SALEM, Ore. — Come January 1st, 2026 Oregon will become the first U.S. state to allow both public and private sector employees to receive unemployment benefits while on strike.
SB 916 was hotly debated but signed into law by Governor Tina Kotek this summer.
It would allow for eligible striking workers to seek payments after a 2 week waiting period. There would be a 10 week cap. And if a deal is reached with employers that covers back pay, all benefits would have to be paid back.
In our workplaces, in our communities and in our government, the right to vote is how working people make our voices heard. The late Rep. John Lewis (Georgia) proclaimed, “Your vote is precious, almost sacred.” The Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing Texas to use a racially discriminatory congressional map threatens that precious right once again—and with it, the foundation of worker power itself.
A challenge out of Louisiana may soon make matters worse, threatening to further limit the strength of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965—the nation’s most powerful tool for correcting historical racial discrimination in voting, including the violence and suppression once used to keep Black voters from the polls.
The VRA was brought to life by courageous civil rights and labor leaders who risked everything to end racial discrimination at the ballot box. The law transformed American democracy by dramatically increasing Black political participation, expanding representation at every level of government and giving working people a real chance to shape the decisions that affect their lives.
This fight is part of the labor movement’s history too. In 1963, labor leaders were key architects of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and labor unions mobilized 40,000 union members and provided resources. We offered critical lobbying support and testimony in support of the Civil Rights Act and the VRA—the passage of which in 1965 led to the filing of thousands of successful cases against workplace discrimination and eliminated many of the racist voting restrictions in the South. When Black voter turnout surged, so did worker power, especially in the South, where the VRA helped create a diverse coalition of working-class voters.
According to research from the University of California San Diego, the VRA narrowed the wage gap between Black and White workers by 5.5% between 1950 and 1980. Another study found that high-turnout communities saw more paved roads and streetlights; better access to city and county resources; and easier entry into public sector jobs such as police, firefighters and teachers.
The lesson is clear: A strong democracy gives working people space to thrive. When democracy is weakened, workers pay the price.
In 2013, the Supreme Court issued its Shelby County v. Holder decision and gutted the VRA, ruling that states with histories of racial discrimination no longer needed federal approval to change voting laws. Almost immediately, a race to the bottom began. States wasted no time closing polling places, shortening early voting hours and passing restrictive ID laws. The targets were clear: young people, shift workers and communities of color—the same groups driving today’s organizing momentum. In the years since Shelby, wages for Black teachers, city workers and health care aides have fallen, while corporate power has only grown stronger.
The Texas congressional map offers a glimpse of a future without the VRA: diluted working-class voices in a system that answers only to the wealthy few. These attempts to roll back the clock on racial progress should sound an alarm. When politicians get a green light to manipulate voting maps and take intentional steps to block representation on the basis of race, they can use that power to dismantle protections for union power, fair wages and retirement security.
Democracy depends on rules that keep it fair. Those in power understand this—and some are working overtime to erase the rules entirely. But America’s unions have never accepted a world where working people are silenced. We fought for the Voting Rights Act because this movement knows our fight for fair pay, safe jobs and dignity at work is the same fight as the struggle for the ballot box.
Workers built this democracy, and we will defend it. We will continue to push Congress to do its job and pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to fully restore and permanently protect voting rights and ensure access to free and fair elections.
Voting rights are a labor issue—because when democracy breaks down, worker power breaks down with it.
Fred Redmond, the highest-ranking African American labor official in history, is the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, representing 64 unions andnearly 15 million workers.
Related
Fred Redmond AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer and NNPA Newswire
AI isn’t just a new tool for the modern workplace; it’s already quietly reshaping how some companies are organized. Companies including Amazon, Moderna, and McKinsey are already eliminating management layers, working to flatten organizations, and deploying AI agents to automate routine work.
As AI rewrites the corporate org chart, humans can avoid some managerial drudgery, according to industry leaders at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference. Managers currently spend a lot of time bogged down with digital tools and administrative tasks, Danielle Perszyk, a Cognitive Scientist at Amazon’s AGI SF Lab, said: “Whether you are a manager or an IC, you are tethered to your computer screen, and all of the productivity apps that we are using are actually undermining our productivity.”
AI agents functioning as “universal teammates” and doing some of these tasks could help managers escape this cycle, Perszyk said, allowing them to focus on strategy. Aashna Kircher, Group General Manager in the Office of the CHRO at Workday, said this could free up managers’ time for other kinds of work. “The role of the manager will very much be as a coach and enabler and a team work director, which theoretically has always been the role,” she said.
Toby Roberts, SVP of Engineering and Technology at Zillow, said that the shift toward AI agents could fundamentally change management structure. Escaping day-to-day minutiae could allow managers to oversee larger teams, he said.
However, as AI automates more of managers’ work, companies may need to reset expectations around what management means in the AI age.
“Historically, we’ve measured management by the output of their teams, not necessarily by the human qualities of being a manager,” Kircher said. Organizations need to build “accountability and incentive structures around rewarding the things that are going to be absolutely critical moving forward for people leaders.”
What AI can’t do
AI can also have negative downstream effects on interpersonal relationships if it is overused or misused. When managers over-rely on AI for collaborative work, organizations risk deteriorating people’s ability to work together effectively, said to Kate Niederhoffer, Chief Scientist and Head of BetterUp Labs.
“Direct reports’ perceptions of managers go down the more they perceive AI and agents to be used in moments of recognition or providing constructive feedback,” Niederhoffer said. “People perceive that humans are better at these empathetic and more essentially human tasks.”
Some managers already struggle with the emotional side of leadership, with many becoming “accidental managers”—employees who were promoted for their professional talents rather than people skills.
But AI’s “synthetic empathy”—even if it’s sometimes more consistent than human interactions—is not the answer, said Stefano Corazza, Head of AI Research at Canva. “The more AI there is, the more authenticity is valued,” he said. “If your manager really shows that he will spend time with you and cares, that goes a long way.”
The Denver City Auditor’s office ruled earlier this year that two strip clubs were mistreating their employees.
Inside the Diamond Cabaret, Feb. 15, 2018.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
A Denver District Court judge has upheld a ruling that strip club workers have protections under the city’s wage and employment laws, rejecting the companies’ attempt to shut down a city investigation that had resulted in millions of dollars in penalties.
The ruling follows a Denver Auditor’s Office investigation into four strip clubs that operate in the city. Investigators used newly expanded subpoena powers to attempt to obtain documents from the strip clubs, and issued daily fines when they refused.
The investigation found hundreds of workers at two strip clubs, Diamond Cabaret and Rick’s Cabaret, had their wages stolen because they were misclassified in order to exempt them from labor laws and forced to pay fees to work. In February, the auditor ordered the strip clubs to pay $14 million in back pay and penalties to those workers, which neither has paid.
The four strip clubs challenged the legality of the investigation, arguing that strip club entertainers are “licensees” and therefore not subject to Denver wage laws. They also alleged other flaws and that a hearing officer had a conflict of interest.
Judge Jon J. Olafson issued an order on Nov. 20, affirming two previous decisions from a hearing officer that allowed the investigation and fees to stand. The club’s appeal alleged that the hearing officer overstepped her jurisdiction in multiple ways by allowing the investigation to stand, which Judge Olafson disagreed with.
“I’m thrilled the District Court recognized our legal authority to enforce sex workers’ rights. We remain steadfast in doing what’s right for all workers in Denver,” Denver Labor Executive Director Matthew Fritz-Mauer said in a statement.
The legal team for the strip clubs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The club owners have appealed to the state Court of Appeals and sued in federal court.
Founders can find it hard to step away from work when their company rests on their shoulders. The concept of having “work-life balance” has sparked fierce debate among entrepreneurs, who question if it’s even possible to have the best of both worlds: scaling a multimillion-dollar business, with enough downtime to recharge. Two-time founder Nicole Bernard Dawes is a strong advocate of unplugging from the job—but only for her employees.
“I think I probably am a little bit of a hypocrite, because I don’t unplug. I never do,” Dawes tells Fortune. “I never want to be the person that’s holding up a member of our team.”
The serial entrepreneur encourages her staffers to totally disconnect from work once they’re off the clock, but doesn’t give herself the same breathing room. Having scaled two companies to success, she’s assumed the responsibility of always being on for decades. Dawes first founded organic, non-GMO tortilla chip brand Late July in 2003, which currently lines the aisles of Targets, Whole Foods, Krogers, and Walmarts across the country. Campbell’s acquired a majority stake of the business in 2014, eventually buying the rest of the $100 million company in 2017. In 2018, Dawes broke into another consumer packaged goods (CPG) market again, this time with zero-sugar, sustainably packaged soda line Nixie. The brand raised $27 million in new funding earlier this year, with its products being sold in over 11,000 major grocery stores.
With more than two decades of entrepreneurship under her belt at Late July, Dawes had pushed through economic downturns and many sleepless nights. But the hardships didn’t stop her from returning to the startup scene as Nixie’s founder—having grown up in the business world, Dawes is not so easily deterred. However, she doesn’t want work to overtake her staffers’ lives.
“I signed up for this. I am the entrepreneur, I did this to myself—a self-inflicted situation. [My employees] didn’t sign up to be entrepreneurs,” Dawes says. “I am very comfortable taking downtime, but also making sure I’m available.”
Dawes says never unplugging is “my life”—and she grew up in it
Many leaders out there, like Google cofounder Sergey Brin, expect their staffers to clock in more than the typical nine-to-five job. But Dawes doesn’t hold her her employees to have the relentless work-ethic of entrepreneurs who pride themselves on having no personal lives.
