| | | | | |  | | By Rebecca Rainey | Editor's Note: Weekly Shift is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Employment & Immigration policy newsletter, Morning Shift. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. | | | The Supreme Court today will weigh whether President Donald Trump will be able to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census population count, which that divvies up the nation's 435 House seats among the states. The court's speedy decision to take Trump v. New York means a decision could be handed down before the Census Bureau delivers the population counts to Trump's desk at the end of the year. REFRESHER: After SCOTUS rejected Trump's efforts to add a citizenship question to the census, Trump issued a memo in July asking the Census Bureau to subtract undocumented immigrants from the count for the purposes of the reallocation of the nation's House districts. Advocates sued, and after a lower court blocked Trump's memorandum, the president went directly to the Supreme Court. | 
A 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident, is shown in Detroit, Sunday, April 5, 2020. | AP Photo/Paul Sancya | THE IMPACT: If SCOTUS greenlights Trump's move to exclude those immigrants, it could give less-diverse states more power in Congress, our Steve Shepard has reported. "A Pew Research Center study last year found that it could result in House seats that would otherwise be assigned to California, Florida and Texas going instead to Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio — each of which is set to possibly lose a House seat in the next decade due to population shifts." "And drawing new districts within the states based only on the counts of citizens and legal immigrants would likely benefit Republicans," he adds, "shifting power from cities and immigrant communities to rural parts of the states, which vote for GOP candidates at higher rates." WHAT WE'RE WATCHING: While Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's liberal justices in ruling against the addition of a citizenship question last year, new justice Amy Coney Barrett has made the court more conservative — and it's unclear where she'll land on the issue. More on the case from Amy Howe of SCOTUSBlog. GOOD MORNING. It's Monday Nov. 30, and this is Morning Shift, your tipsheet on employment and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to emueller@politico.com and rrainey@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @Eleanor_Mueller and @RebeccaARainey. | | | MILLIONS COULD BE WITHOUT COVID-19 PAID LEAVE: As many as 87 million workers could lose access to federally mandated paid sick and family leave at the end of December if Congress fails to extend a program created under the March coronavirus relief package, our Eleanor Mueller writes. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act required many employers "to provide workers with two weeks of coronavirus-related sick leave at full pay and up to 12 weeks of family and medical leave to care for family members at two-thirds pay," Eleanor explains. But it is looking increasingly unlikely that lawmakers will reach a deal to prevent those provisions from expiring at the end of the year — a deadline that will land as virus cases continue to spike, forcing many communities to roll back business and school reopenings. MUST-READ: "City Without a Pulse," from our Megan Cassella | | | BIDEN BUILDS ECONOMIC TEAM: Brian Deese, an investment executive and Obama administration alum, will serve as Biden's top economic adviser, director of the National Economic Council, our Ben White reports. The announcement is expected later this week. And after facing criticism for the lack of diversity in his first round of hires, Biden also plans to announce three people of color for leading positions on his economic team, our Megan Cassella, Ben White and Tyler Pager report. Neera Tanden , an Indian American, will be nominated as director of the Office of Management and Budget. She is currently the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and was a former senior policy adviser to both Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. Cecilia Rouse, an African American economist at Princeton University, has been tapped to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. Adewale "Wally" Adeyemo, a Nigerian-born attorney and former senior international economic adviser during the Obama administration, will serve as deputy Treasury secretary. OBAMA OSHA CHIEF JOINS BIDEN TRANSITION: David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University, has joined the Biden transition team's Covid-19 advisory board. He helmed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama years and is the longest-serving OSHA head in history. | | | | TRACK THE TRANSITION: President-elect Biden has started to form a Cabinet and announce his senior White House staff. The appointments and staffing decisions made in the coming days send clear-cut signals about Biden's priorities. Transition Playbook is the definitive guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Written for political insiders, it tracks the appointments, people, and the emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition and the first 100 days of the incoming Biden administration. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | PRO ACT PRESSURE: While union members turned out more votes for Biden this election cycle than 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, not all rank-and-file union members — especially those in the building trades — backed the president-elect. But the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, a union that says nearly half its members voted for Trump this election, wants to rally blue-collar trade unions around one thing they all broadly support: labor law reform. A new campaign launched by IUPAT today seeks to get both Republicans and Democrats "on the record" about whether they support Democrats' Protecting the Right to Organize Act — and threatens to pull financial and grassroots support in the next election cycle from lawmakers who don't back the bill. The union said 70 organizations representing nearly 5 million workers have signed onto the effort. The PRO Act passed the House earlier this year on a 224-194 vote, with five Republicans voting in favor. If it were to become law, the legislation would create the broadest expansion