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Month: July 2017

Working People Need to Know If We Can Trust Donald Trump’s NLRB Nominees to Protect Our Freedoms

Posted on by Kenneth Quinnell
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President Donald Trump chose two nominees for the National Labor Relations Board whose commitment to the freedom of working people to come together and negotiate is seriously in doubt. These two men, Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel, have records of actively trying to strip working people of their freedoms.

Republicans are rushing to get these nominations through, but it is imperative that the Senate uses upcoming hearings and meetings to find out whether these nominees will side with working people or the richest 1% of Americans. NLRB decisions and actions have a real impact on the lives of working people, particularly the ability to join together with co-workers to advocate for positive change.

Of the nominations, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

Marvin Kaplan has never practiced labor law, and his experience comes from crafting legislation for politicians that rigs the rules against working people. William Emanuel has a long record of practicing labor law on behalf of employers, most recently at one of the most infamous union-busting law firms in the country. On their face, the resumes of both nominees appear to be in direct conflict with the mission of the NLRB.

Emanuel, a member of the staunchly anti-working people legal organization,  the Federalist Society, has extensive experience representing employers in collective bargaining, union elections and unfair labor practice proceedings under the National Labor Relations Act. Recently, he filed a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that employers should be allowed to require employees to waive their right to file class-action lawsuits or any other method of joining with others in seeking relief for rights violations. Emanuel has directly worked on numerous issues currently before the NLRB, raising serious questions about his ability to be impartial on those cases.

Kaplan hasn’t ever practiced labor law. His only related experience is in staffing a couple of Republican, anti-worker committees in Congress and helping run a series of oversight hearings criticizing the NLRB under President Barack Obama. He drafted legislation to overturn several NLRB actions that strengthened the freedom of working people join together. Like Emanuel, Kaplan has actively worked on numerous issues he would have to rule on if confirmed to the NLRB, calling into question his own impartiality on those cases.

This blog was originally published at AFLCIO.org on July 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kenneth Quinnell is a long-time blogger, campaign staffer and political activist. Before joining the AFL-CIO in 2012, he worked as labor reporter for the blog Crooks and Liars. Previous experience includes Communications Director for the Darcy Burner for Congress Campaign and New Media Director for the Kendrick Meek for Senate Campaign, founding and serving as the primary author for the influential state blog Florida Progressive Coalition and more than 10 years as a college instructor teaching political science and American History. His writings have also appeared on Daily Kos, Alternet, the Guardian Online, Media Matters for America, Think Progress, Campaign for America’s Future and elsewhere.


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Jimmy John’s Fired Workers for Making a ‘Disloyal’ Meme. A Court Just Ruled That’s Okay.

Posted on by Bruce Vail
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In a decision emblematic of the new climate of Trumpian governance, a federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled on July 3 that it is acceptable for the boss of a fast-food chain to fire workers for the sin of being “disloyal.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a ruling issued by the Obama-era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a case spawned by a labor organizing drive at the Jimmy John’s fast-food chain. The court held that Miklin Enterprises, the owner of Jimmy John’s franchises in Minneapolis, had the right to fire six pro-union advocates because they demonstrated “disloyalty” by distributing flyers in 2011 that implied the company was selling unsafe food contaminated by employees obliged to work while sick with the flu.

The organizers designed and distributed memes that showed images of identical Jimmy John’s sandwiches. One was “made by a healthy Jimmy John’s worker,” the other by a “sick” worker. “Can’t tell the different?” the poster continued. “That’s too bad because Jimmy John’s workers don’t get paid sick days. Shoot, we can’t even call in sick. We hope your immune system is ready because you’re about to take the sandwich test.”

The Minneapolis union campaign, launched by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or ‘Wobblies’), has been high-profile from the start. First erupting in 2010, the effort quickly developed into an intense legal fight at the NLRB before advancing to the federal courts. It even spilled over into the U.S. Congress in 2014 with the revelation that Jimmy John’s routinely required its low-paid sandwich makers to sign questionable “non-compete agreements.”

Threatened with punitive action by the attorneys general in several states, Jimmy John’s rescinded its non-compete policies in 2016, but not before the company’s reputation had been tarnished.

