As the corporate-funded effort to recall California governor Gavin Newsom intensifies, the governor’s team has increasingly activated labor groups to mobilize support for his campaign.  Unions have spent millions in recent weeks opposing what they frame as an “antiworker” and “antiunion” initiative.  Despite the backing, the dynamic between Newsom and the state’s powerful unions can be thorny.  After a surge of support from organized labor propelled him into the governor’s mansion in 2018, a string of pivots early in his term — abandoning single payer health insurance, vetoing several of prounion bills — alienated union leaders.  Still, unions have generally embraced the governor’s leadership during the pandemic.  And there is little doubt his sensitivity to economic injustice eclipses that of his leading opponent in the recall effort, a reactionary radio host who maintains that the minimum wage is unconstitutional and has characterized the notion that “unions are for workers” as a “myth.”

POLITICO previews that in the coming months the NLRB’s incoming Democratic majority is poised to carry out sweeping policy changes, which could dramatically shift the economic balance of power “toward workers and away from employers.”  Among other things, the new members have indicated interest in extending the Act’s protections to nontraditional categories of workers, expanding the scope of protected activity, and increasing damages exposure where employers interfere with organizing efforts.  POLITICO suggests these policy initiatives could “serve as a backdoor for enacting provisions included in [the PRO Act].”  But in reality the Board’s transformative capacity is limited.  Administrative policymaking cannot replicate the fundamental statutory overhaul many consider essential to revitalize the labor movement.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is scheduled to join union members at a rally in Boston today aiming to pressure the major rideshare companies to withdraw their exorbitant ballot initiative seeking to cement independent contractors status for the states tens of thousands of gig drivers.  The initiative is analogous to California’s notorious Prop. 22, which a judge in the state recently found was inconsistent with the state’s constitution.

BLS data released on Monday reveals that union density modestly increased in the last couple years, which analysts contend largely reflects the millions of furloughs and discharges stemming from the pandemic.  Still, the data displays the impressive degree to which unions managed to insulate their members from economic dislocation during the pandemic, which recent research from UCLA underscores, finding that nonunion Latino workers were nearly seven times as likely as their unionized counterparts to experience displacement in the early months of the pandemic.

The economic effects of the pandemic were devastating, deepening poverty and precarity for millions of people.  The silver lining, though, as Kevin observed over the weekend, is that the labor movement might have emerged in its strongest position in decades.