The Weekly Download

“If there ever was a titan of the labor movement, it was Leo Gerard. As President of the United Steelworkers Union (USW)  from 2001 until his retirement in 2019, Leo enhanced worker power, saved the steel industry, broadened public support for manufacturing’s resurgence, and improved the lives of millions of workers. But he also fought for a clean environment, health care for all, justice, equity and so much more.”

“Big pop culture – television, movies, and songs that reach widespread audiences – is a battleground of class conflict. One set of fights is about the worksite – hiring, pay, hours, benefits, and safety – where unions are already engaged through organizing members, negotiating contracts, and striking when necessary. Another set of fights is about who gets to make the dominant meanings for American workers, unions, and fair labor. Shaping the creative decisions about the stories, characters, images, and sounds that represent workers and that influence how audiences imagine unions and working is an area where unions are largely absent.”

“In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Sonia R. Vásquez Luna of LIUNA and Steven Gardner of NJ LECET to discuss working-class politics and the state government elections in New Jersey and Virginia that are taking place in 2025.”

“Drivers for gig companies like Uber and Lyft gained the right to unionize in California on Friday, thanks to a bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The bill allows unions representing drivers to bargain for better wages and benefits and could serve as a model for other states given the size of California’s ride-hailing industry — about 800,000 drivers, according to the bill’s backers. Only Massachusetts has a similar law, which was passed through a ballot measure last year. The bill could help resolve a yearslong fight in which driver groups have pushed for employee status, which confers protections like a wage floor and the right to unionize, while gig companies resisted. Those companies have long maintained that workers should be considered independent contractors and said that making drivers employees would upend their business models.”

“A labor union and public-interest legal groups sued the Trump administration on Friday for inserting partisan language into federal employees’ out-of-office replies during the government shutdown. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents some 800,000 federal workers, also sent a cease-and-desist letter to the administration demanding it put an end to the political messaging in workers’ autoreplies at the Education Department…After government funding lapsed, furloughed workers across the federal government were instructed, per usual, to set up out-of-office replies during the shutdown. But last Thursday, employees inside the Education Department realized their nonpartisan replies had been altered so that the messages blamed Democrats for the funding lapse, an agency worker confirmed to HuffPost.”

“Senator Bernie Sanders, Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP Committee), directed his staff to examine how artificial labor could impact workers and their livelihoods. HELP Minority Staff reviewed economic data, investor transcripts, corporate financial filings— and asked ChatGPT about job displacement. Specifically, HELP Minority Staff asked ChatGPT to analyze job descriptions catalogued by the federal government for the entire U.S. economy and predict tasks that could be performed by AI and automation. According to the ChatGPT-based model, artificial intelligence and automation could replace nearly 100 million jobs over the next ten years, including 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants and 47% of truck drivers.”

“Customer harassment of service workers is all too common in the United States. Across industries, workers — especially women — report facing sexual harassment from customers. In addressing this issue, the EEOC and courts have typically applied a negligence standard to determine employer liability for third-party harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits sex harassment that creates a hostile work environment. The Sixth Circuit’s recent holding in Bivens v. Zep broke from this practice. While other courts look to whether the employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to take corrective action, the Sixth Circuit in Bivens changed the question to whether the employer intended that the harassment occur. This higher bar insulates employers from liability for third-party harassment of their workers and makes accountability harder to achieve on behalf of employees who have been wronged.”

“Last year, we reported that Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 399, codified as California Labor Code section 1137, into law. This statute bans employers from holding captive audience meetings, which are mandatory employer-sponsored meetings that discuss religious or political matters—including unionization. California is one of at least 12 states that have passed captive audience laws at the urging of labor unions. On September 30, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California issued a preliminary injunction in California Chamber of Commerce et al. v. Bonta et al., temporarily blocking enforcement of SB 399. Plaintiffs in the case argued that SB 399 is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and infringes upon employers’ rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Defendants, meanwhile, asserted that SB 399 is an anti-retaliation statute targeting protected employee autonomy, and not a restriction on employer speech. They contended that SB 399 merely prohibits punishing employees who refrain from attending certain meetings.”

“Only months after courting union voters with pro-worker campaign rhetoric, President Trump is on track to become the most anti-union president in modern American history…In March, the President cited national security concerns as he directed 22 federal agencies to disregard collective bargaining contracts covering 950,000 federal employees…In early April, Representatives Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Ryan Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced bipartisan legislation, “The Protect America’s Workforce Act” (H.R. 2250), to overturn Trump’s executive order and restore all terminated collective bargaining agreements. A companion bill that includes a repeal of the most recent executive order has since been introduced in the Senate. The bill’s authors need 218 signatures to force a vote against the will of House leadership. As of September 17, it has 216 signatures, including 213 Democrats and 3 Republicans, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.”

“Resident assistants and peer mentors at Temple University have voted to unionize, joining a wave of student-worker organizing on local college and university campuses. In a four-hour, paper-ballot vote held Tuesday, 97 of the 126 bargaining group members participated, and all of them voted in favor of joining the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153.”

“Christine Burke and Michael Serrano both work at the Boulder Public Library in Colorado. Both agree that their community needs a flourishing public library. And both believe library workers need a voice on the job to better serve their community. Burke and Serrano are among the Boulder Public Library workers pushing to form a union through AFSCME. Workers went public with their unionization plans last Friday. They chose AFSCME, one of the nation’s largest unions representing public service workers.”

“Boeing is expanding plans to replace striking St. Louis-area workers who assemble fighter jets and munitions with new hires through year's end, management announced on Thursday in an internal memo shared with Reuters. Roughly 3,200 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 have been on strike since August 4. The first group of replacement workers for munitions production and assembly mechanics will begin training on Friday, according to the memo from Boeing Vice President Dan Gillian.”

“When unions get ready for bargaining, we tend to look at the wage scale in our existing contract and think something like, ‘Let’s open with a proposal for a 5 percent raise every year, and maybe eventually we’ll settle at 3.75 percent.’ This type of proposal was made out of habit when inflation was around 2 percent. While that may seem like a logical way to approach negotiations, you’re making a big mistake if you don’t take a closer look at the numbers.”

“Yesterday, the Senate HELP committee had a hearing on the question of labor law reform. One of the major topics of the hearing was whether the bargaining process that occurs under the National Labor Relations Act is working well and, if not, how it should be reformed. The Faster Labor Contracts Act is one piece of legislation that would reform that process by giving unions and employers the right to have an arbitrator establish the terms of a first contract. Former NLRB Chairman Marvin Kaplan testified at that hearing and I interviewed him about his views on the topic. The audio of the interview, a brief summary of the interview, and a full transcript of the interview is below.”

“A union representing medical professionals at a Las Vegas hospital is celebrating its first contract, saying the new terms will improve staff recruitment and retention. SEIU Local 1107 said the contract covers nearly 300 employees at Sunrise Hospital working in laboratory technology, social work, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology, among other fields.”