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What I've Been Reading This Week


For those coming off a sugar high after tearing into Halloween candy last night (and maybe even into this morning too), my sympathies are with you.  To help take the edge off, I have highlighted a few articles of relevance this week.  While there is somewhat of a labor heavy tilt to this week's articles, the below are well worth a read.

As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week.


Joe Biden Releases Labor Friendly Proposals

A week ago, Joe Biden announced several aggressive proposals that would greatly benefit labor unions and their supporters.  Of note, Biden has advocated for allowing card check elections to occur (which is an informal process in which authorization forms are collected from a majority of a bargaining unit, rather than conducting the "traditional" secret ballot election), creating a "cabinet level working group" comprised of labor representatives to increase union density, holding corporate executives personally liable for interfering with organizing efforts and violations of labor laws, and penalize companies that bargain in bad faith.  Now the viability of a majority of these proposals depend upon Biden winning the Democratic Presidential nomination (and actually winning the general election in 2020.)  For the time being, as with many Presidential candidates, releasing these proposals and getting people talking is half the battle.



The Lexington Herald Leader reported last week that the Blackjewel, LLC coal company agreed to pay $5.1 million in back pay, following a nearly two month long protest by coal miners.  Issues arose after the company suddenly went bankrupt, yet nearly 1,700 miners were left holding the bucket without having received payment (or having their paychecks bounce.)  The miners staged a protest at the mine, going so far as to sit on the train tracks to prevent coal from leaving.  The issue went on to draw national attention, with the miners calling on President Donald Trump to step in and help resolve the issue.  For the time being, this is a positive resolution as the miners will receive the back pay that they had been aggressively pursuing.



In the past few weeks, Google employees have reported that the company has developed an internal surveillance tool that is equipped to monitor workers' attempts to organize, create protests, and talk about labor rights.  As Ryan Gallagher at Time reports, the Google employees state that a new tool was being created for the Google Chrome browser that was installed on all workers' computers.  The tool apparently has the capability to report staffers that create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants.  The employees claim it "is an attempt of [Google] leadership to immediately learn about any workers organization attempts."  Google has responded and denied the allegation, instead claiming that the tool is "a pop-up reminder that asks people to be mindful before auto-adding a meeting to the calendars of large numbers of employees."  Google has also stated that it does not collect personally identifiable information nor does it stop the use of calendars.  Something tells me that those employees which were already suspicious of the new tool will not be assuaged by Google's explanation.

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