For all the angst it’s already caused in corporate America, the strongest data privacy law in the nation landed on the West Coast last week with a relative whimper. But the flurry of legal notices that accompanied the California Consumer Privacy Act point to regulatory and political drama ahead this election year. The landmark California …
Wild West: Firms interpret California’s privacy law as they see fit Read More »
In the early morning hours of June 21, 2019, a catastrophic explosion tore through the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery in the southwest section of Philadelphia. The training and quick thinking of refinery workers, members of United Steelworkers Local 10-1, averted certain disaster and saved millions of lives. One month later, on July 21, …
Two days after Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales was forced from office in a right-wing military coup last November, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka condemned the coup on Twitter and praised Morales for reducing poverty and championing indigenous rights. In doing so, Trumka joined Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other prominent figures of the Left in …
To Build a Left-Wing Unionism, We Must Reckon With the AFL-CIO’s Imperialist Past Read More »
Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” plays in a classroom at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) as students mill about with pink “Undergraduate Workers UNITE!” buttons pinned to their shirts. Nearly 40 students from 10 institutions across the Northeast gathered Nov. 15–17, 2019, at UMass Amherst, a highly unionized workplace, for the Northeast Undergraduate Worker Convention (NEUWC). …
Labor 101 for Undergraduate Workers Seeking To Unionize Read More »
I can’t say I’m convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn’t start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street’s historic financial crisis. That calamity has defined the last 13 odd years—call them the long teens—and transformed American politics by showing the …
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, the AFL-CIO is partnering with SAG-AFTRA to host the second annual Labor Innovation & Technology Summit. The summit, led by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris and UNITE HERE International President D. Taylor, brings together union, technology, entertainment and media leaders to explore how these industries intersect and the potential impact for …
Sadly, it’s not just Republican lawmakers who overturn the will of the voters to keep workers underpaid and vulnerable. The Washington, D.C., mayor and council seem to be going out of their way to show that both sides do it. D.C. voters passed Initiative 77, a measure gradually raising the tipped worker minimum wage to the …
Madison, who works a customer service job at an airport spa, has an employee handbook that says “makeup should be well maintained” and “hands and nails must be well manicured.” She says the few men she works with just ignore these guidelines “because they’re meant for women but [it] doesn’t explicitly say that.” Her wages …
The Grooming Gap: What “Looking the Part” Costs Women Read More »
As the Trump administration redoubles decades of Republican efforts to beat U.S. workers and their unions into fearful submission, it’s worth thinking about where we’ve come from, how workers fought for some of the rights we now take for granted—and some of those we’re in danger of losing—as well as where we’re going, and how to make …
Work then, work now, and organizing to win: Five books about labor in the United States Read More »
If you’ve been in the workforce since 1979, how much have your wages gone up? If you’re a little younger, how much have the wages for a job like yours gone up in those years? I bet it’s not 157.8%—unless, of course, you’re in the top 1%. By contrast, wages for the bottom 90% grew by 23.9% …
It sure is great to be in the top 1%, this week in the war on workers Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
