Best case scenario for a labor movement reeling from attacks in 2025. Despite it all – NLRB lacking quorum, stripping away of bargaining rights for nearly a million federal workers – the overall unionization rate ticked up. Back in the double digits!
www.bls.gov/news.release...
In an otherwise bleak day for labor with the stripping of job protections for tens of thousands of federal workers, actual good news out of the South: the @uaw.org negotiated a first contract for the first successfully organized foreign-owned auto plant.
www.timesfreepress.com/news/2026/fe...
Just 2% of air traffic controllers will receive this bonus, no doubt engendering trust and goodwill when the next shutdown comes along!
www.wsj.com/business/why...
Flying soon? Prepare for delays. As I tell
@cnn.com air traffic controllers were an "understaffed and overworked group of employees" before the shutdown. Now add a lack of a paycheck with no end to the shutdown in sight.
I wish the ‘where did colleges go wrong?’ genre reflected more on the ‘Walmart offering $30/hour’ aspect of the dynamic. The college-for-all push rested on the belief that noncollege jobs paid terribly. That changed, and it’s no wonder the marginal college student recalculated.
Boeing benefits from the comparative lack of attention to this strike - one reason the company has bargained harder than in last year's West Coast dispute.
Why did the Teamsters endorse Ramaswamy? See this comment from the OH Plumbers & Pipefitters' head (also a Vivek endorser) for an explanation:
"We kind of try to read the tea leaves, and we believe that Vivek is going to be the next governor."
Ramaswamy, who has called for the elimination of teachers' unions and ending the right of federal workers to organize, wins Teamsters' endorsement *before* the Dems even have a nominee.
The GOP reached out to union workers in 2024 and won many of their votes. But Trump's labor policies have largely continued the party's historically anti-union stance #LaborDay buff.ly/Oreb5Vc
In advance of Labor Day, I scored the GOP's new pro-worker agenda. Upside: lots of room for improvement! Downside: *lots* of room for improvement.
theconversation.com/trump-admini...
The demolition of what little remained of labor law continues.
news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
Curious what O'Brien believes the outreach has achieved so far, aside from a Labor Secretary who has forsworn all of her past pro-labor positions.
www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Uncharacteristic about both last year's and this year's Boeing strike is the workers are out ahead of the union, voting down proposals the union urged them to accept. More of my thoughts @Marketplace www.marketplace.org/story/2025/0...
See p. 8:
Wait - Columbia will be collecting applicants' 'color' now? How?
"Columbia shall provide...admissions data...showing both
rejected and admitted students broken down by race, color, grade point average, and performance on standardized tests, in a form permitting appropriate statistical analyses."
Early results suggest Chavez-DeRemer's prior pro-labor stances weren't exactly deeply held.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
According to the survey, mean earnings for these full-timers is 179k! Unenrolling my daughter from the 3rd grade and getting her a TikTok account immediately.
www.keller-advisory.com/_files/ugd/7...)
Here's the otherwise interesting article!
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/b...
This, from the Sunday Times, is hard to believe. Admittedly I'm old and know nothing of the influencer trend, but ~12m full-time creator/influencers would mean this is now the largest occupation - by about 8 million workers.
Fantastic and timely book!
At this point, the Teamsters' victory in the labor secretary battle seems utterly inconsequential.
news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
"Organized labor has taken a leading role in challenging the Trump administration’s downsizing agenda in court."
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/b...
The conflation of "manufacturing jobs" w/ "good jobs" will be news to many recently hired (non-union, large #s working for staffing firms) manufacturing workers. See Myth #5:
www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five...
There is nothing inherent about these jobs that make them (to quote Lutnick today) “the coolest jobs, the highest-paying jobs" - it's worker power that makes all the difference.
In particular, some Obama-era economists (some of whom also worked in the Biden WH) have noted that when manufacturing jobs get re-shored, the wage premium doesn't come back, they pay like service sector jobs.
We could try sectoral bargaining or tight labor markets + focus on food/gas prices?
DOGE comes for CNN's headline writers.
In case anyone doubted the importance of public sector unions: "Unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government to put it more directly under his control."
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/u...
The Trump admin just illegally stripped collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers in 18 different departments across multiple agencies.
The regime stated that “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.”
www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...
