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Nearly 45,000 student workers at private colleges and universities have formed unions since 2022, seeking to bargain with their employers over wages, health care, protections from harassment and discrimination, and other issues. These student workers include graduate student teaching assistants, undergraduate and graduate student resident assistants, and student dining workers.
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for March. Read the full thread here.
Last Friday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) scored a historic win in the South after a decade-long campaign to organize a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. The UAW is hoping momentum from the Volkswagen vote as well as last year’s successful strike at the “Big Three” automakers will help them win representation at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama next month.
The U.S. Department of Labor issued a final rule today making changes to the regulations about who is eligible for overtime pay. Here’s why this matters:
The labor market recovery from the pandemic recession has been tremendous and low-wage workers have been key recipients of those gains, with dramatically fast real wage growth between 2019 and 2023 as we found in our recent report.
U.S. employers have tremendous power over worker conduct. Under federal law, employers can require workers to attend “captive audience” meetings—and force employees to listen to political, religious, or anti-union employer views—on work time.
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 303,000 jobs added in March. Read the full thread here.
U.S. labor market strength in the recovery has been extraordinary because policymakers addressed the pandemic and subsequent recession at the scale of the problem. Unemployment has been at or below 4.0% for 27 months running, the longest such stretch since the late 1960s. Low-wage workers experienced an unprecedented surge in wage growth over the last four years, as shown in our new report.
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for February. Read the full thread here.
This piece was published in collaboration with the Albert Shanker Institute.
For some students and workers, hair is a trivial wardrobe decision, while for many Black and Brown people, their hairstyle can be a consequential element of class participation and a job offer. School dress codes and “business appropriate” dress often put high stakes and severe restrictions on how Black and Brown people can express their culture and identity through their hair.