| | | | |  | | By Nick Niedzwiadek | | | | ON SENATE TIME: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continues to operate with a working majority of Republican appointees, more than a month after former Chair Janet Dhillon's term expired. Dhillon has remained active on the five-member commission , as she is allowed to do by federal statute, while the nomination of her potential successor — attorney Kalpana Kotagal — remains pending before the Senate, which is not set to shift back into gear until early September. The general counsel's office also continues to be led on an acting basis, with Karla Gilbride only being nominated in early June. As such, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows , who President Joe Biden elevated on his first day in office, has had limitations on what she can accomplish during her tenure. The Republican bloc can vote down any item brought before them — a power they have exerted at least 15 times since Jan. 20, 2021 — leaving the Democratic appointees to mainly stick to cases that pass unanimously or where they can pick off at least one Republican commissioner (Andrea Lucas being the primary target.) "She doesn't have three Democrats that she can count on. That is sort of the key consideration right now," Victoria Lipnic, former EEOC acting chair and now partner at Resolution Economics, told Morning Shift. Lipnic said that effectively means biding time and finding things the EEOC can push out on the sub-regulatory level or otherwise do not need to be voted on, such as this May's technical assistance on implementation of AI technology in hiring. Kotagal has idled since the end of May after the Senate HELP committee deadlocked on her nomination, with occasional swing vote Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining their GOP colleagues in opposing Kotagal. If that result is any indication, the nomination is almost assuredly to be decided on a party-line basis with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. That adds logistical hurdles for Democrats, who have grappled with Covid-related absences and other difficulties that have kept that magic number out of reach. GOOD MORNING. It's Monday, Aug. 8. Welcome back to Weekly Shift, your go-to tipsheet on employment and immigration news. Send feedback, tips, exclusives to emueller@politico.com and nniedzwiadek@politico.com . Follow us on Twitter at @eleanor_mueller and @nickniedz . And it's not just the EEOC. A Labor Department nominee, Lisa Gomez, has been in limbo for weeks after Senate Democrats didn't have Harris on hand when Gomez's name was put on the floor and Republicans lined up in opposition. Further delay squeezes the window Democratic appointees will have to leave their mark and the GOP's willingness to play hardball on labor-centric nominees looms large, particularly as Burrows' term expires in 2023 and Republicans don't seem inclined to make the process easy on the Biden administration should they take control of the Senate. "The clock is really ticking on what — even with a Democratic majority — can get done right in this first term of the Biden administration," Lipnic said.
| | | | The Women Rule series brings together rising stars, accomplished professionals, and women at the pinnacle of their careers to inform, empower and connect women across diverse sectors and career levels. Attendance to our quarterly in-person POLITICO Women Rule meetings, is by invitation-only. Join our interest list and learn more here . | | | | | Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You'll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day's biggest stories.
| | | WHAT WENT DOWN IN MICHIGAN: The internecine primary contests between sitting Reps. Andy Levin and Haley Stevens was one that many labor organizations and other outside groups were watching intently. Now with the dust settled and Stevens the victor, our Zack Stanton has a look at how that came to pass and what that means for the Levins — a Michigan political institution unto themselves. As Shift and others have pointed out before, the two were largely in line with one another on a host of key Democratic priorities. That was reflected in endorsements, where organized labor on a local-level backed Stevens and state and national organizations backed Levin. In the end "the race turned on a few key points: new district lines that gave Stevens a substantial advantage, a misreading of the new suburban Democratic electorate by the Levin camp, a decades-long trend in Oakland Democrats' preference to elect women and the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs — which, in eliminating the guaranteed right to abortion, supercharged that gender dynamic."
| | | PBGC NAMES GC: The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation on Friday announced the appointment of Karen Morris as the body's general counsel. Morris had been serving as its head of negotiations and restructuring . She first joined PBGC in 1988. The agency is the federal backstop for people whose pension plans risk financial collapse and insolvency. WHAT'S ON MARTY'S MIND: The oft-quotable labor secretary made the rounds Friday trumpeting the Biden administration's economic policies and assuaging concerns about an overheating market. Along the way he also offered some thoughts on other matters worth capturing. West Coast ports negotiations: "I'm very confident where we are in the negotiations right now," Marty Walsh said on Bloomberg TV. "I'm not concerned." Dissatisfied Dems: "Some in my own party need to take a step back and maybe shut their Twitters off," he said on CNN, defending the president. "He's done an amazing job in my opinion of working across the aisle and pulling America together." Red Sox: "I'm going to get myself in trouble here," he said when asked on Bloomberg TV if the last-place team needed some "labor turnover" of its own.
