The German economy may be showing signs of a life after more than half a decade of stagnation.
Europe’s largest economy has suffered a series of recent blows, including a surge in energy costs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, higher tariffs on its exports to the U.S and fierce competition from China in key sectors such as automobiles.
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Don Nico Forbes
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Remote and hybrid work have become defining features of the postpandemic economy.
While most employees seem to love it, the initial optimistic assessment during the pandemic that remote work was a success has given way to a more-sobering reality for many organizations: Performance, collaboration, innovation and workplace culture are taking a measurable hit.
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OTTAWA—Canada said Tuesday it intends to run wider deficits to finance spending and tax measures aimed at unleashing the massive private-sector investments the economy needs to rebuild amid a protectionist U.S.
To offset some of the elevated costs, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government said it would cut the size of the federal public-sector workforce by about 5%, or 16,000 jobs.
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Paul Vieira
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For years, Venezuelans fighting to unseat President Nicolás Maduro have hoped the country’s military would do the job for them. But even with a menacing U.S. Navy buildup currently offshore, the strongman is virtually coup-proof.
The leftist leader has purged officers accused of conspiring against him, jailing and sending them into exile. The vaunted intelligence service of close ally, Cuba, has worked to identify plots and renegades, with intelligence officers placed in every unit.
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Juan Forero
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This is an edition of the WSJ Careers & Leadership newsletter, a weekly digest to help you get ahead and stay informed about careers, business, management and leadership. If you’re not subscribed, sign up here.
Walmart’s CEO issued an AI wake-up call, saying the technology will wipe out some jobs and reshape the company’s workforce. Doug McMillon’s remarks—which echo those made by leaders at Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon—reflect a rapid shift in how executives discuss the potential human cost of AI.
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Public school employees in one of the biggest school districts in the U.S. have voted overwhelmingly to form unions, capitalizing on a recent Virginia law that allows for collective bargaining in the public sector.
The two votes in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax County covered more than 27,000 workers, putting them among the largest union elections in recent years. The county’s teachers voted nearly 97% in favor of unionizing, while the operations staff, which includes custodians, food workers and bus drivers, voted nearly 81% in favor.
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools could not immediately be reached for comment Monday. The election results were released Monday by the two unions representing the workers, the Fairfax Education Association and the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers.
Leslie Houston, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the unions would focus on “securing fair compensation and living wages for all.”
Until not long ago, Virginia was one of a small handful of states that barred public-sector collective bargaining, forbidding workers from negotiating over wages and benefits since a state Supreme Court decision in 1977. But as Virginia has shifted from red to blue in recent years, it’s become more welcoming to organized labor, a pillar of the Democratic Party.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
In 2020, spurred on by pressure from labor groups, Virginia’s Democratic-led assembly passed a bill overturning the decadesold ban on public employee unionism. The legislation was signed into law by then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, giving unions hope they could build membership in the right-to-work state.
The law allows for municipal employees across Virginia to form unions, so long as their local officials approve it. Several Democratic strongholds in the state have since passed resolutions or ordinances paving the way for collective bargaining, including the state capital of Richmond and the Washington suburb of Alexandria.
The Fairfax County School Board passed a resolution giving the green light for union elections last year. The organizing in the school system was a joint effort by affiliates of the country’s two major teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Jo Ann Madison, a Fairfax bus driver, said in a statement Monday through her union that the county’s public school employees would now have “a seat at the table” to bargain over their working conditions.
“We’re counting down the days until we have a legally binding contract,” Madison said.
Amazon will pay out $1.9 million to more than 700 migrant workers to settle claims of human rights abuses following exploitative labor contracts, The impacted laborers were working at two of the company’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia.
Amazon saying it hired a third-party labor rights expert to investigate warehouse conditions. The organization found numerous violations of Amazon’s supply chain standards, including “substandard living accommodations, contract and wage irregularities and delays in the resolution of worker complaints.”
This follows an from last October that detailed various alleged human rights abuses experience by those contracted to work in Amazon facilities in the region, and noted that many of the impacted laborers were “highly likely to be victims of human trafficking.” The report also suggested that Amazon was aware of the high risk for labor abuse when operating in Saudi Arabia but still “failed to take sufficient action to prevent such abuses.”
Simultaneous reports by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism offered detailed accounts of the conditions that these laborers allegedly suffered under, The investigations found that workers had to pay illegal recruitment fees of up to $2,040 to get hired. This forced the migrant workers, many of whom were from Nepal, to take out loans with high interest rates.
Investigators also learned that these workers were living in squalid conditions, with one laborer saying he was living “in a crowded room with seven other men, jammed with bunk beds infested with bed bugs.” The water was said to be salty and undrinkable. Amnesty International echoed these findings, saying that the accommodations were “lacking even the most basic facilities.”
The combination of the exorbitant hiring fees, along with the associated loans, amounted to “human trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation as defined by international law and standards,” Amnesty alleged in its report.
