Posts tagged blue-collar workers
Rep. Allen, Vinnie Vernuccio: How to empower workers and improve unions
June 26, 2025 // The ERA will protect workers’ rights while refocusing unions on their core mission of representing employees. It will give workers and entrepreneurs the confidence to champion their future and shape our economy for decades. The ERA protects and promotes the foundational elements of the modern economy. It ensures that workers of all backgrounds can continue pursuing their American dream by guaranteeing their right to decide how and when they work as independent contractors. That fundamental right has long been under attack and in danger due to conflicting federal laws, regulations, and rulings. The ERA also ensures that Americans can continue to pursue entrepreneurship through franchising by permanently clarifying the shifting and incompatible “joint employer” standards that have threatened this long-standing small business model.
Do More Powerful Unions Generate Better Pro-Worker Outcomes?
May 15, 2025 // Unionization is generally associated with higher wages for lower-skilled unionized workers.[37] However, when unionized sectors set higher wages, excess workers shift to nonunionized sectors, increasing the labor supply and lowering wages for lower-skilled nonunion workers.
‘Union Joe’ left labor movement weaker than it was
February 25, 2025 // As Dominic Pino pointed out last month in National Review, the overwhelming majority of workers in such fields as manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation and warehousing are not union members. Efforts to unionize employees attract disproportionate media cheerleading, especially when the unions target iconic American companies like Starbucks and Amazon. But there isn’t nearly as much coverage when workers in high-profile workplaces vote against joining a union — as they have recently at a Mercedes factory in Alabama, an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina and even Princeton University — or when scores of unions each year are decertified in workplace elections.
Opinion: Better Capitalism Will Reduce The Need For Unions
January 17, 2025 // But now, slowly but surely, we see the pendulum starting to swing again. A new generation of corporate leaders increasingly recognize the downsides of shareholder primacy and the benefits of multi-stakeholder capitalism. Some companies are moving away from treating workers as replaceable widgets — as pure cost centers — and increasingly see them as the key to improving productivity and innovation, which are now the key drivers of long-term profit. Some notable examples in recent years include Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Costco, Best Buy, and JP Morgan Chase.
Opinion: How Biden betrayed union workers by giving them what they wanted
January 7, 2025 // This would hurt the blue-collar American workers whom Biden prioritizes, many of whom wanted the deal to go through. But what’s good for rank-and-file members and what ego-sensitive union leaders want are not always aligned. United Steelworkers leaders were apparently peeved that Nippon had not sought the union’s blessing before making a takeover bid, as other prospective buyers had. (Those other suitors, however, had not offered nearly as generous terms and, in at least one case, blocked U.S. Steel from conducting due diligence on the offer.)
Trump backs dockworkers in fight against automation. The move risks higher prices, experts say
December 14, 2024 // The U.S. Maritime Alliance, or USMX, the organization representing shipping firms in negotiations, said on Thursday that such automation would improve efficiency and increase capacity. Those enhancements would benefit U.S. companies and consumers that depend on goods from abroad, the group added. “We need modern technology that is proven to improve worker safety, boost port efficiency, increase port capacity, and strengthen our supply chains,” USMX said in a statement.
Harris faces challenge with union voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania
October 9, 2024 // One labor official who requested anonymity said many members of his union come from more culturally conservative households and aren’t very familiar with Harris’s record on labor issues. “We have a lot of Republicans in our membership,” the official said, adding that union members reflect society’s spectrum of different political views. That diversity within union membership, however, didn’t stop labor groups from embracing Biden in 2020, as well as Clinton in 2016 and former President Obama in 2012 and 2008.
Boeing Worker Side Hustles Could Drag Strike Out for Months
September 23, 2024 // But as workers stare down the embattled manufacturer for better pay and benefits, the 33,000 members of IAM District 751 have the full benefit of a tight labor market and gig economy that provides a quick transition into jobs that help make ends meet. That gives the union bargaining leverage, potentially frustrating Boeing’s effort to swiftly end a conflict that’s costing it an estimated $100 million each day. While the battle between one of the world’s largest exporters and its blue-collar workers may look like an uneven fight on its surface, Boeing finds itself in an increasingly untenable situation with its finances so dire that it can ill afford a drawn-out paralysis.
Op-Ed: Greszler: Harris, Walz policy records undermine pro-worker rhetoric
August 23, 2024 // the Biden-Harris Administration is also picking winners and losers among blue-collar workers. Its regulations governing wages and labor agreements on government contracts are disastrous. They almost exclude non-union workers from federal contract jobs, including 89% of construction workers who aren’t unionized; force many workers who perform federal contract jobs into unions, including requiring them to pay into union pensions they’ll never receive. Not only that, but despite the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to empower and unionize more workers, the unionization rate hit a new record low of 10% in 2023 (6% among the private sector), and the gap between union and non-union wages also hit a record low. That’s because union wages increased 6.4 percentage points less than non-union wages between 2019 and 2023. For Walz’s part, he’s signed a slew of labor laws ostensibly aimed at helping workers, but by driving up the costs and legal liabilities of employing people in Minnesota, they have instead hamstrung job growth in the state.
WMKT Special Edition Interviews Vinnie Vernuccio: RNC Labor Speech
July 30, 2024 // Vinnie Vernuccio, President and Co-founder of the Institute for the American Worker joins the show to discuss the fallout from Teamsters Union President Sean O'Brien's speech at the RNC convention.