Auto workers need to realize that Donald Trump's calls to slam the breaks on the transition to electric vehicles will spell disaster for Detroit's automakers & ultimately lead to the layoffs of tens of thousands of GM, Ford & Stellantis workers What Trump won't tell auto workers is that there is a worldwide race among automakers to produce electric vehicles, and those automakers that come in last could face disaster & bankruptcy, with huge layoffs for autoworkers.

I'm sick & tired of reading & hearing stories saying white working-class Americans are voting Republican because they feel Democrats betrayed them on economic issues

I wish those stories explained that on issue after issue Democrats want to do more to help workrs than Repubs do It's Republicans who oppose a higher minimum wage, increased child-care subsidies & making it easier to unionize

In other words, Republicans oppose these policies that would very much help white-working class Americans and help Black & Latino working-class Americans, too

IT'S TERRIBLE that @elonmusk has acted so disgracefully, callously & unwisely since acquiring Twitter.

Just days after taking over, Musk fired 3,700 dedicated & talented workers--half of Twitter's workforce--without any explanation or compassion & voicing very little regret Musk showed how impatient, impulsive & irresponsible he can be in moving to gut Twitter's workforce & lay off many valuable content moderation workers the week before our midterm elections, when Twitter has been flooded with partisan lies & misinformation nytimes.com/2022/11/04/us/…

Chief Justice John Roberts holds himself out as a centrist institutionalist

But history will remember Roberts as the chief justice whose court did more than any previous chief justice's to sabotage our democracy—to let voting rights be eroded, to bless egregious gerrymandering.. to let Southern states reduce the voting power of Blacks & Hispanics, to let billionaires & corporations have a hugely outsize voice in our elections, making the notion of one person, one vote a hollow promise.

We can only hope that Roberts seeks to mend his undemocratic ways

Important @ZephyrTeachout piece on pervasive workplace surveillance

It "comes with a powerful implicit threat—If the company notices too much fatigue, you might get overlooked for a promotion. If it overhears something it doesn’t like, u could get fired
nybooks.com/articles/2022/… "Employers read employees’ e-mails, track Internet use & listen to their conversations. Nurses & warehouse workers are forced to wear ID badges, wristbands or clothing w/ chips that track their movements, measuring steps & comparing them to coworkers’ & the steps taken yesterday"

Amazon & Starbucks tell workers, Don't unionize, You'll be paying "onerous"union dues

But many workers say the benefits of unions hugely outweigh the cost of dues

Here's an in-depth look at the gains workers in 5 different fields get from unionizing
prospect.org/labor/look-at-… Barista Madeleine Souza-Rivera used to pay $9,600 a year in health premiums. With a union, she pays nothing in premiums. "The dues are nothing to me. I don’t even notice it"

Hospital aide Lorie Quinn's pay has jumped 70% & her health premiums fell 50% since unionizing in 2015

"Wages today are historically low. They have been growing slowly for decades for every income group other than the affluent. As a share of gross domestic product, worker compensation is LOWER THAN AT ANY POINT in the second half of the 20th century...
nytimes.com/2021/05/20/bri… Two main causes are corporate consolidation and shrinking labor unions, which together have given employers more workplace power and employees less of it."
@DLeonhardt

A piece of advice for Democrats, progressives & Trump haters: Don't ever call Trump supporters stupid. Don't ever act superior to them. They're our fellow citizens—and they're often every bit as smart as you & I are. Problem is they've been systematically & selfishly deceived... by Donald Trump, the most dishonest & demagogic president in American history, by toadies like @tedcruz & @HawleyMO, by greedy arch-manipulator @rupermurdoch & by Fox "News," Hannity, Ingraham, Fox & Friends. They're happy to lie & suck up to Trump if it increases their ratings.

Trump's Broken Promises to Blue-Collar Voters--America’s industrial base has actually deteriorated further during Trump’s Presidency; more than 200,000 jobs have been lost to offshoring and trade, according to Trump's own Labor Department.
newyorker.com/news/us-journa… "At an event near Saginaw, Michigan, last month, Trump boasted that he 'saved the auto industry' and brought the state 'a lot of car plants.' But Michigan has lost fifty thousand manufacturing jobs since the start of Trump’s Presidency, about half of them in the auto industry."

Some blue-collar workers in Ohio say they made a big mistake voting for Trump in 2016.

"I don’t like where our country is right now,” said Jason Markovich, a laid-off GM worker. "The rich are getting richer, and the middle class is getting squeezed."
theguardian.com/us-news/2020/o… In Trump's first 3 years, Ohio added only 36% as many jobs as during Obama’s last 3 years. Ohio has lost 329,000 jobs since Trump became president, including 26,000 manufacturing jobs.

"I don’t think our country can handle another four years of Donald Trump,” Markovich said.

