The top lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board issued an official opinion this week that players at all 17 private colleges in the FBS are employees of their schools. It is a significant expansion of a 2014 ruling by NLRB regional director Peter S. Ohr that Northwestern football players are employees.
If New Hampshire, Missouri and Kentucky succeed in enacting "right-to-work" bills, it would be the most states rolling back union power in one year since 1947, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Success in New Hampshire would also make it the first state in the Northeast with a "right-to-work" law. The bills are a further reflection of organized labor's falling clout. Just 10.7 percent of American workers belonged to a labor union in 2016.
An investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found systemic race and gender discrimination throughout the temp industry, including in Chicago.
That states can pass laws banning mandatory union dues is not new. Congress amended labor law in 1947 to allow individual states to pass right-to-work laws.
“How it affects the workforce is really simple: It lowers wages,” said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center. “If you strip it to its core, this is about reducing the power of workers to bargain for a decent living.”
As recently as 2015, Donald Trump was still collecting a $168,000
pension — and maybe more — from the Screen Actors Guild
for playing himself in The Apprentice. Now that Trump is about to be president, the most
important question is: What is Trump's plan to save the
system that is designed to protect millions of union pensions like his own?
More than 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors staged a six-day sit-in December 2008 when the factory was abruptly closed, resulting in a settlement. The occupation received international attention and became a symbol of workers’ rights amid the economic recession.
In the face of Trump and the GOP’s likely nationwide attack on unions, labor leaders are scrambling to ensure that they have a hand in reshaping a Democratic Party that has, as union power has diminished, sometimes pushed organized labor to the margins. Union members make up about 100 of the roughly 447 voting members of the Democratic National Committee, making union support a major factor in the race for DNC chair.
Democrats were wrong to think that shifting demographics alone would hand them victory. What then determines whether workers respond to economic grievances with nativism or solidarity? In a word, organization.
At the top of Representative Virginia Foxx's agenda is the U.S. Labor Department rule that would extend mandatory overtime pay to more than 4 million workers. A federal judge in Texas blocked the rule last month before it took effect, but the Labor Department has challenged that ruling in a federal appeals court.
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