Like the non-compete agreements, the July 3 court decision is an unwarranted attack on labor rights, says William B. Gould IV, a labor law professor at Stanford University and former chairman of the federal labor board.

“The first thing that strikes you is how archaic this feels,” Gould tells In These Times. “The legal basis is from a case in the 1950s when people had a whole different concept of loyalty owed to their employer.

“In those days,” Gould continues, “the assumption was that loyalty was a two-way street: You were loyal to the company and the company was loyal to you. Now, with Uber and Lyft and the others, companies are even refusing to admit that you are one of their employees, so there isn’t much talk about loyalty owed to the employer anymore.”

The July 3 decision turns on the interpretation of ‘loyalty’ articulated in the 1953 Supreme Court case National Labor Relations Board v. Local Union 1229 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, known as “Jefferson Standard” for short. Earlier in the process of the more recent NLRB case, the labor agency’s Obama appointees had ruled that the firing of the workers was an illegal violation of their rights to form a union. But the appeals court decision reversed that decision, asserting that the disloyalty displayed by the pamphlets gave the employer the right to fire the workers, Gould explains.

The court stated, “(W)hile an employee’s subjective intent is of course relevant to the disloyalty inquiry—”sharp, public, disparaging attack” suggests an intent to harm the Jefferson Standard principle includes an objective component that focuses, not on the employee’s purpose, but on the means used—whether the disparaging attack was ‘reasonably calculated to harm the company’s reputation and reduce its income,’ to such an extent that it was harmful, indefensible disparagement of the employer or its product.”

Erik Forman was fired six years ago for organizing a union at a Jimmy John’s in Minneapolis. He told In These Times, “The big takeaway for me is that this ruling means workers do not have the right to tell the truth about their employer,” he said, adding: “The ruling is incredibly slanted towards the employer. They frame our campaign for sick days as an attack on the employer and turn logic on its head. We told the truth about the risk to the public.”

“Employers’ motivation wasn’t just to stop the sick-day campaign,” Forman continued. “It was to stop our unionization effort.”

According to Gould, “This case comes from the 8th Circuit which is the most conservative in the country. It’s the worst circuit in the country for a labor union, or for labor rights.”

The ultra-conservative nature of the ruling may have the unintended benefit of limiting its applicability to workers other than the Minneapolis Jimmy John’s employees, the former NLRB chairman adds. Other judicial districts may not be eager to follow its lead because many traditionally defer to the NLRB in matters of this kind, he says, and few employers will want to take the legal risk of relying on a circuit court ruling that has not been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

The reversal of the Obama-era NLRB decision mirrors action in Congress, where several measures are under consideration to roll back pro-worker measures adopted by the labor board during Obama’s tenure. This week, the U.S. Senate is considering thenomination of two Trump NLRB appointees, both of whom have been criticized as anti-worker by the AFL-CIO.

Carmen Spell, an NLRB representative at the agency’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, would only comment that “(w)e are considering options at this time” on how the agency will respond to the court ruling.

Jane Hardey, a spokeswoman for Jimmy John’s, declined any comment, asserting that the legal case involved only the Minneapolis franchise owner, and did not involve the sandwich chain company itself. Hardey did not respond to a request from In These Times for a telephone interview with Jimmy John Liautard, the controversial founder of the franchise.

According to the Jimmy John’s web site, the rapidly growing chain currently has 2,701 locations in 48 states. The number of employees is estimated at over 100,000.

“The fact that we were fired over six years ago in retaliation for union organizing should tell everyone that you cannot rely on labor law in this country,” says Forman. “Every single decision can now be appealed up to a Trump Supreme Court. We need to find new ways of building and exercising power on our own.”

This article was originally published at In These Times on July 13, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper’s New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.


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News from Congress: VA Employees’ Civil Service Protections Slashed

Posted on by The Attorneys of Passman and Kaplan
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On June 23, 2017, the President signed into law Pub.L. 115-41.  The new statute reduces civil service protections for employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA).

Pub.L. 115-41 renews the push to cut back VA civil service protections, after the prior attempt under the last Administration saw adverse actions reversed at the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and portions of the statute struck down as unconstitutional.

Pub.L. 115-41 is more expansive than the prior statute.  Instead of just applying to Senior Executive Service (SES) employees at DVA, the statute applies to all DVA civil service employees, but different rules apply to different categories of employees.

