Tag: labor

Tim Scott Says Black Americans Were Better Off Under Donald Trump, So We Fact Checked Him

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has been hard at work trying to get former President Donald Trump to choose him as his Vice Presidential pick. The South Carolina Senator spent the last several months showering Trump with praise and making a case that Black voters should side with the Republican presidential nominee. ‘Imaginary’ Star DeWanda Wise […]

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The FTC Says a Giant Supermarket Merger Will Screw Workers—Along With Customers

I answered the Kroger and Albertsons executives’ self-justifying argument with the argument that when you fight market concentration with more market concentration, the end result is not going to be less market concentration. The FTC complaint, informed by a superior understanding of antitrust law, goes to great lengths to argue that the (unmentioned) 30 percent […]

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The FTC Says a Giant Supermarket Merger Will Screw Workers—and Customers

I answered the Kroger and Albertsons executives’ self-justifying argument with the argument that when you fight market concentration with more market concentration, the end result is not going to be less market concentration. The FTC complaint, informed by a superior understanding of antitrust law, goes to great lengths to argue that the (unmentioned) 30 percent […]

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Stop This Ruinous Albertsons-Kroger Merger

The price issue is especially salient, given public outrage over food prices. Writing earlier this month in The Washington Post, Abha Bhattarai and Jeff Stein reported that food prices rose 25 percent during the past four years, compared to an overall inflation rate of 19 percent. More than two-thirds of voters said, in a November […]

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This Ruinous Grocery Store Merger Must Be Stopped

The price issue is especially salient, given public outrage over food prices. Writing earlier this month in The Washington Post, Abha Bhattarai and Jeff Stein reported that food prices rose 25 percent during the past four years, compared to an overall inflation rate of 19 percent. More than two-thirds of voters said, in a November […]

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Stop This Ruinous Albertsons-Kroger Merger

The price issue is especially salient, given public outrage over food prices. Writing earlier this month in The Washington Post, Abha Bhattarai and Jeff Stein reported that food prices rose 25 percent during the past four years, compared to an overall inflation rate of 19 percent. More than two-thirds of voters said, in a November […]

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Elon Musk and Amazon Team Up to Try to Demolish Workers’ Rights

Musk also claimed during the event that unions “naturally try to create negativity in a company.” While that assertion is questionable, unionization could imperil Musk’s meticulous efforts at image management and brand promotion, which have helped turn Tesla and SpaceX into multi-billion-dollar companies. It would also make it harder for Musk to impose his own […]

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Union Accuses Sierra Club of Plotting to Fire Strikers

Tensions were already high coming into this round of contract negotiations. Last year, the Sierra Club began laying off large numbers of employees in order to account for a purported $60 million budget gap and restructure the organization around state-based chapters. While Berman declined to provide figures as to how many staff had been laid […]

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EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Planning to Guarantee Jobs for Everyone, Here’s How …

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks at a news conference calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the U.S. Capitol building on November 13, 2023 in Washington, DC.Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Staff (Getty Images) Roughly 60 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made the case for a different kind […]

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The CEOs Are Warming to Trump

As Brian Beutler pointed out in his Off Message newsletter, this was worthy of alarm bells: “The question of whether elites, particularly center-right elites, choose to abide fascism is central to the survival of democracy.” In a later post, Beutler dove deeper into Dimon’s rhetoric, and found evidence that whatever ties that might have bound […]

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Trump Whines about UAW Endorsement, Calls Shawn Fain a “Dope”

The benefits of free flights didn’t stop at the NRA head, who also effectively allowed his family to use the company credit card for trips, charging the NRA more than $1 million for flights around the country, including a $26,995 flight from Dallas to Orlando, a $15,495 flight from Las Vegas to Nebraska, and a […]

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Trump Tears Into Auto Union Leader After Losing Endorsement to Biden

The benefits of free flights didn’t stop at the NRA head, who also effectively allowed his family to use the company credit card for trips, charging the NRA more than $1 million for flights around the country, including a $26,995 flight from Dallas to Orlando, a $15,495 flight from Las Vegas to Nebraska, and a […]

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How Surveillance Is Changing Our Most Intimate Relationships

Then there are the subtle ways in which the increasing digitization of our social and professional lives encourages us to surveil potential mates and assume they’re doing likewise. Daters are now replicating state surveillance, says lawyer and surveillance expert Heidi Boghosian. You might research, or put less kindly, stalk someone before meeting them. In theory […]

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A Trump Reelection Will Be Hell on American Workers

