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Regulators Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train
One year after a supply chain crisis caused shortages across the nation, the Biden administration is trying to prevent railroads from modernizing and…
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A Closer Look at The Guardian’s “The Uber Files”
On July 11, 2022, The Guardian published an expose of rideshare giant Uber’s business practices, based on a trove of leaked documents it obtained.
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Supreme Court EPA Ruling A Warning Shot to Agencies like NLRB
The Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act…
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Federal Agency Tries to Extend Reach with Joint Employer Standard
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal labor law enforcement agency, is likely planning to vastly expand its reach through a rulemaking on…
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Biden Says He Wants to Be the “Most Pro-Union President in the History of the United States”
Flattering the audience is one of the handiest tools a person has when giving a speech. It’s a simple way to establish a positive…
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As Gas Prices Rises, Ridesharing Industry Adjusts
Rideshare companies are currently feeling the pinch from high gas prices, but some of their drivers are weathering the change better than others. High…
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Dead Man’s Switch: Biden Administration Fights Railroad Automation
Of all modes of transportation, one would think that railways would be at the leading edge of automation. After all, they don’t use public…
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EEOC Nominee Kalpana Thinks Transparency Is an Important Value, Less Clear on Need to Abide by It
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may become a lot less accountable in its decision making than it was under the Trump administration should President…
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Court Tells NLRB Sometimes a Joke Is In Fact a Joke
In a significant win for common sense, a federal appeals court has found that sometimes a joke is just a joke, even when…
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Let’s Not Allow Davis-Bacon to Further Clog Job Arteries
The Biden administration is proposing to make government contracting even more expensive by revamping the Davis-Bacon Act. This law requires that related workers…
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House Staffers Can Now Unionize
The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved, for the first time ever, allowing congressional staff to form unions. This will be an interesting experiment.
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Unions Are Getting Smarter by Returning to Old-School Organizing Tactics
A new wave of union activism has swept the country in recent months with workers at Starbucks, Amazon, and even Apple pushing to organize.
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NLRB General Counsel Calls for End to Secret Ballots in Workplace Elections
The general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is calling on the agency to unilaterally adopt “card check” rules for all…
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NLRB General Counsel Targets Mandatory Attendance Meetings
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is taking aim at “captive audience meetings” held by employers, arguing that it is…
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Amazon Union Wins in Staten Island with Backing of 32 Percent of Workers
Key to understanding the union organizing win at Amazon’s Staten Island facility is that there were enough workers who wanted a union, or…
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Weil, That Was a Close One!
David Weil, the Biden administration’s pick to be the administrator of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division, was rejected…
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The Best Thing the Department of Labor Can Do for Freelancers is Keep the Trump-era Rule
In a surprising move, a federal court has thrown out the Biden administration’s attempt to throw out the Trump administration’s new rule to…
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Biden Administration Seeks to Redefine Word “Prevailing”
The Biden administration has come up with an innovative way to aid its union allies: redefining the word “prevailing” to mean its opposite.
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Inflation Numbers Show a Minimum Wage Hike Is Still A Bad Idea
Like a slasher movie villain who refuses to die, the push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour seems to have…
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How Newt Gingrich Laid the Groundwork for Congressional Staff Unionizing
The current effort by congressional staff to unionize builds on a legal groundwork laid decades ago by Republicans. In fact, the idea…
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The One Area Where Voting Rights Isn’t Sacred: Union Elections.
