The Weekly Download

“The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our rotating guests will discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for our pilot episode are: Claudia Irizarry Aponte, Elizabeth Wilkins, and Mark Gevaart.”

“The inspector general for the National Labor Relations Board is investigating the ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency's interaction with the NLRB following NPR's exclusive reporting about sensitive data leaving the agency. The investigation was first reported by FedScoop, which filed records requests for information related to allegations made by IT staffer Daniel Berulis in an official whistleblower disclosure last month.”

“Tens of thousands of U.S. government workers have chosen to resign rather than endure what many view as a torturous wait for the Trump administration to carry out its threats to fire them, say unions, governance experts and the employees themselves. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on taking office to dramatically slash the size and cost of government. Four months later, mass layoffs at the largest agencies have yet to materialize and courts have slowed the process. Instead, most of the roughly 260,000 civil servants who have left or will leave by the end of September have taken buyouts or other incentives to quit. Some told Reuters they could no longer live with the daily stress of waiting to be fired after multiple warnings from Trump administration officials that they could lose their jobs in the next wave of layoffs.”

• “The federal workforce has been reduced by about 23,000 since the Trump administration took office in January and began aggressively downsizing federal agencies, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Establishment Survey. Reuters estimates more than 260,000 federal jobs will ultimately be eliminated this year through firings, early retirements and buyouts initiated by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. The economic impact of this mass downsizing has a particular impact on African Americans in civil service, as government employment has long been seen as a reliable pathway to Black middle-class prosperity. There don’t seem to be any hard numbers on how many Black workers have been affected by the recent federal job cuts, but for decades, there has been a higher percentage of Black workers in federal jobs compared to their percentage of the population.”

“Across the country, we are seeing the introduction of a slew of proposed policies that would regulate employers’ use of AI and other digital technologies in the workplace. In the process, stakeholders are raising a number of questions about these technologies, how employers use them, and how workers are impacted. In this accessible and non-technical FAQ we answer some of the most common questions that are being raised, drawing on existing research, including our own. We focus on what are commonly known as electronic monitoring and automated decisions systems; there are other workplace technologies being addressed by policymakers that we do not cover here.”

“In a rare occasion of good news for the nation’s coal miners, a decision this week in a lawsuit brought by one of their own will reverse at least some of the damage done when the Trump administration eviscerated the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) offices in Morgantown, W. Va., in April. That’s when hundreds of those workers had suddenly found themselves out of a job thanks to a slapdash ​’reorganization,’ as the Elon Musk-directed wreckers in DOGE termed it. As a result, the NIOSH Respiratory Health Division and the Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP), whose ongoing research and health screenings are critically important in addressing the black lung epidemic stalking Appalachia’s coal miners, were left unable to function. Now, just over a month later, a preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Irene Berger in the suit against the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a win for those resisting the cuts and trying to survive their devastating impacts.”

“The Trump administration has made its war on nonprofits abundantly clear. In the face of funding cuts and threats of political retribution, unions may offer a solution. Unions provide a useful forum to facilitate dialogue between workers and management to decide collectively how to manage these tough times. Can this moment of great uncertainty be a new moment for nonprofit unionization?”

“State and local governments have begun taking concrete steps towards a clean energy economy, and for now, even under Trump, green union jobs are increasing. Meanwhile, unions have partnered with climate activists to win legislation for more such jobs. Six states have passed “climate jobs” bills to expand renewable energy and raise labor standards for that construction. Four more have union coalitions advocating for such legislation. Will the green surge continue? And if it does, will workers reap the economic benefits—or get left behind?”

“Even the most alarmed predictions of left-leaning commentators failed to capture the extremity of the onslaught that flooded forth from the second Trump administration in its first few months. Only recently has the real severity of that opening assault come into better focus. That relentlessness was very much by design, a well-worn page of Steve Bannon’s playbook: To ‘flood the zone’ is to leave your opponents reeling and unable to mount a response to any single atrocity. But looking past the immediate fray, the routes taken by the Trump administration’s bewildering blitzkrieg do have a common logic. What unites these excesses is that they all represent new fronts in the waging of unrestricted class warfare against labor and working people, a strategy calibrated to the interests of capital. This administration has tactically dispensed with long-standing precedents, trampled guardrails against authoritarianism, thrown open the door for wanton profiteering and maneuvered to strike a severe blow to the labor movement.”

