This awful @washingtonpost.com editorial is a reminder to call your congresspersons and tell them to support the bipartisan Faster Labor Contracts Act today!

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...

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...

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...

"None of this is normal." www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...

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?

Fitting. www.newsmax.com/finance/stre...

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/...

"If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days." Should do wonders for FL's test scores. www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/b...

Surely the pro-worker senior Senator from MO will weigh in on this anti-worker overreach by his statehouse GOP colleagues? www.stltoday.com/news/local/g...

Amidst all the chaos of the past months, one fascinating under-the-radar story is the continuing transformation of Josh Hawley. “I’m not going to vote for Medicaid benefit cuts,” “We need to get wages up...and we can’t do that without organized labor.” www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...

It was a real pleasure discussing the present, past, and possible future of the labor movement on the Inequality Podcast - and to hear @dschneider.bsky.social talking schedule unpredictability. Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/18Nf...

To the extent a pro-worker contingent is growing within the GOP, it sure hasn’t penetrated the executive branch. apnews.com/article/coll...

Breaking news: A federal judge just ordered the reinstatement of Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, whom Trump fired to eliminate the board’s quorum. Trump’s firing was ‘unlawful’ and therefore ‘null and void’

Two union-backed bills are being introduced in Congress this week - the PRO Act, and the bipartisan Faster Labor Contracts Act, whose chief Senate sponsor is [head spins] Josh Hawley. Early test of the size of the emerging pro-labor GOP faction. www.axios.com/2025/03/04/j...

Good. www.politico.com/live-updates...

I get the impulse - and the fury behind it - but Dems shouldn’t oppose this nominee. There are political and policy upsides to backing her. www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Shaking up the Dems' consultant class was good advice two decades ago (via @amysullivan.bsky.social) and is good advice today: washingtonmonthly.com/2005/01/12/f...

And it shows: "Martin is the first U.S. attorney for D.C. in at least 50 years not to have served as a judge or federal prosecutor." (More here: www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...) bsky.app/profile/jess...

An expanding labor force means unions must recruit many members just to maintain the prior unionization rate. All else equal, 2.2 million new jobs means unions must organize 220k workers to maintain last year's 10% density. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

UNION MEMBERSHIP continues to fall, now below 10% for the first time in over a century. This despite a huge increase in workers winning union elections last year, but not yet enough to impact this long decline (that summary here: ericdirnbach.medium.com/u-s-union-el...). www.bls.gov/news.release...

Wilcox’s term wasn't up until 2028; her firing appears blatantly illegal. With no quorum, the NLRB cannot operate. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...

Absolutely dispiriting. With an opportunity to lock in their majority on the NLRB until 2026, Dems needlessly delayed the vote then forgot to get word to Harris in time to break the deadlock. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Delighted that the Winter @ucstonecenter.bsky.social Inequality Workshop will open with @jakerosenfeld.bsky.social. His fascinating 2021 book You're Paid What You're Worth is particularly valuable to fellow economists given the complex sociological perspectives on wage determination he develops.

A looming port strike will provide an early test of how much power the pro-labor contingent has within the new administration. So far, Trump is siding with the union: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/b...

Winter IWS opens with @jakerosenfeld.bsky.social, Professor of Sociology at WUSTL . He will discuss a survey of 4,000 public sector workers that highlights unmet demand for unions among women and Black workers, revealing opportunities for public sector union growth. 🔗Register here: bit.ly/41tmGPG

Turns out it could be the Hardee's guy after all. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...

Upside: *slightly* higher rating than the average GOP rep on the AFL-CIO's scorecard: aflcio.org/scorecard/le... nypost.com/2024/11/12/u...

Tuesday's result overshadowed an important vote on Monday. In @us.theconversation.com I examine the outcome of the Boeing strike, and discuss why future labor wins will be harder to come by in the Trump administration. theconversation.com/boeing-worke...

Revisiting for obvious reasons. "If education and geographic location increasingly pattern the white vote, the same goes for many second- and third-generation nonwhite Americans." www.dissentmagazine.org/article/majo...