Yes, Unemployment Insurance and Welfare Encourage People to Quit Lousy Jobs. That’s the Point.
Do we have a right not to work? The answer is we don’t if Democratic leaders stubbornly try to keep the “era of big government” confined to the 20th century. Think of a barista right now in Georgia. She’s home collecting unemployment and watching her two kids while the schools and the cafe where she worked are closed. Her boss says they’re reopening next week even as the coronavirus continues its deadly spread, but schools won’t. Governor Kemp, along with other GOP governors, is using the horrifying tactic of threatening to kick workers off unemployment insurance if they don’t return to their jobs. What should she do? This is the stark choice many workers are left with in post-”big government” America. Return to work and face a deadly virus when intensive-care beds are already nearly full in Georgia and her kids are alone, or stay home and risk losing all income. That so much of the current tension around a […]
Kick the Boss Out of the Doctor’s Office
Is the ability to negotiate healthcare benefits with employers a source of strength for unions, or an insidious trap? The Covid-19 health crisis and ensuing economic meltdown probably answers that question, but it’s still worth dissecting for those naive optimists who think there is some semblance of the old normal that we can return to when the pandemic is finally behind us. Medicare for All was a central issue in the Democratic presidential primary. Among the front-runners, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsed versions of a single-payer plan, while Joe Biden argued against it. In doing so, Biden employed unions’ hard-fought campaigns to win and maintain health benefits to argue that taking the issue out of bargaining entirely, by providing healthcare to everyone, would be disrespectful to union members’ past sacrifices. The issue blew up in the Nevada caucuses when the powerful—and progressive—hotel and casino workers union, Culinary Local 226, […]
The Powerful New Idea in Elizabeth Warren’s Labor Platform
On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren released her long-awaited labor platform, titled “Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages.” The plan provides unions with a long wish list of badly needed reforms and new powers. It also makes a solid case that, like Bernie Sanders, she would be the labor movement’s biggest booster in the White House in generations. Several other candidates, including Julián Castro, Beto O’Rourke and Amy Klobuchar, have also recently put out lengthy labor plans, which provide examples of how (and how not) to stand out from the pack when the baseline position of most Democrats in repealing the Taft-Hartley Act. The biggest innovation in Warren’s platform is a private right of action in the federal courts against employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act. Currently, only employers are able to take their complaints directly to the federal courts, against a union picket line, boycott action or other alleged […]
Bernie Sanders’ Labor Plan Could Put a Union in Every Workplace in America
Bernie Sanders released his Workplace Democracy Plan on Wednesday. His campaign’s labor platform makes the strongest case of any of the candidates so farthat he would be unions’ best ally in the White House in generations. At a time when the Democrats’ official labor law reform proposal, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, would essentially overturn the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, the race to the left for labor’s support in the primaries demands bolder policies. Bernie Sanders does not disappoint. The stand-out measures Where Sanders’ labor platform is most exciting is its proposal for new workers’ rights and forms of union representation that transcend the National Labor Relations Board framework of enterprise-based contract bargaining. One is a “just cause” legal standard of employment, which would mean that non-managerial workers—whether they are represented by a union or not—could only be fired only for a legitimate, serious, work-performance reason. This has […]