| | | | | |  | | By Rebecca Rainey | With help from Ximena Bustillo 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. | | | Organized labor is having a moment, and the unexpected death of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka last week meant the loss of not just a union leader, but a man who had President Joe Biden's ear. We are all left wondering if the loss will lead to a sea change at the powerful federation, and what it will do with the momentum of growing worker activism at some of the U.S.'s largest corporations and the impassioned pro-union stance of the Biden White House. | 
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaking at a rally in 2019. Lawmakers and advocates are mourning his death today. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | The AFL-CIO, its affiliates and the local union membership that makes up its ranks have splintered over major issues under Trumka's leadership, including whether to endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016, whether to reject police unions from membership , and most recently vaccine mandates. And while an impassioned firebrand for the movement, Trumka was unable to reverse a years-long decline in union density. Nearly 11 percent of workers were represented by unions last year --- a share that has halved since the 1980s -- according to Labor Department data. The current playbook: Members of the labor movement contend that federal labor law is weak, and has been eroded by corporate outsourcing and growth in subcontracting arrangements (which don't provide the same labor protections as full employment). So, it's made more sense for unions to focus their limited resources on changing the law -- such as backing Democrat's Protecting the Right to Organize Act, (which Democrats now want to rename after Trumka.) That bill would broadly expand what types of workers can join unions and make forming unions easier across the board. But, as I wrote with my colleague Eleanor in April, other members of the labor movement say that unions' laser focus on lobbying for its legislative priorities at the state and federal levels as opposed to grassroots organizing is to blame for shrinking union membership in recent years. "Workers will be inspired by Joe Biden's public endorsement of workers having unions and the strength and the importance of unions in American democracy," said Bruce Raynor, a former labor organizer who helped found of Change To Win, a group of unions that broke off from AFL-CIO in 2005 over the powerful labor federation's focus on national politics. "But at the end of the day, it's got to be the unions themselves that go out and organize the workers," Raynor said. "The federal government doesn't organize workers, unions organize workers. And that means unions have to spend the energy, the money." What now?: When it comes to Trumka's replacement, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler appears to be the favorite within the organization, someone who is described as being in ideological lockstep with Trumka when it comes to labor. The two "really were tight," AFL-CIO spokesperson Tim Schlittner said of Shuler and Trumka. "Not just as friends and partners, but as far as their vision for the labor movement," he added. MORE: "After Trumka's Death, A.F.L.-C.I.O. Faces a Crossroads," from The New York Times' Noam Scheiber OPINION: " A Labor Leader Is Gone, and the Road Ahead for Unions Is Steep," from former labor reporter Steven Greenhouse GOOD MORNING. It's Monday, Aug. 9, 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. | | | | Be a Policy Pro. POLITICO Pro has a free policy resource center filled with our best practices on building relationships with state and federal representatives, demonstrating ROI, and influencing policy through digital storytelling. Read our free guides today . | | | | | | | | INFRASTRUCTURE UPDATE: The Senate last night voted to end debate on Biden's massive infrastructure proposal, inching one step closer to infusing $550 billion in new money into the nation's physical infrastructure, our Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine report. What's next? "Final passage of the legislation is expected late Monday night, or the wee hours of Tuesday at the latest, unless a deal is reached among all 100 senators to speed it up. A 50-hour budget debate and an unlimited 'vote-a-rama' on nonbinding but politically symbolic topics will follow immediately after." THE IMPACT: Likely won't seem like much in the next few years, Paul Kiernan writes for The Wall Street Journal. "Longer term, though, investments in highways, ports and broadband could make the economy more efficient and productive," he writes. The "short-term boost to growth will be relatively limited" according to Kiernan, because the bill will take place over five to 10 years, and is much smaller than the packages approved to fight Covid-19. | | | LEFT IN THE HEAT: As climate change makes the country hotter, there are no federal rules protecting workers from heat exposure on the job, which killed 815 workers between 1992 and 2017 and seriously injured 70,000 more, E&E's Ariel Wittenberg and our Zack Colman report. