This Week’s Top Hits

As private sector workers, the Google protestors “don’t really have constitutional rights to free speech in the workplace,” according to Cathy Creighton, director of the ILR Buffalo Co-Lab.

Had the UAW and Daimler Truck failed to reach a deal, the union said workers would have gone on strike. A walkout could have made some Mercedes workers skittish about joining the union, Art Wheaton said.

"We’re going to see a huge change in the balance of power in the South," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research.

This piece discusses the Cornell ILR Wage Atlas and how it shows that higher wages would lead to an $80 billion increase in combined earnings and boost consumer demand.

“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.”