“I think that where a lot of [leaders] differ, is extending that to their team. I feel very strongly that it should not extend to the team,” Dawes explains. “But I also feel like that is how I grew up. My father missed a lot of stuff because he felt like that was what you had to do. So I was determined I wasn’t gonna do that. I wanted to be present at things for my kids, and I wanted [it] to be okay for our team to be that way, too.”
Dawes witnessed the pitfalls of entrepreneurship as a kid growing up in her parents’ food businesses. She spent her childhood years working the front counter of her mother’s health-food store, and roaming the floors of her late father’s $4.87 billion snack empire: Cape Cod Chips. As a kid in a family running two businesses, Dawes says it could be difficult for her parents to step away from the job. So when she decided to follow in their footsteps as a two-time founder of successful CPG brands, she knew exactly what to expect.
“When you decide to become an entrepreneur, there’s a lot of people [saying], ‘It’s stressful, it’s lonely, it’s all these things.’ And that’s true, but this is where I was really fortunate: I grew up in this business, so I entered eyes wide open,” Dawes says. “That’s why it’s really important to be passionate about your mission, passionate about your products. Because you do have to sacrifice a lot on the other side.”
Dawes still makes time for the important things
While Dawes admits she has difficulty stepping away from the grind, she still makes time for the things that keep her sane.
“You have to choose what’s the most important thing in that moment. I don’t think as an entrepreneur—at least for me—I’ve never really, truly, been able to shut off completely,” Dawes says. “But I also make time to have family dinner almost every night. There were things that were priorities to me, and I still make them priorities, like going out for a walk every day or exercising.”
The entrepreneur also loves hitting the beach, reading, and cooking—and despite it feeling like a chore to many, Dawes really enjoys going to the grocery store. She calls it her “hobby”: observing what new products are stocked on shelves, and what items shoppers are gravitating towards. It’s gratifying to witness people pick up a bag of Late July or a case of Nixie drinks to bring home to their families, something she feels immensely grateful for. While getting her brands into those grocery aisles has been no easy feat, it’s all been worth it in the end. Dawes says passion is what eases the weight of her work-life balance.
“Sometimes when I wake up in the morning like, ‘I can’t even believe I’m this lucky that I get to do this job,’” Dawes says. “And because I feel that way, it doesn’t feel like working. I’m getting to do something fun all the time.”
Titans of industry like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel have all been slashing staff, and employees are hand-wringing about being next on the chopping block. Donald King, a 26-year-old who built AI agents for PwC, never thought he’d be the next one out the door—but he soon realized why consultants are called “hatchet-men.”
After graduating with a degree in finance from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, King landed a job at one of the “Big Four” consulting giants: PwC. He packed his bags and moved to New York to start his role as an associate in technology consulting, working with major clients, including Oracle, during his first year. But everything changed when PwC announced a $1 billion investment in AI; King was already intrigued by the tech, so he pitched himself to join the company’s AI factory team. Working 60 to 80 hours a week, he immersed himself in the tech, even throwing knowledge-sharing AI agent block parties within the firm that drew up to 250 participants. King logged a ton of hours—sometimes at the expense of his weekends—but was confident he was excelling in his role as a product manager and data scientist.
“I was coding and managing a team onshore and offshore. It was crazy, it’s like, ‘Give this 24-year-old millions of dollars of salary spent per month to build AI agents for Fortune 500 [companies],’” King tells Fortune. “[It was] my dream job…I won first place in this OpenAI hackathon across the entire firm.”
Although King was proving himself as a key AI talent for PwC, he did begin to question the impact of his work. The AI agents King was building for major corporations could undoubtedly automate swaths of human roles—perhaps even entire job departments. One Microsoft Teams agent his group created mimicked an actual person, and King was a little spooked.
“We had a late night call with all the boys that are building this thing, like, ‘What the hell are we building right now?’” King says. “Just saying ‘Treat them like humans’ is probably not the best way to think about it.”
Behind the scenes, a layoff was brewing—but this time, for King. In October 2024, just eight months into his final role at PwC, the Gen Zer presented his winning project from the OpenAI hackathon: a fleet of AI agents that automated manual tasks. King was proud and felt confident in his place at the firm, but two hours later, PwC called King to inform him he was being laid off. The 26-year-old recorded the meeting and posted it on TikTok, raking up more than 75,000 likes and 2.1 million views. Commenters under his videos expressed shock that King would be let go after winning the hackathon.
“I thought I was safe, especially after I won first place,” King says. “I just got a little blindsided.”
King clarifies he doesn’t think there were any “nefarious” intentions behind his layoff, reasoning he was likely a random staffer dismissed after the firm had overhired in previous years. However, he does connect the dots between the AI agents he built for PwC customers and the layoffs that soon ensued at those client companies.
Fortune reached out to PwC for comment.
King believes his AI agents may have been connected to layoffs
While King doesn’t believe his former role at PwC was automated, he recognizes that the AI agents he built likely had an impact on others. The year after his layoff, King observed that some of the Fortune 500 clients he served were implementing staffing cuts. Those AI agents he helped create may have had a hand in the layoffs.
“It’s 100% connected,” King says. “I knew that consulting was a hatchet-man type job, I knew you’re going in to potentially lay people off, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this.”
While King believes AI agents are akin to the reasoning power of a five-year-old, they still know “all the corpus of information in the world” and can automate mundane tasks. Oftentimes, that means entry-level jobs are most at risk of being disrupted.
“It’s automating tasks, 100%, those are gone,” King says. “If your job is doing those menial types of things, if you’re just emailing a spreadsheet back and forth, you can kiss your job goodbye.”
Pivoting to his new life purpose: founding a marketing agency
While being on PwC’s AI team may have once been his dream job, the layoff didn’t crush his spirit.
“I’m grateful for it happening…It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but then it turned into the best thing,” King says. “Overall, [I’m] very grateful that I got laid off.”
In the aftermath of being let go, King says he was inundated with job offers from major tech companies to join their AI operations. However, the scrappy young entrepreneur sidelined the idea of returning to a nine-to-five gig; instead, King started his own marketing agency, AMDK. The business officially launched in December last year, less than two months after being laid off from PwC.
So far, King says AMDK has roped in clients ranging from small companies to billion-dollar enterprises, many of whom are looking for AI agents of their own. His end goal is to build a swarm of agents that help companies with their back ends—but after his experience on PwC’s AI team, he says he’s being cautious about the ramifications of his creations. He’s still learning the ropes of entrepreneurship, but wouldn’t trade the highs and lows for a salaried corporate job.
“This is my purpose in life, versus this is someone else’s purpose,” King says. “[I’m] way happier.”
The US Department of Justice has announced that five people have pleaded guilty to helping North Koreans defraud US companies by pretending to be US-based remote workers. North Korea has previously used fake identities and the direct manipulation of US cybersecurity workers to circumvent international sanctions and funnel money into the country.
In this case, the people knew they were helping North Koreans, the DOJ says, and “provided their own, false, or stolen identities” to help the remote workers get jobs. They also “hosted U.S. victim company-provided laptops at residences across the United States” to hide the workers’ location. In the case of at least two “facilitators,” they also took company drug tests on the workers’ behalf.
Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar and Alexander Paul Travis each pleaded guilty to one wire fraud conspiracy for their role in the scam. Travis was paid “at least $51,397” for participating, while Phagnasay and Salazar earned “at least $3,450 and $4,500, respectively.” Another facilitator, Erick Ntekereze Prince, used his company to contract certified IT workers to other US companies, fully knowing the workers were using stolen identities. He earned “more than $89,000” for his participation in the scam and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
The final facilitator, Oleksandr Didenko, pleaded guilty for one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of aggravated identity theft for participating in an extensive identity theft operation. Didenko helped foreign IT workers fraudulently gain employment at 40 US companies, the DOJ says, and he’s forfeiting $1.4 million as part of his plea.
“These prosecutions make one point clear: the United States will not permit the DPRK to bankroll its weapons programs by preying on American companies and workers,” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said in the DOJ announcement. “We will keep working with our partners across the Justice Department to uncover these schemes, recover stolen funds, and pursue every individual who enables North Korea’s operations.”
The U.S. immigration crackdown will cause net job losses in the millions and will lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third over the next decade, a new study estimates.
The Trump administration’s policies aimed at legal and illegal immigration would reduce the projected number of workers by 6.8 million by 2028 and 15.7 million by 2035, the National Foundation for American Policy’s study released Friday found. People entering the workforce won’t fully make up for the job losses, leading to a net reduction in the labor force by a projected 4 million workers by 2028 and 11 million in 2035.
“With the U.S.-born population aging and growing at a slower rate, immigrants have become an essential part of American labor force growth,” the think tank, which focuses on trade and immigration, said.
In fact, immigrant workers were responsible for 84.7% of the labor force growth in America between 2019 and 2024, according to the report.
The study takes into account many of Trump’s far-reaching immigration policies for those eligible to work in the country, including reducing and suspending refugee admissions, a travel ban on 19 countries, ending Temporary Protected Status, and prohibiting international students from working on Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT after completing their coursework. The analysis does not account for a new policy that requires U.S. companies to shell out $100,000 in one-time fees for new H-1B visas.
Labor reduction
Trump’s immigration crackdown is already having an impact on the labor force.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey shows a decline of 1.1 million foreign-born workers since the start of the Trump administration in January through August, according to the report.
