Rightwing alliance State Policy Network plots assault to “defund and defang” America’s unions. How labor scholars missed the Trump revolt: We thought we knew the white working class — then 2016 happened. Helaine Olen on how the rollback of pro-worker policies since Trump took office is staggering. The Trump administration’s ongoing attack on workers. Are employers using Trump’s ICE agents to intimidate workers? Here’s another way working mothers are penalized: Two blockbuster stories reveal that securing basic workplace rights for mothers requires an insane amount of labor. The decline of the labor and capital shares, as well as the decline in low-skilled wages and other economic trends, have been aided by a significant increase in markups and market power. Building more factories won’t help American workers — reforming wages and health care will.
In 1897, the New York Times argued police should open fire on striking workers. Laura M. Weinrib (Chicago): The Right to Work and the Right to Strike. From The Century Foundation, Shaun Richman on Labor’s Bill of Rights: “It is the time for unions and their allies to return to the rights-based rhetoric and constitutional legal strategies that preceded the passage of the National Labor Relations Act and the development of our current labor law regime”. The right to organize at work deserves constitutional protection. Thomas A. Kochan and Lee Dyer on a new social contract for work. There’s a strange debate at the Fed over whether the US can create too many jobs.
From Splinter, America’s biggest public union leader is in the fight of his life: Hamilton Nolan interviews Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; and Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, says he has a plan — let’s hope so. Bend the trend: Jared Bernstein on reviving unionization in America. Meet Larry Williams, the millennial who’s trying to save the labor movement with UnionBase, a Facebook for unions. The way forward for labor is through the states — but that requires the courts to reverse decisions that subverted federal labor law.
