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Josh Eidelson
@josheidelson
, 18 tweets, 9 min read Read on Twitter
Here are some stories and examples that help explain the issues that 2020 Democrats' labor plans (like bloomberg.com/news/articles/… & bloomberg.com/news/articles/…) are trying to tackle:
(A thread)
Labor and civil rights laws leave out many types of workers, such as the fast-growing ranks of domestic workers:
thenation.com/article/labor-…

prospect.org/notebook/alt-l…
Companies in all sorts of sectors claim their workers are "independent contractors" rather than employees, and therefore excluded from a slew of workplace protections:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Companies across the economy also increasingly rely on sub-contracted or franchised workers, who are ostensibly employed by someone else, making it harder for workers to bargain with the bigger company or hold it liable:

bloomberg.com/news/features/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

State "right-to-work" laws banning mandatory union fees have helped deplete unions' budgets & clout, and last year Supreme Court made the entire U.S. public sector "right-to-work":

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
When workers try to win union recognition through National Labor Relations Board process, companies have wide discretion to wage aggressive anti-union campaigns including mandatory meetings & ominous predictions, and allegations of threats and retaliatory firings are ubiquitous:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Workers' only legal recourse for alleged illegal union-busting is to go through the federal Labor Board, which can drag on for years & has no threat of punitive damages or personal liability for executives:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Some of the most historically effective strike tactics have been made illegal, and even in strikes that are legally protected, companies often have a right to respond by "permanently replacing" the strikers with new employees: thenation.com/article/longvi…
The law restricts workers' ability to pressure companies by going after other companies they do business with, even if workers believe the other company is the real decision-maker: inthesetimes.com/working/entry/…
Rather than sector-wide negotiations, the U.S. collective bargaining system is based on company-by-company talks, which some experts argue ensure instability and perverse incentives: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Federal law restricts states' ability to pass their own pro-union policies:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The federal wage has remained at $7.25 for a decade, and companies can legally pay some disabled or tipped workers less:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Companies can require workers to give up their right to sue them via courtroom class actions rather than individual arbitration hearings:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
With mandatory fees already banned for them, the Trump Administration has also moved to curb automatic payroll deduction of voluntary union dues for Medicaid-funded homecare workers as well:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The NLRB has repeatedly reversed its position on whether graduate students that teach and research are employees with labor rights:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

inthesetimes.com/working/entry/…
Workers classified as contractors, if they try to somehow bargain collectively despite being excluded from traditional unionization, risk running afoul of anti-trust law: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The Supreme Court has ruled undocumented workers aren't eligible for backpay if they're illegally fired for organizing: inthesetimes.com/working/entry/…
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Josh Eidelson
@josheidelson
New: @BernieSanders today is releases a sweeping plan to fundamentally overhaul US labor law, including establishing sectoral bargaining, ending at-will employment, and reversing key provisions of Taft-Hartley bloomberg.com/news/articles/… “I think the momentum is with us,” he tells me
@BernieSanders & Sanders plan (bloomberg.com/news/articles/…) would
-extend bargaining rights to state/local gov't employees
-let federal employees strike
-require "just cause" to fire workers
-protect contracts during mergers
- deny federal contracts over union-busting
- ban right-to-work laws
&...
@BernieSanders ...Sanders labor plan (bloomberg.com/news/articles/… & bloomberg.com/news/articles/…) would also
- Let workers win union recognition via card-check
- Establish mediation & arbitration for first contracts
- Legalize secondary boycotts/picketing
- Ban permanent replacement of strikers
&...
Read 9 tweets
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Josh Eidelson
@josheidelson
Recently Uber has used its app to tell drivers that "Recent changes to California law could threaten your access to flexible work with Uber," & ask them to sign a petition to get the state legislature "to modernize the law".

Here's some context on what's afoot & what's at stake.
In 2018, CA's supreme court issued a sweeping ruling establishing that if workers aren't conducting “work that it outside the usual course” of a firm’s business, then under CA wage law they're employees entitled to protections - not independent contractors bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
This ruling spurred alarm among all sorts of companies, including tech platform companies whose core business model is providing services via an army of workers who they claim are contractors, but whose work is arguably very much within "the usual course" of the firm's business.
Read 23 tweets
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Josh Eidelson
@josheidelson
I would suggest news outlets not use “allows staff to unionize” (wsj.com/articles/eliza…) as the way to describe an employer agreeing to recognize a union of their employees
“Unionize” gets used to mean various things: workers choosing to start organizing; workers forming an organization; workers’ union getting recognition from management, & thus the chance to collectively bargain. (“Unionized” as descriptor of a company usually refers to the latter)
Colloquially, “right to unionize” in U.S. often refers to workers’ right (guaranteed on paper in New Deal law to most private sector employees) to get their union recognized by employer and collectively bargain - if they prove majority support via Labor Board election
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