With the midterm elections coming, Democrats are trying to push through key legislative priorities — including renewing the child tax credit (CTC), which gives working parents a credit for each child and will expire in December 2025. No one doubts that it will be renewed; the credit has broad bipartisan public support.
Our study shows that over 1.5 million parents — 80 percent of whom are women — may be excluded from the full child tax credit despite working. At the current federal minimum wage, we estimate that a...
Though a win would have inevitably injected more momentum into the current labor organizing push, today’s loss still has the potential, according to labor experts, to further mobilize workers by laying bare the lengths to which corporations will go to defeat unionization drives.
Regardless of today’s loss, the unprecedented nature of the first victory will likely keep the movement energized. “[Workers] were told that Amazon was too big, that the...
The recent deluge of union elections at Starbucks Corp. stores is pushing the federal labor board to its limit, reflecting a broader influx in labor action as the pandemic winds down.
Flat funding and a restless labor force have created a near perfect storm for the National Labor Relations Board, charged with overseeing every private-sector union election. Election petitions have already swelled by 57% in the first half of the 2021 fiscal year as unfair labor practice charges rose by 14%. At the...
The Brockton-based company has paid large settlements in recent years in at least three lawsuits brought by workers who got hurt on the job and blamed JDC and other contractors.
Mark Erlich, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program and a retired officer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, said big job sites like these are supposed to have many checks on safety protocols. But things don't always go right.
In a massive victory, Amazon workers recently won a union at a warehouse in New York. So now the company is trying every trick in the union-busting playbook to throttle worker organizing at a second facility.
One of the consultant firms advertises that it offers “a team of men and women who represent bi-lingual, ethnic and cultural diversity” that will “meet with the individual employees, establishing both rapport and credibility,” and notes that its services will help address situations in which the company’s management and...
There are gaping holes in what the law requires employers to reveal about their campaigns to keep their workers from unionizing.
Instead of hemorrhaging money hiring anti-union consultants to mimic their workforce’s demographics while spewing tired anti-union tropes, companies could figure out how to work effectively with unions. They could recognize that poor treatment of workers is unsustainable and accept that the tide is turning. They might well discover that a unionized workforce ...
BY JOSEFA VELASQUEZ ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE The City, NYC
The retail giant is challenging NLRB certification, and a second vote at a nearby warehouse looms ahead. That’s all before anyone sits down at the bargaining table to discuss a contract.
Aside from Amazon’s objections to the vote, it could be a long road to getting the company and the ALU to agree on a contract. While the NLRB requires employers to bargain in good faith once the...
In the coming days, the Amazon Labor Union may face a challenge from Amazon over the legitimacy of the election results that, if successful, could overturn the outcome. If the union survives that potential challenge, it will enter negotiations with the company over the contours of a union contract at the facility that will likely stretch on for months.
If Amazon foregoes a challenge of the results or the...
Amazon workers have voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history in the United States, securing a sweeping and unexpected victory in a National Labor Relations Board election for a group of around 8,000 workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
"Amazon is a corporation with massive essentially unlimited resources which it has deployed to stop workers from exercising their right to organize, and that nonetheless the workers have been able to...
Overall U.S. unionization declined last year, despite 2021’s wave of prominent strike authorizations, mass resignations, and other organizing efforts. But Smalls’s win signals that there’s an opening for workers, one that many others are now more likely to explore. “The psychological and symbolic importance of a win can’t be overstated,” says Sharon Block, a former Obama Labor Department policy chief who now directs Harvard Law School...
Sharon Block, a labor policy expert who most recently served as acting administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Biden administration, has been appointed professor of practice at Harvard Law School, effective July 1.
Block, who currently serves as the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, first joined HLS in 2017, where, with Professor ...
I am so happy to share with OnLabor readers the news that Sharon Block is returning to Harvard Law School as a professor of practice and the Executive Director of the Labor and Worklife Program. Sharon’s return is a great boon for labor law at Harvard and an incredible opportunity for us to consider the future of LWP, including the Clean...
I think it is fair to say that based on President Biden’s first State of the Union (SOTU) address, the state of labor’s interests in the Biden Administration is strong. Even before President Biden entered the House Chamber Tuesday night, Biden sent a signal about how central the labor movement is to his presidency. Starting with President Reagan, presidents have used invitations to sit with the First Lady during SOTU as symbols of their values. ...
Lawmakers have passed legislation granting benefits and protections, but allowing Lyft and Uber to continue to treat drivers as contractors.
Worker advocates worried that other states would try to replicate the legislation. “I hope Governor Inslee seeks additional analysis of its potential impact,” said Terri Gerstein, a workers rights lawyer at Harvard...
Now, a year after Seattle's minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers took effect, state legislators are considering a similar floor of pay and benefits for drivers statewide. The bill, House Bill 2076, has already cleared the House and a key committee in the Senate.
If passed, drivers would gain a guaranteed minimum per ride that would increase at the same pace as the state's minimum wage, which is currently $14.49. They would also begin accruing paid sick time, become eligible for workers compensation, and gain access to an appeals...
