News & Commentary

November 14, 2016

Adi Kamdar

Adi Kamdar is a student at Harvard Law School.

While it has been covered many times in the past week, Marketplace further explores why labor had weakened support for the Democrats this election. While Trump did not win a majority of union households, “he did cut into President Barack Obama’s margin.” Various union members weigh in on why the ground game was not as effective as it was in past elections, and why various union members flipped from Clinton to Trump. For example, autoworkers, whose jobs the Obama administration restored, found themselves with lower pay and fewer benefits—a fact that Trump promised to fix.

Veterans made up 44% of all full-time federal government job hires, according to the Washington Post. Just over two-fifths of these hires were disabled veterans. This news isn’t all positive: former servicemembers do not stay in government in jobs as long as non-veterans. Furthermore, the preferred hiring of veterans has “fueled culture clashes in some federal offices” and “resentment from job candidates who did not serve and see their prospects for getting hired diminish.” Several federal agencies—including the Pentagon—have complained that they cannot hire the skilled candidates they want because of the veteran-hiring constraints.

As the Guardian and Bloomberg BNA note, Trump’s administration poses threats to union rights: erasing Obama’s overtime pay regulations, promoting right-to-work laws (perhaps even on a federal level), and filling the Supreme Court with an anti-union justice, threatening to tip the balance in the next Friedrichs-like case.

Oh, and Donald Trump is now hiring. The New York Times weighs in on his plans and choices for top spots.

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