Amazon has stated that it has “remediated the most serious concerns” involving the two Saudi warehouses, including an upgrade to housing accommodations. “Our goal is for all of our vendors to have management systems in place that ensure safe and healthy working conditions; this includes responsible recruitment practices,” the company wrote.
It’s worth noting that though that $1.9 million number seems high, it breaks down to around $2,700 per employee. Amazon made which comes out to more than $1.5 billion each day.
Amazon doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to labor. It’s regularly particularly at its The company is also rabidly anti-union, as many of these complaints involve Amazon faces multiple ongoing federal probes into its safety practices, and it has been fined by federal safety regulators for
However, the company remains defiant in its efforts to chip away at worker’s rights. Amazon that claims the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional, joining Elon Musk’s SpaceX and grocery giant Trader Joe’s. The NLRB is an independent arm of the federal government that enforces US labor law and has been operating since 1935.
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Lawrence Bonk
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New government data shows a surprisingly strong job market for the month of January.
But there are signs of weakness in the labor market, based on tens of thousands of workers who have been laid off since 2024 started.
U.S. employers announced 82,307 job cuts in January, up from 34,817 in December, a 136% increase, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Still, that is down 20% from the 102,943 cuts announced in January 2023 and the all-time high for that month in 2009, with 241,749 job losses.
At the same time, the latest data shows the U.S. job market is still strong, with the unemployment rate holding at 3.7%.
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Moreover, the number of job openings stands at nine million, which is still elevated compared to prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, yet down from a 12 million peak, noted Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.
“On the one hand, Americans should have a sense that their job security is generally speaking in a good place,” Hamrick said. “At the same time, we have to understand that certain sectors of the economy may be experiencing more disruption or innovation.”
With that innovation comes a higher risk that workers may suffer from an income loss as the economy adjusts, he said.
For example, retail brands may be shedding positions as they continue to transition from brick-and-mortar stores to online sales. Sectors tied to the mortgage industry are repositioning in the wake of higher interest rates. Areas such as entertainment and media are adjusting to new online streaming and subscription models.
“There’s still the benefit of the elevated number of job openings,” despite the anecdotal evidence that job cuts are happening, Hamrick said.
Some companies that have open positions are eager to fill them.
“There are still companies that are hiring, and they can’t find talent fast enough,” said Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster.
If you’re newly out of work, taking these steps may help you get hired faster.
Losing a job typically prompts a feeling of rejection, Salemi said, while getting a job offer instead prompts acceptance and optimism about the future.
To get to that latter phase faster, it helps to take a moment to acknowledge your feelings and shift into a better mindset.
Salemi recalls working as a corporate recruiter to help two candidates who had just been let go to prepare for their job search.
The first candidate who was excited about potential opportunities landed a new job in six weeks. The other who was shell-shocked from the layoff took longer than six months to find a new position.
Mindset and attitude make all the difference, according to Salemi. “Navigating this journey can be challenging, but it can definitely be overcome,” Salemi said.
Update your resume with your latest accomplishments based on recent performance reviews, Salemi said.
To refresh your interviewing skills, try practicing with a friend, setting up informational interviews or getting tips from a career coach.
When you see a relevant position advertised, be sure to apply quickly. “Don’t wait more than 24 hours — the job may be gone,” Salemi said.
Also, be sure to include keywords that will help put your applications to the top of a recruiter’s results, she said.
Start thinking about the ideal job and what that looks like for you by asking yourself some key questions, Salemi advised.
Where is your ideal position based: in office, hybrid or remote? What industry is it in? What tasks does it require? Are there strengths or items you absolutely loved doing in your last position that you want to continue doing?
Use your time away from a full-time role to continue advancing your skills. That may include taking on a part-time role, volunteer work or online class.
When interviewing, be sure to highlight how those experiences have kept your skills fresh and enhanced what you can offer, Salemi said.
Just because you’re out of work doesn’t necessarily mean you need to take a lower salary for your next role. Even if you are coming to a new position without a job, do not discount your worth because you’re unemployed, Salemi said.
Employers are more surprised when you don’t negotiate than when you do, according to Salemi.
“Don’t be shy about negotiating that offer,” Salemi said.
Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:
Updated Dec 09, 2023, 12:13 pm EST / Original Dec 08, 2023, 6:30 pm EST
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That was close.
After the U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 3.9% in October, stoking fears that the labor market might finally be starting to crack under the weight of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes, economic data released Friday showed that unemployment retreated to 3.7% in November.
That means the Sahm rule, an indicator devised to sniff out a recession long before one is officially declared, is now even further from triggering, after nearly brushing up against the threshold last month.
And according to the rule’s creator, former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm, perhaps it won’t trigger, at least not during this cycle.
“I am more optimistic today that it doesn’t trigger,” Sahm told MarketWatch during a phone interview Friday.
Wall Street and social media were abuzz with talk of the Sahm rule last month as the rising unemployment rate sparked a debate about whether a recession had begun.
The increase brought the Sahm rule indicator to 0.30, according to data available on a Federal Reserve branch website, bringing it closer to triggering than at any time during the past two years. It also sparked a brisk conversation among professional economists and amateur market watchers about what the Sahm rule is, how it works and why investors should care about it.
