BY TERRI GERSTEIN
The Hill

When conservative British lawmakers bucked their leader on Brexit, many of us in the United States were left wondering, where are our principled conservatives willing to take on the president? Maybe our conservatives have lost the muscle memory of how to do something like this. It seems unlikely any will take on the president any time soon. But maybe they can begin with smaller steps to start rebuilding that muscle.

A great opportunity for taking principled action is happening this month. A bill that prohibits forced...

By Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs
Washington Post

Recognizing them as employees was a fine first step. Letting them unionize is crucial.

The struggle for gig workers’ rights took a big step forward this week when the California legislature passed a law classifying many such workers — including Uber and Lyft drivers — as “employees.” Once it is signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the law...

Aarian Marshall
Wired
Uber will not treat its California drivers as employees, the ride-hail company’s head lawyer said Wednesday, despite a new law designed to do just that. The law would create a more stringent test to separate independent contractors from full-time employees. The company’s argument rests on a premise that’s been a cornerstone since its early days: that Uber is a technology company, not a transportation one.

The ...

By Thomas Kaplan and Noam Scheiber
New York Times

Mr. Sanders called his new labor plan “the strongest pro-union platform in the history of American politics.” The plan “is an important recognition of the fact that tinkering around the edges isn’t going to be enough to return power to American workers in our economy,” said Sharon Block, a former National Labor Relations Board member appointed by President Barack Obama, who is executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

by
Kimberly Ann Elliott
Global Policy

Labor Provisions in Preferential Trade Agreements (LABPTA) are an important and necessary step forward in being able to better assess the role of these trade‐labor linkages in improving workers’ lives. A Response to ‘Labor Provisions in Trade Agreements (LABPTA): Introducing a New Dataset’, Damian Raess and Dora Sari, LWP Fellow

There are a great number of research questions that this new dataset allows us to explore, and that work has just begun. LABPTA is thus an important and necessary step forward in being able to better assess the role of these trade‐labor linkages in improving workers’ lives.... Read more about Assessing Trade–Labor Linkages: A Big Step Forward

BY RICK WARTZMAN
Fast Company

The central question revolving around Scalia is whether he will be willing to act, first and foremost, as a proponent of workers.

Critics note that, as a corporate attorney, he has helped to wipe out a rule meant to safeguard those seeking retirement-planning services, killed off a Maryland law mandating that certain large employers spend a prescribed dollar amount each year on health coverage for their employees, sought to raise the burden of proof needed for whistle-blowers to be protected, and vociferously opposed requirements meant to help workers avoid repetitive stress injuries.

Time and again in the current administration, “the impact of proposed rules on business is what shapes the agenda—not the benefit to workers,” says Sharon Block, who served as a senior aide in the Obama Labor Department and is now executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.