And of the 6.8 million fewer projected workers in the U.S. labor force by 2028, 2.8 million would be due to changes in legal immigration policies, while 4 million would result from policies on illegal immigration, the study said
At the same time, it doesn’t look as though U.S.-born workers are entering the workforce en masse as foreign-born workers exit, the report said. Instead, the labor force participation rate for U.S.-born workers aged 16 and older has ticked lower to 61.6% in August from 61.7% last year, according to the report.
Labor economist and senior fellow at NFAP Mark Regets, said in the report it’s “wrong” to assume a decline in immigration helps U.S. workers when job growth slows.
“Immigrants both create demand for the goods and services produced by U.S.-born workers and work alongside them in ways that increase productivity for both groups,” Regrets said. “While it is just one factor, we shouldn’t be surprised that opportunities for U.S.-born workers are falling at the same time an estimated one million fewer immigrants may be in the labor force.”
But the White House says there’s a large pool of available U.S.-born workers.
“Over one in ten young adults in America are neither employed, in higher education, nor pursuing some sort of vocational training.” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fortune in a statement, referencing a July 2024 CNBC article. “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this Administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws.”
Economic fallout
Previous reports have warned Trumps’ immigration policies also threaten negative economic consequences.
In September, the Congressional Budget Office projected 290,000 immigrants will be removed from the country between 2026 and 2029, which may create a labor shortage and drive up inflation.
And according to the NFAP study, Trump’s immigration policies will lower the projected average annual economic growth rate to 1.3% from 1.8% between fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2035.
There are also ramifications for the agriculture industry and food production. The Labor Department admitted earlier this month in a filing in the Federal Register that Trump’s immigration crackdown risked a “labor shortage exacerbated by the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens.”
That’s not the only sector feeling the talent squeeze.
The $100,000 one-time fee for workers applying for new H-1B visas is expected to disrupt companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, since they heavily recruit workers under this status.
And the policies are projected to have far-ranging effects on most areas of business, including a potential loss of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers in sectors like information and educational and health services.
In addition, individuals affected by Trump’s travel ban on 19 different countries represent a significant part of the economy, the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit research organization and advocacy group, has estimated.
Households led by the recent arrivals from the countries earned $3.2 billion in household income, paid $715.6 million in federal, state and local taxes and held $2.5 billion in spending power, according to AIC.
“These nationals made important contributions in U.S. industries that are facing labor shortages and rely on foreign-born workers,” like hospitality, construction, retail trade and manufacturing, the report said.
But the White House said Trump will continue “growing our economy, creating opportunity for American workers, and ensuring all sectors have the workforce they need to be successful.”
Nan Wu, research director at AIC told Fortune the recent NFAP study may not even fully capture the broader impact of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
“Given the unprecedented scale of these actions, it’s difficult to quantify the chilling effect they may have on immigrants who might otherwise choose to move to or remain in the United States,” Wu said. “For instance, international students—who are a critical source of high-skilled talent—may increasingly opt to pursue education or career opportunities in other countries. This shift could significantly disrupt the U.S. talent pipeline, particularly in sectors that rely heavily on STEM expertise and innovation.”
Every year, Hispanic Heritage Month offers the United States a chance to honor the profound and varied contributions of Latino communities. We celebrate scientists like Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina woman in space, and activists like Dolores Huerta, who fought tirelessly for workers’ rights. We use this month to recognize the cultural richness that Spanish-speaking families bring to our communities, including everything from vibrant festivals to innovative businesses that strengthen our local economies.
But there’s a paradox at play.
While we spotlight Hispanic heritage in public spaces, many classrooms across the country require Spanish-speaking students to set aside the very heart of their cultural identity: their language.
This contradiction is especially personal for me. I moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States as an adult in hopes of building a better future for myself and my family. The transition was far from easy. My accent often became a challenge in ways I never expected, because people judged my intelligence or questioned my education based solely on how I spoke. I could communicate effectively, yet my words were filtered through stereotypes.
Over time, I found deep fulfillment working in a state that recognizes the value of bilingual education. Texas, where I now live, continues to expand biliteracy pathways for students. This commitment honors both home languages and English, opening global opportunities for children while preserving ties to their history, family, and identity.
That commitment to expanding pathways for English Learners (EL) is urgently needed. Texas is home to more than 1.3 million ELs, which is nearly a quarter of all students in the state, the highest share in the nation. Nationwide, there are more than 5 million ELs comprising nearly 11 percent of the U.S. public school students; about 76 percent of ELs are Spanish speakers. Those figures represent millions of children who walk into classrooms every day carrying the gift of another language. If we are serious about celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, we must be serious about honoring and cultivating that gift.
A true celebration of Hispanic heritage requires more than flags and food. It requires acknowledging that students’ home languages are essential to their academic success, not obstacles to overcome. Research consistently shows that bilingualism is a cognitive asset. Those who are exposed to two languages at an early age outperform their monolingual peers on tests of cognitive function in adolescence and adulthood. Students who maintain and develop their native language while learning English perform better academically, not worse. Yet too often, our educational systems operate as if English is the only language that matters.
One powerful way to shift this mindset is rethinking the materials students encounter every day. High-quality instructional materials should act as both mirrors and windows–mirrors in which students see themselves reflected, and windows through which they explore new perspectives and possibilities. Meeting state academic standards is only part of the equation: Materials must also align with language development standards and reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of our communities.
So, what should instructional materials look like if we truly want to honor language as culture?
Instructional materials should meet students at varying levels of language proficiency while never lowering expectations for academic rigor.
Effective materials include strategies for vocabulary development, visuals that scaffold comprehension, bilingual glossaries, and structured opportunities for academic discourse.
Literature and history selections should incorporate and reflect Latino voices and perspectives, not as “add-ons” during heritage month, but as integral elements of the curriculum throughout the year.
But materials alone are not enough. The process by which schools and districts choose them matters just as much. Curriculum teams and administrators must center EL experiences in every adoption decision. That means intentionally including the voices of bilingual educators, EL specialists, and, especially, parents and families. Their life experiences offer insights into the most effective ways to support students.
Everyone has a role to play. Teachers should feel empowered to advocate for materials that support bilingual learners; policymakers must ensure funding and policies that prioritize high-quality, linguistically supportive instructional resources; and communities should demand that investments in education align with the linguistic realities of our students.
Because here is the truth: When we honor students’ languages, we are not only affirming their culture; we are investing in their future. A child who is able to read, write, and think in two languages has an advantage that will serve them for life. They will be better prepared to navigate an interconnected world, and they carry with them the ability to bridge communities.
This year, let’s move beyond celebrating what Latino communities have already contributed to America and start investing in what they can become when we truly support and honor them year-round. That begins with valuing language as culture–and making sure our classrooms do the same.
Altagracia “Grace” Delgado, Texas Association for Bilingual Education & Assessment for Good
Altagracia “Grace” Delgado has devoted 30 years to education, serving as a bilingual teacher, literacy coach, and both a school and central office administrator. A passionate advocate for students in special populations, she collaborates with various organizations to ensure they receive the support and resources they need. Grace serves as a Board Member of the Texas Association for Bilingual Education and an Advisory Board Member for Assessment for Good, a project of the Advanced Education Research & Development Fund, as well as the Houston Christian University’s Women in Leadership Program.
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Altagracia “Grace” Delgado, Texas Association for Bilingual Education & Assessment for Good
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon says it’s investing $1 billion to raise wages and lower the cost of health care plans for its U.S. fulfillment and transportation workers.
The Seattle-based company said Wednesday that the average pay is increasing to more than $23 per hour.
Some of its most tenured employees will see an increase between $1.10 and $1.90 per hour and full-time employees, on average, will see their pay increase by $1,600 per year.
Amazon also said it will lower the cost of its entry health care plan to $5 per week and $5 for co-pays, starting next year.
Amazon said that will reduce weekly contributions by 34% and co-pays by 87% for primary care, mental health and most non-specialist visits for employees using the basic plan.
Over 30 “Workers Over Billionaires” Labor Day protests are planned throughout New York state on Monday, Sept. 1.
The same organizers behind the May Day protests that took place across the country on May 1 — May Day Strong — are continuing their movement on Monday, Sept. 1.
Here’s what to know.
What are the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests about?
The “Workers Over Billionaires” movement is is targeted to unify working-class people against billionaires who “are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy, and building private armies to attack our towns and cities,” according to the May Day Strong website.
“Labor and community are planning more than a barbecue on Labor Day this year because we have to stop the billionaire takeover,” the website reads. “Just like any bad boss, the way we stop the takeover is with collective action.”
The nationwide organization promoting the event is calling for the following:
Stop the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration.
Protect and defend Medicaid, Social Security and other programs for working people.
Fully funded schools, and healthcare and housing for all.
Stop the attacks on immigrants, Black, indigenous, trans people and all communities.
Invest in people not wars.
Where are the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests in New York?
The Good Trouble protest in downtown Mount Kisco July 17, 2025.
Protests are taking place across the state. Some of the key locations include:
Map of the ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ protests in New York
You can view the full national protest map and more information on local events at: mobilize.us/mayday/map/.
Emily Barnes reportson consumer-related issues for the USA TODAY Network’s New York Connect Team, focusing on scam and recall-related topics. Follow her on X and Instagram @byemilybarnes. Get in touch at ebarnes@gannett.com.
