Portside

This past year was a big one for working peoples' lives. The job market started to tighten, prompting pay increases even at near-minimum wage employers like McDonald’s and Walmart. The income floor also rose through legislation, with minimum wage increases from New York to Los Angeles, while fair scheduling and paid leave campaigns — newly popular with corporations themselves — got underway across the country as well. The Obama administration continued its spate of executive and regulatory actions strengthening protections for workers. The country became half right-to-work, but some old unions won back much of what they’d lost during the recession, and some new ones emerged where none had existed before.

So what’s in store for 2016? Here are a few themes to watch.

Will wages keep rising?

This is probably the biggest question facing the economy today, with some reason for concern that the great recession did enough damage, especially, to the earnings of young people that they might never recover to the point where they can attain all the accoutrements of adulthood — house, kids, 401(k)— that their parents enjoyed. The answer depends on a lot of things, among them the rate of job growth, how much more productive workers get and whether they regain enough bargaining power to demand a larger share of what they produce.

Local worker-friendly policymaking on the move

Despite the panoply of proposals pushed by both Democrats and Republicans, odds are that no serious labor and employment law will get made in Congress this election year. But that’s not really where the action is anyway. Labor unions and community groups racked up several victories last year, and have picked most of their new state, county and municipal targets for 2016, crafting proposals to raise minimum wages, mandate that employers provide paid leave and require more shared control over worker schedules. Meanwhile, since whomever each party nominates for president will strongly disagree with the other on these issues, expect them to be fully hashed out in debates and on the stump all the way through November.

Whither TPP?

One of the biggest projects the labor movement took on this year was defeating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal that unions believe will depress wages and send jobs to places with lower labor standards, like Malaysia and Vietnam. Despite some early success, they failed to deny the president the power to conclude the agreement, which Congress could now vote on as soon as Feb. 4. Even if they push it off until after the election, which appears likely, unions and their allies might have a hard time killing it for good.

SCOTUS and the fate of public sector unions

Although unions now represent a tiny share of the private sector workforce, they’re still sitting at about 35 percent of government employees. That could change, rapidly, if the Supreme Court rules against them in Friedrichs vs. the California Teachers Association, which concerns the question of whether the “fair share” payments that workers must make whether they join the union or not are a violation of free speech. If the court decides that they are, no government worker will have to pay dues of any kind, creating a “free rider” problem that could send the unions into a tailspin and change the political landscape especially in states where they’re still a strong voice for public services.

On-demand death match continues

Will new growth in the labor movement flourish or die on the vine? The year 2015 saw a number of improbable organizing victories in the new economy. Unions went from having almost zero presence in digital media to winning elections at Vice, Salon, Gawker, Al Jazeera America, Guardian America — and very nearly the Huffington Post. The push to organize university adjunct professors and dramatically raise their pay gained steam. Through a broad campaign that highlighted technology’s role in rising inequality, Teamsters in the Bay Area organized many of the bus drivers who shuttle Facebook and Google employees from San Francisco to corporate campuses down the valley.

All of those wins potentially open up avenues for labor's future growth at a time when unions are still hemorrhaging members in traditional labor bastions like Michigan and Indiana — and may yet lose more, if states like West Virginia and Missouri go right-to-work as well. But it’s still a very fluid situation, and long-term success will depend on sustained momentum through 2016.

On-demand death match continues

The practice of classifying workers as independent contractors for additional flexibility and freedom from employment obligations has been a problem for decades. But 2015 was the year it broke into the popular consciousness, with icons of the on-demand economy facing what they consider an existential threat: Lawsuits, which could prompt courts to decide that workers who use Uber, Handy and other app-based service platforms are employees rather than independent contractors. That would force the fast-growing sector to re-think its business model, and also add urgency to a discussion that’s cropped up in recent months around whether social benefits should be decoupled from the employment relationship, to better cover workers now stuck without them in a world where that relationship has been substantially weakened.

Will the NLRB finally subdue McDonalds?

Speaking of the employment relationship: Over the past few years, the Service Employees International Union has been systematically filing labor complaints against McDonald’s franchisees, charging that the corporate flagship is a “joint employer” and should be equally liable for any violations. The National Labor Relations Board’s General Counsel agreed, and bundled all those complaints into a big case that will see arguments starting in January. The situation grew a lot more friendly to the union back in August, when the board embraced a more expansive definition of what it means to be a joint employer, striking fear in the hearts of franchisors and other companies that use contractors everywhere. If SEIU wins, the plan is to use the threat of future labor cases to force the global company to recognize a union of cooks and cashiers — still an unlikely prospect, to be sure, but one with potentially massive implications if successful.

Lydia DePillis is a reporter focusing on labor, business, and housing. She previously worked at The New Republic and the Washington City Paper. She's from Seattle.