Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.
DOL Sets Sights on Southern Workers|Organizers Using One-Day Strikes
Rebecca Rainey: Leaders of the US Labor Department say they’re focusing agency efforts on the South as part of the administration’s work to ensure federal investments enhance racial equity, noting the lack of protections some states provide to workers there.
“Here at the Department of Labor, the Labor Secretary and I and our teams have talked a lot about what’s happening in the Southeast, and why it’s happening in the Southeast,” Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su said during an event at the DOL last week.
“We know that workers do not have the same opportunities to organize in many of the states in the southern part of the country,” she added. “But not all regions experience barriers to organizing equally.”
Trillions of dollars of federal investments for battery and solar manufacturing, as well as for bridges, roads, and other infrastructure projects will likely land in the Southeast, which Su said presents a challenge to President Joe Biden’s goal to create “good jobs” out of government-funded projects, which the administration says includes the right to organize.
Su cited data indicating that southern states have the lowest union membership rates in the country, and that more than half of the Black population in the US lives in the South. Southern states also rank among the worst to work in, according to OXFAM’s 2022 analysis of state worker protection...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...