The Weekly Download

“In this special blogcast, Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by music and labor experts to reveal the results of Power At Work’s #LaborGrammys2025. This awards ceremony features Elise Bryant, the founder-director of the DC Labor Chorus and co-host of the Labor Heritage Power Hour podcast; Chris Garlock, the Executive Director of the Labor Heritage Foundation and founder-coordinator of the Labor Radio Podcast Network; and Ruben Garcia, Professor of Law and Director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Nevada.”

“As the Academy Awards ceremony approaches, Power At Work is excited to announce our second Labor Oscars! #2025LaborOscars is dedicated to spotlighting films that feature worker power, unions, labor leaders, front-line union members, and workers’ collective action. This year we have added 13 more labor films to our original list published last year, including the acclaimed documentary Union about the organizing of the Amazon Labor Union.”

“Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia formed the chain’s first union on Monday, setting the stage for a larger organizing fight at the Amazon-owned grocer. Employees at the company’s Center City location voted 130 to 100 in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, according to a spokesperson at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency overseeing the election. Whole Foods has five business days to file a challenge to the results, though a spokesperson declined to say if it planned to.”

“Last week, over 1,400 workers in Boulder County made history, becoming the largest group to win union recognition since Colorado passed SB22-230 in 2022 granting county employees collective bargaining rights. The unit is also the largest group to join CWA District 7 in 25 years. Workers voted overwhelmingly to join Boulder County Employees Union-CWA (BCEU-CWA).”

“The Trump administration has swept into office with a volley of attacks: Gutting programs that acknowledge race and gender inequality. Freezing funding for a wide swath of programs (though that order has already been rescinded). New work rules. Immigration raids. Replacing career civil servants with political lackeys. A mass email inviting federal employees to resign.”

“J.D. Vance's ascent from Silicon Valley venture capitalist to the second-highest office in the nation lends new urgency to examining his narrow portrayal of Appalachia's working-class history. Few people serious about Appalachian Studies have much use for J. D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s self-admiring 2016 memoir, updated two-hundred year-old tropes bemoaning Appalachians’ shiftless character and poor behavior. It sits on a shaky foundation of, to be generous, anecdotal evidence.”

“In this live blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris will review the 2024 Union Member Survey results with Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist and senior researcher at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Watch now to hear Harris and Sojourner interpret what these results meant for worker power and collective in the past year, and what they will mean for the upcoming year. Also hear Harris and Sojourner answer questions from a live audience made up of the Power At Work community regarding the survey results.”

“AFSCME and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit today against the Trump administration, challenging its efforts to politicize the civil service through illegal executive orders. The lawsuit asserts that President Donald Trump illegally exceeded his authority in trying to unilaterally roll back a regulation that protects the rights of civil servants. Trump is trying to make it easier to fire career civil servants in order to appoint loyalists to do his bidding.”

“Extremist politicians want to make devastating cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans rely on these programs for their health care. And thousands of AFSCME members work with these programs, delivering life-saving services to American families.”

“Unionized direct care workers – personal care aides, nursing assistants and home health care workers – are likely to earn more money and are more likely to have employer-sponsored health care insurance and pension plans than non-unionized direct care workers. Unionization was also associated with greater job satisfaction, and unionized workplaces reported better care, quality and safety for their workers.”

“It wasn't a surprise when President Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo late Monday. She was a Biden appointee who had used the agency to expand workers' rights. But Trump went further, also firing Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox in an unprecedented move that she has vowed to fight in court. Due to existing vacancies, Wilcox's ouster leaves the board with just two members, short of the quorum it needs to adjudicate even routine cases. (The board, when fully staffed, has five members.) With this move, Trump has effectively shut down the NLRB's operations, leaving the workers it defends on their own, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.”

“The share of American workers in unions edged down in 2024, reaching its lowest level on record, even as the year was marked by a surge in union election filings and several high-profile strikes. The union membership rate dropped by one-tenth of a percentage point to a new low of 9.9 percent last year, the Labor Department said Tuesday, while the total number of union members in the United States barely budged last year, with a loss of roughly 100,000 members. About 14.3 million workers were in unions in 2024, according to the Labor Department. The decrease in the union membership rate happened in part because a solid labor market added 2.2 million jobs in 2024, with nonunion positions growing at a faster pace than union ones.”

 “Despite macroeconomic headwinds, including high interest rates that provided challenges for project sponsors and investors, building trades union membership continues to rise. We proudly announce that NABTU affiliates achieved a net membership growth of 49,554 in 2024. This increase, combined with 2023’s record growth, marks the most significant consecutive expansion of the building trades since the 1950s.”

“On January 20, 2024, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims struck down a 2022 Executive Order which required construction contractors to collaborate with unions in order to be considered for large-scale federal construction projects. In invalidating the Executive Order, the court agreed with the challenging contractors that the mandate runs afoul of the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act’s (better known as “CICA”) requirement for the federal contract bidding process to promote “full and open competition.”

