Posts tagged Pennsylvania
White Coats Take a Cue From Blue Collars
February 26, 2025 // Harking back to the emergence of physician unions, we're seeing a resurgence of interest among resident physicians in hospitals across the country. To varying degrees, U.S. hospitals still require resident physicians to work long, irregular hours (in some cases as many as 80 hours a week). In combination with other adverse workplace issues, this has led to house staff dissatisfaction with the status quo and, ultimately, to unionization.
Trump, Elon Musk, and Philly unions are the wild cards in this year’s DA race
February 24, 2025 // But with risk comes reward. If Dugan prevails, it would be seen as a major win for the building trades and would represent the second time in three years that the group helped install its preferred candidate in a major citywide election. One union that has been silent so far is the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which represents current and retired Philadelphia police officers.
Amazon’s Fight With Unions Heads to Its Grocery Aisles
January 27, 2025 // Rob Jennings, an employee in the prepared foods section of the Philadelphia store, has worked there for nearly two decades. He said he noticed a series of changes after Amazon bought the chain in 2017: a program that offered employees a portion of the store’s budget surplus was scrapped, part-time workers lost health insurance, staffing levels started to decline. Even though Whole Foods had never been a worker paradise, Mr. Jennings said, “I have a fantasy about bringing back all the things they took away.”
When New Jersey Hiked Minimum Wages, Fast Food Prices Rose
January 14, 2025 // Today, New Jersey's minimum wage is a little more than $15 per hour, thanks to a provision that automatically raises the minimum wage along with inflation. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's minimum wage is $7.25, which is the federally mandated level. Interestingly, the study found that menu price hikes did not occur immediately after the minimum wage increases. Rather, it took an average of about six weeks for menu prices to rise.
Opinion: Mitch McConnell: Nippon Steel Isn’t the Enemy
January 10, 2025 // In Georgetown, Ky., hundreds of skilled workers build automotive parts at a facility owned by Nippon Steel. About 5 miles away, another Japanese firm, Toyota, employs nearly 10,000 people full-time at the company’s largest vehicle-manufacturing plant in the world. Toyota recently announced more than $2 billion in new investments to expand and modernize its facilities there. Japan likely wonders why the Biden administration considers a major investment in American jobs and manufacturing a national-security risk but not its purchase of cutting-edge American military technologies.
Independent Contracting in 2025
January 8, 2025 // Independent contractors forgo workplace benefits that employees receive. Portable benefits are a way to give them access to benefits untethered from employment with one employer.
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.)
Steelworkers Union Applauds as Biden Blocks Sale of US Steel to Japanese Giant
January 4, 2025 // The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal committee that has the power to review certain transactions involving foreign investment in the United States to evaluate a deal's impact on national security, decided to forgo making a formal recommendation about whether the deal should be allowed to proceed last week. The proposal also became ensnared in election year politics, with both presidential candidates saying that U.S. Steel should remain a domestically-owned firm. Rust Belt lawmakers in both parties, including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—both of whom lost re-election in November—and Vice President-elect JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, expressed opposition to the deal.
461 employees at ZeniMax Online Studios have unionized
December 20, 2024 // Another union has formed within Microsoft in a bid to 'create protections against layoffs and workplace exploitation.'
Hundreds of U.S. Steel workers rally in Clairton in support of Nippon deal
December 14, 2024 // Some speakers took aim at United Steelworkers union leaders, who have maintained opposition to the deal. USW president Dave McCall has continued to say that there aren’t enough guarantees in writing for the company’s union workers. Kurt Barshick, the vice president of U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works, said that the hundreds of workers who showed up for the rally were the true voices of the company’s union workers, and that they favored the deal. He suggested that union leadership was overly focused on a separate, less generous acquisition offer made by Cleveland Cliffs Steel.