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What I’ve Been Reading This Week


This week (and this year) have been somewhat labor centric.  With that being said, the two articles I highlight this week are worth a read even for those not as interested in labor law.

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



Recently, a task force created by President Joe Biden that was directed to find ways to boost union membership and collective bargaining among private and public employees has released approximately 70 steps the Biden administration can take.  As Noam Scheiber at The New York Times writes, those steps include allowing union organizers to have access to workers on federal property, creating preferences in federal grant and loan programs for employers with strong labor standards, and prohibiting employers from using federal contract money on anti union campaigns. For an administration that is in desperate need of good news on the labor front, it will be interesting to see if these proposed steps from the task force lead to a recognizable (and sustained) boost in union membership.



I think it is fair to say that halfway through February, the big labor & employment law story of 2022 has been the ongoing unionization efforts at various Starbucks across the country.  As this article from The Huffington Post notes, Starbucks is locked in an intense battle with the union seeking to represent Starbucks workers.  That union, Starbucks Workers United, has notched a few victories including the successful unionization at two Buffalo area locations as well as securing elections elsewhere around the country.  I refer readers to this article for more information about how Starbucks has been trying to curb the wave of unionization at the company.  So far, those efforts to stymie unionization are mixed, to say the least given that workers at 54 locations in 19 states (and counting) have made moves to unionize.

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