BREAKING: The Department of Labor has raised the overtime threshold.

The new rule says that everyone who makes under $58,656 and works over 40 hours a week must be paid time-and-a-half.

That increases the threshold dramatically from $35,568.
substack.perfectunion.us/p/the-departme… In 2014, Obama tried to double the overtime threshold to include workers earning up to $47,000.

This caused an uproar from corporate America and ultimately a federal judge invalidated it in 2017.

Under Trump, the ruling wasn’t appealed and the threshold was set to $35,000.

BREAKING: Over 4,000 Volkswagen workers in Tennessee just joined the @UAW in a landslide.

They’re the first American workers to win a union at a non-union car company in decades.

This historic victory will change the auto industry, and the future of American labor. This isn’t the first time workers at the Chattanooga VW plant have tried to unionize.

Workers tried to organize a union at the Chattanooga factory two previous times — in 2014 and 2019 — and both times they lost by narrow margins.

BREAKING: The Justice Department plans to sue Live Nation/Ticketmaster for running an illegal monopoly over the ticketing industry.

This corporate monopoly charges too much for tickets, exploits venues, and hurts fans and artists.

The antitrust lawsuit is expected within weeks. The suit "could spur major changes at the biggest name in concert promotion and ticketing," WSJ reports.

wsj.com/business/media…

THREAD: Subway used to have $5 footlongs, now it’s “$6, six inches”. The McChicken used to be $1, now it's almost $3. Taco Bell’s Beefy 5-layer burrito was $0.89 in 2009, now it’s $3.69.

Fast food companies want to blame inflation or the minimum wage going up. It’s all a lie. 2. From 2014 to 2024, inflation rose 31%. Only 30 states have a minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, which hasn’t changed since 2009.

In that time the biggest fast food chains raised prices much, much faster than inflation.

THREAD: Boston University is so determined to union-bust its own students that they’re proposing replacing grad workers with AI.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Unionized students at BU (@gradworkersofBU) are on strike, demanding a fair contract with a living wage.

But instead of bargaining in good faith the university has engaged in consistent retaliation.

Boeing has erased the surveillance footage that captured its work on the Alaska Airlines door plug that later blew out, federal investigators just revealed.

The company will not even disclose which people did the work.

Is Boeing just a complete criminal enterprise? The NTSB says that Boeing is blocking it from getting all the information it needs.
abcnews.go.com/US/boeing-over…

THREAD: After two-and-a-half years @SBWorkersUnited and Starbucks have announced a “path forward” to reach collective bargaining agreements for over 300 union stores and thousands of workers.

It’s a huge development in one of the nation’s most high-profile organizing campaigns. Since the first Starbucks store in Buffalo voted to unionize in December 2021, more than 380 stores have voted to unionize.

But in the time since, Starbucks has refused to bargain with the union.

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1571868115251740678?s=20

THREAD: There is a massive, totally legal bribery scheme driving up drug prices in America.

And pharmacy benefit managers—shady middlemen you’ve probably never heard of—are right at the center. Insurance companies hire pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to negotiate drug prices with pharma companies, set your co-pay at the pharmacy, and determine what drugs your insurance covers.

And they have another purpose too: rake in rebates for insurance companies. /2

THREAD: Teacher strikes in Massachusetts are banned and punishable by fines.

But when teachers are underpaid and overworked, there's no other choice.

So educators in Newton went on strike last week for better pay, lower student-staff ratios, and a social worker in every school. Newton teachers have reportedly been negotiating with the city over a new contract for two years, and have been working without a contract since August.

Even under the threat of increasingly heavy fines, 98% of teachers voted to strike. wbur.org/news/2024/01/1…

THREAD: Pennsylvania law encourages municipalities to sell their water and sewage systems to private corporations, then allows those corporations to jack up utility bills to the benefit of investors.

Today, PA state senators heard about what this law is doing to communities. Some residents have seen hikes of 60% or more after private companies, including Essential Utilities and American Water, have bought their local systems. They often don’t know it’s happening until the sale is ready to close.