SES employees and certain other individuals in executive or administrative positions can be removed, suspended, reprimanded, involuntarily reassigned or demoted by the Secretary, with notice and opportunity to respond to the proposal limited to 7 business days and the overall period from proposal to decision limited to 15 business days.  Affected DVA employees lose MSPB appeal rights.  Instead, adverse actions taken under this mechanism may solely be grieved to a new DVA internal grievance process, with a final decision due within 21 days.  Final decisions by DVA are then subject to judicial review.

Other DVA employees also suffer cuts to their civil service protections.  Under Pub.L. 115-41, affected employees may receive proposed adverse actions from the Secretary, with notice and opportunity to respond to the proposal limited to 7 business days and the overall period from proposal to decision limited to 15 business days.  MSPB appeal rights are retained, but the appeal deadline is cut to 10 business days.  The MSPB administrative judge must issue a final decision within 180 days.  The VA’s burden of proof to support its charges is cut to mere substantial evidence.  The MSPB may not mitigate to a lesser penalty (it must uphold the penalty or reverse entirely).

Pub.L. 115-41 moves into statute the DVA whistleblower office created by Executive Order 13,793.  The Secretary cannot remove, demote or suspend non-executive whistleblowers with active cases before the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) or the DVA whistleblower office without permission of the relevant whistleblower office.

Pub.L. 115-41 also allows the Secretary to disallow retirement service credit for DVA employees who are convicted of felonies.  Pub.L. 115-41 also allows the Secretary to claw back bonuses, awards and relocation expenses paid to DVA employees under certain circumstances.

This blog was originally published by The Attorneys of Passman & Kaplan, PC on July 7, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Authors: Founded in 1990 by Edward H. Passman and Joseph V. Kaplan, Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law, is focused on protecting the rights of federal employees and promoting workplace fairness.  The attorneys of Passman & Kaplan (Edward H. Passman, Joseph V. Kaplan, Adria S. Zeldin, Andrew J. Perlmutter, Johnathan P. Lloyd and Erik D. Snyder) represent federal employees before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other federal administrative agencies, and also represent employees in U.S. District and Appeals Courts.


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New study confirms widespread reports of science’s sexual harassment problem

Posted on by Laurel Raymond
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In January 2016, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) took to the House floor and delivered a blistering speech on a topic not often discussed outside the towers of academia: sexual harassment in the sciences.

“When I was made aware of it, I was astonished and disgusted,” Speier told Wired about the case she presented on the floor, based on a leaked report on harassment at the University of Arizona. But she wasn’t surprised: “It was consistent with what I have seen in science for a long time.”

As Speier notes, the idea that science has a sexual harassment problem is hardly new?—?particularly for female scientists, who’ve been dealing with and fighting against it for decades. But until recently, it didn’t get a lot of attention. Speier’s speech helped open up a dam, as female scientists came forward in droves to share their experiences with sexist discrimination and harassment.

And this week, new survey data confirms what the anecdotes told us: Women, and particularly women of color, working within the astronomical and planetary sciences are vastly more likely than their male colleagues to experience a hostile work environment based on their race or gender.

A series of scandals

Speier her speech began by referencing two high-profile cases that had shaken the world of astronomy and first brought the issue into the spotlight, the first of which centered on world-famous astronomer, tenured professor, and, as it turns out, serial sexual harasser Geoff Marcy.

Marcy had repeatedly violated the school’s sexual harassment policy and engaged in inappropriate behavior with female students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping, as a Title IX investigation leaked to Buzzfeed revealed. According to subsequent reports, his behavior dated back to previous academic posts and had gone on for decades with little consequence, despite numerous reports from women.

Despite the extensive documentation and report, Berkeley did not hand down punishment for Marcy. He resigned from his tenured position down after pressure from his colleagues.

Then, a similar story broke at Caltech, where newly-tenured astrophysics professor Christian Ott was suspended for inappropriate behavior toward two female graduate students?—?one of whom he fired after he fell in love with her, upending her research plans and ultimately causing her to leave the university to finish her studies elsewhere.

