Posts tagged white collar
How AI Is Impacting Labor Relations—and Why Employers Need to Pay Attention
October 25, 2024 // One key takeaway from the DOL guidelines is the importance of worker involvement. In unionized workplaces, rolling out AI without worker input is risky. Unions are already pushing back, trying to ensure that AI doesn’t replace jobs or erode working conditions. Employers should expect collective bargaining proposals that set clear parameters around AI usage, from performance monitoring to task automation. Industries like entertainment are leading the charge, with unions such as SAG-AFTRA and the WGA negotiating limits on AI-generated scripts and digital replicas. At ports, the International Longshoremen’s Association is resisting fully automated systems. These are clear signs that AI’s impact on labor is at the top of many unions’ minds.
Proposed federal pay adjustment could boost wages for thousands of blue-collar feds
October 9, 2024 // Geographically, based on the proposal, OPM’s regulations would give federal pay increases mainly to FWS employees working in Alabama, California, Maine, Maryland and Pennsylvania. In particular, the proposed regulations would most prominently impact federal employees working at three major military installations: Tobyhanna, Letterkenny and Anniston Army Depots. The challenges leading to the persistent federal pay disparities are two-fold. In some cases, there are differences between blue-collar FWS employees and white-collar GS employees. In other cases, there are pay disparities among FWS employees working within the same wage area, OPM explained.
Mike Rowe calls Gen Z the next ‘toolbelt generation’ amid increasing vocational enrollment
April 22, 2024 // Rowe doubled down on the demand for electricians, pipe fitters and plumbers, among others, despite emerging technologies. "Look, plumbers are not going to be outsourced," he added. "Electricians, steam fitters, pipe fitters, the people my foundation tries to assist — they have a level of job security that the article in the Journal is referencing, and it's a big deal, because those jobs have always been here for the last 20 years, as long as I've been doing this, they've been open, and it's starting to tip where we're literally turning a tanker around with regard to perceptions."
Opinion: The UAW vote — gambling with our future
April 15, 2024 // The UAW talks a lot about solidarity — but solidarity with whom? Unionized VW employees cannot be in "solidarity" with their fellow unionized workers at other foreign auto assembly plants in the U.S. for one simple reason: Every time the UAW has entered a foreign automotive assembly plant in the U.S., that plant has eventually closed. Mitsubishi in Illinois; Toyota in California; Mazda in Michigan; and VW in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania — the last time the UAW made an American Volkswagen plant unprofitable.
UNION’S FIRST CONTRACTS: MORE TWISTS THAN A SEASON OF ‘STRANGER THINGS’
November 16, 2023 // Welcome to the wild world of collective bargaining, where the quest for a first-time collective bargaining agreement (CBA) often feels like an episode straight out of ‘Stranger Things’ – unpredictable, a little strange, and full of twists and turns.
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.
Opinion: UAW veers off the road in demanding more money for less work
September 26, 2023 // Last week, the UAW called for a work stoppage for about 12,700 employees at three U.S. plants. And until the union listed its demands, I had no idea that working five days a week was so undignified. Any union is only as strong as it is reasonable. The UAW – which represents about 150,000 autoworkers – has four major demands. They range from fair to fantastical. It's fair that the union is seeking the restoration of defined-benefit pensions and a rollback of concessions that workers made in 2007 when U.S. automakers were struggling. That is, as long as the union and the workers it represents understand that these things are cyclical and that they may have to make concessions again .
Opinion: Bernie Sanders to Big 3 CEOs: “It is time for you to end your greed.”
September 19, 2023 // Bernie Sanders: "the average American worker is worse off today than he or she was 50 years ago."
Op-ed: Will COVID-era work-from-home flexibility disappear?
September 19, 2023 // Telford points out the irony that even Zoom – the company that made remote work possible for millions, has recently instructed its own employees who live within 50 miles of a Zoom office to start coming in at least twice a week. Mark Zuckerberg has informed Meta employees that they could face termination if they do not come in at least three days a week starting this month. The sources quoted in the Post story seem to all be pointing toward the long schlep back to the office as being inevitable. Venture capitalist Matt Cohen said “During the pandemic, a lot of salespeople were taking calls from the top of mountains on hiking trips. That’s not working anymore.” Of course, all of this exists only within the world of the office worker. The remote work debate is largely a moot point for anyone who works in a warehouse, a restaurant, or on a road crew. It’s rather difficult, after all, to give a client a work-from-home pedicure. In so far as we’re supposed to be most worried about the outcomes of those least well off, there are probably plenty of employment issues that should be far higher up on our priority list.
Millions more workers would be entitled to overtime pay under a proposed Biden administration rule
August 30, 2023 // The proposed regulation, unveiled by the Department of Labor, would require employers to pay overtime to salaried workers who are in professional, administrative and professional roles but make less than $1,059 a week, or $55,068 a year for full-time employees. That salary threshold is up from $35,568 level that has been in place since 2019 when Trump administration raised it from $23,660, in a more modest increase than President Barack Obama’s earlier proposal.