By BOB BUSSEL, U of O Labor Education and Research Center professor emeritus
A sobering loss for the union movement occurred last month in the U. S. Senate—the derailing of President Biden’s nomination of David Weil to be administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. The 53-47 vote included three Democrats (Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona) who crossed party lines to torpedo Weil’s nomination. The vote tells us some important things about the state of labor politics, the emerging counterattack against worker organizing, and intensifying opposition to the Biden administration’s pro-worker and pro-union policies.
A respected scholar and administrator, David Weil had previously held the Wage and Hour post under the Obama administration. During his tenure, he expanded overtime coverage by raising the wage ceiling for eligibility, cracked down on wage theft, and took a special interest in the misclassification of workers as independent contractors.
As Weil outlined in his important 2014 book The Fissured Workplace, employers have systematically outsourced work to contractors, franchises, and outside vendors over the past three decades. Although this approach has fattened the corporate bottom line and given some workers greater flexibility, it has also led to rampant misclassification and a serious erosion of protections for workers.
Not surprisingly, Weil’s nomination provoked a firestorm of protest from business...
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