“Following a growing trend, Republican lawmakers this year proposed legislation in Florida, Kentucky, and Ohio that would undermine federal laws on child labor, minimum wage, and worker health and safety protections. These proliferating state challenges to federal law are laying the groundwork for more extreme and dangerous Project 2025 proposals to allow employers across the country to hire children for hazardous jobs or to allow states to ‘opt out’ of various federal labor standards like the minimum wage.”

“Gov. Jared Polis made his expected veto of Senate Bill 5 official on Friday, a decision that’s sure to deepen the rift between him and the Colorado labor movement, as well as Democrats in the legislature. The measure would have abolished a requirement in the Colorado Labor Peace Act that 75% of workers at a company sign off before unions can negotiate with businesses over union security. That’s after a majority of workers vote to unionize.”

“Conservatives think we need to resurrect traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline. But what Americans miss about mid-century America isn’t the chauvinistic cultural values — it’s the economic equality created by strong unions and worker power.”

“There’s growing support in Congress for a bill that would undo a union-busting executive order from this White House. The March order stripped 1 million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. In response, AFSCME and other unions sued. Our case is still pending in court, with a hearing set for this week. The bill, which has 222 co-sponsors, seeks to protect the collective bargaining rights of unionized federal workers by reversing the order. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced the bill in April. It has the support of many labor unions, including AFSCME and the AFL-CIO. When the order was issued, AFSCME President Lee Saunders accused the White House of ‘blatant retribution.’”

“Public Citizen Litigation Group and the AFL-CIO’s Office of the General Counsel filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of unions, workplace safety experts and a PPE manufacturer. The plaintiffs include the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC), California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), Dentec Safety Specialists Inc., the Machinists (IAM), National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM), National Nurses United (NNU), New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), United Auto Workers (UAW), Mine Workers (UMWA) and United Steelworkers (USW).”

“When I came to the AFL-CIO in 1998, not long after John Sweeney was elected president, the enthusiasm and hope around organizing was contagious. I’d spent much of my twenties as a union organizer in the South, talking with working people in their homes and witnessing the tsunami of employer resistance they faced when unionizing. I knew at my core just how hard it was for U.S. workers to organize. Nevertheless, it seemed that the Kirkland-era stagnation was finally out, and a new vision for movement growth was in. Calling for a revival of the ‘culture of organizing,’ Sweeney persuasively pledged that ‘with an army of organizers...we can do what the labor movement did decades ago: organize workers and raise wages in entire industries.’ Today, the U.S. labor movement is smaller, weaker, and more embattled than the day Sweeney took office, thirty years ago. Though workers have managed heroic union organizing victories during the Sweeney years and beyond, none of these have turned the tide of decline, and the millions of new members never materialized. Union membership has dropped from 15 percent in 1995 to 10 percent today, and private-sector union membership is at its lowest since 1900, at a mere 6 percent.”

“Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is one of the most important and dynamic champions of worker power in U.S. history. For nearly six decades, from 1906 to 1964, she devoted herself to what she called “the working-class movement.” Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her, Flynn organized workers into unions, led strikes in a variety of industries, supported anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements around the globe, galvanized resistance to fascism, protested deportation of immigrants, advocated for prison reform, championed labor and political rights for women, fought for civil rights for Blacks, and defended civil liberties for labor activists of all stripes.”

“Ryan Christensen is a 52-year-old grocery worker for Lunds & Byerlys, where he has been for 38 years. Christensen says that what was once a strong, family-supporting job has deteriorated over time. He was one of 9,000 grocery employees working on an expired contract across the Twin Cities Metro rallying under the demand “One good job should be enough.” Last week, workers ratified contracts with four companies—including the one where Christensen works. But grocery workers, represented by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 663, rejected contracts with three other companies, and strikes could be imminent.”

