For now, legislative proposals to reduce costs and improve the lives of workers, such as expanding paid leave, subsidizing child care and making prekindergarten universal, is kaput. Support for such a comprehensive package with a high price tag was never achievable in a 50-50 Senate, even before inflation became Americans’ top economic concern.
It’s instructive to see how other labor benefits, such as the 40-hour workweek, were achieved. Initial lobbying efforts for a federal law failed. Worker protests and strikes followed. One state, Illinois, passed a law for an eight-hour workday. More protests followed. The mining and printing industries then adopted a 40-hour week. More labor protests ensued. Then Ford Motor Company adopted a 40-hour week. Only after all of that did Congress pass a law limiting the workweek to 40 hours.
In the wake of the Build Back Better package’s collapse, progressives should end their fixation on passing a law through Congress. Instead, they should head to state legislatures and individual employers.
The good news for workers is that the country is already undergoing a mini-surge of unionization. The Post reports: “The unorthodox but stunningly successful unionization campaign by Amazon employees in New York was propelled by a burst of new energy by many worker groups, which have emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with new tactics and edge. Employees at a number of other Amazon warehouses are expected to try to replicate the success notched...
; ; ; A foreigner who was granted refugee status in South Korea after claiming persecution in their home country for being a sexual minority now faces the loss of their refugee status as most of t...