Here's the best argument for expanding & thereby repairing the Supreme Court. Over the past 2 decades, starting with Bush v. Gore, the court's conservative majority has pursued an aggressive agenda to keep Republicans in power & Republicans in turn appointed conservative justices This has skewed our political system & improperly increased the number of conservative justices. Those justices have skewed the system to preserve GOP control in Tuesday's Census decision, Citizens United & Shelby County v. Holder (overturning Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act) AND

The Trump-DeJoy Wrecking Ball Hits the U.S. Postal Service —"In rural Michigan, diabetes medicine that used to arrive in three days now takes almost two weeks. In the Milwaukee area, dozens of trailers filled with packages are left behind every day." nytimes.com/2020/08/15/us/… In Ohio, where mail voting is likely to double, piles of undelivered mail are sitting in a Cleveland distribution facility—In New Glarus, Wis, the owners of Maple Leaf Cheese worry their cheese will go bad now that deliveries that used to take 2 to 3 days are taking twice as long

Powerful Video--Tyson workers tell of the dangers of Covid-19 & meatpacking. "The reason our plant continues to be a super-spreader is Tyson forces us to process so much chicken so quickly...We may be feeding America but we're sacrificing our own selves." nytimes.com/video/opinion/… "Everyone is standing not even arm's length apart. There is absolutely no way we can social distance in these plants...The rate they have to get these orders processed, it's physically impossible to social distance. If they slowed down the line...we'd be able to social distance."

Meatpacking companies said their plants needed to stay open, warning that the U.S. faced a severe meat shortage. At least 89 meatpacking workers died

It was a fake meat shortage. Turns out American meatpackers shipped a record amount of pork to China. nytimes.com/2020/06/16/bus… .@mattdpearce: Our country sacrificed the lives of meat workers to protect the business of meat companies.

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1272956651503378432

Leilani Jordan, a grocery worker, died at age 27 from Covid-19. She said her store provided neither gloves, nor hand sanitizer.

She continued working because she wanted to help people. Her mother received Leilani's last paycheck: it was just $20.64.
cbsnews.com/news/grocery-s… Leilani Jordan's family has set up this website in her memory.
efraser919.wixsite.com/leilani-jordan

The NYT has 4 stories on labor today—1) More than 5,000 Uber & Lyft drivers used a novel app to help defeat Uber & Lyft in the fight to persuade the California legislation to enact a law declaring those drivers to be employees, not independent contractors nytimes.com/2019/09/20/bus… 2) Nurses go on strike in four states -- California, Illinois, Arizona and Florida -- to demand higher pay and better nurse-patient ratios to improve care. nytimes.com/2019/09/20/us/…

As I explain in my new book, corporations are increasingly taking advantage of workers—prohibiting them from filing lawsuits & instead requiring them to go to employer-friendly arbitration is just one way—That's why the California legislation is important

https://twitter.com/greenhousenyt/status/1166356849962246144

Many corporations have adopted practices that were far rarer or largely unheard of three or four decades ago—hiring hordes of unpaid interns & expecting many workers, white-collar & blue, to toil 60 or 70 hours a week. Many workers are asking whatever happened to the 40-hour week

In my new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, my goal was to explain labor unions & worker power—past & present—to people who are eager to know more about labor. I write about the rise of unions & how they lifted millions of workers & built the middle class penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246798/b… I also write how the decline of unions & worker power has fueled wage stagnation & income inequality & warped our system so that corporations & the rich dominate our politics. The book examines models for rekindling worker power, including the teachers' strikes & Fight for $15.

Trump holds himself out as a friend of workers and labor, but he is running the most anti-worker, anti-union administration in modern history. My Labor Day story:
prospect.org/article/worker… Trump has effectively scrapped the “fiduciary” rule that required Wall Street firms to act in the best interests of workers and retirees in handling their 401(k)s—a move that could cost many workers tens of thousands of dollars.

Many workers have little idea how disastrous the Supreme Court's 5-4 Epic Systems decision was for vindicating workers' rights—The ruling lets employers prohibit workers from filing class actions on wage theft, sex bias, etc & lets them require arbitration rewire.news/article/2018/0… Trump says he is a champion of workers, but his first appointee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, provided the pivotal deciding vote in Epic Systems and wrote the majority opinion in that hugely anti-worker decision. thinkprogress.org/neil-gorsuch-t…

There's tons of talk about American exceptionalism, but there's one type of American exceptionalism that gets far too little attention: American's anti-worker exceptionalism.

Worker power is weaker in the U.S. than in any other industrial nation—My Story: nytimes.com/2019/08/03/opi… In no other industrial nation do corporations fight so hard to keep out unions.

The consequences are enormous, not only for wages & income inequality, but also for our politics & policymaking & for the many Americans who are mistreated at work.