| | | THE PULL FACTOR OF IVF: Amazon frequently boasts of the pay and benefits it offers to workers at its warehouses and distribution facilities relative to other employers in the retail or service sectors it competes with to meet its needs. One of those offerings is coverage for in vitro fertilization. However that's become a bit of a double-edge sword for people interested in the procedure, as it's led to a contingent of workers taking on strenuous work for Amazon that could complicate their chances of success with the treatment they're toiling to earn, New York magazine reports . "'The very work that will pay for your fertility treatment may well be the kind of work you should not be doing when you are having fertility treatments,' says Josephine Johnston, a bioethicist and a director at the Hastings Center, a research institute focused on health policy." HAPPENING TODAY: Workers at several call center locations who handle Medicare and Obamacare-related inquiries are lodging a one-day strike Monday to protest their compensation and other workplace conditions. Organizers told your Shift host that they expect around 200 Maximus workers to demonstrate across the federal contractor's Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Bogalusa, Louisiana; and Chester, Virginia, locations — with additional action planned at a fourth site in London, Kentucky. It is just the latest demonstration by disgruntled workers at the largest federal call center contractor, following other strikes in March and May. For its part Maximus has repeatedly said it has taken a number of steps to address workers' concerns about raising pay and lowering their health care costs.
| | | APPLE ORGANIZING FALTERS: The effort to unionize retail workers at Apple Store locations in several states appears to have hit an impasse even as other parts of the industry have continued to notch victories, The Verge reports . "'The temperature for considering a union has gone cold, much to my disappointment,' says a worker in Texas, who asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation." One Maryland store voted to unionize in June, but unlike places like Starbucks, that foothold did not give way to a wave of activity at other locations. What lays ahead: "Organizers at the Communications Workers of America and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — two unions helping to organize Apple employees — say more stores are expected to announce unions as soon as next month." More union news: " Stanford Health Care Threatened Staff's Jobs, Teamsters Allege ," from Bloomberg. Even more union news: " Austin Restaurant Workers Plan To Unionize Local Pizzerias In New Organizing Effort ," from HuffPost.
| | | N.J. UNIONS FIGHT HEALTH BENEFITS CHANGES: Some of the New Jersey's top union leaders are requesting that public employees' health care contributions be frozen at current levels and that federal Covid relief funds be used to help offset proposed rate increases for those workers' health insurance, POLITICO New Jersey's Daniel Han reports . The union leaders also criticized top officials from the the Department of Treasury, which oversees the public employee health insurance program, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, which administers the health insurance plans. The letter comes as the State Health Benefits Program faces proposed rate increases for current state and local employees of around 20 percent. Across various plans, increases range from 12 to 20 percent. More state news: " Calif. DA, Female Attorneys Settle Sex Bias Suit ," from Law360.
| | | BAIT AND SWITCH: Companies in Georgia allegedly recruited Mexican college graduates to fill lucrative engineering jobs only to have them instead work blue-collar assembly jobs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports . "The men provided documents showing a little-known visa program that immigrant watchdogs say is ripe for abuse paved the way for the agency to bring them to Georgia." That program — the Trade NAFTA, or TN, visa — is intended to fill high-skill jobs in the U.S. with workers from Mexico and Canada. However, with "little oversight of the TN visa program, some immigrant advocates report a growing pattern of fraud resulting in worker exploitation, with many cases linked to the auto sector in the Southeast." WORTH YOUR TIME: The Atlantic's Caitlin Dickerson is out with a deep dive into the Trump administration's policy of splitting up migrant families who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. The piece is also available in Spanish . The one-sentence takeaway: "A flagrant failure to prepare meant that courts, detention centers, and children's shelters became dangerously overwhelmed; that parents and children were lost to each other, sometimes many states apart; that four years later, some families are still separated—and that even many of those who have been reunited have suffered irreparable harm." More immigration news: " National Guard won't help D.C. deal with migrant influx caused by Texas Gov. Abbott busing migrants to the city ," from NBC News.
| | | | INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY . | | | | | | | | — " Weak Growth, Tight Job Markets Are a Global Phenomenon ," from The Wall Street Journal. — " Chick-fil-A store asks for 'volunteers' to work for chicken, not money ," from The Washington Post. — " Months into war, Ukraine refugees slow to join EU workforce ," from The Associated Press. — " Inflation Driving Up 2023 Retirement Plan Contribution Limits ," from Bloomberg Law. — " Public Pension Funds—the Next Battleground for Human Rights ," from The Nation. THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT! | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
Comments
Post a Comment