And on the floor, Speier outed yet another instance of harassment within astronomy: Timothy Frederick Slater, a professor at the University of Wyoming who obtained the post despite a documented history of sexual harassment at his previous job at the University of Arizona.

As the topic moved out of the shadows and into the mainstream, women from all across the sciences came forward with their own stories of gender-based discrimination and harassment.

Reformers, however, still faced a classic problem when it comes to sexual harassment: disbelief. Were these anecdotes just isolated incidents, or particularly high-profile examples of a widespread epidemic?

Now, new survey data published in the Journal of Geophysical Research is helping confirm that it’s the latter?—?and illustrate that when it comes to harassment and hostile workplace behavior, women of color, as a double minority, are the people at the greatest risk.

A culture of sexism

Researchers surveyed 474 astronomers and planetary scientists in an internet survey, asking about their experience with harassment over a period of five years. As they were particularly interested in the experience of women?—?who experience the majority of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace, and who also form a minority group within the scientific field at issue?—?they specifically targeted recruitment so they would be oversampling women relative to their numbers in the field.

They found that overall, women were more likely than men to experience a hostile work environment, and were far more likely to experience sexism and harassment.

“The results were initially worse than expected, as somebody who’s been working in and around these issues for some time,” study co-author Christina Richey told Inside Higher Ed. “It’s a little disheartening, but at least as we present this information it’s an opportunity for that gut-check moment. It forces conversations to start.”

Seventy-nine percent of women surveyed reported hearing at least some sexist remarks from their peers, and 44 percent reported hearing them from their supervisors. Women were also more likely than men to hear remarks about their physical ability or disability. Seventy-five percent of women reported hearing remarks from others about their mental abilities, as compared to 48 percent of men.

And in nearly every significant area, the researchers found that “women of color experienced the most hostile environment, from the negative remarks observed to their direct experiences of verbal and physical harassment.”

Forty percent of women of color reported feeling unsafe at work because of their gender, and 28 percent reported feeling unsafe because of their race. They also observed the highest frequency of problematic remarks, as compared to white men and men of color and white women, and were the most likely to report harassment based on their race.

White women and women of color experienced verbal harassment related to their gender about equally?—?with 43 percent and 44 percent reporting it, respectively.

Overall, the study paints a picture of endemic hostile experiences predicated by race, gender, and their intersections.

And this culture has an effect: Thirteen percent of women reported skipping at least one class, meeting, fieldwork, or professional event due to feeling unsafe, as compared to 3 percent of men. Twenty-one percent of women of color reported skipping professional events due to feeling unsafe, as did 18 percent of men of color. Only 2 percent of white men reported skipping at least one event due to feeling unsafe.

This result underlines a common theme with workplace sexual harassment: Often, when men in power harass their employees, it’s the women on the receiving end whose careers pay the price.

A discriminatory environment creates a leaky pipeline

This study specifically focused on astronomy and the planetary sciences?—?one area within the sciences where women are particularly scarce, and where some of the highest-profile scandals have occurred.

Reports indicate, however, that the problem stems across disciplines and even across academia. According to a 2015 report, one in three female science professors reported experiencing sexual harassment at some point in their career.

One likely reason sexual harassment in the sciences is prevalent is because of gender imbalances in the field: While women now outnumber men in social and some biosciences, they remain drastically underrepresented in engineering, physics, and computer science.

Academia is also a world where length of career matters. For decades, women weren’t even accepted to technical or scientific degrees. Now, that legacy still lingers in the ranks of those who lead University departments or who built powerful research legacies?—?and therefore are in charge of the course of young careers. That means that more often than not, even as more women are being encouraged to choose STEM careers, those in charge of mentorship, funding, and career opportunities are men.

All of this has a perpetuating effect: Women remain stubbornly underrepresented in the sciences, and part of that is because the pipeline is leaky.

In engineering, for example, women earn only 19 percent of bachelor’s degrees, and then on top of that 40 percent of female degree earners leave the field, citing hostile work cultures, limited advancement opportunities, and unsupportive supervisors.

That’s a problem not just for women, but also for science in general, because it means that fields are missing out on bright minds.

The authors of the study offer several suggestions for remedying the environment for women and women of color in science?—?including adopting codes of conduct protecting vulnerable populations, providing diversity and cultural awareness training, and helping women and women of color to build communities of peers.