As his replacement, Trump nominated Eugene Scalia, a former corporate lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While a BigLaw attorney, Scalia made a living defending corporations from the very department he was chosen to head. He boasted a powerhouse clientele, including Boeing (which he defended […]

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Donald Trump Is No Friend to the Working Class

As his replacement, Trump nominated Eugene Scalia, a former corporate lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While a BigLaw attorney, Scalia made a living defending corporations from the very department he was chosen to head. He boasted a powerhouse clientele, including Boeing (which he defended […]

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A Death at Walmart

OSHA’s inspection reports from Arkansas do not provide much insight into Walmart’s worker safety practices there. From 2012 to 2022, OSHA launched just eight Walmart inspections in Arkansas. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency provided records for just three of these cases, explaining that the others had been destroyed per […]

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Elon Musk’s Odious One-Man War Against Labor Law Just May Succeed

Miraculously, the NLRB’s constitutional deficiencies went unnoticed by the courts for 89 years. They warrant attention now because the NLRB is inconveniencing Musk and his various companies. If these arguments sound familiar, that’s because they’re part of Donald Trump’s war on the administrative state, which Trump’s then-chief strategist, Steve Bannon, pledged to “deconstruct” in 2017. […]

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Hero of the Year: Shawn Fain

What about nonunion companies like Tesla and Toyota? “Foreign automakers operating in the United States (Toyota, Hyundai, etc.) pay their workers about $55 per hour all in,” Rampell observed in September. “Tesla is estimated to pay workers somewhere in the mid-$40s. In other words, the legacy manufacturers are already at a significant cost disadvantage compared […]

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Tipping Is Immoral

But of course neither Amy Vanderbilt (1908–1974) nor Letitia Baldridge (1926–2012) ever knew today’s world, where you’re invited to tip at a retail checkout counter where the only service is to ring up a charge and perhaps bag a few items, or at a self-checkout machine where no service is provided at all. Tipping is […]

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How Corporations Crush New Unions

In a statement, REI said it’s typical to take at least 19 months to hammer out a first contract. “Negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement is a lengthy process,” a spokesperson said. “We are engaged in good faith bargaining with stores that have chosen union representation and will continue to participate fully in the negotiating […]

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Union-Busting at the Bargaining Table

In a statement, REI said it’s typical to take at least 19 months to hammer out a first contract. “Negotiating a first collective bargaining agreement is a lengthy process,” a spokesperson said. “We are engaged in good faith bargaining with stores that have chosen union representation and will continue to participate fully in the negotiating […]

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The Actors’ Union May Have Come Up Short in the A.I. Wars

But the fact that SAG-AFTRA voted to strike at all, and the gains it made, showed that its leadership and members are becoming more unified and engaged in making changes in their industry, amid a wave of labor organizing across the country. The “unity and solidarity” built on the picket lines alongside the WGA and […]

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Did the Actors’ Union Really Win?

But the fact that SAG-AFTRA voted to strike at all, and the gains it made, showed that its leadership and members are becoming more unified and engaged in making changes in their industry, amid a wave of labor organizing across the country. The “unity and solidarity” built on the picket lines alongside the WGA and […]

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The GOP Showed Again How Anti-Worker It Really Is

Enjoying union benefits without joining the union and paying for those benefits is known as the “free rider” problem, and it reduces union membership. The free-rider problem is why private-sector union membership in right-to-work states (5.2 percent) is roughly half the rate in non-right-to-work states (10.2 percent). According to a June 2022 study by Nicole […]

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New York Appeals Court Tells Trump to STFU

Advertisers have long been in revolt against Musk’s designs for the site, which have consistently made the platform less appealing for brands to appear upon. But in recent days, advertisers have found new reason to flee the site, after an explosive Media Matters report published earlier this month revealed that X was routinely placing antisemitic […]

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Elon Musk’s Open Secret

Tesla has just about 130 employees in Sweden and does not produce cars there. Yet a growing number of unions have joined the effort to uphold the country’s muscular, hard-fought labor market norms against the U.S. manufacturer’s attempts to evade them. Many fear Tesla, if unchallenged, could set a worrying precedent for foreign firms similarly […]

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The Hilarious Reason Elon Musk May Regret Going to War With Sweden

The solution? Reverse course on a party maxim to oust Trump from the public consciousness, according to Democratic leadership, who no longer feel that ignoring the real estate mogul is an effective tactic and instead are quietly hoping for live broadcasting of his notorious campaign rallies, reported The New York Times. “Not having the day-to-day […]

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Even Bank Workers Want to Unionize Now

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Unions Are Finally Going Where the Money Is

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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