| | | | |  | | By Nick Niedzwiadek | With help from Olivia Olander
| | | NUMBERS TO KNOW: At the end of last year, the National Labor Relations Board received a $25 million boost to the agency’s budget, staving off an impending crisis that threatened to hobble the agency and furlough its workforce. It was its first increase since the 2014 fiscal year, and brought the NLRB from the $274.2 million it had been stuck on for years to a shade under $300 million. The influx relieved NLRB leadership, which quickly set about allocating that additional money. But it is largely going to increased office rents, federally mandated raises and inflation-related expenses, rather than beefing up operations. Now the White House is seeking $376 million for fiscal 2024 — more than three times the increase congressional Democrats secured for the NLRB in the omnibus spending deal — in its budget request released last week. “While the bump in our FY23 funding was essential in averting furloughs, the NLRB is still drastically underfunded,” General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a statement. “Congress should enact the President’s budget so the Agency can continue to uphold our Congressional mandate of promoting collective bargaining and safeguarding employees’ rights to organize and act collectively to improve wages, benefits, and other working conditions.” Make no mistake, there is absolutely zero chance the NLRB will be getting a 25 percent windfall with Republicans in control of the House. Rather the actual battle will be defending against potential cuts to the agency’s funding coming from the GOP. But the forthcoming appropriations battle also holds big stakes for the other major independent agency tasked with enforcing workplace laws. The president’s budget would boost the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's budget by $26 million, up 5.7 percent from its $455 million this fiscal year. An EEOC spokesperson said that the agency’s caseload spiked last year and that the proposal would “allow the agency to fill vacancies and create vital staff positions to manage this increase, primarily supporting additional frontline staff.” GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, March 13. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. Send feedback, tips, and exclusives to NNiedzwiadek@politico.com and OOlander@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @nickniedz and @oliviaolanderr.
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| | | END OF REGULATION: Labor Secretary Marty Walsh sat down for his last official meeting in the cabinet Friday at a roundtable with Vice President Kamala Harris and employers about the benefits of unions. Walsh acknowledged his “bittersweet” departure, and said he was “proud to serve in this administration — in the most pro-worker, pro-union administration in my lifetime and I think a lot of people's lifetime.” He referenced his longtime closeness with the president, but also said he had developed a friendship with Harris in working together in the administration. Walsh is set to take over the players’ union for the National Hockey League, a development Harris jokingly referred to Friday as “going to go play hockey.”
| | | DEMS INTRO BILL TO BOOST UNIONS: Senate Democrats last week introduced two measures to boost union membership and make it more onerous for employers to bat back organizing drives, HuffPost reports. “One bill, which has 40 cosponsors, would restore a tax break that union members enjoyed until Republicans overhauled the tax code under former President Donald Trump.” The other bill would block companies from deducting the cost of anti-union activity from their taxes as a business expense.
| | | IG KNOCKS OSHA: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration failed to keep up with workplace complaints, potentially endangering workers and leading to incomplete inspections. An audit put out last week from the Labor Department’s inspector general found that OSHA “did not consistently ensure complaints and referrals were adequately addressed nor did it regularly enforce hazard abatement timelines.” The findings came after an outside accounting firm reviewed 100 cases from the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years and determined that OSHA did not always involve the people who made complaints in their investigations, ensure that companies corrected violations that stemmed from those probes, or detail its rationale for not launching investigations. In its official response, OSHA questioned whether the audit’s small sample was representative and took issue with using it as a basis for “sweeping recommendations” contained in the report. More agency news: “Workforce and Service Delivery Still Front and Center in Biden’s 2024 Budget,” from Government Executive.
| | | ANOTHER BIG JOBS NUMBER: The American economy added roughly 311,000 jobs in February, again blowing past experts’ expectations. “The unemployment rate rose to 3.6%, from a 53-year low of 3.4%, as more Americans began searching for work but not all of them found jobs,” The Associated Press reports. Jobs numbers have proven rather resilient. February's numbers will likely portend increased Federal Reserve rate hikes, which are aimed at cooling the economy to tame inflation. A warning flag: “Average wage growth slowed in February, rising just 0.2%, to $33.09, the smallest monthly increase in a year.” More workplace news: “Three Years After Covid Hit, Restaurants Are Still Desperate for Workers,” from Bloomberg.
| | | CAN UFW REGAIN ITS CLOUT?: The United Farm Workers were once one of the most influential forces in organized labor. Their membership and power has dwindled over the decades, though a California law easing farmworker unionization is giving some hope for a resurgence, The New York Times reports. “The union is a shadow of what it was decades ago. Membership hovers around 5,500 farmworkers, less than 2 percent of the state’s agricultural work force, compared with 60,000 in the 1970s. In the same period, the number of growers covered by U.F.W. contracts has fallen to 22 from about 150.” More union news: “EBay Collectibles Subsidiary Employees Approve Forming a Union,” from Bloomberg.
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | | | | TENSION ON I-84: Connecticut is suing the contractor that operates its highway rest stops over $2.7 million in back wages for workers, The Associated Press reports. “The lawsuit alleges that from 2017 to 2019, the plaza workers were not paid the state’s ‘standard wage,’ an amount for certain state contractor employees that typically is a few dollars per hour higher than the state’s minimum wage. A state investigation found more than 2,000 workers were underpaid.” More state news: “New York Raises Pay for Uber Drivers,” from The New York Times.
| | | TX JUDGE REJECTS MOTION TO TRANSFER CASE: A federal judge rejected the Justice Department’s bid to have an immigration lawsuit filed by Republican-led states transferred to another jurisdiction. DOL argued that the lawsuit was an example of forum shopping, so as to steer it to Judge Drew Tipton — a Trump appointee. “The judge said he was unconvinced that Texas’ choice of filing the case in his division – the Southern District of Texas, Victoria division, where Tipton is assigned every civil lawsuit that is brought there – was creating a public perception of unfairness,” CNN reports. The case involves the Biden administration’s parole policy for migrants hailing from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
| | | — “Yellen: Rising workforce participation should ease burden on businesses,” from POLITICO Pro. — “Scabby the Rat is an American labor icon. Why are his manufacturers disowning him?” from The Guardian. — “Missing From Biden’s Budget: His Plan for Social Security,” from The New York Times. — “Barista union to ask Starbucks shareholders to back labor review,” from Reuters. — “How Two Former Employees Scammed Amazon Out Of $10 Million,” from Vice. THAT’S ALL FOR SHIFT! | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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