They also recommend that when abuse is reported, that the perpetrators be sanctioned swiftly, justly, and consistently, “as this is the only way to signal consequences to the target and the broader community.”

This article was originally published at ThinkProgress on July 11, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laurel Raymond is a reporter for ThinkProgress. Previously, she worked for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and served as a Fulbright scholar at Gaziantep University in southeast Turkey. She holds a B.A. in English and a B.S. in brain and cognitive sciences from the University of Rochester, and is originally from Richmond, Vermont.


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The SEC Whistleblower Program

Posted on by Jason Zuckerman
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In 2011, a former executive at Monsanto, a large publicly traded company, raised concerns that the company was violating accounting rules and misstating its earnings. Despite being aware of these issues, Monsanto failed to remedy the accounting violations and continued to misstate earnings. Undeterred, the former executive reported his concerns to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through its new whistleblower program. Armed with this information, the SEC opened an investigation into Monsanto’s accounting practices and discovered that the company had indeed violated accounting rules and misstated company earnings for three years. Monsanto agreed to pay an $80 million penalty to settle the charges and the former executive received a $22 million award from the SEC.

Overview of the SEC Whistleblower Program  

The SEC Whistleblower Program was established to incentive whistleblowers, like the former Monsanto executive, to report violations of the federal securities laws to the SEC. Under the program, whistleblowers may be eligible for an award when they provide the SEC with original information that leads to successful enforcement actions with monetary sanctions totaling more than $1 million. A whistleblower may receive an award of between 10-30 percent of the monetary sanctions collected.

The SEC requests specific, timely, and credible information about any violation of the federal securities laws. The most common whistleblower tips relate to corporate disclosures and financials, offering fraud and market manipulation. Other notable areas of whistleblower tips relate to insider trading, trading and pricing schemes, foreign bribery, unregistered offerings, and EB-5 investment fraud.

Under the program, whistleblowers may submit tips anonymously to the SEC if represented by an attorney. Moreover, most whistleblowers, regardless of citizenship or position within a company, are eligible (or can become eligible) for an award under the program. This includes internal auditors, external auditors, officers, directors, and even individuals involved in the wrongdoing.

Since 2011, the SEC Whistleblower Program has received over 18,000 tips and has awarded more than $150 million to whistleblowers. Enforcement actions resulting from whistleblower tips have enabled the SEC to recover nearly $1 billion in financial remedies from wrongdoers, much of which has been returned to investors.

Free eBook on the SEC Whistleblower Program

The rules implementing the SEC Whistleblower Program are complex and there are many potential pitfalls for whistleblowers. Zuckerman Law has recently released a free eBook about the program that highlights important steps that whistleblowers should take to increase the likelihood of recovering and maximizing an SEC whistleblower award. The eBook covers the following topics:

Overview of the SEC Whistleblower Program

  • What is the SEC Whistleblower Program?
  • Can I submit an anonymous tip to the SEC Whistleblower Office?
  • What employment protections are available for SEC whistleblowers?
  • What violations qualify for an SEC whistleblower award?
  • What are the largest SEC whistleblower awards?

Whistleblowers Eligible for an Award

  • Who is an eligible SEC whistleblower?
  • Can I submit a claim if I had involvement in the fraud or misconduct?
  • Can I submit a tip if I agreed to a confidentiality provision in an employment/severance agreement?
  • Can compliance personnel, auditors, officers or directors qualify for an SEC whistleblower award?

Reporting to the SEC and Maximizing Award Percentage

  • When is the best time to report the fraud or misconduct to the SEC?
  • Do I have to report the violation to my company before reporting the violation to the SEC?
  • Can I submit an SEC Whistleblower claim if the SEC already has an open investigation into the matter?
  • How do I submit a tip to the SEC?
  • What type of evidence should I provide to the SEC?
  • What factors does the SEC consider when determining the amount of the award?

After Reporting to the SEC

  • What happens after I submit a tip to the SEC?
  • How long does it take to receive an SEC whistleblower award?

Click here to download your free copy of the eBook SEC Whistleblower Program: Tips from SEC Whistleblower Attorneys to Maximize an SEC Whistleblower Award.