After Sahm declared that the rule hadn’t triggered, some on social media accused her of misrepresenting her own rule, said the economist, who now runs her own consulting business.
She was surprised by this, she told MarketWatch, since she thought the rule’s simplicity was one of its most important features.
It was initially devised with lawmakers in mind, intended to become an automatic mechanism to send out stimulus checks more quickly as a recession begins, thus helping to shield workers from some of the worst financial consequences.
But the debate has helped her realize that perhaps the rule’s dynamics aren’t clearly understood by all.
To try to remedy this, she published a step-by-step guide explaining how the Sahm rule is calculated, or at least how Sahm and the Fed calculate it. Economists are free to devise their own variations on the rule. Here are some key points:
The logic undergirding the rule is pretty straightforward, Sahm said: The rule is grounded in the notion, supported by historical data, that once employment starts to rise, it often snowballs.
Typically it increases by anywhere between 4 and 6 percentage points during a recession, Sahm said.
But just because the rule has held in the past doesn’t mean it always will. Sahm has previously said that she wouldn’t be surprised if the rule were to break because of pandemic-related distortions in the global economy.
She affirmed on Friday that she still believes this to be the case, although she doubts the rule will trigger this cycle.
That is largely because, as Sahm sees it, the rise in the unemployment rate has been driven not only by slowing job creation, but by workers returning to the workforce, a sign that supply-and-demand dynamics in the U.S. labor market are coming back into balance, and that maybe employers won’t need to be as precious about hiring in the future.
“If [the rebalancing] happens fast enough, then we won’t trigger. But if it slows down, then maybe we’ll trigger, but we’ll likely see unemployment move sideways before coming back down,” Sahm said.
Labor Department data showed the U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in November, surpassing economists’ expectations for 190,000 new jobs. The number was also higher than the 150,000 created during the previous month.
See: Job report shows gain of 199,000 in November. Wages are still hot.
When COVID-19 struck, companies had little choice but to adapt swiftly. Office spaces were replaced by living rooms and in-person meetings transitioned to virtual calls — a temporary solution, or so it was thought.
But months have turned into years, and now it’s clear this is not just a fleeting phase but a profound transformation in work dynamics.
The…
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has outlined a plan to lift what’s called the national living wage by nearly 10%, from £10.42 to £11.44 ($14.35). He called that the biggest increase in more than a decade.
The minimum wage applies in the U.K. to those over the age of 23, though when the new rate goes into effect in April it also will apply to 21- and 22-year-olds.
Internationally,…
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Public school teachers in Ohio recently got some surprising news in the mail: They were due a “credit” from their union.
Melissa Cropper, president of the 20,000-member Ohio Federation of Teachers, was listed as the sender of the “CREDIT DUE NOTICE.” All educators had to do was fill out the attached form and mail it back for an apparent refund.
There was just one problem. The notice didn’t actually come from Cropper or the union ― it came from the Freedom Foundation, a conservative group whose mission is to get teachers and other public sector workers to drop their union membership.
Anyone who carefully read the form would see that by signing it, a teacher would be authorizing the Freedom Foundation to submit it to their union and employer on their behalf to renounce their membership.
“People are really pissed,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the Ohio union’s parent group.
Weingarten said she is accustomed to the foundation ― which has ties to GOP megadonors ― “misrepresenting” teachers unions and their work. But she believes the group crossed a legal line this time by listing Cropper as the sender of the document.
“They lie all the time, and their MO is to divide and divide and divide,” she said. “This one was a complete fraud.”
A teacher who quits their union would stop paying dues out of future paychecks. But the mailer didn’t just imply that teachers were owed a credit, Weingarten said ― it also suggested the union’s own leader “is inducing you to drop the union.”
Courtesy American Federation of Teachers
The Freedom Foundation declined to answer detailed questions about the mailer campaign, such as how many were sent out and how many the group received back from teachers. But Ashley Varner, a spokesperson for the group, defended the use of the mailers in an emailed statement to HuffPost.
“Freedom Foundation informs public employees, including teachers, of their constitutional right to leave their unions and stop paying dues because unions like AFT fail to do so,” Varner said. “The communication with teachers in Ohio was neither fraudulent nor misleading. Randi Weingarten’s claims are simply untrue.”
Nonetheless, the Freedom Foundation backed down from using the mailers after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the AFT, according to letters provided to HuffPost. The foundation agreed not to send any more mailers, and assured the AFT that it hadn’t distributed any outside of Ohio.
The union’s general counsel, Dan McNeil, said in a letter to the foundation that its “reliance on trickery and deception to further its insidious goals is not only morally repugnant, it is also unlawful.” McNeil alleged that the effort ran afoul of both trademark law and identity fraud statutes, and that it amounted to “federal mail fraud.”
Freedom Foundation executive vice president Brian Minnich wrote in a response that the group “respectfully disagrees” that the letter was meant to deceive teachers. Although the letter’s sender was listed as the union president, Minnich said the return envelope and tear-off form “clearly indicated the return would go to the Foundation.”
