University of Wyoming Labor Law Professor Mike Duff tells Payday’s Mike Elk that it is likely the Trump Administration will slowly kill the investigation. Duff and Elk discuss what type of enforcement actions the Trump Administration is going to allow and why the Google investigation is unlikely to continue.
In an exclusive interview with Payday, Perez says that he wants to see Democratic politicians get more involved in building community support for labor struggles in the South, like the recent union drives at Boeing in South Carolina and Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn., where Republican politicians vigorously fought against unionization. If Perez is able to get Southern Democrats to embrace the labor movement, it would be a significant reversal of practices by the Democratic Party.
Regions like Alabama’s Black Belt and the Mississippi Delta receive approximately 1/10, per capita, of the national average of funding from foundations. Between 2010 to 2014, foundations donated, on average, $41 dollars towards philanthropic causes in the regions, while nationally, foundations donated $451 per person, according to the NCRP’s research.
The emails show that Republican State Senator Todd Gardenhire met with top UTC officials on March 20 and urged the firing of Helbert. Following the meeting, UTC Chancellor Steve Angle argued that Helbert should be fired.
“The potential repercussions for the state representative and UTC are HUGE,” wrote Angle in an email obtained by the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. “We could easily lose all funding we are providing to WUTC.”
We discuss how Thurgood Marshall would drive into small towns in the South expecting to have his life threatened and lose civil rights challenges just to build case law Also, the Alabama NAACP and Greater Birmingham Ministries have a pending lawsuit against the State of Alabama that alleges the majority-white state legislature violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it passed a law overturning majority-black Birmingham’s raising of the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
In Durham, North Carolina, Elk writes for The Guardian about the movement to push back against so-called “pre-emption laws” that block progressive enclaves in the South from enacting higher minimum wages law. He looks at how and why the Fight for $15 is starting to invest in organizing poor rural Southern whites in North Carolina.
In 2016, the Obama Administration issued 486 enforcement-related press releases.
However, the Trump Administration has not issued a single press release citing an enforcement action. The silence from the Trump Administration is indicative of the favoritism towards companies at the expense of workplace safety that many observers expect a Trump DOL to take.
#BossTalk aims to be a lot like the show Car Talk. However, instead of teaching you to how to fix your car, we teach you how to fix your boss. Each week, #BossTalk aims to explore ways in which workers can use labor law to fight back against the boss.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s veto of $15 an hour minimum wage shows that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is still very much alive and willing to take votes against worker’s interests.
So far this month, Payday Senior Labor Reporter Mike Elk has driven over 2,400 miles from Conneautville, Pennsylvania to Canton, Mississippi to Huntsville, Alabama to Nashville to Louisville and now to D.C. Next up, we have Raleigh, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – “No, no. He’s got to go,” shouts a crowd of 75 mostly white-haired protesters wearing white #LetsTalkMo shirts in front of the…
Want Payday to visit your city? Payday Senior Labor Reporter Mike Elk pledges to visit any labor struggle in the South where someone will offer him a couch. Contact [email protected] if you wanna host a labor reporter in your home.