Posts tagged unemployment
White Collar Workers Are Considering Unionizing as Their Jobs Are Threatened
October 23, 2025 // The scenario was recently explored in a Washington Post article titled “The future of white-collar work may be unionized,” which noted “(l)aw firms, banks and tech companies are seeing an uptick in employees choosing to organize.” Interestingly, the paper didn’t mention that its own tech workers overwhelmingly voted to form a union earlier this year, despite management efforts to prevent them. Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has for years battled to stop the online marketplace’s employees from doing the same. In any case, it was probably no coincidence that the Post’s IT workers led the push to organize. Employees at Alphabet, Microsoft, Kickstarter, and other tech companies began organizing as far back as 2020 to gain better leverage against what they considered heavy-handed management decisions.
COMMENTARY: If Mamdani Wins, the Gig (Work) Is Up
October 3, 2025 // California shows the answer. In 2019, California passed a law attacking independent work. The state’s many photographers, freelance writers, translators, and designers quickly discovered that their once-lucrative work had dried up. Company after company cut jobs. The Mercatus Center found that one out of 10 self-employed jobs disappeared in short order. Even worse job losses were surely on the horizon. Recognizing the danger, California voters almost immediately passed a ballot measure that gave app-based workers and app-based companies the freedom to once again enter into freelance arrangements. The legislature then passed another law to carve out a dozen more professions. But those carve-outs didn’t apply to many other freelancers, like independent truckers, whose ability to work in California remains much more difficult. To this day, because politicians strangled freelance work, Californians have fewer of the jobs they want and need.
Andrews joins Labor Caucus to announce new unemployment legislation
September 21, 2025 // “Everything from adjusting the way that the unemployment rates are garnishments and the minimum percentages that are taken off, all the way down to how we classify workers,” Andrews said. The bill from Andrews would implement the “ABC Test” at the Unemployment Insurance Agency. The test is used in states like California to better determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor.
SAG-AFTRA Confronts a Fran-less Future
August 21, 2025 // But now, with another tough contract negotiation on the horizon, SAG-AFTRA is going to have to push forward without its erstwhile leader from Queens. This time around, Drescher has decided against running for president. In her place, another celebrity, Lord of the Rings and Rudy star Sean Astin, and a rank-and-file performer, New England Local board member Chuck Slavin, are battling it out for the job. The stakes are high, given that the candidates face a darker and more foreboding landscape than the one that even Drescher confronted when she entered office in 2021 during the pandemic.
SEIU Wants Unemployment for Strikers — While Blowing Cash on Billboards
July 23, 2025 // When 1,700 unionized healthcare workers went on strike in the spring of 2023, SEIU 1199 New England had millions in reserve — including a strike fund. But instead of using it to support the walkout, the union spent big on billboards and ads while members lobbied for unemployment benefits to shift the cost onto employers. According to SEIU’s federal LM-2 filings covering July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, the union reported $876,570 in strike benefits along with sitting on almost $22 million in assets. The U.S. Department of Labor defines strike benefits as “all disbursements made to, or on behalf of the members… associated with strikes, work stoppages and lockouts during the reporting period.” In other words, that figure represents the total support SEIU provided its members during the 2023 strike.
CT Union Threatens Lamont Over Striking Worker Bill
June 4, 2025 // S.B. 8, which passed the Senate 24–11 on May 28 with Sen. Norm Needleman (D-Essex) abstaining, rewrites Section 31-236 of state law to allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits after 14 days on the picket line — even if they volunteered to strike. Gov. Lamont vetoed a similar bill last year, and for good reason. This year, he’s again signaling opposition — but unions aren’t taking “no” for an answer.
The Cost Of Misguided Labor Policies: Winchester’s Cautionary Tale
May 23, 2025 // The bill to provide unemployment benefits for striking workers risks repeating the errors that drove Winchester away. A 2022 Stop & Shop worker testified that similar legislation would have extended their 2019 strike by boosting employee “leverage.” This isn’t about fairness — it’s about manipulating the system to prolong labor disputes at the expense of businesses, taxpayers, and consumers.
Op-Ed: The Case for Gig Worker Benefits
December 19, 2024 // Independent workers miss out on many fringe benefits associated with regular employment, such as disability insurance, life insurance, or health insurance. They are also ineligible for paid family or medical leave. In 2022, the proportion of self-employed adults lacking health insurance (18 percent) was substantially higher than that among all working-age adults (12 percent). These disparities result to some extent from tax policy. For the best part of a century, businesses have provided health insurance, pensions, and other fringe benefits to employees with pretax dollars—perks that self-employed workers did not enjoy.
Sean Higgins: Inflation has ruined progress on wages
September 2, 2024 // A new Labor Department rule promises to crack down on this alleged “worker misclassification.” The Federal Trade Commission also promised to crack down on the practice, though it hasn’t issued a rule to date. The Labor Department’s rule will make companies wary of hiring contract workers. Never mind that many workers prize the flexibility this freelance work allows. So workers have fewer options in the traditional jobs they could apply for, and fewer opportunities to earn a living through non-traditional methods such as freelancing. Wage growth has been largely wiped out by inflation. In short, the current administration couldn’t stick the landing for the economy as it recovered from the lockdown.
Opinion: Congress Doesn’t Care About Freelancers — and It May Cost Them at the Polls
August 11, 2024 // Supporters of reclassification do not understand how essential independent contracting is to our livelihoods. This was evident in 2020 in the fight against California’s AB5—a law implementing a restrictive ABC test that reclassified many independent contractors as employees and inspired the DOL’s new rule. One elected state official claimed the independent status being stripped from us was just “taking away our lollipops.” Instead, AB5 hollowed out self-employment, pushed up unemployment, and destroyed many livelihoods in the process. While California is not in play in this election, Virginia is. Independent professionals are aware of what they will lose if similar policies are nationalized.