“They lie all the time… This one was a complete fraud.”
– Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers
The mailers are part of a long-running conservative effort to weaken public sector labor groups that tend to support Democrats. Republicans in states around the country have taken aim at teachers unions in particular, pushing laws designed to make it harder for the groups to hang on to members and influence education policy.
This right-wing cause got a major lift from the Supreme Court in 2018.
The conservative majority ruled in its landmark case Janus v. AFSCME that public sector workers could not be required to pay any dues to a union, even if the union is still legally obligated to represent them. The decision effectively made the entire U.S. public sector “right to work,” and forced public sector labor groups to change the way they operate and focus more on member retention.
After the ruling in Janus, the Freedom Foundation started pouring resources into campaigns encouraging workers to drop their unions. The recent Ohio mailers were part of a project called “Opt Out Today.”
It’s difficult to unpack how the Janus decision has affected teachers unions nationally so far, in part because membership hinges on school staffing levels that fluctuate. The Freedom Foundation claims teachers have been opting out of AFT “in droves,” but Weingarten says this doomsday scenario has not come to pass.
“They used Janus to try to defund unions. What’s happened in terms of our union is, it hasn’t worked,” she said. “But the amount of time, energy and effort we have to spend correcting the record and dealing with these misrepresentations and out-and-out lies, that takes time away from us servicing the members.”
Weingarten said the Freedom Foundation’s use of the “credit due” mailer is a sign of “desperation.” She noted that in the group’s Oct. 12 response to the union’s cease-and-desist letter, the group said that it had “not forwarded a single request to opt-out received recently” from the Ohio mailer campaign.
The union demanded a list of all members who received the mailers, but it says the Freedom Foundation hasn’t provided one yet. The union suggested in a follow-up letter that it might pursue legal action.
“The AFT reserves all rights,” the letter read.
Shipping containers are loaded onto rail cars at the Global Container Terminals Vanterm container terminal on Vancouver Harbour in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) of Canada voted to ratify the second tentative agreement with West Coast port ownership, meaning an end to the uncertainty and trade congestion that has gripped the supply chain for weeks since dock workers first decided to strike.
Rob Ashton, president of the ILWU, said 74.66% of members voted in favor of accepting the terms of the tentative agreement.
The ILWU Canada and the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) announced a revised second tentative deal last Sunday, with the agreement brokered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board, after union members rejected an original deal proposal. The country’s industrial relations board directed the union to vote no later than Friday.
The new deal includes increases in wages, benefits, and training, according to an overnight statement by the BCMEA. No additional specifics were given.
The original deal proposal which was rejected increased the compounded wage over four years by 19.2%, according to disclosures from the BCMEA, as well as a signing bonus of $1.48 an hour per employee, which tallied to approximately $3,000 per full-time worker. There was also an 18.5% increase in the retirement payout.
The union argued that worker salaries were unsustainable against rising inflation, but the BCMEA countered that over the past 13 years, longshore wages have risen by 40%, ahead of inflation at 30%. The union said that the use of contract labor for maintenance work was another sticking point in the deal.
The BCMEA said the ratification would provide “certainty and stability for the future of Canada’s West Coast ports.”
“The BCMEA recognizes and regrets the profound repercussions this labor disruption has had on the national economy, workers, businesses and ultimately, all Canadians that depend on an efficient and reliable supply chain. All supply chain stakeholders must collaborate now to ensure we do not see disruptions like this ever again.”
But, after a week of traveling and meeting shipping clients, Paul Brashier, vice president of drayage at ITS Logistics, told CNBC the reliability and reputation of the Canadian ports have created lasting damage.
“We are happy that the ILWU has finally come to terms and agreed to a new contract,” said Brashier. “Unfortunately, this lack of government intervention and direction has forced cargo owners and shippers in our network to make the decision and permanently move their imports back to the U.S. port of entry on the West Coast.”
Over the course of the 14-day strike, ocean carriers either pulled up anchor to divert the Canadian ports to stay on schedule and unload at U.S. ports. Some U.S. shippers reconsigned the destination of their containers to the U.S during that time. Other ocean carriers eventually went back to the Canadian ports and waited to unload both Canadian and U.S. freight.
Canadian Labor Minister Seamus O’Regan tweeted acknowledgment of the supply chain damage the strikes caused and is now calling on federal officials to review how the disruption of this magnitude unfolded so it can be avoided in the future.
It will take at least two months for the railroads to clear out the pileup of containers as a result of the 14 days of striking by dock workers. At the height of the strike, $12 billion in freight was stranded on the water. Some of that trade was diverted on vessels that called on ports on the U.S. West Coast.
The Railway Association of Canada originally estimated that it would take three to five days, for every day the strike lasted, for networks and supply chains to recover. When the first strike ended on its 13th day, delays for rail containers were estimated at 39 to 66 days. After an additional day of work stoppage in the on-again, off-again strike, the congestion tally moved up to a range of 42 to 70 days.
“Delays appear to be bearing out toward the mid-to-upper end of that range,” a Railway Association of Canada spokesperson recently told CNBC via email.