Workers install cooling fans on a supercomputer that will train Tesla’s new Autopilot. The supercomputer will consist of 50 thousand Nvidia H100 accelerators. Such a data center requires approximately 75 megawatts of electricity. Located in a gigafactory in Texas.
China’s population is poised to age dramatically in the coming years, posing financial strains to retirement pensions. But in recent remarks, President Joe Biden said this pain had already occurred.
Biden, speaking to supporters in Seattle on May 12, said the U.S. maintains its strong economic position in part because of its openness to outsiders. “We’re not xenophobic,” he said. “We allow people to come in and work. We grow our economy.”
He contrasted the United States’ demographics to China, the world’s second-biggest economy and arguably the U.S. biggest economic rival.
“Look at China,” Biden said. “China’s in a situation where they have more retired than working. They don’t know what to do about it.”
This reversal is poised to happen — but in the early 2050s, about a quarter century from now.
For now, “China’s aging crisis is still less severe than that of the United States, so unsurprisingly, its economic growth rate is still higher,” Fuxian Yi, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a specialist on Chinese demographics, told PolitiFact.
But within a decade or so, “all of China’s demographic parameters will be worse than those of the United States, and its economic growth rate will begin to be lower than that of the United States,” Yi said.
The White House did not provide additional information when we inquired. Biden said something similar at least once before, during a February 2021 town hall in Milwaukee with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Yi’s data show that today, China is home to 816 million people ages 16 to 59, and almost 283 million who are age 60 and older. That’s about 2.9 working-age people for every 60-or-older person.
China has different retirement ages — 60 for men, 55 for white-collar women and 50 for working-class women. So, changing the age groups used in this calculation can modestly shift the year these numbers reach parity.For these age brackets, the numbers equalize in 2052.
But whatever the age groups used, “President Biden’s remarks are indeed overstated and premature,” Yi told PolitiFact.
By contrast, the United States has about 193 million people ages 19 to 64, compared with more than 56 million people age 65 and older. In the U.S., the full retirement age is 66 or 67 years old, depending on the person’s birth year.
Other ways of slicing the data also foretell the coming fiscal squeeze on pensions in China, which has been exacerbated by the country’s one-child policy that was enforced from about 1980 to 2015.
China’s median age — which had been under 20 in 1971 — is currently about 43. But it’s set to reach 60 in 2060, and 64 by century’s end.
And the ratio of Chinese workers supporting each retiree is set to plunge.
Today, China has about 4.4 working-age people (that is, aged 18 to 64) for every person who is 65 or older. That ratio is set to fall below 2-to-1 by 2040 and below 1-to-1 by 2081.
By comparison, the United States is in worse shape than China on this metric today; the current U.S. ratio of workers to retirees is about 2.6-to-1. But the U.S. curve is projected to level out rather than fall like China’s. China’s worker-to-retiree ratio is poised to sink below 2-to-1 in 2041 — a level that the U.S. is not forecast to fall below through the end of this century.
China’s demographic quandary will have economic consequences, Yi said.
“In the future, the economic gap between elderly China and middle-aged United States will again widen,” he said. “If the United States is overtaken as the world’s largest economy, it will be by India, not China.”
Our ruling
Biden said, “China’s in a situation where they have more retired than working.”
That’s not the case today; it’s projected to happen about a quarter century from now, depending on which age brackets are used for the calculation.
If you work an office job, perhaps it’s happened to you. You didn’t get enough sleep last night. You’ve powered through the morning, yet your to-do list stretches on. You’re moving a bit slower, sated from lunch. Your computer screen becomes hazy. You glance out the window to see the sun starting its afternoon descent, and your eyelids droop with it. You decide to let yourself snooze just for a few minutes…
Occasionally falling asleep at work is par for the course, according to a new survey by sleep wellness company Sleep Doctor, with 46% of respondents saying they nap during the workday at least a few times a year. What’s more, 33% reported doing so weekly—9% once per week, 18% several times per week, and 6% daily.
Particularly if you didn’t get enough shut-eye the night before, taking a 20- to 25-minute nap may help you recharge and take on the remainder of your workday, says Sleep Doctor founder and clinical psychologist Michael Breus, Ph.D. But don’t make a habit of it.
“While you might feel slightly sleepy between one and three in the afternoon—because everybody does, it’s due to a post-lunch dip in core body temperature—you should not require a nap,” Breus tells Fortune. “If you’re getting the sleep that you should be getting at night, you should not require a nap.”
Midday snoozing is a big no-no for people with insomnia, Breus adds: “If you have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep at night, napping, all that does is make it worse.”
Nearly 1,300 full-time U.S. employees completed the survey in March via Pollfish. Sleep Doctor didn’t provide additional details about the respondents, such as their shift schedules, workplace environments, or socioeconomic statuses. Though the survey isn’t a scientific study, it offers insight into the post-pandemic habits of the nation’s workforce, Breus says.
Half of in-person employees nap in their cars
It’s not just remote and hybrid employees who are catching Z’s during work hours. About 27% of in-person workers reported napping at the office on a weekly basis, compared to 34% of remote and 45% of hybrid workers. In-person employees napped in these locations:
“There are a lot of health care disparity issues related to sleep,” Pelayo tells Fortune. “You can only nap at your job if you have a place to nap and it’s accepted by your employer. So a lot of people don’t have a place to nap where they work.”
Pelayo adds, “If you work in an assembly line and you take a train to work, you don’t have a chance to nap anywhere. Or, if you’re in a place where you don’t feel safe; somebody who is napping is vulnerable to being robbed or attacked.”
Men, younger staffers more likely to nap during workday
More than half of male employees, 52%, told Sleep Doctor they nap at least a few times a year during work hours, compared to 38% of females. It’s unclear whether the survey collected data on non-cisgender workers.
A majority of younger adult employees admitted to workday napping, a higher percentage than more seasoned staffers:
18–34: 54%
35–54: 46%
55+: 25%
Younger adults tend to be more sleep-deprived because they have less control over their lives, Pelayo tells Fortune. They may have children interrupting their sleep, elderly parents to care for, longer commutes, and more demands on their free time.
“When people get older and they have medical problems, medical problems interrupt our ability to sleep, like arthritis, chronic pain. But healthy elderly people sleep really, really well,” Pelayo says. “They get better sleep than healthy young people. Healthy older people, the reason they ended up being healthy old people is they had good lifestyles.”
More than half of male employees, 52%, told Sleep Doctor they nap at least a few times a year during work hours, compared to 38% of females. It is unclear whether the March 2024 survey collected data on non-cisgender workers.
“This increases the likelihood that your brain will stay in the lighter stages of sleep and that you will wake up refreshed,” Tiani tells Fortune via email. “When we nap much longer, we may cycle into deeper stages of sleep, which may be harder to wake from. We also recommend taking the nap as far in advance of your desired bedtime as possible to lessen the impact on your nighttime sleep quality.”
More than half of workday dozers keep their naps under 30 minutes, according to Sleep Doctor:
Fewer than 15 minutes: 26%
15–29 minutes: 27%
30–59 minutes: 24%
1 hour: 12%
2 hours: 9%
3+ hours: 3%
On average, 34% of remote and 31% of hybrid workers nap for longer than an hour, compared to 15% of in-person workers.
“The fact that many people who are working from home are more likely to take advantage of opportunities to nap was very surprising,” Grandner tells Fortune via email. “It suggests that many workers would prefer to integrate napping into their lifestyle if they could.”
Why are employees napping at work?
Staffers primarily cited some form of exhaustion as a reason for snoozing on the job, while others were simply bored:
Re-energize: 62%
Recover from poor sleep at night: 44%
Handle long working hours: 32%
Stress: 32%
Boredom: 11%
Avoid work: 6%
But why are they so sleep-deprived to begin with? Ironically, the flipside of napping at work is 77% of survey respondents said job stressors cause them to lose sleep nightly. About 57% reported losing at least an hour of sleep on an average night. Most cited work-life balance as their top job stressor:
Work-life balance: 56%
Demanding projects: 39%
Long hours: 39%
Upcoming deadlines: 37%
Struggling to get to work on time: 30%
Issues with boss: 22%
Interpersonal conflict in workplace: 20%
Fears of being fired or laid off: 19%
Employees who lose sleep over job stress only to crave rest during the workday aren’t the norm, but their predicament isn’t rare either, Breus tells Fortune: “They kind of get their days and their nights mixed up.”
Hybrid workers were most likely to report job stressors impacting their sleep, 88%, compared to 73% of in-person and 71% of remote workers. In addition, more higher-level employees, such as CEOs and senior managers, reported losing sleep over career stress, 84%, than lower-level employees, 71%.
Napping on the job may have health, performance consequences
Dozing at your desk may seem inconsequential on a slower workday or when you think your boss won’t notice. But some employees have paid the price, Sleep Doctor data show.
Among nappers, 17% miss deadlines and 16% miss meetings at least once a month because they’re asleep on the job. About 27% of workers admit to falling asleep during a remote meeting in the past year, and 17% have done the same in person.
While just 20% of workers faced consequences, some were serious:
Check in with supervisor more often: 62%
Workload changed: 56%
Sit down with manager: 49%
Suspended: 24%
Fired: 17%
“Limiting sleep to one major nighttime window can help to ensure that you obtain an appropriate amount of sleep at night and thus do not require a daytime nap, which could interfere with work or other responsibilities,” Tiani says.
Strategic daytime napping can be an effective tool to boost energy and productivity, Grandner says, but falling asleep at work when you don’t mean to may indicate an underlying health issue.
