Posts tagged affirmative action
The Changes Begin: Trump Administration Takes Slew of Actions in the Labor and Employment Field
January 28, 2025 // President Trump did not take immediate action to fire the General Counsels for the EEOC and NLRB, moves that had been widely anticipated for his first day in office, although those actions are expected soon. Once made, the moves will further shift those agencies away from their Biden-era policies toward, to some extent, more business-friendly approaches with some significant caveats evident in the President’s initial Executive Orders.
Hotel Workers Strike against Scab Staffing App and Anti-Black Racism
August 2, 2023 // Bradley said he’s been trying to get a permanent hotel job for more than a decade, and suggested that discrimination was the reason he was passed over. “I think I’ve proven myself, and it’s still not enough,” he said. UNITE HERE has negotiated contract language to push hotels to hire Black workers, starting in Local 1 in Chicago in 2006, with similar language in contracts in Boston and Los Angeles. “Often we’re put against each other, right?” said Briceño. “So through all these years that we’ve been bargaining, we take the opportunity to educate our top leaders, folks that come to the negotiation, to understand the need to speak with one voice for the workers and the inclusion of Black workers.”
Teachers union presidents blast Supreme Court affirmative action ruling
July 17, 2023 // Weingarten said, “At the end of the day, those of us in education, and frankly for those of us in Labor … we fight for a better life for everyone. Neither of us are going to stop fighting for what kids and communities need to succeed,” Weingarten said. “Whether that kid is dyslexic or scarred by social media issues or, frankly, whether that kid, because schools were closed for a long time, has issues because of that.” Those words stand in stark contrast to her and her union’s actions, such as when AFT handcrafted school shutdown policies at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) federal agency in early 2021. Based on released emails, AFT sent a list of suggestions (which included closing schools) to the CDC, and the CDC adopted much of the AFT’s list in their final public health guidance that kept schools closed.
Teachers union presidents blast Supreme Court affirmative action ruling
July 14, 2023 // In a Twitter Spaces online, audio-only discussion event hosted by the progressive group Alliance for Justice, both Weingarten and Pringle blasted the Court. Weingarten emphasized that the Court’s ruling was “horrible” and immediately drew a connection to her interpretations of history. “What this decision does is basically ignore the original sin of slavery and the effects of that original sin and pretends that there is no longer an effect to it,” Weingarten affirmed. “And [it] basically says that equal protection means whatever the dominant power play is right now, that’s what should be happening in America.” Weingarten claimed that the Court “is no longer calling balls and strikes” and is too busy “making law that is quite ideological.” In her words, “Our job has gotten both harder and easier in the last couple years because of these decisions — a dynamic she attributes to the public having “no confidence in the Court.”