Changes to vessel routes impact the profitability of railroads, including Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway, since fewer containers can be unloaded at U.S. ports. This decrease in containers also impacts trucking companies. On the flip side, the extra containers coming into U.S. ports will add to the profitability of U.S. trucking companies and railroads BNSF, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, and Union Pacific. Over the long term, if Canadian trade is rerouted to the East Coast as a result of West Coast labor strife, that would also benefit Norfolk Southern and CSX.
In the first two weeks of the strike, the flow of railroad trade from Canada to the U.S. was cut by 82%. Train trade has slowly recovered, with a 6.2% decrease being tabulated for the week ending July 29.
The supply chain issues have already hit the bottom lines of railroad companies. Canadian Pacific Kansas City railroad’s chief marketing officer John Brooks told analysts on the company’s conference call last week the labor unrest will negatively impact the railroad’s revenue by $80 million. Brooks said the company is working to claw back those losses over the third and fourth quarters.
Canadian National Railway announced it was running additional trains to help expedite the clearing out of the container congestion.
The timing of this strike occurred during the peak shipping season, when back-to-school and holiday items are arriving for retailers.
Fran Drescher, the Screen Actors Guild president, lit into studio executives on Thursday as the union representing some 160,000 Hollywood performers voted to strike in response to failed negotiations.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to reach an agreement with the guild, known as SAG-AFTRA, despite the union extending negotiations two weeks past their contract expiration on June 30. The Screen Actors Guild’s members have been fighting for equitable wages and working conditions.
The SAG-AFTRA’s national board agreed to the union negotiating committee’s unanimous recommendation to strike on Thursday. The strike is expected to begin at midnight and involve union members, leadership and staff.
“We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity,” the iconic TV star said in a blistering speech amid the strike announcement. “I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things.”
Drescher continued: “How they plead poverty that they’re losing money left and right while giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”
Drescher, known for her memorable role in the ’90s sitcom “The Nanny,” referred to executives from Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros ― all major studios represented by AMPTP. Specifically, Disney CEO Bob Iger found himself in hot water on Thursday for saying the demands of the Hollywood writers and performers were “disruptive” and “not realistic,” while the executive’s salary amounts to up to $27 million a year.
“The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, A.I.,” Drescher said. “This is a moment of history. This is a moment of truth. If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family.”
SAG-AFTRA members will join their colleagues in the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike since May after their contract negotiations with the AMPTP also fell through. Like SAG-AFTRA, Hollywood writers are also sounding the alarm about technology that could be used to replace or further exploit them.
“We stand solidly behind our union siblings in SAG-AFTRA as they begin their work stoppage,” WGA said in a statement to its members. “The last time both of our unions struck at the same time, actors and writers won landmark provisions that we all continue to benefit from today ― residuals and pension and health funds.”
Drescher also said Thursday that SAG-AFTRA stands in “unprecedented unity” with its sister guilds, as well as other unions leading the current labor movement.
“Because at some point, the jig is up,” she said. “You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored.”
The Insider Union has reached a tentative agreement with management at the news site Insider, ending the longest strike in digital media history, the union’s bargaining unit announced Wednesday.
“Our strike is over ― we’re going back to work tomorrow!” read a tweet from the account of the unit, which consists of about 250 people.
Staff at Insider, organized through the NewsGuild, have been on strike for 13 days. Negotiations with the site’s management had fallen apart after more than two years of bargaining over increased health care costs, salary minimums and various other workplace conditions.
The three-year deal they reached Wednesday includes a $65,000 salary minimum, immediate raises for most unit members, a layoff moratorium through the end of 2023, a “just cause” requirement for disciplining employees, and a commitment from management to reimburse more than $400,000 in health care costs over the course of the agreement. The tentative contract now goes to the full unit for a vote on ratification.
“The deal we won today shows the power of solidarity,” Dorian Barranco, a member of the Insider Union bargaining committee, said in a statement. “We came together and refused to settle for anything less than what we were worth, and our collective power won a contract that will resonate in newsrooms across the country. It’s never an easy decision to go on strike, but today’s victory proves it was well worth it. We’re excited to get back to work with our new wins in hand.”
Increased health care costs were a major point of tension during bargaining. Last November, the NewsGuild filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Insider with the National Labor Relations Board, which found merit with the complaint in May. The complaint alleged that management had unlawfully changed workers’ health care coverage, resulting in increased costs for unit members.
Up until now, striking staffers have encouraged readers not to cross the digital picket line by visiting Insider or clicking on any of the site’s stories. The non-unionized staffers who remained at work, meanwhile, recycled old stories and published unfinished content.
At one point, Insider’s editor-in-chief, Nicholas Carlson, was captured on film biking around Brooklyn, New York, and ripping down pro-union fliers that called him out with the headline “Have You Seen This Millionaire?”
Writers for the U.S. film and television industries have given their unions the green light to declare a strike if they can’t reach a satisfactory deal on a new contract with the major studios.
