishing a system of sectoral bargaining, expanding the scope of mandatory bargaining subjects to include fundamental decisions regarding the scope and direction of the enterprise, democratizing corporate governance, and cabining the capacious preemption doctrines that have blocked innovation at the subfederal level.

In sports news, the four largest professional sports unions in the United States expressly endorsed  the PRO Act on Tuesday. “Now is the time to overcome decades of increasing obstacles to working people who choose to exercise their right to organize a union,” the NFLPA, MLBPA, NBPA, and MLHPA said in a joint statement. The Act is all but guaranteed to continue languishing in the Senate unless something manages to dislodge the aversion among a small group of recalcitrant Senate Democrats — some of whom are avid sports fans — to bypassing the filibuster.

While unlikely to prove transformative, the heightened public awareness resulting from the vocal support of these highly visible unions — which represent many of the world’s most famous athletes — may help move the needle.

In international news, violent protests in demand of economic justice are continuing to rattle Colombian society. Orchestrated by the country’s largest unions, the widespread demonstrations were sparked by a tax reform plan the country’s reactionary president put forth last week, which threatened to sharply elevate the prices of many goods and services.

Although the president swiftly rescinded the proposal, caving to the explosive public outcry, the protests have continued to escalate, transforming into a broader outpouring of resentment and frustration over the country’s deepening economic woes — particularly its poverty, inflation, unemployment, and inequality.

On Monday, the protests took an unnervingly lethal turn, as security forces in Cali, a large city in the country’s southwest, reportedly opened fire into a dense crowd of protestors in what some have characterized as a “massacre.” At least a dozen protestors were killed, with hundreds more injured. Emboldened by the bloodshed, the unions have called for a sweeping national strike today.

In doctrinal news, the NLRB’s Republican majority found that telecommunications conglomerate AT&T violated federal labor law by disciplining a union steward for recording a meeting in which an employee was discharged. Significantly, however, the Board declined to invalidate the company policy invoked to punish the steward, thereby repudiating in part its Lutheran Heritage doctrine, under which it would set aside an otherwise lawful workplace rule if applied to suppress Sec. 7 rights.

Lastly, in an (inadvertently) amusing piece published Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Business Times reports that several local business have apparently discovered a novel management strategy to address staffing shortages: offering decent wages.

The outlet reports that after struggling with severe staffing shortages for months, the businesses suddenly found themselves inundated with thousands of applications after significantly hiking wages. As labor shortages persist across the country, these enterprising local capitalists may have unearthed the key to commercial success: affording employees basic dignity. One can only hope their revolutionary approach gathers steam.

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