Posts tagged writers
One Big Beautiful Law on American Radio Journal
July 7, 2025 // This week on American Radio Journal: Lowman Henry talks with Vincent Vernuccio from the Institute for the American Worker about the proposed Employee Rights Act of 2025;
Op-ed: California Legislature should drop latest attack on gig workers
April 21, 2025 // “The bill’s utter lack of detail is a problem,” William Messenger told us; he’s vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which defends workers’ right not to be controlled by unions. “It’s almost like they’re giving that department the authority to just sort of make up its own labor law.” He contrasted that with Massachusetts, whose voters last November passed Question 3, which enacts gig driver rules, but runs to 33 pages and, among other things, details a hearing and appeals process.
Sesame Workshop Announces Major Layoffs
March 7, 2025 // Just a few months after Max said it would stop distributing episodes of Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop announced a round of major layoffs. In a letter to staff on Wednesday, March 5, president and CEO Sherrie Rollins Westin announced that Sesame Workshop will "downsize significantly," calling the cuts "necessary to ensure that the Workshop is poised to continue to deliver on its mission for years to come."
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.
Remote Work Is Reshaping the California Labor Market
June 5, 2024 // That flexibility may be desirable for workers and it could improve labor force participation. For instance, initial evidence suggests that the opportunity for telework may have improved employment among women in recent years. Additionally, remote work is a valuable option for workers with disabilities, though the recent shift toward remote work does not appear to be widespread among this group. In fact, occupations with more flexibility to work remotely have had strong employment growth. While overall employment fell 2% between 2018–19 and 2021–22, employment in occupations where at least half of workers report working from home grew 12%. The largest growth includes software developers, mathematical science occupations, management analysts, and computer hardware engineers. However, the occupations most likely to do remote work are writers and editors (3 of the top 10 remote occupations), even though this field is not growing very fast in California.
California’s AB5 Law Threatens Film and TV Workers Who Use Loan Outs
May 28, 2024 // Loan-out corporations already pay W-2 wages to their owners. The California Employment Development Department's decision to not recognize loan-outs for payroll purposes means studios would have to pay these corporations directly. Due to the logistical challenges this presents, studios are likely to reject using loan-outs altogether. This could severely disrupt the entertainment industry and needs immediate resolution. And the other giant thing is, other states will not have this law. So why would Hollywood workers stay and have businesses in Southern California if they'd be paying more taxes to live in a more expensive place? Especially if work then moves out of state as well.
UAW eyes more wins in South after historic union vote at VW plant
April 22, 2024 // Unions in other industries are already moving ahead with organizing campaigns in the South and trying to learn from the UAW's playbook.
Biden claims to stand for women, but his new regulation will kill jobs that women want
March 30, 2024 // Patrice Onwuka, director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at the Independent Women’s Forum, is extremely concerned about how Biden’s rule will affect women. Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, a visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, is a small business owner and independent contractor who learned firsthand about how government intrusion into this realm is harmful.
Gig Workers Need Flexibility, Not More Rules | Opinion
March 20, 2024 // Su and the Biden administration are missing one important thing, however: most contract workers don't want those protections. Or rather, they consider the reward of the contract work and compensation to be greater than the risk of not having the traditional protections a full-time employee might enjoy. Many contract workers also work full-time jobs that offer said protections. The gig economy has exploded in the last two decades. Before the pandemic, it was estimated to employ 36 percent of American workers, or about 57.2 million people. Statistics from last year suggest there are over 73 million freelancers in the U.S.
PLAYERS’ ASSOCIATIONS WARN SPORTS ILLUSTRATED ON UNION BUSTING
March 7, 2024 // The AFL-CIO Sports Council, which launched in 2022 to assist athletes in unionizing, released the statement Monday. The warning doesn’t mention any specific consequence that could arise. However, players in those leagues could refuse to conduct interviews with SI writers and podcasters, decline to attend SI parties and otherwise boycott creation of SI content. For the storied publication, which for decades influenced the sports industry like no other, a loss of access to players and their unions would make reporting more difficult, and it would both diminish and delegitimize the SI brand.