On Monday the two affiliated unions, the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East, released the results of a strike authorization vote held among their members amid contract talks. Nearly 98% voted in favor of authorizing a work stoppage, and nearly 80% of eligible members participated in the vote — figures that the unions said were record highs.
The vote does not guarantee screenwriters will walk off the job, but it empowers union leaders to call a strike if they don’t make sufficient headway at the bargaining table. It would be the first strike by Hollywood writers since they were off the job for 100 days in 2007 and 2008.
“Our membership has spoken,” the unions’ negotiating committee said in an email to members. “You have expressed your collective strength, solidarity, and the demand for meaningful change in overwhelming numbers. Armed with this demonstration of unity and resolve, we will continue to work at the negotiating table to achieve a fair contract for all writers.”
The unions are negotiating a new three-year deal known as the minimum basic agreement, which sets pay, benefits and protections for the industry’s writers. The big studios, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal and Netflix, bargain the agreement collectively as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The contract covers more than 11,000 workers.
This year’s negotiations were expected to be contentious as writers demand a bigger piece of the streaming pie. Much like the film production workers who threatened to strike in 2021, screenwriters say the studios have used the shift toward streaming as an opportunity to push down wages for those who make the content.
David McNew via Getty Images
According to the unions, a growing share of writers, editors and showrunners have been receiving the industry’s minimum pay under the contract. For instance, a decade ago 10% of co-producers were working at the minimum rate, and now 59% are. The unions say median pay for writers and producers has dropped 4% over those years, not counting for inflation.
At the same time, the unions say streaming has led to fewer episodes per season and longer production times for each episode in a series — a dynamic that has squeezed writers since they are paid per episode.
“The companies have leveraged the streaming transition to underpay writers, creating more precarious, lower-paid models for writers’ work,” the WGAW and WGAE said in a recent memo. (HuffPost employees are represented by the WGAE.)
In their pattern of demands, the writers also said they want to boost what are known in the industry as “residuals” — pay for the reuse of their work, such as with television reruns or feature film DVDs.
The AMPTP said ahead of talks that it would approach the contract with “the long-term health and stability of the industry” in mind. “The goal is to keep production active so that all of us can continue working and continue to deliver to consumers the best entertainment product available in the world,” the group said in a statement.
The current contract is set to expire on May 1. If the two sides fail to reach a deal or extend the current one by then, union leaders could declare a strike.
In the event of a work stoppage, writers would be expected to withhold their work from any studio under the lapsed contract. A prolonged strike could stop production of scripted television shows and eventually impact film production as well.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could head into the GOP presidential primary against Donald Trump with a shiny new conservative credential: destroyer of public-sector labor unions.
Republicans in the Sunshine State are moving ahead with legislation designed to make it harder for government employee unions to collect dues and, well, to exist at all. The bill cleared the GOP-dominated state Senate in Tallahassee last week, despite several Republican lawmakers joining their Democratic colleagues and voting against it.
The bill has not yet passed the state House, which is also under solid GOP command, and it must make it through committee before reaching the House floor. DeSantis, who’s leading a broad attack on what he claims is “wokeism” in education, has publicly backed the bill as it relates to teachers unions.
Unions and their Democratic allies have managed to keep the grab bag of anti-labor provisions at bay for several years. But now they are alarmed — and furious — at the legislation’s advance.
Adding to their fury is the fact that Senate Republicans included a carveout to the bill that protects unions representing police, firefighters and corrections officers — that is, unions more likely to politically support Republicans.
In its current form, the bill would affect teachers, school support staff, bus drivers, janitors and sanitation workers, parks and library employees and others across the public sector whose unions tend to support Democrats.
“The goal of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public-sector workers who the governor doesn’t like,” said Rich Templin, director of politics and public policy at the Florida AFL-CIO labor federation. “Nobody that’s directly involved has asked for this. This is another in a very long line of policies being advanced solely for the governor’s run for the White House.”
Unions are right to find the mechanics of the bill troubling.
The main provision would bar unions representing teachers and other public-sector workers from deducting dues through workers’ paychecks. That’s the primary way workers pay their union dues now. They also use it to pay health insurance premiums, gym memberships and a slew of other deductions that employers allow. Ending it would force unions to create new dues-collection mechanisms, like setting workers up for ACH transfers through their banks.
“The goal of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public-sector workers who the governor doesn’t like.”
– Rich Templin, Florida AFL-CIO
Republicans have pursued bans on paycheck dues deduction in several states in recent years, casting it as “paycheck protection” for workers — teachers, in particular — against rapacious unions. They succeeded in Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama and Indiana. A federal judge recently blocked the Indiana law from taking effect after teachers unions sued on the grounds the law violated their constitutional right to freedom of association.
The loss of “dues checkoff,” as paycheck deductions are known, is not necessarily calamitous for a union. But as an organizer once wrote in the publication Labor Notes, it creates a “new layer of convincing” when trying to sign a worker up for the union, even one who supports the cause: “Not only must the member or staff organizer move the worker into action, but we also have to convince them to give us their damn bank info!”
