Posts tagged tight labor market
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.
25 states will hike minimum wage in 2024
December 22, 2023 // Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, said many food and hospitality workers already earn more than their state minimum. He noted that employers have raised salaries to compete for a shrinking pool of applicants. “Raising state and local rates does hurt the smaller businesses, the classic mom and pop enterprises, who will employ local high school or college-age kids if they can but may not be able to justify that if the minimum rate increases,” Mr. Higgins said.
Opinion: Why stop at the four-day workweek?
November 9, 2023 // s. Second, let workers unionize and collectively bargain rather than firing them for it. The road, though, doesn’t end there. “One thing you need,” said Benanav, “is something that was never really achieved in the US: actual sectoral bargaining. Not just collective bargaining at the firm level, but at the industry level.” Sectoral bargaining means unions would negotiate standards that apply to all workers in an industry, not just those who work in unionized firms. To complement that greater representation, workers would also benefit from social programs like unconditional cash transfers, universal healthcare, or as the pandemic showed, stronger unemployment insurance. We already saw early tremors of the power such reforms can hold as part of the surprisingly generous US policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly the boosted unemployment insurance. “A lot of that was giving people resources to just make their own decisions,” said Konczal.
Why it seems like everyone’s going on strike on Biden’s watch
September 19, 2023 // Biden was able to intervene directly in talks between railroads and rail workers since federal law gives the government a big say in that industry’s labor relations due to its economic importance. And his top Labor Department official was involved in a deal this year between West Coast ports and dockworkers. Here’s how the administration publicly stepped in — or didn’t — in some of organized labor’s most high-profile moments.
No-Show Workers Add Wrinkle to Stellantis Union Contract Talks
September 14, 2023 // The auto giant has a hard time getting some US factory workers to show up for their shifts. They just don’t align on how to solve it. Stellantis has made fixing absenteeism a priority in contract talks with the UAW for its 43,000 unionized workers. The absentee rate at its US plants was 23% last year, according to a copy of the company’s initial contract proposal reviewed by Bloomberg. Absent workers led to $217 million in lost sales in 2021 and 2022, the company estimated.