The National Labor Relations Board recently gave businesses the go-ahead to misclassify employees as independent contractors. In the wake of that and other horrible decisions, former board member and current AFL-CIO general counsel Craig Becker writes that the NLRB is “the administrative state, remade in Trump’s image.” So how does that look?
Trump’s NLRB is “purely reactionary. It has no vision of how the law should promote healthy and productive labor relations, but seeks only to erase the recent past.” Literally, weeks after starting his job, the agency’s general counsel asked for the files on every major decision of the Obama era so that they might all be overturned. Next, Becker writes, “while Trump claims to speak for American workers, he has staffed the NLRB with longtime frontmen for their corporate employers.” And they’re refusing to recuse themselves from cases in which their former law firms represented employers.
Third, according to Becker, “despite the president’s rhetoric, his NLRB is not deregulating but, rather, selectively regulating—that is, regulating unions but not employers.” Trump’s political appointee is overturning huge numbers of decisions made by career attorneys … when they decide against prosecuting unions. And fourth, “Trump’s NLRB has contempt for procedural norms and fairness.” That means reversing precedent without giving public notice to hear from people who might be affected.
Overall, what this spells out for the NLRB, and for the Trump administration more generally, is that “laws are being used to silence and oppress the very people they were intended to protect—workers, borrowers, consumers.“
● Jacobin has introduced a new labor advice column written by longtime organizer and writer Jane McAlevey. It’s going to be worth a follow—the first column is “I Quit My Job to Dedicate Myself to Organizing. What Now?”
● On the job 24 hours a day, 27 days a month.
● Marshfield, Massachusetts, residents support union workers as trash strike enters seventh day.
● Crazy Rich Asians co-writer left sequel after learning white male colleague was paid about 10 times as much.
● The Kentucky Labor Cabinet hunted down teachers who joined protests by sifting through Capitol visitor logs, superintendents’ emails, and more than 12,000 sick-day entries.
● "Content farm" Mandatory.com fired workers for asking why their paychecks were late. One person was apparently making $600 a month for writing 120 pieces. Check out this Twitter thread by the first person fired.
● Eugene Scalia, Trump’s Labor nominee, earned millions while working for big business, disclosure shows.
● Amazon promises us next-day delivery. At what cost?
● Arlene Inouye of Unite Teachers Los Angeles writes about How Los Angeles teachers built up our courage to strike.
● Alaska leading the latest assault on unions, Erik Loomis writes.
● Meatpacking is already a terrible, brutal job. The Trump administration is making it worse.
● UAW workers approved strikes should they become necessary as the union bargains new contracts with the automakers.