What sets the Florida legislation apart is how the dues-deduction ban could work in tandem with a second anti-union provision.
Florida has long been a “right-to-work” state where no worker can be required to pay fees to a union, even if they enjoy the benefits of a union contract. (The entire U.S. public sector is now right to work, courtesy of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling.) But in 2018, under then-Gov. Rick Scott, Republicans added another challenge for the state’s teachers unions: If the number of dues-paying members in a bargaining unit fell below 50%, a process would begin whereby the union could be “decertified,” or purged and its contract nullified.
As part of their new proposal, Republicans would apply that decertification threshold to public-sector unions writ large, and raise it from 50% to 60%. So as unions lost members due to the payroll deduction ban, they could more easily fall in danger of being decertified — unless they represent cops, firefighters or corrections officers.
“It’s pretty clear this is political retribution,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a union with more than 150,000 members. Of the unions carved out, Spar said, “I have a lot of friends in those unions, but those unions have supported Gov. DeSantis.”
HuffPost asked Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, sponsor of the bill, what the logic was for including a carveout for certain unions that happen to lean conservative. A spokesperson pointed to a Senate committee hearing in which Ingoglia said cops and firefighters are “putting their lives on the line every day.”
“They may go to work and not know if they’re coming home that night,” Ingoglia said March 16. “So if you’re getting rid of payroll deduction, then you’re forcing a face-to-face conversation with the employees and their union representatives … I would have a hard time telling law enforcement who worked an overnight from 12 to 8 that she or he would have to not get any sleep and meet their union representative at 11 a.m. to give them their check.”
HuffPost asked a follow-up question: If this bill is really about “protecting” workers’ paychecks, don’t our heroes deserve the same protections that other workers are afforded under the bill? The spokesperson did not respond.
SOPA Images via Getty Images
A spokesperson for DeSantis would not say whether the governor supports the carveout for cops and firefighters, recommending HuffPost steer questions to the bill’s backers in the legislature. In a press conference where he promoted “paycheck protection,” DeSantis spoke of it solely in relation to teachers unions.
“Since this legislation is still subject to the legislative process (and therefore different iterations), the governor will decide on the merits of the bill in final form if and when it passes and is delivered to the governor’s office,” said the spokesperson, Jeremy T. Redfern.
It is not clear how the legislation’s backers arrived specifically at 60% as an appropriate threshold below which a union would have to apply for recertification with the state. After all, there is a certain logic to the current 50% marker, above which the dues-paying members represent a majority.
Spar, of the FEA, said he believes he knows how 60% was chosen.
“We know he [DeSantis] had his staff call around the state to find out where all the teachers unions were in membership, and he found out they all were over 50%, with many in the upper 50s and quite a few over 60%,” Spar said. “So why set a threshold of 50?”
Warring with teachers unions is nothing new for Republican luminaries. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were celebrated on the right for their attacks on public-sector unions, though neither managed to ride their anti-union record to the GOP presidential nomination.
But in the case of Florida, labor leaders believe the push to kill dues checkoff is wrapped up in DeSantis’ crusade against what he calls “woke ideology” in schools. He has banned “woke” textbooks, warred with the College Board over African American studies and attacked diversity, education and inclusion initiatives in higher education.
Spar said teachers unions are in the crosshairs because the governor views them as a line of defense against his education agenda, including at the university level.
“The governor has made it clear if he doesn’t like you he comes after you, whether you’re Disney, [prosecutor] Andrew Warren, school board members or the College Board,” Spar said. “The real reason we’re dealing with this bill is because teachers and staff and professors … are people who will band together and speak up on behalf of kids and communities and families.”
“The governor has made it clear if he doesn’t like you he comes after you.”
– Andrew Spar, president of Florida Education Association
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the Florida legislation a “noxious attack” on collective bargaining rights in an email to HuffPost. Weingarten is so concerned about the bill and DeSantis’ education agenda in general that she traveled to a union rally in Miami on Saturday. She said DeSantis is issuing “authoritarian edicts.”
“We have all watched Gov. DeSantis abandon the conservative notion of limited government, but in this session, he appears fixated on stripping away freedoms and silencing those who have raised doubts about his policies,” Weingarten said of the bill.
Templin, of the Florida AFL-CIO, said unions are trying to mobilize against the bill to prevent its passage in the House. But they are already discussing ways they would try to deal with the new system if the bill is signed and survives the nearly inevitable court challenges.
Unions may end up sharing resources to create new systems for dues collection if they can no longer deduct them directly from workers’ paychecks. But Templin said other facets of the legislation would be problematic as well, including a requirement for a new annual audit that unions would have to perform. According to Templin, some local unions are so small that the audit would be an unreasonable burden to staff.
Spar said that Florida Republicans may talk a lot about eliminating red tape and cumbersome regulations, but they appear happy to create more for the unions they don’t like.
“This is an incredible amount of government overreach and intrusion,” he said. “We’re private, democratic organizations … They’re basically saying that teachers and staff and others can’t make their own decisions and they need big government to make decisions for them.”