“For people who are unable to maintain consciousness, I would recommend evaluating your nighttime sleep to see if you have any untreated sleep disorders like sleep apnea, or if there are other steps you can take to achieve healthier sleep,” Gardner says.
You should also consult your doctor if you’re typically not a napper but begin having unexplained fatigue, Pelayo says: “An abrupt change in your need for sleep would indicate a medical problem being present.”
Nearly 300 current and former Apple employees have published an open letter alleging that several retail and corporate employees of the company have been disciplined or “wrongfully terminated” for expressing support for Palestinian people through pins, bracelets, or keffiyeh.
The group, which calls itself Apples4Ceasefire, is planning a protest outside Apple’s retail store in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Saturday. In a podcast published last week with media outlet Palestine in America, the group alleges a Palestinian retail employee at that location was wrongly fired for wearing clothing and accessories showing support for Palestinian people. The podcast episode also elaborates on allegations made in the letter, making detailed claims about multiple Apple employees experiencing retaliation from managers.
The group’s letter, also released last week, also calls on Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives to acknowledge the many deaths in Gaza from Israel’s assault on the territory in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7. Cook sent an email to Apple employees two days after Hamas attacked expressing sympathy for those who died or were bereaved, the letter says. It adds that “after over 150 days of violence against innocent Palestinian lives, there has yet to be a message sent expressing the same kind of concern for them.”
Apple did not respond for comment in time for publication.
Some 1,200 people died in the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, Israel’s government has estimated. The UN reported last week that more than 32,000 Palestinians have died since the conflict began, citing data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Tariq Ra’ouf, a technical expert at an Apple retail store in Seattle who helped organize the Apples4Ceasefire campaign, says that the vast majority of people who signed the letter are retail workers at Apple, with a few dozen signatories in corporate roles like product management or software development. Some 55 signatories identified themselves as former employees. The signatories hail from cities around the world, including Chicago; St. Petersburg; London; and Apple’s home base of Cupertino, California.
“Apple says that they want to make the world a better place,” Ra’ouf says. “This is a rare opportunity, a historic one, to actually do the work to make the world a better place.”
Corporate Dissent
Apple is not the only tech giant where workers have demanded executives show more recognition or support for Palestinians since the latest Israel-Hamas conflict began.
Six months after closing, workers from the Signature Room have won a $1.5 million lawsuit against their former employers as a federal judge ruled that Infusion Management Group broke Illinois law by failing to give workers proper notice of their decision to shutter, which happened on September 28.
Unite Local No. 1 represented 132 former workers at the restaurant that stood on the 95th floor of the Hancock Center. State law, under the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, mandates employers to inform their employees with a 60-day notice of their decision to close. This applies to workplaces with 75 or more full-time employees. The $1.5 million is for back pay and benefits. That total comes out to about $11,363 per worker if it’s divided equally. The court ruling was made on March 14, according to the Sun-Times. The paper also reports workers celebrated with a cake decorated with the words “Justice is served.” Infusion wasn’t reached for comment.
Tortilla plant workers file NLRB complaint
Seven months after factory workers from El Milagro tortillas won an NLRB complaint against their employers, workers from another Chicago tortilla factory are claiming their employers aren’t treating them fairly. On Thursday, Authentico Foods workers filed a retaliation complaint with the NLRB as a news release from Arise Chicago says employees at Authentico’s Archer Heights factory have been threatened with layoffs. Arise, a faith-based worker’s rights group that’s done labor organizing in Chicago’s Spanish-speaking communities frames the threat as retaliation for worker protests that have dated back to 2022. Authentico is the maker of the popular supermarket brands El Ranchero and La Guadalupana. Inspired by their peers at El Milagro, workers at Authnetico’s three plants claim similar complaints — abusive managers, low pay, and insufficient breaks under state law.
One Off launches app
One Off Hospitality, the owners of Big Star, the Publican family of restaurants, Avec, and influential cocktail bar Violet Hour, have launched an app with a customer loyalty program. The 27-year-old group, founded in 1997 when Blackbird opened in West Loop, is one of the city’s most recognized groups thanks to partners Donnie Madia, executive chef Paul Kahan, Eduard Seitan, Peter Garfield, Terry Alexander, and the late Rick Diarmit.
The app offers discounts with a points system based on customer spending and allows One Off to better track customer preferences. In a news release, CEO Karen Browne says the project has been years in the making and that made sense “as a growing restaurant group.”
One Off joins Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises as Chicago-based restaurant groups with apps and programs.
During a recent campaign rally, former President Donald Trump amplified a growing argument among some Republicans that foreigners are taking jobs away from native-born Americans.
On March 9 in Rome, Georgia, Trump said, “Unions should endorse Trump because I am closing our border good and tight. … In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared. Think of that. You lost 1 million jobs. Black people. That’s who lost the jobs. Hispanic people. That’s who lost the jobs.”
However, this is wrong on several levels, including that economists consider Trump’s statistic to be cherry-picked and all but meaningless.
Trump’s campaign did not answer an inquiry for this fact-check.
How credible is the statistic Trump used?
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics every month publishes the “employment level for the native-born” and calculates a monthly companion employment level statistic for the foreign-born.
The native-born employment statistic emerges from the same monthly survey that asks households about who is working, who is unemployed but looking for work and who is not currently looking for work. This survey is used to calculate the widely tracked unemployment rate.
Although the household survey also produces a raw number for people who are currently employed, economists consider this number inferior to the one from a different federal survey that asks businesses about the workers they employ. Also, the household survey has a significantly higher margin of error because it’s much smaller than the survey of businesses.
Of the two surveys, only the household survey asks demographic questions, including whether the worker is native-born or foreign-born. But that doesn’t mean the overall employment numbers in the household survey are precise.
For instance, in February, the month Trump referred to, the household survey found that the nation lost 184,000 jobs. By contrast, the survey of business establishments found that employment had increased by 275,000 jobs, which was broadly in line with monthly job gains over the past few years.
“It’s a terrible measure of employment,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum said of the household survey. “We don’t know what we’re really learning.”
Beyond this, Trump’s 1 million figure is exaggerated.
The household survey statistic shows that in February, the employment level for native-born Americans fell by 494,000, not 1 million.
Seasonal differences also undercut Trump’s statistic
One problem with using the household survey’s employment figure is that the number bounces around because it’s not “seasonally adjusted” — that is, regular, seasonal differences in hiring patterns aren’t smoothed out. (The establishment survey, by contrast, offers a seasonally adjusted number.)
A recurring pattern in the native-born and foreign born employment data is that employment usually falls during the year’s first two months. One reason is that workers hired for the year-end holiday season leave their jobs. Another is that construction projects slow during winter’s depths.
Since 2008, the household survey’s data shows that two-thirds of the time, January and February collectively produced a job loss for native-born workers. In most cases, these losses ranged from 500,000 to 2 million. So, a native-born job loss of about 500,000, such as the one in February, is not unprecedented.
Losing the forest for the trees
Focusing on one month also overlooks the broader trend that native-born employment has been robust on President Joe Biden’s watch.
The native-born employment level has declined for each of the last three months, but the increase during Biden’s tenure has been substantial nevertheless. Since Biden’s 2021 inauguration, native-born employment has risen by about 6.2 million jobs.
Also, years when Biden was president account for two of the five instances since 2008 when native-born employment bucked the historical trend and rose in January and February. (We did not include 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the labor market.)
“Anyone who makes a big deal out of the monthly changes in the household survey is basically telling you that they don’t understand the data,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Our ruling
Trump said, “In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared.”
Trump is wrong on the number — it was closer to 500,000 that month. But other things also make Trump’s statistic problematic.
Economists say the survey Trump used for measuring raw changes in employment isn’t the most accurate. It’s common for this metric to show a large decline in jobs during the first two months of the year, because the statistic is not adjusted for regular seasonal cycles of employment.
Also, focusing on one month obscures the overall trend line under Biden: an increase of 6.2 million jobs for native-born Americans since his inauguration.
During a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told voters their jobs were in danger. Immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. southern border would take the rallygoers’ jobs, he said.
“The biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border, because you’re not gonna have your jobs anymore,” Trump said at the Feb. 17 rally, later adding “The truth is, though, when you have millions of people coming in, they’re going to take your jobs.”
Michigan union membership is dropping, in line with national trends. But Trump is oversimplifying the role immigrants are playing in this complex U.S. employment landscape.
Economy and labor experts told PolitiFact immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border likely aren’t taking Michigan’s union jobs. Instead, newly arrived migrants are likelier to work in jobs that Americans don’t want, such as day laborer positions. These aren’t union jobs.
Some labor experts have found a correlation between an increase in immigration and a drop in unionization. However, they said that’s not evidence that immigrants are “taking” union jobs. And immigration and labor policy specialists disagree about the reasons behind this correlation.
Michigan is following national trends as union membership drops
The number of employees in Michigan has grown over the past 10 years, yet union membership has dropped, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative Michigan think tank. The number of employees has gone from 3.9 million to 4.4 million, while union membership has dropped from 631,000 to 564,000, the center reported.
One reason for the drop, said Illinois State University labor expert Victor Devinatz, is a 2012 Michiganright-to-work law that said nonunion employees in unionized workplaces could not be required to pay dues or join a union.
These trends aren’t unique to Michigan, said Steve Delie, labor policy director at the Mackinac Center. Nationally, union membership is also dropping.