Pennsylvania is just one of roughly a dozen states with “fair market value” laws like Act 12. substack.perfectunion.us/p/after-water-…

THREAD: Albuquerque, NM, has become the largest U.S. city to permanently make public transportation free for everyone.

It’s a huge way to help those who need it most.

And, it’s saving the city money. Here’s how /1 ABQ RIDE passengers are largely people of color, low-income, and/or don’t have access to a car. Prior to the program, 90% of passengers reported not being able to afford the fare at least once in the past month.

/2

Rep. Linda Chaney is the author of a Florida bill to let bosses make 16- and 17-year-olds work more than 30 hours a week, and let them deny teens meal breaks.

She says "This bill is about teenagers, they're 16 and 17 years old, they're driving cars, they are not children." A Florida House committee has now advanced the bill.

Next the full house will vote on the legislation, which specifically lets kids work these long hours when school is in session, and eliminates the mandatory breaks every 4 hours for teens.

orlandoweekly.com/news/florida-b…

BREAKING: An Indiana Republican has filed a bill that would allow kids as young as 14 to drop out and work on corporate farms during school hours.

Kids would only need to complete 8th grade in order to work 40 hours a week as a farm laborer. It's hard to believe, but here's the text of the bill: iga.in.gov/pdf-documents/…

More than 2 million people have been disabled since 2020 — but the Census Bureau has plans to change its questions in a way that would cut the amount of people considered “disabled” by nearly half.

That could mean huge cuts to state and federal disability programs.

Thread. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey collects data about the country and the people who live in it. Seems simple enough.

NEW: Workers in Georgia won one of the most improbable union victories in a generation.

They unionized Blue Bird—the country’s largest electric school bus maker—in the anti-union South.

We dug into how they did it, and what it will take to turn their victory into a wave. This victory was a long time coming.Workers at Blue Bird have attempted to unionize many times, most recently in 2001.

But they faced illegal retaliation from the company.

Workers told us people affiliated with the union drive were fired.

Florida Republicans are having a hearing about rolling back child labor laws.

When asked about the danger to kids and rising child labor violations, bill author Rep. Linda Chaney says:

"These are not children. These are 16 and 17-year-olds. these are youth workers." This teenager says with clarity what the Florida GOP Rep will not:

https://twitter.com/moreperfectus/status/1735020234359079058

Alabama has a prison labor system where the state makes hundred of millions leasing inmates to companies like McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s, and more.

Now a federal class action lawsuit has been filed to dismantle the scheme and compensate those who have been exploited. "McDonald’s knowingly benefits, financially and otherwise, from its exploitation of this coerced workforce."

Non-compete agreements take one of employees' most basic rights away — the ability to use your skillset and experience to find a better job.

They make it hard, sometimes impossible, for workers to get new jobs.

But now that could change. Thread. In 2015, a legal journalist left Law360 for a new job at Reuters, only to discover that a non-compete prevented her from covering legal news for a year after departing her previous employer. wsj.com/articles/nonco…

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is sitting on a pile of bills. She isn’t vetoing them, or signing them, she’s just keeping them in limbo.

All of them were passed by the Democratic Assembly and passed by the Democratic Senate.

But she simply isn’t making them into law. Thread. #1: A bill banning noncompete agreements, which would help workers across the state.

Bill A1278-B/S3100A would prohibit most employers from enforcing noncompete agreements, which suppress workers’ wages.

Unsurprisingly, Wall Street is fighting the bill, claiming it’s “job-killing” legislation.

BREAKING: Apple illegally evaded $14 billion in taxes and should pay it back, the legal adviser to the EU's top court has found.

The world's richest company had a tax rate under 1% in Ireland.

Major tax dodgers have rigged the system for years. Now they need to pay up. The EU's second-highest court ruled in Apple's favor on this matter in 2020.

But this legal adviser's finding means that the case will be reviewed by the highest court, which agrees with the adviser's views in a majority of cases.

bbc.com/news/business-…

You’ve probably seen headlines like this.

But it turns out corporate execs might just be making up the retail theft crisis.

Thread. A new report finds that retailers seem to be exaggerating reports of theft. /2

cnn.com/2023/10/27/bus…