When companies lay off or fire employees, they often include nondisparagement provisions as a standard part of any separation agreement. If you’ve ever been in that vulnerable position and agreed to a severance package that included a nondisclosure agreement, you are all too familiar with the scary silencing effect that this language can have.
But this month, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency in charge of protecting private sector employees’ rights, clarified that there’s a limit to how much an employer can make you keep quiet.
In a February ruling involving McLaren Macomb Hospital in Michigan, the NLRB said that furloughed workers had been asked to sign severance agreements with nondisparagement clauses that were overly broad, as those agreements violated the employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act to talk about their working conditions.
Making very broad nondisparagement clauses has been a general and intentional practice, said California-based employment attorney Ryan Stygar.
“The gray area between a truthful statement which is unflattering for the employer and a ‘disparaging’ remark can be hard to understand,” he said. “Employers want workers to think, ‘I should keep my mouth shut about labor issues because I might get sued.’”
But the National Labor Relations Act, first passed in 1935, protects the rights of eligible employees to join forces and engage in “concerted activities” against an employer’s union-busting behavior, wage theft and other unfair working conditions.
So in a March memorandum to regional offices, Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, clarified that the decision in the hospital case had “retroactive application.” This means any severance agreements that were made prior to February in the U.S. by employers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, and that asked employees to “broadly waive” rights provided by it, are no longer valid, either.
In fact, any “employer communication” that violated an employee’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act is now on notice, according to the memo.
“For employees, the guidance signals that they cannot be lawfully precluded from making public statements on protected ‘concerted’ workplace issues, such as by criticizing an employer’s stance on union organizing,” said James M. Cooney, a labor and employment law expert in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.
This new clarification sends the message that preventing employees from talking to each other about their working conditions is no longer allowed, according to Florida-based employment attorney Donna Ballman.
Ballman said companies used overly broad NDAs to keep people from finding out about complaints made by fellow employees and then bringing similar claims of their own.
“And that’s what the NLRB says is now illegal,” she told HuffPost. “Employees should be free to discuss working conditions with co-workers and former co-workers.”
You may be wondering what exactly this means for you, especially if you’ve ever signed a severance agreement. Legal experts weighed in on pressing questions about how freely you can now talk about bad employers from your past.
Lawyers caution against using the new NLRB guidance as carte blanche approval to break an old NDA and start posting negative things about your old bosses on social media.
“Truthful statements about employers’ labor practices are usually protected,” Stygar said. “But — and this is crucial — defamatory statements are not protected. Any false statement, or any statement made with ‘reckless disregard’ for the truth, could land an employee in legal trouble.“
At the very least, talk with a lawyer first before making any public statement, attorneys said. “You should carefully review the purpose of the statement and what goal you want to achieve,” Stygar said.
Beyond the threat of being sued for violating your nondisparagement clause, bad-mouthing a previous employer is generally frowned upon because future employers may believe you will one day speak ill of them, too.
“I generally think it’s a bad idea because it makes you look unprofessional and undesirable to potential employers,” Ballman said.
“Lawful severance agreements may continue to be proffered, maintained, and enforced if they do not have overly broad provisions that affect the rights of employees to engage with one another to improve their lot as employees,” Abruzzo stated in her memo.
In other words, employers can still protect trade secrets and confidential information and can prohibit defamation in the agreements they ask you to sign while onboarding or offboarding.
“I’m seeing more narrowly tailored nondisparagement provisions since this decision,” Ballman said. “Some employers are now just saying employees can’t defame them or say anything maliciously untrue, and that should be OK with the NLRB.”
Watch out for employer communication language that infringes upon your legal rights.
“An overly broad nondisparagement clause occurs when protected speech, such as your right to report unlawful harassment to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] or to a lawyer, appears to be prohibited by the agreement,” Stygar said.
“Examples of illegal and overly broad provisions to watch for in a nondisparagement agreement would include language seeking to silence an employee from disclosing information on workplace health and safety violations or a discriminatory work environment in violation of federal, state or local civil rights laws,” Cooney said.
Maybe. Abruzzo’s memo could be challenged in court by an employer appealing the decision.
“NLRB rulings are not self-enforcing, and therefore an employer could appeal to the federal courts any case applying the standards announced in the McLaren Macomb decision,” Cooney said. “However, the board did not create new law in that case, but rather returned to long-standing precedent, so it is probably not likely that a court would overturn a board ruling.”
At the same time, Cooney noted that actual cases will need to be litigated in front of the NLRB to see if it will adopt all aspects of the guidance.
Who is serving on the NLRB could make a big difference too, because it is common for presidential administrations to make new appointments and roll back NLRB policy decisions from their predecessors.
“The current NLRB is focused on scaling back some of the policy decisions from the [President Donald] Trump era. In this case, that includes policies which could enable employers to get around the statutory purpose of the National Labor Relations Act,” Stygar said.
“If Mr. Trump or another Republican candidate returns to the Oval Office … we can and should expect reversals in some form or another. How far those would go is anyone’s guess. But for now, I am optimistic of the direction the current NLRB is taking on these issues.”