There is one area of voting rights where many Democrats don’t seem to want every voice to be heard: union elections. Democratic lawmakers have…
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Unions Likely Received $36 Million in Improper PPP Loans
It is possible that labor unions improperly received more than $36 million in “loans” under the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The program was…
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Even Most Democrats Favor Right to Work Laws
For being so controversial, right to work laws are pretty popular. A majority of states, 27, have them and even Democrats will…
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Rising Pay Undermines Push for Increasing the Minimum Wage
A Department Labor report released Friday shows wages rising 4.5 percent, evidence that the Biden administration’s plan to raise the federal minimum wage…
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Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Still a Bad Idea Even If Properly Enacted
The best that can be said about the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw the executive order for its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and instead try…
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As Numbers Stagnate, Unions Continue to Look to Congress For Salvation
The Department of Labor’s latest statistics confirm that the union movement in the U.S. remains stagnant and slowly declining. Only 10.3 percent of…
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The Bizarre Logic of the NLRB’s Decision in the Amazon Union Case
The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) order overturning the workers’ rejection of a union at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, and…
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The Invisible Hand, Not Washington, Is Easing the Supply Chain Crisis
The supply chain crisis is showing signs of receding. This is happening not because of any action by the White House or Congress. The…
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Build Back Better’s $1.5 billion Gift to Unions
Hidden in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan is a provision that amounts to a $1.5 billion gift to unions. It is intended…
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We Wanna Negotiate This – Unions Cool to Biden Vaccine Mandate
The nation’s top unions have reacted coolly to the Biden administration’s proposed vaccine mandate, with many rejecting the administration’s unilateral approach and saying that…
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There Is Less to Biden’s Ports Deal than It Appears
President Biden on Wednesday announced that the two main ports on the West Coast will start operating 24 hours a day to help…
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Why Don’t U.S. Ports Operate 24/7? Ask the Unions
There has been a massive backlog for months now of cargo ships waiting to drop their goods at West Coast U.S. ports. As…
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America Needs More Truckers on the Road
Severe backups and bottlenecks in the nation’s ports, particularly on the West Coast, have created severe logistical and supply problems throughout the country. This…
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Fighting Income Inequality Won’t Help Workers
I just learned of the latest forthcoming study focusing on the issue of income inequality, this one promising to explain how regulations can…
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Are Unions Losing Hope for the PRO Act?
In a sign that unions are losing hope that the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act can pass Congress, they are now…
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Unions on Biden’s Vaccine Mandate: That’s Not in Our Contract
President Biden’s vaccination mandate announcement on Friday has drawn a notably cool reaction from unions. While none appear to have come out against it,…
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The Cost of Uncertainty in Dealing with the Pandemic
If there is one thing that businesses want more than anything else when it comes to regulations, it is predictability. That’s one case where…
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Mexican Workers Deserve Secret Ballot Elections; So Do U.S. Workers.
Today, U.S. labor leaders applauded Mexican workers for getting rid of an allegedly corrupt union at a General Motors (GM) plant in Silao,…
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Weil Is a Poor Choice to Lead Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division
Lawmakers should reject President Biden’s choice to serve as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, a major federal law…
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The Meaningless Symbolism of Raising the Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors
The Biden administration is planning to increase the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour, but there is much less to this…
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With PRO Act, Congress Readies National Version of California’s AB5 Fiasco
California’s AB5 law, which was meant to prevent worker misclassification, faced a popular backlash when it disrupted the livelihoods of freelancers and…
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Does DOL Nominee David Weil Believe in Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
David Weil, a Brandeis University professor and President Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division seems to believes that…
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Biden Is Right to Call for Rolling Back Occupational Licensing and Non-Compete Agreements
President Biden’s executive order today calling for occupational licensing and employment non-compete agreements to be rolled back is a good idea that could…
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How the Unemployment Rate Rose While the Economy Added Jobs
The Department of Labor’s (DOL) seemingly contradictory report Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate had risen marginally to 5.9 percent, up 1/10th of…
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Missouri Employers Must Jazz Up wages to Avoid St. Louis Blues
Employers are struggling to fill jobs in Missouri and that’s a good thing. It means wages and benefits in the state will rise and…
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Justices Affirm that Collective Bargaining Rights Shouldn’t Trump other Rights
The Supreme Court was correct in its 6-3 ruling today in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that a California regulation granting union organizers…
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The Way to Maximize Worker Freedom: Combine Right to Work and Micro-Unions
The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a pro-union bill currently awaiting action in the Senate, includes a lot ideas to coerce…
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The PRO Act Would Erode Individual Workers’ Rights
Suppose a piece of legislation was presented as an expansion of rights, when in fact it narrowed those rights. That ought to stir up…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economic recovery continues, but Congress is still intent on passing unneeded stimulus and infrastructure spending. Inflation is also up, and five antitrust bills…
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The Paycheck Fairness Act’s Solution to the Gender Pay Gap: Make It Impossible to Defend Against Claims of Discrimination
Congress hit a wall this week on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which narrowly failed 49-50 on a Senate vote on Tuesday to…