“Throughout recorded history, people have found ways to organize and voice their grievances. As long as people wield power to dehumanize or subjugate, there will be people to challenge that power. We are currently in an era that demands a strong resurgence of organizing to address the social and political upheaval negatively affecting workers….At the same time, flexibility in the workplace is under attack. Federal offices and private business owners are sending former remote workers back into the office, stripping away flexibility that has been beneficial for employers and helpful for employees and their families. Even hybrid models, which offer balance, are at risk as the push for stricter in-office policy grows. As some federal workers face job losses, officials have targeted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), potentially threatening workers’ ability to establish collective bargaining agreements. Now is the time to organize.”

“Since President Trump took control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts earlier this year, his administration has scaled back some programs there and fired nearly 40 employees. Those changes have unnerved many of the center’s administrative staff members, who work in programming, education, marketing, fund-raising, public relations and other areas. Now, seeking greater protection for their jobs, more than 90 of them are leading a push to unionize, they announced on Thursday.”

“Workers at five Ciena Healthcare nursing home facilities are holding a one-day strike today (Tuesday, May 20), seeking better pay and benefits from their employer. This comes after Ciena, represented by SEIU Health Care Michigan, has been negotiating a new contract, with a representative for the workers saying they hope "to reach an agreement that respects frontline caregivers and Ciena’s continued bad faith bargaining."

“As the historic Pratt & Whitney strike enters its third week, the union president called workers 'organized and determined' despite the fact that they will soon lose access to their health care plans. The union members began picketing in East Hartford and Middletown on May 5, a day after overwhelmingly rejecting the jet-engine maker’s final contract offer and setting up a historic bargaining showdown not seen at the company in decades. The contract dispute covers about 3,000 hourly workers and members of IAM Local 700 and Local 1746.”

“As NJ Transit rail crews got out to inspect trains and track to prepare for resuming commuter train travel May 20, a tentative agreement between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen hangs in the balance. Neither side has said much about what took place during the three days of tense negotiations amid NJ Transit’s first strike in 42 years — or what is contained in the new deal that will now have to be voted on by the roughly 450 engineers. ‘This is a very sensitive time. Nobody wants to upend a deal,’ said Bill Dwyer, a professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.”

“Public school educators in 32 union locals across California are joining forces to maximize their power in a campaign called “We Can’t Wait.” It covers 77,000 educators—about a quarter of the California Teachers Association’s total membership—serving a million students. The campaign started with 11 locals that worked to align their contract expiration dates for the end of June: Anaheim, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Natomas, Oakland, Richmond, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Twin Rivers. And it quickly spread from there. Locals have organized educators to sign onto the campaign’s platform, rally before school and walk in all together, and join informational pickets. The goal is to have educators strike-ready in the fall.”

“Visual effects professionals who help realize the often fantastical worlds of the Marvel, Disney and Avatar films have ratified their first union contracts. Unionized staffers have ‘overwhelmingly’ voted to ratify two labor contracts covering work on these projects, the crew union IATSE announced on Friday, without offering a specific tally. One agreement covers work on Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures titles, while another spans labor for Walt Disney Studios subsidiary TCF US Productions 27, Inc., which collaborates with James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment on the Avatar films. The Avatar deal was ratified in February, while the Marvel/Disney agreement was ratified on Wednesday.”

“The union for about 2,500 submarine designers at Electric Boat in Connecticut has tentatively agreed to a new contract with the company, averting a strike that would have begun Monday. The Marine Draftsmen’s Association-United Auto Workers of America, Local 571, essentially the workers responsible for designing the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, had threatened to strike earlier this month if the company did not make greater wage and benefit concessions. The local's negotiating committee announced the tentative contract agreement late Sunday, saying it contains ‘unprecedented’ wage increases of more than 30% over the five-year term as well as increased retirement security. The deal now goes up for a vote by union members. Union officials did not say when the vote would be.”