About the Author: Jason Zuckerman represents whistleblowers nationwide in whistleblower rewards and whistleblower retaliation claims.  Recently Matt Stock and Zuckerman issued an ebook titled SEC Whistleblower Program: Tips from SEC Whistleblower Attorneys to Maximize an SEC Whistleblower Award.


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18 states are suing Betsy DeVos for putting for-profit college fraudsters over student borrowers

Posted on by Laura Clawson
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Betsy DeVos is making it harder for students to get loan forgiveness after being cheated by for-profit colleges, but Democratic attorneys general across the country are challenging her in court. DeVos has had the Education Department put a hold on new rules that were supposed to take effect on July 1 protecting student borrowers—protecting student borrowers is definitely not what Betsy DeVos is about, let’s be clear on that—and 18 states are going to court to get the rules put back in place.

An existing federal law allows borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness if they attended a school that misled them or broke state consumer protection laws. Once rarely used, the system was overwhelmed by applicants after the wave of for-profit failures. Corinthian’s collapse alone led to more than 15,000 loan discharges, with a balance of $247 million.

Taxpayers get stuck with those losses. The rules that Ms. DeVos froze would have shifted some of that risk back to the industry by requiring schools at risk of closing to put up financial collateral. They would also ban mandatory arbitration agreements, which have prevented many aggrieved students from suing schools that they believe have defrauded them.

DeVos really is stepping in in favor of fraudulent schools over defrauded students—and taxpayers—in other words.

“Since day one, Secretary DeVos has sided with for-profit school executives against students and families drowning in unaffordable student loans,” said Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, who led the multistate coalition. “Her decision to cancel vital protections for students and taxpayers is a betrayal of her office’s responsibility and a violation of federal law.”

Two students left with debts after their school lied to them about their job prospects are also suing the Education Department over the same issues.

This blog was published at DailyKos on July 6, 2017.  Reprinted with permission. 

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at DailyKos.


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The Trump administration is quietly making it easier to abuse seniors in nursing homes

Posted on by Ian Millhiser
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The Trump administration is poised to undo rules issued by the Obama administration last year to protect seniors from a common tactic used by businesses to shield themselves from consequences for illegal conduct.

Under these rules, issued last September, Medicare and Medicaid would cut off payments to nursing homes that require new residents to sign forced arbitration agreements, a contract which strips individuals of their ability to sue in a real court and diverts the case to a privatized arbitration system.

But last month, the Trump administration published a proposed rule which will reinstate nursing homes’ ability to receive federal money even if they force seniors into arbitration agreements.

Forced arbitration can prevent even the most egregious cases from ever reaching a judge. According to the New York Times, a 94 year-old nursing home resident “who died from a head wound that had been left to fester, was ordered to go to arbitration.” In another case, the family of a woman who suffered “two spine fractures from serious falls, a large, infected ulcer on her heel that prevented her from walking, incontinence from not being able to get to the bathroom, receding gums from poor hygiene assistance, and a dramatic weigh loss from not being given her dentures,” was also sent to an arbitrator after they sued the woman’s nursing home alleging neglect.

Moreover, as law professor and health policy expert Nicholas Bagley notes, arbitration tends “to favor the repeat players who hire them—companies, not consumers.” Several studies have found that forced arbitration typically produces worse outcomes for consumers and workers. An Economic Policy Institute study of employment cases, for example, found that employees are less likely to prevail before an arbitrator, and that they typically receive less money if they do prevail.

The Obama-era rules were never allowed to take effect. Shortly after the regulations were announced, a George W. Bush-appointed judge in Mississippi issued a decision blocking the rule—although Judge Michael Mills did caveat his order by stating that “this case places this court in the undesirable position of preliminarily enjoining a Rule which it believes to be based upon sound public policy.”

Important parts of Mills’ opinion rely on dubious reasoning. At one point, for example, he cites a doctrine limiting the federal government’s power to use threats of lost funding against state governments in order to impose similar limits on federal efforts to encourage good behavior by private actors.

But let’s be honest. If the Trump administration wasn’t preparing to end the Obama-era rule, conservatives on the Supreme Court most likely would have done so themselves.