“Another bump in Illinois’ minimum wage took effect on Jan. 1, as part of a number of changes in state’s Labor laws this year. Illinois’ minimum wage increased to $15 an hour as of Jan. 1, the final step in a series of raises that began six years ago. Youth workers also will see an increase to $13 an hour, and tipped workers will be paid $9 an hour.”

“The Michigan House of Representatives voted on a pair of bills Thursday to preempt a Michigan Supreme Court ruling ordering an increase to the minimum wage and expanding paid sick leave. Last summer, the court ruled that the GOP-led Legislature acted illegally in 2018 when it adopted a pair of voter initiatives on minimum wage and sick leave and then later amended them in the same legislative session. The court essentially ordered the original minimum wage and sick leave initiatives to go into effect starting Feb. 21. The first bill introduced by Republican lawmakers this session, House Bill 4001, would increase the minimum wage this year to $12.00 an hour instead of $12.48 as ordered by the court. The bill would also preserve a lower minimum wage for restaurant servers and bartenders who receive tips, while the court's order would eventually eliminate the tipped minimum wage by 2030.”

“Labor activism in the United States has had a remarkable resurgence over the last three years (NLRB 2022; Combs 2023). In the past few years, workers mounted successful organizing campaigns at a wide range of companies, including Amazon, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Ben & Jerry’s, Chipotle, REI, and Volkswagen. Moreover, according to Gallup polls, 70% of the U.S. public—and almost 90% of young workers—approve of unions, a figure not seen since the mid-1960s (Saad 2023). Even more remarkable, unions are wildly popular despite their organizational weakness: In the mid-1960s, they represented almost one-third of private-sector workers, while today they represent fewer than 6%. At the bargaining table, unions have won record wage increases at companies such as UPS (Gurley 2023), the Big Three auto companies (Whalen 2023), Kaiser Permanente (Simmons-Duffin 2024), and Disney (Isidore et al. 2023; Rainey et al. 2024).”

“Elon Musk’s ‘department of government efficiency’ (Doge) has been accused by a leading labor union of an “absolutely illegal” breach of federal regulations after posting a vague request for job applications. The Trump administration’s much-vaunted but ill-defined program to reshape the federal government announced it was recruiting “full-time, salaried positions” for software engineers, information security engineers and “other technology professionals” on its official website. The page was promoted by Musk on X, the social network he owns, and swiftly drew criticism from a prominent union leader.”

“Visitors to Disney Springs and the Japanese restaurant Morimoto Asia were met with a spontaneous flyering event on Monday, organized by the labor union UNITE HERE Local 737, which represents thousands of theme park and hotel workers employed by Disney World. The labor action, highlighting what the union declares a wrongful firing by Morimoto Asia’s parent company — the Patina Restaurant Group — was organized just ahead of the restaurant’s annual Ramen Rumble event Monday evening. The goal? To get Ramen Rumble attendees on their side as part of a pressure campaign to get the Patina Restaurant Group to rehire Julie Ruiz, a former server at Pizza Ponte in Disney Springs, who was fired in October after speaking up about alleged sexual harassment by a supervisor."

“Workers at Democracy Works, a nonpartisan voter education organization, ratified their first labor contract with the News Media Guild, the union announced. The pact, ratified Thursday, guarantees yearly pay raises, establishes job security, and secures other important workplace rights at the leading civic technology nonprofit organization. The contract offers workplace protections for the next three years to 34 employees across several departments, including engineering, research, partnerships, and more. The agreement was reached after nearly three years of collective bargaining efforts.”

“Nurses and healthcare professionals at University of Michigan Health-Sparrow voted to approve a new contract, the Michigan Nurses Association announced Thursday afternoon. The vote passed with 95% approval, averting a planned five-day strike. Members of the Professional Employee Council of Sparrow Hospital-Michigan Nurses Association (PECSH-MNA) began voting on Monday. Voting ended Thursday and was tallied that same afternoon. Workers would have gone on strike if the contract had not been approved. The new contract runs until Oct. 30, 2027.”

“The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED-IBT) reached a Tentative Agreement Wednesday with the freight railroads represented by the National Carriers' Conference Committee (NCCC).* The five-year Tentative Agreement, covering the period from January 1, 2025, to July 1, 2029, ensures BMWED members 18.77 percent compounded wage growth over the next five years, protects health and welfare benefits without additional cost, and improves vacation accrual timing, amongst other gains.”

“AFSCME and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit today against the Trump administration, challenging its efforts to politicize the civil service through illegal executive orders. The lawsuit asserts that President Donald Trump illegally exceeded his authority in trying to unilaterally roll back a regulation that protects the rights of civil servants. Trump is trying to make it easier to fire career civil servants in order to appoint loyalists to do his bidding.”

“The Trump administration has swept into office with a volley of attacks: Gutting programs that acknowledge race and gender inequality. Freezing funding for a wide swath of programs (though that order has already been rescinded). New work rules. Immigration raids. Replacing career civil servants with political lackeys. A mass email inviting federal employees to resign.”