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration "has ignored three recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it create a much-needed floor, a temperature level above which conditions are deemed inherently unsafe for worker safety. OSHA has also denied similar petitions from occupational and environmental groups." "A four-month investigation by POLITICO and E&E News found that the agency's reluctance has extended through nine administrations, with bureaucracy and lack of political will combining to continually kick the can down the road." Continued danger in the northwest: Last week, members of the farmworker community in Yakima County Washington grieved the loss of Florencio Gueta Vargas who died while on the job on July 29. Gueta Vargas worked at a hops farm, which is currently undergoing an investigation by the state department of Labor and Industries to determine if any rules were broken — but the investigation could take up to six months. Washington's own rules: The state is one of three to have heat rules, and enacted emergency temporary rules after a deadly heat wave hit the region in July. The emergency rules require shade and 10 minute cool-down rest periods every two hours at 100 degrees and cool water and allow breaks at 89 degrees. Dina Lorraine, public information officer at Washington L&I told POLITICO they are in the process of crafting new permanent rules. We're continuing to report on unsafe heat-related working conditions. Do you have a story or tip to share? Fill out this form and our reporters may be in touch. | | | A GOOD JOBS DAY: The economy added 943,000 jobs in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, pushing the unemployment rate down to 5.4 percent and a sign that labor market growth is gaining the steam needed to get back to where it was before the pandemic. BUT, and a big one, the survey week for the jobs report is typically taken in the second week of the month, meaning that the economic concerns over the Delta variant likely didn't show up in the figure. LEFT BEHIND: While the overall July job gains are a good thing, not everyone has caught up. While the white unemployment rate was at 4.8 percent in July, the unemployment rate for Black Americans was 8.2 percent. The number of people who are "long-term" unemployed and usually have more barriers to getting back to work, also made up nearly 40 percent of the unemployed workers last month. WAGES RISE IN PUBLIC-FACING JOBS: "The U.S. labor market hit a new milestone recently: For the first time, average pay in restaurants and supermarkets climbed above $15 an hour." via WaPo's Andrew Van Dam and Heather Long | | | CHILDCARE ISSUES RESURFACE AMID DELTA: "Panic is setting in among America's 46 million parents of children under 12 as plans for in-person day care and schooling are getting disrupted yet again from the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus," Heather Long reports for The Washington Post. "While children do not tend to face the worst complications from the virus, they do get sick and spread the virus, which can close down camps, school and day care for weeks." A SECOND SHE-CESSION?: "Some economists are warning the United States may be on the verge of a massive second wave of women dropping out of the labor force if the delta variant of the coronavirus cannot be stopped," Long writes. DO MANDATES OUT THE UNVAXXED?: While getting the coronavirus vaccine has for the most part been a private medical decision, as some workplaces have begun determining how to safely bring employees back to the office, "that choice is becoming increasingly public," Sydney Ember and Coral Murphy Marcos report for The New York Times. "With the virus's resurgence has come mounting frustration among vaccinated Americans toward the unvaccinated, making some unvaccinated workers especially circumspect about revealing themselves," they write. Unvaccinated workers told the Times they "fear that any company policy that identifies them" " such as masking requirements, "is like a scarlet letter on their chests." RELATED: " Frontline service workers left out of the vaccine mandate trend," from our Victoria Colliver and Alexander Nieves LABOR MARKET FACTOR: "In addition to potential legal ramifications if any of their policies are viewed as discriminatory, many companies are concerned that implementing separate protocols for unvaccinated workers could lead some of them to quit amid an already tight labor market." QUOTE DU JOUR: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on Meet the Press Sunday: "As a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates." Background: " AFT president says union is now 'looking at vaccine mandates,'" from our Juan Perez Jr. | | | — "Welcome to Birmingham, Ala., One of the U.S.'s Tightest Labor Markets," from The Wall Street Journal — "Big Tech call center workers face pressure to accept home surveillance," from NBC News — " Back to Normal? It's a Tall Order as New York City Restaurants Struggle." from The New York Times — "'What he did to me was a crime': Cuomo executive assistant who filed criminal complaint breaks silence," from The Washington Post — " Fast facts on views of workplace harassment amid allegations against New York Gov. Cuomo," from Pew Research Center — "Renewables Are Fast Replacing Coal, Except in Rural America," from The Wall Street Journal — "College Was Supposed to Close the Wealth Gap for Black Americans. The Opposite Happened. " from The Wall Street Journal — "Weary US businesses confront new round of mask mandates," from The AP — "Could the pandemic have just delayed a writers strike?" from The Los Angeles Times THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT! | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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