By Benjamin Sachs 
in Vox

NFL team owners this week decided that players will no longer be allowed to take a knee during the playing of the national anthem. And if they do, they will be subject to punishment and their team will be subject to fines.

The policy is also illegal — for a host of reasons.... Read more about The NFL’s “take a knee” ban is flatly illegal

by Rick Smith 
WRAL Tech Wire

Vivek Wadhwa has been named a Distinguished Fellow with the Labor and Worklife program at Harvard Law School “to help with what I consider to be the most important research project of our times: to understand the impact of technology on jobs and develop policies to mitigate the dangers.”

Reached by WRAL TechWire, Wadhwa says the project is “something that [economist] Richard Freeman and I have long been discussing. There is anecdotal evidence automation is affecting jobs but not enough hard research.”... Read more about Can a Mad Max dystopia be stopped? Ex-RTP entrepreneur Wadhwa to find out at Harvard

By Dylan Matthews
Vox

The Trump era has sparked some of the most creative thinking in labor in years.

“Sectoral bargaining is certainly getting more attention in legal academic and labor law policy debates,” Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School and former practicing labor lawyer, says. “The way I would think about it is that there’s an existential panic about what will happen to the labor movement. That’s not new, it’s just getting worse. … If we need unions for economic and political equality as I think we do...

Posted by Evelyn Douek
in Podcast , The Harvard Law Record

Evelyn and Hannah sit down with Professor Benjamin Sachs, the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School, to learn about how labor and employment law is everywhere in your lives and the news, even if you don’t always see it, get some great movie recommendations and an interesting productivity tip.

By Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs
Washington Post

For the past three years, the federal government has painstakingly built a case against the world’s second-largest private employer, McDonald’s, charging the company with illegally harassing and terminating employees who have gone on strike with the “Fight for $15″ campaign.

Last month, shortly before the trial was expected to conclude, Peter Robb, the general counsel Trump appointed to the NLRB, announced that he wanted to halt the trial to settle the case with McDonald’s and its franchisees.

Settling a case might not sound so bad. But in this instance, “settling” is a euphemism for abandoning at the 11th hour a groundbreaking inquiry into whether a major employer like McDonald’s should be held accountable for violating the rights of its low-paid workers.... Read more about The Trump administration is abandoning McDonald’s workers — and everyone else

By Scott Reeder
Illinois Times

Janus doesn’t belong to the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees but must pay about $500 of the $70,000 he earns a year to the union in what are called “agency” or “fair share” fees. On Feb. 26 the United States Supreme Court will hear his case. At stake is whether government workers should, as a condition of employment, be compelled to pay money to a union. 

“I would say this case has the potential to be a landmark case,” Harvard University Law Professor Benjamin Sachs told Illinois Times. “Essentially, if the court rules in Mr. Janus’ favor, it would put every government worker in the United States under a right-to-work regime.”... Read more about Local landmark

By Dylan Matthews
The Vox

Labor unions in America are in crisis. In the mid-1950s, a third of Americans belonged to a labor union. Today only 10.7 percent do, including a minuscule 6.4 percent of private sector workers. The decline of union membership explains as much as a third of the increase in inequality in the US, caused voter turnout among low-income workers to crater, and weakened labor’s ability to check corporate influence in Washington, DC, and state capitals.

The future for traditional unions looks so bleak that a growing number of labor scholars and activists are coming to the conclusion that the US approach is dead and can’t be revived.

Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School and former practicing labor lawyer, says, “The way I would think about it is that there’s an existential panic about what will happen to the labor movement. That’s not new, it’s just getting worse. … If we need unions for economic and political equality as I think we do, we have to do something to stop that downward spiral.”

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Press Release

Thirty-six distinguished economists and professors of law and economics including three Nobel laureates, two recipients of the American Economic Association’s prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, and two past presidents of the American Economic Association filed an amici curiae brief to assist the Supreme Court in understanding the free-rider problem at issue in Janus v. AFSCME.

Richard B. Freeman, who holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University, and is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School, was on of the 36 signers.