Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. He is also faculty director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law, employment law, and law and social change, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School. From 2002-2006, he served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C. Professor Sachs graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, and served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the New York Times and elsewhere. Professor Sachs received the Yale Law School teaching award in 2007 and in 2013 received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School. He can be reached at [email protected].
Welcome to On Labor, a new blog by Jack Goldsmith and myself dedicated to current developments in the world of workers, unions, and politics. Labor is a complicated field today. Complicated because the traditional labor movement is in dramatic decline, and, on some accounts, on the brink of disappearing entirely. The decline of unions – why it’s happening, whether and how it will continue, and what it means for our economy and our politics – is worth attention and analysis, which we will give it. But despite union decline – actually, in part because of it – “labor” questions remain central to multiple ongoing public debates. Witness the last two days on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times: the Journal goes on the attack about political disclosure rules for unions; the Times takes up strikes by fast food workers. Or consider the Supreme Court’s recent docket: one case raises the constitutionality of the current structure of public sector unions; another the legality of current models of organizing private sector unions.
As traditional unions decline, moreover, new worker organizations are moving to fill the gap, and, as a result, these organizations are now the subject of intense contestation. There are also innumerable questions about how work ought to be structured and managed, how workers ought to be represented and compensated, and about what the appropriate role of government is in all of this. We mean the blog to be a place where these questions will get raised and debated and, hopefully, clarified.
As a law professor, I have written extensively about these subjects, and the blog will be a forum for shorter writing that is more responsive to contemporary developments. Most of the posts will come from Jack and me, but we will be joined by a group of Harvard Law Students who will provide summaries of top daily news stories, background briefings on relevant legal and political developments, and some posts of their own. We will occasionally have guest posts from others in the field.
Like many blogs, On Labor is a work in progress. We welcome your ideas and suggestions as we go.
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
April 18
Disneyland performers file petition for unionization and union elections begin at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee.
April 18
In today’s Tech@Work, a regulation-of-algorithms-in-hiring blitz: Mass. AG issues advisory clarifying how state laws apply to AI decisionmaking tools; and British union TUC launches campaign for new law to regulate the use of AI at work.
April 17
Southern governors oppose UAW organizing in their states; Florida bans local heat protections for workers; Google employees occupy company offices to protest contracts with the Israeli government
April 16
EEOC publishes final regulation implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee gear up for a union election, and the First Circuit revives the Whole Foods case over BLM masks.
April 15
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of bakery delivery drivers in an exemption from mandatory arbitration case; A Teamsters Local ends its 18-month strike by accepting settlement payments and agreeing to dissolve
April 14
SAG-AFTRA wins AI protections; DeSantis signs Florida bill preempting local employment regulation; NLRB judge says Whole Foods subpoenas violate federal labor law.