Post-Labor Day Roundup

One of the good things about Labor Day is that publications will actually publish labor stories. Here’s a few of them.

First, I am curious about this Hulu series The Bear, which seems to be a pretty deep dive on the general crapitude of modern work.

Second, Gillian Brockell reminds us that the 30 hour week was once a very serious labor demand and there wasn’t any reason to think in the 1940s that the 40 hour week would remain the standard. The real hero of the story is Hugo Black, of course, who was the most powerful person to push for the 30 hour week. But note this ending:

For decades, the 40-hour week has endured, but it didn’t seem like it would in the beginning. As Joe Pinsker of the Atlantic pointed out in June, many economists once assumed we would be working fewer than 40 hours by now. In 1956, even then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon predicted a 32-hour, four-day workweek in the “not too distant future.”

It hasn’t happened yet. In fact, in a 2014 Gallup poll, half of full-time employed respondents reported working 41 hours or more per week; 18 percent said they worked more than 60. Only 8 percent said they worked 39 hours or less.

The idea that Nixon would think seriously about a 32 hour week isn’t because he was some friend of labor. It’s because the endless growth of capitalism that would provide increasingly more benefits to workers was seen as basically inevitable in the 50s. And…..didn’t quite work out that way!

Third, Google became famous for providing its workers incredible benefits to get them to stay in the office longer. That includes first rate food. But did Google treat those food workers well? Ha ha ha ha, oh god no. It was the same contracted companies that handle food everywhere, with the same wages and lack of benefits. So now those workers are unionizing. This is huge because it is also setting standards for the industry that are far better than non-unionized workers are getting.

Fourth, Jake Rosenfeld, who is one of the most important union analysts out there, makes the case that the tight labor market is making unions more appealing to workers. I’m always a bit skeptical of the case that unions do better in tight labor markets–the 30s sure as heck weren’t a tight labor market! But there is the case to be made and he does so.

Finally, Ryan Cooper notes that the Starbucks union movement has stalled out in the face of overwhelming pressure from the company. I feared this would happen and you’ve seen a lot fewer stories about successful union votes in recent months. As he correctly concludes, this is unlikely to change without the transformation in American labor law. Of course, electing Democrats is necessary for that to happen, but the obstacles to it are huge, very much including a lot of indifference among moderate Democrats.