Prior to Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority took such a sweeping and expansive view of companies’ power to use forced arbitration that it is likely the Obama administration’s rules would have been struck down in a 5–4 decision. Now that Neil Gorsuch occupies Scalia’s seat, Republicans once again have the majority they need to shield arbitration agreements.

In the alternative universe where the winner of the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election was inaugurated last January, Justice Merrick Garland was likely to provide the fifth vote to uphold the Obama-era rule. But we do not live in that universe. And neither do the many elderly nursing home residents who will be worse off thanks to the Trump administration.

This article was originally published at ThinkProgress on July 6, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Ian Millhiser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the editor of ThinkProgress Justice. He received his JD from Duke University and clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His writings have appeared in a diversity of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, the American Prospect and the Yale Law & Policy Review.


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As Universities are Gutted, Grad Student Employee Unions Can Provide a Vital Defense

Posted on by Sabeen Ahmed
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The exploitation of academic workers has simmered for decades. Now, buoyed by a National Labor Relations Board ruling that graduate employees at private universities have the right to unionize, a new generation is organizing unions across private universities—defying a wave of pushback from administrations. Some students win (Columbia, Loyola). Some withdraw (Duke). Some get caught in a limbo of university appeals (Yale).

But all of these efforts are integral to the U.S. labor movement, as graduate workers challenge their own exploitation and the neoliberal decimation of the higher-education institutions that employ them.

I’m a graduate worker at Vanderbilt University and a member of the committee organizing to unionize 1,200 graduate employees. I attend graduate school out of a passion for learning, writing and teaching young people. I came here to critique Western intellectual history by analyzing social, economic and political issues. These matters impact my life and the lives of loved ones; they are not academic hobbies or intellectual fancies. Even lecturing is no mere academic exercise: Higher education is what fosters democratic citizenship. It cultivates capacities for critical self-reflection, engagement in public discourse and thoughtful participation in a rapidly changing world. We need these pursuits now more than ever.

I did not come to graduate school to spend thousands of dollars out-of- pocket to fulfill professional obligations while watching my institution insidiously cut funding opportunities for faculty and graduate workers. I did not come to graduate school to listen to administrators rebrand us as students gaining ‘experiential education opportunities’ rather than as employees teaching introductory classes, executing research programs, or building scholarly communities. Most importantly, I did not come to graduate school to bolster a system that abuses its workers, ignores academic rigor, overlooks sexual harassment allegations against distinguished (male) faculty, engages in unlawful labor practices and disregards the needs of its staff and faculty.

And yet, this system demands that I participate by providing constant intellectual, physical and emotional labor, despite minimal job security.

Many scholars have already exposed the decline of education and the poor labor conditions of university educators. In his 2011 The Fall of the Faculty, Benjamin Ginsberg published a devastating analysis of the decline of faculty power. More recently, Elizabeth Anderson’s 2015 Tanner Lectures at Princeton, published as Private Government, chronicled dictatorial employment practices. And last month, University of Michigan dual-Ph.D. candidate Maximillian Alvarez penned “Contingent No More,” a manifesto criticizing the laissez-fare academic culture that perpetuates the “neoliberization of higher education.”

These writers illuminate the struggles of a new generation of faculty and graduate workers in academia. Burdened by insurmountable student debt and confronted by the machinery of U.S. capitalism, we fight just to survive.

Recent struggles in higher education are part of a long history of economic exploitation and domination over workers, problems that have pervaded U.S. society since its racist, genocidal and profit-driven founding. Whereas in the 1970s almost 80 percent of faculty were full-time, universities today have shifted to a contingent employment model. Non-tenure track faculty now compose 70 percent of the academic labor force, 41 percent of whom are part-time. Graduate workers are 13 percent of the academic labor force, almost 5 percent more than full-time, tenure-track faculty.

Why? Because contingent labor is cheap, and no tenure means we’re expendable. This allows universities to slash salaries for faculty while expanding bureaucratic administrations that obstruct grievance processes and legal redress.

In fact, Business Insider reveals that tuition has increased by 260 percent since 1980, compared to the 120 percent increase in consumer items over the same period. So, where is that money going, if not to faculty and graduate employee salaries? It is going to university administrators, whose employment has increased by 221 percent from 1975 to 2008. In contrast, faculty employment has increased by only 3.5 percent.