of labor rights in seven decades and would, among other things, allow employees to form a union via card check if workers can demonstrate that their employer had interfered with union elections and allow the NLRB to impose fines on employers. Biden has vocally supported the PRO Act on the campaign trail. But the organized labor movement hasn't forgotten the last Democratic administration's promises. Obama had also vowed to make a card check bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, a top priority of his first term. But he was notably silent on the issue after taking office, and even with a Democratic House and Senate supermajority, the party couldn't pass the bill. "We plan to use this campaign to see exactly where the Biden administration and party leaders stand with regards to unions and our future. We don't want a repeat of EFCA. We want results," IUPAT said in an email. | | | RESTAURANTS REJECT SHUTDOWN ORDERS: Several states have started to reimpose limits on indoor dining as coronavirus cases have surged in some states and started to overwhelm hospitals. But some restaurants are refusing to cooperate, Heather Haddon and Julie Wernau report for The Wall Street Journal, "saying that serving customers indoors is their only way to stay in business and that they can do so safely." "Restaurants and trade groups in an increasing number of states, including Illinois, Michigan, New York, California, Oregon and Texas, have sued over dining restrictions in state and federal courts," Haddon and Wernau write. WHAT WILL STATES DO? In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said state police are issuing citations to restaurants that remain open and he has told state attorneys to "prosecute those who refuse to close." But a representative for the governor told The Wall Street Journal "that ultimately, it is up to city and county authorities to enforce the state's dining ban." | | | COMPANIES WANT TO WATER DOWN ANTI-FORCED LABOR BILL: Apple, Nike and Coca-Cola "are among the major companies and business groups lobbying Congress to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labor in China's Xinjiang region,"Ana Swanson reports for The New York Times. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act overwhelmingly passed the House in September and has the votes to pass the Senate, according to Swanson. That's made it a target for multinational companies — as well as business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — that rely on supply chains in that region of China. Lobbyists for these interests argue "that while they strongly condemn forced labor and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act's ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China." SPECIFICALLY: The bill would "require companies sending goods to the United States to scrutinize those supply chains, or perhaps abandon Chinese suppliers altogether," Swanson explains, and bar the import of products made "in whole or in part" in Xinjiang "unless companies prove to customs officials that their products were not made with forced labor." | | | | NEXT WEEK - DON'T MISS THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT 2020: POLITICO will feature a special edition Future Pulse newsletter at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators determined to confront and conquer the most significant health challenges. Covid-19 has exposed weaknesses across our health systems, particularly in the treatment of our most vulnerable communities, driving the focus of the 2020 conference on the converging crises of public health, economic insecurity, and social justice. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage from December 7–9. | | | | | | | | TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S LAST-MINUTE RULE MOVES: The Trump Labor Department is moving to finalize a pair of rules that critics say could be costly to tip-earning workers and allow government contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees, with just weeks left before Trump leaves office. TIPPING: Last week, the White House budget office began review of a final rule that would clarify that workers earning the (reduced) tipped hourly minimum of $2.13 may complete some non-tipped work so long as it's completed during or "for a reasonable time immediately before or after" their tip-earning work. The proposed version of the rule would replace an Obama administration policy requiring that tipped employees spend at least 80 percent of their time doing tipped-wage duties such as waiting tables, rather than untipped "back of the house" duties like folding napkins or washing dishes. The proposal would also allow companies to use "tip pools" to share tips with back-of-house restaurant workers, so long as all workers participating in the pool are receiving the full minimum wage (which is set at $7.25 federally, but may be higher depending on the state). Worker advocates and Democrats say tipped workers may lose income under the rule by spending more of their time performing duties where they are not earning tips. DISCRIMINATION: The White House budget office last week also completed its review of a final rule that would clarify that government contractors can claim a religious exemption to make employment decisions that align with their beliefs and expand the types of companies doing business with the government that would qualify for the exemption. Now that OMB has cleared the rule, it will likely be released shortly. | | | — "The Class of 2020 Looks for Work," from The Wall Street Journal — "For female economists, Janet Yellen's treasury secretary nomination marks another inspiring first," from The Washington Post — " A Rush to Expand the Border Wall That Many Fear Is Here to Stay," from The New York Times — "Federal tax hit could take many unemployed people by surprise," from The San Francisco Chronicle — "Trump's 2016 transition defined his presidency. Biden's might, too," from POLITICO — "Disparity in Jobless Rates Suggests Black Workers Face Slower Recovery," from The Wall Street Journal — "Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal," from The New York Times — " Florida's Approval of $15 Minimum Wage Sets Up Battle in Other States," from The Wall Street Journal THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT! | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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