“Given that unionization has been trending negative for decades, it seems that workers have decided unions aren’t serving them well,” Delie said. “Some workers may disagree with a union’s political views and activities, others may believe that they would do better bargaining on their own behalf.”
But U.S. laws and employers’ actions have figured prominently in unionization’s decline, labor experts told PolitiFact.
Right-to-work laws, such as the one in Michigan, create “free riders,” people who receive union benefits without having to pay union dues or fees, said Devinatz.
“Extremely weak US labor laws, employers’ virulent opposition to unions, globalization and technological change in the workplace have also negatively impacted union organizing efforts and have led to a decline in union density,” Devinatz said.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump listens as an autoworker he invited to the stage speaks at a campaign rally in Waterford Township, Mich., Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
The trend between a rise in immigration and a drop in unionization
There’s a clear correlation, experts told PolitiFact, between immigration and unionization; as immigration rises, unionization drops. But experts diverged as to why those numbers move in concert.
American workers abandon jobs when wages are lower and working conditions worsen, wrote Ruth Milkman, chair of City University of New York’s labor studies department, in a 2019 article. As a result, employers hire new workers, often immigrants, to take open jobs.
“Thus, the employment of immigrants did not cause the labor degradation in the industry,” Milkman wrote of construction jobs. “On the contrary, it was the result of the employers’ anti-union campaigns.”
Devinatz agreed with Milkman.
“The wave of immigrant workers, who often earn low wages, is a result of the neoliberal restructuring of the economy,” he said. “Over the last several decades, employers implementing forms of subcontracting while simultaneously working to undermine unions have created much more demand for low-wage labor. This demand has resulted in millions of immigrant workers entering the lowest rung of the US labor market in order to perform jobs that US workers were unwilling to do.”
Devinatz said that immigrant workers, especially those who are in the U.S. illegally, are less likely to join unions than their U.S.-born counterparts. Language barriers, employer intimidation and U.S. court decisions all factor in this, he said.
But a 2022 working paper from the libertarian Cato Institute found that immigration has contributed to the drop in union density. The paper’s authors said this is partly because immigrants are less likely to join unions and because immigrants diversify workplaces making it harder to get enough people together to begin collective bargaining.
“They have different interests. They have different desires, they have different demands. And so one of the effects of increased diversity is a lower rate of union density,” said Alex Nowrasteh, Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies and one of the paper’s authors.
Nowrasteh said his paper isn’t evidence that immigrants take union jobs, as Trump claims. However, if immigration lowers unionization, then in the long term, as immigration increases, there could be fewer unions and therefore fewer union jobs.
“That doesn’t mean, of course, fewer jobs overall. It just means fewer unionized jobs in the private sector,” Nowrasteh said.
Historically, unions were hostile toward immigrants, Milkman said. But over the last few decades “there’s been growing recognition that it’s in the interest of U.S. farm workers to unite with, rather than try to exclude, immigrant workers.”
Experts say immigrants in the U.S. illegally aren’t ‘taking’ Americans’ jobs
Unemployment in the U.S. is historically low, said Nowrasteh. And employers say they’re in need of workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“The latest data shows that we have 9.5 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6.5 million unemployed workers,” wrote Stephanie Ferguson, global employment policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Immigrants are coming to the U.S. to fill open and available jobs, said Nowrasteh.
“There is not a fixed number of jobs in the United States economy,” he said. So, as more immigrants come and purchase goods and services, they create more job opportunities “for others, including native born Americans.”
Economy and labor experts said it’s highly unlikely that immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border are taking Michigan union jobs. That’s because people who recently crossed the border illegally don’t have work permits to legally work in the U.S. Asylum seekers must wait six months after applying to become eligible for work permits.
Most immigrants who recently crossed the border are likely to work “in the ‘informal’ sector, getting paid under the table in cash rather than with paychecks, said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. These jobs might include agricultural, construction or service work.
“Illegal immigrants do not tend to get higher paying jobs with benefits typically associated with unionized workplaces,” Wheaton said.
This is particularly true in Michigan’s private sector, said Amelie Constant, a University of Pennsylvania labor economist. Most people work in the auto industry and many workers have lost their jobs because of automation, she said. The ones who remain “are rather skilled in the sense that they are the ones who manage the robots.”
Union jobs are “more desirable. … People who already have those jobs are not giving them up. And if they’re in a union, they can’t be easily fired either,” Milkman said. “So immigrants basically have access to jobs at much lower levels in the labor market, not those jobs.”
Our ruling
In Michigan, Trump said “the biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border, because you’re not gonna have your jobs anymore.”
However, economy and labor experts told PolitiFact that immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border illegally are unlikely to take union jobs because these jobs are highly competitive. Instead, they tend to work in nonunion jobs that Americans don’t want, such as day laborer positions.
Union membership has been dropping in Michigan and nationwide for years. And experts agree immigration and union membership numbers move in concert: as immigration rises, unionization drops. Some experts said immigrants have filled jobs left by union workers who disagreed with their employers’ labor practices.
One study found that increased immigration reduces union density because immigrants are less likely to join unions. In the future, this could mean that more immigrants would lead to fewer unions. However, one of the study’s authors said that’s not evidence that immigrants are “taking union jobs.”
The statement contains an element of truth — there’s a correlation between union numbers and immigration — but it ignores critical facts about the nature of the job market and the pressures already facing union membership. We rate this claim Mostly False.
Aya Pastry was a rare pandemic success story. While Chicagoans anxiously navigated the early days of COVID, the desire for comfort foods increased, and baker Aya Fukai — who rose through Chicago’s culinary ranks using her imagination and creativity as pastry chef at highly profitable Gold Coast hot spot Maple & Ash — was there with her baked goods: Fukai took inspiration from a variety of sources, including Girl Scout Cookies, which pushed her to create a supercharged doughnut, a decadent treat that looks like a Samoa cookie. Coffeehouses around town turned to Aya to supply pastries, and the bakery’s wholesale operation boomed, counting more than 50 clients including large grocery stores like Dom’s Kitchen & Market and independent coffee shops like Gaslight Coffee Roasters.
But behind the scenes, Fukai wasn’t exactly enjoying her tremendous success. She quietly left the bakery in October. Fukai’s exit came just 10 months after her backers at What If Syndicate dissolved the company. What If co-founder David Pisor brought Aya Pastry under his newly formed entity, Etta Collective.
Few knew about Fukai’s exit, as her name remained on the signs. She says that her deal to sell her 51 percent stake in the bakery for $700,000 closed on October 3. Meanwhile, Pisor told Eater on January 17 that she was still with the bakery.
Aya Pastry is just one of the dominoes to fall in Pisor’s restaurant empire, an empire that at one point consisted of five restaurants in three states. In the past month, Pisor closed the River North location of Etta and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy papers for Etta Collective and Etta River North. On the same day, Thursday, February 1, his attorney made two more bankruptcy filings — one for Etta Bucktown and another for Aya Pastry. The Aya filing revealed Pisor owed $500,000 to Fukai (she received $200,000 upon closing, it went mostly to attorneys fees, she says). A fifth filing had been made on January 18 involving Etta in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are also reports of a $2.5 million loan defaulting and eviction orders, according to Crain’s. The Chapter 11 filings would allow the businesses to continue, and although messaging directed to customers indicate that things are business as usual, questions remain about Etta’s future. Also, plans for a suburban Etta location in Evanston are on hold, Pisor confirms.
Workers said they only received two hours’ notice before Etta River North closed.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
“Our aim is to best position the Etta brand for future success,” a statement provided to Eater from Pisor and his reps reads. “By filing for protection under Chapter 11, we will be able to restructure our financial position while continuing our daily operations and keeping our locations open. As has already happened in our Scottsdale location, we predict that we will emerge stronger both operationally and financially.”
Former workers have been calling out Etta Collective for months, alleging that the company left them without health care. Their final paychecks also arrived two days late. Fukai, along with 11 former Etta employees — servers, bartenders, and operations staff — from River North and Bucktown provide an inside look into the seeming slow-rolling collapse of a national restaurant group. Etta’s Chicago workers saw warning signs of the downfall in August when Etta Collective narrowly dodged eviction at its Culver City location and laid off 10 workers including a handful at the corporate level. The cost-cutting continued as nine Etta River North workers claimed that they saw lapses in their health care coverage despite having premiums deducted from their paychecks. They accuse Pisor and management of allegedly misleading customers about the distribution of a 3.5 percent staff benefits fee added to customer checks. Most have requested their names be kept out of the story for fear of being labeled as outspoken as they search for new hospitality jobs. Some say they are worried about becoming a target of what they describe as Pisor’s litigious temperament.
After the settlement, Pisor quickly touted the arrivals of three forthcoming restaurants in an afternoon interview with Eater on January 22 — Etta Evanston, Etta Dallas, and a yet-to-be-announced Downtown Chicago steakhouse. Yet the bankruptcy filings include a list of unpaid vendors across sectors — restaurant, health care, and construction — that may put the three projects in jeopardy. Familiar names like Slagel Family Farm, Sysco, Kilgus Farmstead, and Supreme Lobster are owed thousands of dollars, according to these filings.
“He’s got open tabs all around the city,” alleges a source who works in construction and design.
In a written response about money owed to vendors, Pisor writes that Etta filed for Chapter 11 in part to ensure day-to-day operations to restructure and “work to resolve those payments.”