All the while, faculty and students are left in the dark as to how university revenue is spent. The Illinois State Senate’s 99 Percent General Assembly 2015 Report on Executive Compensation notes that “tuition increases have coincided with a dramatic increase in administrative costs, including the size of administrative departments and compensation packages for executives.” Vanderbilt University’s Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos was cited by Forbes as the fifth-highest- paid university president in 2012, with an annual salary of $2.23 million. He and 35 other university presidents across America made over $1 million that year. Nearly 40 percent of university presidents are eligible for financial bonuses for increasing statistics like graduation rates, at the expense of faculty resources for research and conference travel.

For the administrative university, undergraduates—our students—have gone from ‘future leaders’ to ‘commodities.’

The generation of capital, rather than free and critical thought, is increasingly becoming the purpose of higher education. Deans see themselves as micro-CEOs, while provosts and chancellors view the university as a money-making venture. We instructors are the face of the university and provide the classroom education that students pay for, yet revenue we bring in doesn’t pay for our security. Instead, we are told that admission to a doctoral program is a gift, that our employers are benevolent, and that quiet gratitude is the only appropriate response to our conditions. They pretend this is enough to ignore watching us sink below a living wage, struggle with mental health with little support, and work ourselves to exhaustion.

This piece was originally published at In These Times on July 5, 2017. Reprinted with permission. 

About the Author: Sabeen Ahmed is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is interested in social and political philosophy and critical phenomenology. She is currently working to analyze refugee discourses through a critique of Western intellectual history.


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Prescription Drug Spending is Consuming a Bigger Share of Wages

Posted on by Dean Baker
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Prescription drugs are a large and growing share of national income. While it is generally recognized that drugs are expensive, many people are unaware of how large a share of their income goes to paying for drugs because much of it goes through third party payers, specifically insurance companies and the government.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) produce projections of national expenditures on prescription drugs through 2025, along with historical estimates dating back to 1960. As shown below, prescription drug spending from 1960 to 1980 was equivalent to about one percent of total wage and salary income. In the years leading up to the passage of the Bayh-Dole act in 1980, wage income was rising faster than spending on prescription drugs. As a result, the share of wages spent on prescription drugs was actually falling, reaching a low in 1979 of 0.86%.

However, after 1980, prescription drug spending rose rapidly relative to wage income. The ratio of drug spending to wages rose each year from 1980 to 2007. In 2007 wage growth finally outpaced drug expenditures, with the ratio again increasing in the Great Recession. By 2010, prescription drug spending had climbed above four percent of wage income.

The three percent of annual wage income lost to higher drug spending over the past 40 years makes a big difference to working individuals and families. This increase in annual spending averages out to roughly $2,400 per household. CMS projections, combined with projections on wage income growth from the Congressional Budget Office, suggest that spending on prescription drugs will increase further through 2025. This ratio is expected to exceed five percent by 2024.

While an aging population has been a factor increasing spending on drugs, demographics alone cannot explain the sharp increase in prescription drug spending. Inflation-adjusted prescription drug spending per household has increased more than eightfold since 1980, far outpacing any demographic trend surrounding age. The share of people over age 65 in the population has increased from 9.2% in 1960 to 14.8% in 2015. This can at most explain a small part of the increase in spending on drugs over this period.

It is important to recognize that the high cost of drugs is the result of a conscious policy decision to give drug companies monopolies in the form of patents and other forms of exclusive marketing rights. Without these protections drugs would almost invariably be cheap, likely costing on average less than one fifth as much as they do now. Even worse, the perverse incentives resulting from patent monopolies distort the research process and can lead drug companies to misrepresent evidence on the safety and effectiveness of their drugs.

 This blog was originally published at CEPR on June 27, 2017. Reprinted with permission. 
About the Authors: Dean Baker co-founded CEPR in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer, Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, The United States Since 1980, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot), and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. His blog, “Beat the Press,” provides commentary on economic reporting. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan. Brian Dew holds a B.A. in Psychology and Organizational Sciences from the George Washington University and an M.A. in Economics from American University. His previous research has focused on international trade, network analysis, and open-economy macroeconomics, while his current research interests include domestic trade, employment, and monetary policies. Brian worked previously for the International Monetary Fund.


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