This Week’s Top Hits

“The remedies against the employer are so pathetically weak they’re almost an invitation to violate the law,” said Cathy Creighton, an NLRB attorney during the Clinton administration and a union lawyer who now serves as the head of the Buffalo Co-Lab.

“Volkswagen workers will have a chance for better pay and working conditions under a collective bargaining agreement,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies. “They’ll have a lot of job protections under a union contract that they don’t have now.”

“They are going to have a much harder road in work sites where they are going to face aggressive management resistance and even community resistance than they faced in Chattanooga,” said Professor Harry Katz.

“Everybody would agree that US Steel has been declining, declining, declining, and the workers would all benefit from significant investment, but there is a lot of political influence involved," said Art Wheaton, director of labour studies.

“This is like every bit of bad governance and excessive executive compensation on steroids,” said Brian Dunn, an executive-compensation expert who is a visiting lecturer at the ILR School.

"There's currently over 350 unionized Starbucks, and they have exactly zero contracts," said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. "There is nothing in the U.S. labor law that says they ever have to say yes."