Etta Collective’s decline comes in the aftermath of a split between Pisor and former business partner Jim Lasky following a legal battle that started in March 2022. The two opened Maple & Ash, in 2015 in Chicago’s Gold Coast. They went on to form What If Syndicate and opened a Maple & Ash in Scottsdale. However, along the way, Lasky and Pisor’s relationship became strained, according to court documents. In January 2023, the pair agreed to split What If into two companies. Pisor formed Etta Collective, taking Etta restaurants in River North and Bucktown, Aya Pastry, and Cafe Sophie in Gold Coast. Lasky formed Maple Hospitality Group, taking Maple & Ash, one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the country, according to Restaurant Business Online.
Pisor’s employees in this new company, Etta Collective, say the split was an unwelcome change. Fukai alleges it was made without her knowledge or input, despite her being the majority owner of Aya Pastry. Though she’s come to terms with leaving the business that bears her name, she is considering pursuing legal action against Pisor after seeing the bankruptcy filing.
Many other former employees believe they would still be employed under different leadership.
“Pisor was the only thing wrong with that company,” former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff alleges of Etta Collective.
Pisor earned a reputation as a developer with big ideas. As a restaurateur, he relished creating lavish dining rooms. Before Maple & Ash, he served as the chief executive officer of Elysian Hotels and was a prolific real estate developer. In 2015, Lasky and Pisor founded Maple & Ash. Building on the success of that first steakhouse, the partners, along with executive chef and Elysian alum Danny Grant, opened a second location four years later in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Maple & Ash brought a brasher attitude compared to traditional steakhouses. It had to, as it takes guts to open a steakhouse on the perimeter of what Chicagoans have nicknamed “the Viagra Triangle,” with Morton’s and Gibsons already surrounding Mariano Park. Pisor and Lasky debuted a new brand centered on one of the trends of the moment: kitchens with wood-fired hearths.
An approach that mixed fine dining with approachable irreverence earned Maple & Ash national attention; then-Eater critic Bill Addison hailed the team for its embrace of “the steakhouse motif with unfettered playfulness.” Addison continued, “[Grant] oversees a 12-foot hearth that breathes fire over rows of steaks, as well as a coal-burning oven that produces the kitchen’s greatest stroke of genius: a seafood tower of roasted shrimp, oysters, lobster, Alaskan King Crab legs, and other oceanic treasures, kissing the shellfish with smoke and concentrating their flavors.”
When Etta Bucktown, a more casual restaurant than Maple & Ash, opened in 2018, customers soon made it one of the hottest tables in town, too. A prototypical neighborhood restaurant and easily scaled, a second Etta soon opened in River North with a third following in Culver City, California.
But the partnership reached a breaking point during the pandemic. Maple & Ash became caught up in a scandal over vaccinations earmarked for a safety net hospital on Chicago’s West Side. A Maple & Ash regular, the former chief operating officer of Loretto Hospital, broke protocol and secured a supply of COVID vaccines for the steakhouse’s staff. While all of this was going on, restaurants across the country fought for every dollar and applied for PPP funds, and staff donned masks to keep safe. Pisor and Lasky’s relationship continued to erode.
David Pisor came up with much of the design for Maple & Ash, the steakhouse he and Jim Lasky opened before the two split in January 2023.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
A lawsuit filed by Pisor in April 2022 alleged that Lasky and Grant were freezing him out of the company. A counter-lawsuit accused Pisor of allegedly showing up to a female employee’s house late at night unannounced. Rumors began to circulate on both sides, but before the powder keg could explode, Pisor and Lasky agreed to a settlement in January 2023, splitting the company and keeping any other stories away from the public eye.
Today, Pisor’s empire appears in shambles, and his former business partner at Maple & Ash, Lasky, is defending allegations of PPP fraud levied by restaurant investors. The claims of PPP abuse were used as punchlines during the 2024 Jean Banchet Awards, which recognizes local chefs and restaurants. On stage in January, host Michael Muser, a co-owner of two-Michelin-starred Ever, joked about the alleged purchase of a private jet using taxpayer funds that were supposed to benefit employees. But Maple & Ash’s reputation and brand, at least in the eyes of customers, remains strong. The steakhouse continues to attract crowds in Gold Coast and Scottsdale.
Maple & Ash’s owners declined to comment for this story.
Pisor had big plans in 2023 after breaking away from Lasky. In March, he hired a pair of big names with Michelin-star resumes. Alinea Group alum Dan Perretta served as a partner and executive chef. He brought over Micah Melton, the former beverage director of the Aviary — the upscale cocktail lounge operated by Alinea. Buoyed by a fresh start and new personnel, Pisor teased expansion through a series of media announcements in the spring and early summer. But by August, Melton was laid off and Perretta had quit, allegedly in protest of the layoffs.
For service staff, Etta looked like a great place to work from the outside. The company’s promise to pay 70 percent of medical expenses for employees was particularly attractive. But after those August layoffs — which included firing managers who handled payroll — Etta workers allege that they received mixed messages from management regarding their paychecks and benefits. One ex-employee claims he was told by a manager that Etta had underpaid him in August and that he would receive the missing amount in the next week’s paycheck. When the following payday arrived, he claims he was told he owed money to the restaurant because he was overpaid. Complicating matters, according to workers, was an alleged lapse in dental and vision coverage between July 31 and December 5. Eater reviewed emails from insurance provider Guardian and Etta that backed the claim.
“It was just becoming this big, big process of confusion and lies,” a former River North worker alleges.
In an interview from January and a written statement, Pisor denies any lapses, claiming Etta provided “same-day reimbursement checks” and payments before appointments.
Eater has reviewed worker pay stubs from January 2024 showing the deductions (around $15.56 bimonthly for dental and $67.14 for health insurance for employees without dependents). Another worker tells Eater that their dentist told them their “insurance was no longer active.” They claim management never bothered to tell workers.
“I got a call from my dentist for like $500 because they said that they canceled our insurance in August, but we had still been paying premiums since then,” that same worker says. “And that has been taken out of our checks.”
Similarly, Etta server Riebhoff received a letter dated December 12 from Guardian stating dental coverage had been terminated on July 31 before coverage was reinstated. Workers pushed back during a December pre-shift meeting and benefits were restored retroactively to August. Management allegedly told workers they would be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket health care expenses incurred during the lapse in coverage.
“All employees who attended their appointments and submitted a claim to us received a manual check reimbursement from us directly out of pocket, as we did not want any employee to have to fund their own vision and dental appointments while the billing dispute was still being resolved,” Pisor responded.
In January, Pisor told Eater that the health care concerns were not as widespread as alleged by employees, attributing the claim to just one outspoken worker complaining. However, Eater spoke with eight other employees who shared similar concerns about dental and vision coverage. Pisor added that Etta was in a dispute with Guardian, saying the insurance company overcharged Etta following its August layoffs.
Guardian does not appear on the restaurant’s bankruptcy filing as one of the vendors to whom Etta River North owes money. In a statement, Pisor writes that Etta and Guardian agreed to a payment plan in mid-December after receiving a notice on December 7 from Guardian, giving Etta its 30-day notice that it would discontinue coverage due to nonpayment. However, a $10,042.39 debt to United Healthcare appears on the Etta Collective filing.
Aya Fukai says she left Aya Pastry in October 2023.Aya Pastry
Workers want to know what their deductions were spent on. They also received notice of open enrollment going from December 20 to December 29, 2023. An email sent to workers dated December 29, 2023, announced that the dispute with Guardian had been settled. A representative from Etta’s dental and vision provider, Guardian, declined most questions but did say that Etta is no longer a client.
Etta also tacked on a 3.5 percent fee for customers, presenting it as a payment for “staff benefits.” Workers claim that’s not the case and allege the money goes toward credit card processing fees.
“We were required through management to tell people that that was to go toward our health care,” a former Etta worker alleges.
Pisor’s statement denies this claim, saying the charge is meant to cover health care: “We do not offer discounts for cash, nor do we communicate with customers in that manner.”
Multiple former workers, including Riebhoff, allege that they were told by managers that “if [customers are] paying with cash, we take that service charge off.”
Riebhoff continues, “Yep, I guess if you pay cash, you don’t have to help people with insurance.”
Former Etta workers claim pettiness played a role in the company’s fall, citing numerous instances of Pisor’s hubris. A former employee says they believe “it would be thriving” and alleges that Pisor “completely gutted the restaurant of all of its heart and soul.”
The menu changed so much that regular customers couldn’t recognize the restaurant they once enjoyed; management removed popular items like oysters, ricotta pillows, and fire pie. “They just didn’t want anything that Danny [Grant] created on our menu,” Riebhoff says.
A manager allegedly told Riebhoff that the decision to remove specific dishes was a reaction to the loss of chef Grant after What If’s split. Pisor dismissed that conclusion as untrue speculation, saying while dishes change due to seasonality, the classics remain. In addition, three workers and a source familiar with operations say that to underscore that feeling, someone had defaced a photo of Grant at Etta Bucktown, drawing a penis on the picture.
“That’s how petty that they were about the Danny Grant situation,” a former worker says. “And that’s up at the restaurant for employees to see and walk past every day.”
Cafe Sophie next found footing in Gold Coast.Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Pisor writes, “to the best of my knowledge, there’s no photo of Danny Grant in the restaurant with graffiti on it” and that “if I had been aware of any such photo, I would have had it removed and made sure we addressed that issue with staff immediately.”
Grant declined a request for comment.
