The Right Believes It Has the Supreme Court Votes to Entirely Overturn Labor Law
The foundational 1935 labor law protecting workers is unconstitutional, according to major corporations and right-wing zealots who believe they have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn it. In the latest sign that anti-union forces will doggedly press the matter, a federal judge for the Northern District of Texas enjoined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing any allegations of employer violations of workers’ rights. The National Review hailed the decision as “A Welcome Blow to the NLRB.” This is after Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a similar injunction against the NLRB before the Western District of Texas in July. Both cases will work their way up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which has served as an expressway to steer anti-regulatory legal appeals to the Supreme Court ever since Trump packed it with right-wing ideologues. The arguments that the employers utilize, and even the immediate outcomes of these cases, are almost irrelevant to the ultimate goal: The right wing aims to repeal the 20th Century. But, in trying to repeal all […]
The Powerful Movement To Micromanage and Defund Public Schools Has Been Awfully Quiet About Police
Police are violently suppressing street protests across the country in mutiny against community demands for democratic accountability and respect for human rights. Their brutal rejection of basic demands for greater oversight and penalties has fueled larger demands for defunding police departments, if not outright abolition and replacement with other bodies. In this context, some activists are calling for a crackdown on police unions, which they say protect police from democratic accountability. That these calls are not being joined by a seemingly obvious ally is telling. There is already a political movement that blames unions for the harm done to Black communities by publicly funded institutions. Its adherents argue that these public bodies misspend the money they have and deserve no additional resources. It is well-funded by the philanthropy world, hyped by celebrities, cloaked in the rhetoric of civil rights and showered with uncritical media coverage, and has been successful in […]
Usher in a new day for labor: The courts can’t be counted on to protect workers anymore; Congress needs to pass new laws
As the Supreme Court prepares to decide whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination, it seems, at least to me, unlikely that a bench dominated by five very conservative men will protect gay employees. This should be a wake-up call: We cannot count on the courts to protect our rights in the workplace. We need a Congress that will actually pass laws, and high on the list of legislative priorities should be a “just cause” law that would protect every employee from unfair terminations. Common as a legal standard of employment across much of the industrialized world, and here routinely negotiated into union contracts, “just cause” is the principle that no employee can be fired without a legitimate, serious, work-performance reason. Such a legal standard would empower workers to speak out about pay disparities, to combat sexual harassment and to complain about unsafe […]
The Powerful New Idea in Elizabeth Warren’s Labor Platform
On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren released her long-awaited labor platform, titled “Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages.” The plan provides unions with a long wish list of badly needed reforms and new powers. It also makes a solid case that, like Bernie Sanders, she would be the labor movement’s biggest booster in the White House in generations. Several other candidates, including Julián Castro, Beto O’Rourke and Amy Klobuchar, have also recently put out lengthy labor plans, which provide examples of how (and how not) to stand out from the pack when the baseline position of most Democrats in repealing the Taft-Hartley Act. The biggest innovation in Warren’s platform is a private right of action in the federal courts against employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act. Currently, only employers are able to take their complaints directly to the federal courts, against a union picket line, boycott action or other alleged […]
Bernie Sanders’ Labor Plan Could Put a Union in Every Workplace in America
Bernie Sanders released his Workplace Democracy Plan on Wednesday. His campaign’s labor platform makes the strongest case of any of the candidates so farthat he would be unions’ best ally in the White House in generations. At a time when the Democrats’ official labor law reform proposal, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, would essentially overturn the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, the race to the left for labor’s support in the primaries demands bolder policies. Bernie Sanders does not disappoint. The stand-out measures Where Sanders’ labor platform is most exciting is its proposal for new workers’ rights and forms of union representation that transcend the National Labor Relations Board framework of enterprise-based contract bargaining. One is a “just cause” legal standard of employment, which would mean that non-managerial workers—whether they are represented by a union or not—could only be fired only for a legitimate, serious, work-performance reason. This has […]
On Labor, a Tale of Two Cities’ Mayors (with Presidential Ambitions)
It was a tale of two cities’ mayors (with presidential ambitions) this week. South Bend, Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg and New York’s Bill de Blasio—the two active-duty mayors among the 20 Democratic presidential candidates still on the debate stage—released their labor and workers’ rights platforms. Both mayors include fairly robust proposals to overhaul and modernize our nation’s main labor law, the National Labor Relations Act. But that should no longer be considered good enough. Given that Congressional Democrats’ official proposal right now, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, essentially overturns the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, adds card check under some circumstances and imposes meaningful financial penalties for employers who violate their employees’ rights, woe to the candidate who doesn’t propose to outdo it. Only one mayor, de Blasio, breaks new ground with his proposal; the other, Buttigieg, offers a survey course of think tank white papers and moderate reforms. I’m […]