A source familiar with Etta’s operations says they were stunned by how quickly the chain’s financials soured right after the split with Lasky in January 2023. That source claims Pisor didn’t realize that restaurants in Chicago slow down in the winter months and make the majority of money after March. Part of the reason, the source alleges, was that Pisor didn’t make any adjustments to his lifestyle, thinking he could live his life as if he was still a co-owner of Maple & Ash, which reported $32 million in sales in 2023. He wanted badly to see Etta succeed on the national level but Etta wasn’t ready to expand that quickly at that scale, the source says.
Pride also seems to have fueled Pisor’s desire to open another steakhouse — showing Grant and Lasky that he could exceed the success of Maple & Ash without them. Pisor had an opportunity to partner on a new restaurant at One Illinois Center. Maple & Ash’s reputation impressed the project’s owner who sought to replicate that success. But in the wake of the bankruptcy filings and eviction notes, the project owner confirms they have severed ties with Pisor. They declined further comment, stating they didn’t want their name in the story and didn’t want anything to do with Pisor. Two other sources allege that the owner was continually embarrassed by Pisor’s recent headlines.
Engineers, architects, and management companies haven’t been paid for a $5 million project that includes a new Etta in Evanston. Construction was supposed to start there in mid-February, but parties are pulling out of the project: “As far as right now, that project is dead,” a construction source says.
Pisor described Evanston as “on hold” and that Etta Collective’s focus is on restructuring.
Pisor’s attitude toward flipping the page in teasing new projects without facing accountability irked his former employees. The day he closed Etta River North, Pisor told Eater Chicago he had worked out a deal with his landlord to open a new restaurant in the space.
“When he said he was going to open a new restaurant in that space, that was a bit infuriating for me,” a former worker says. “Because if that is the case, why were we not informed about this and given the option to maybe pursue a future with the company?”
As the bankruptcies get sorted, there are parties interested in buying Etta from Pisor. Court documents identified John Leahy, who owns Lulu’s in Waikiki, Hawai’i, as a stalking horse investor. “He is a long-time colleague who is interested in helping us restructure and emerge stronger from this bankruptcy,” according to Pisor. “Each entity is being restructured so that we can emerge stronger from the filing. We’re excited to start growing again once we come out the other side of this.”
While Pisor talks expansion, grassroots campaigns from restaurant workers, including the activists at the CHAAD Project, have mounted with a goal of alerting members of the hospitality industry of Pisor and Etta Collective’s reputation.
Pisor writes that he’s unaware of such campaigns and feels Etta treats workers well: “We take very good care of them, and we have employees who have been with us for five years. We’re very proud of the team we’ve built.”
That’s contrary to Riebhoff’s frustrations which have built for months.
“In the court documents for the Scottsdale bankruptcy, there is a quote from him saying, ‘I want to keep this place open so I don’t negatively impact my employees there,’” Riebhoff says. “Meanwhile, he closes Etta River North two hours before our shift with no communication whatsoever. I fucking worked for Lettuce [Entertain You Enterprises] during COVID, and R.J. Melman called us to tell us about it — everyone. So for him to just like not acknowledge it at all, to have zero sympathy or empathy, is fucking disgusting.”
Etta River North remains closed even though lights are turned on and tables set as though the restaurant is ready to serve customers. On the morning of Wednesday, February 7, Rieboff was greeted by the sound of 30 or so text messages. He wasn’t surprised with what he read. He and his former coworkers were supposed to receive their last paycheck from Etta, but the payments didn’t come through. So he and four former workers gathered that afternoon outside Etta Bucktown with signs to protest.
“A lot of industry people live check by check, where’s their money?” they yelled. “They have new concepts even though they’re broke!”
Former Etta River North server Drew Riebhoff holds up a sign at a protest in front of Etta’s Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
A former Etta worker holds up two signs outside the Bucktown location.Ashok Selvam/Eater Chicago
Eater reviewed a text from Rieboff to Etta Bucktown manager Max Ostrowski asking about the status of the paychecks. Ostrowski replied that payment should pop up in 24 to 48 hours, “but if Bucktown gets shut down [because] of protest, then the courts could shut us down and we can’t pay anyone and it would be tied up in courts for months.”
That night, Pisor sent out an email to those former workers, writing that “this payment delay was not expected, the court has approved payment, and we anticipate that the funding process will only take a few days.”
On the afternoon of Friday, February 9, Rieboff told Eater that he received his payment and that he was shocked that no insurance premiums were deducted from his paycheck.
As news spread about Aya Pastry’s bankruptcy on Tuesday, February 13, Pisor’s teams sent out an email newsletter to the bakery’s customers: “Aya continues to operate and add new clients to our roster. What does this mean for you, our valued patrons? Operations as usual. We remain dedicated to producing great breads, cakes and pastries that you’ve come to expect, and our day-to-day operations will continue without interruption.”
A similar email was also sent to Etta Bucktown’s customers, a message that addressed the protest earlier in the week, reassuring potential diners that payments were “sent less than 36 hours after they were due” and that management was “filled with optimism about the future.”
Neither message included any mention of Fukai’s departure. When reached, Fukai, who had already seen the Aya Pastry email, said she felt the message “seemed misleading.” Pisor, in a statement, writes that Etta Collective promoted a worker who had been with the bakery for four and a half years to lead Aya Pastry.
Fukai, who already received $200,000 of Aya’s $700,000 sale price from Pisor, wonders if she’ll see the remainder after five years of building the bakery. She empathizes with Rieboff and Etta’s other workers. Though she’s had since October to extricate herself from the bakery, she needs a reset.
“I’ve been working so hard, and I had so many responsibilities, so I’m taking a little break,” Fukai says.
For many Americans, the coronavirus pandemic has receded into the past. But it wrought some lasting changes on the nation’s workforce — a point Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley described at a Jan. 2 town hall in Rye, New Hampshire.
Haley criticized the size of the federal budget and said some of the federal government’s duties can be shifted to the states. “Do you know right now over 70% of federal employees are still working from home three years after COVID?” she said.
Haley repeated the statistic Jan. 4 during a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa.
Haley’s campaign confirmed that this data point came from a recently released annual study by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency that handles the federal government’s human resources.
However, the 70% figure misleads by leaving out important information: Only half of that figure involves people who said they worked remotely most or all of the workweek. The other half consists of employees who work two days or less per week from home, including some who do so “rarely.”
Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business who has studied telework, said politicians often confuse measures of “telework” with measures of working entirely by telework, even though the two “are quite different.”
Rockmann added that research shows benefits from telework, such as saving on commuting costs and enabling a better work-life balance.
“So the real debate is not the one Haley suggests,” he said. “Most private companies are OK with one or two days of telework a week. The real debate is over full-time telework. This is where organizations are struggling a bit.”
Data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey
Every year, the federal government publishes a survey of employees from a wide range of federal agencies. The most recent survey, released in November 2023, queried about 1.6 million federal employees and received responses from more than 625,000.
One of the survey’s many questions involves remote work, also known as telework.
Thirty-seven percent of the 2023 survey’s respondents said they typically worked remotely from three to five days a week. Seventeen percent more said they worked remotely one or two days a week, while 46% said they did so rarely or never. (The 46% who rarely or never worked from home included employees whose jobs made remote work impossible and those who could have worked remotely but chose not to.)
To approach the figure Haley cited, you would have to include not just the 37% who work remotely three to five days a week, but also the 17% who work remotely one or two days a week; the 4% who said they telework one or two days a month; and the 10% who said they telework even less often than that. That adds up to 68%, which is close to the 70% figure she cited.
A little more than half of the federal employees Haley considers to be “working from home” do so from two days a week to “very infrequently.”
How government telework compares
Haley’s campaign argued the percentage of remote government work is still higher than it was pre-pandemic. Looking back to the 2019 survey, she has a point, mainly for those working a three-to-five day remote schedule. That number has risen from 7% in 2019 to 37% in 2023. (The share working remotely one or two days a week is virtually unchanged.)
But telework’s growth isn’t limited to the federal government. Telework has also expanded in other parts of the private-sector economy in which working remotely is feasible, such as information and professional and business services.
An analysis of Census Bureau data by the Government Accountability Office found that from 2010 to 2019, 4% to 6% of workers “primarily” worked at home, but that share jumped to almost 18% during the pandemic. And the share doing “any work from home during an average work day” rose from the low-20% range before the pandemic to 38% during it.
Comparing federal government telework patterns with those in the private sector is complicated, because different industry sectors, for practical reasons, cannot embrace telework equally. But some data suggests that federal government telework rates are similar to or lower than other economic sectors in which remote working is feasible.
In 2022, Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that 42% of information sector employees worked remotely all the time and an additional 25% worked remotely sometimes. In the professional and business services sector, 25% worked remotely fully and 24% worked remotely sometimes.
“Has there been a shift?” Rockmann said. “Yes. But it is not nearly the shift Haley suggests.”
Our ruling
Haley said, “Right now, over 70% of federal employees are still working from home three years after COVID.”
Getting to that 70% figure requires counting not just full-time teleworkers but anyone who ever works from home, however infrequently. In 2023, a benchmark federal survey found that about half that figure — 37% — worked a majority of their week remotely and about 17% worked remotely one or two days a week. But 46% of respondents said they worked remotely rarely or never.
Federal government telework is more common than it was before the pandemic, but it this work style has also increased in private sector companies. The federal government’s rate of teleworking is broadly similar to what it is in private-sector industries in which teleworking is feasible, such as information and professional and business services.
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