Another week, another bout of Supreme Court-related horror for workers. Up this week, Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad—a reminder that, even following a disastrous-for-workers Supreme Court session, things can get worse.
- Daily Kos’ own Meteor Blades wrote about Kavanaugh's awful SeaWorld dissent, noting that Kavanaugh’s demeanor as he makes the rounds of the senators he needs to vote to confirm him is surely a sharp contrast with “the snarls and sneers and outright contempt contained in his judicial record when he talks about workers.”
- Brett Kavanaugh once sided with an anti-union company that scapegoated undocumented workers, Ethan Miller writes. Oh, and the son of the owner of that company? Was sentenced to prison, the company’s violations were so egregious … and then Donald Trump pardoned him.
- Moshe Marvit writes that Trump's Supreme Court pick could spell a fresh hell for workers, citing repeated cases in which Kavanaugh ruled against the most basic exercises of the right to organize, like wearing t-shirts critical of the employer or displaying pro-union signs in parked cars.
- And while I haven’t come across any allegations that Kavanaugh has a history of sexual harassment—and in fact the execrable Amy Chua wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he’s been a good mentor to women (I’m not linking, the piece is so disgusting and such an indictment of the elite legal world)—it’s worth noting that Kavanaugh clerked for and remained notably close to Judge Alex Kozinski, who was forced to retire due to a well-established pattern of harassment. Did he know? It’s a question worth asking. And if he didn’t know, how didn’t he know?
● Inside the Koch family's 60-year anti-union campaign that gave us Janus.
● Pension rally draws thousands to Ohio statehouse.
● The world's worst industrial disaster is still unfolding.
● Washington, D.C., voters voted last month to raise the tipped worker minimum wage, and now the city council is moving to overturn the will of the voters. Disgusting.
● What does the Janus decision mean for working women?
● These eight fast food chains are under investigation for their hiring practices.
● For many undocumented workers, there's no such thing as a minimum wage.
● Right to work is wrong for Missouri:
- Based on the impact of an RTW law in neighboring Oklahoma, we could expect that nearly 60,000 fewer Missourians working in the private sector would be covered by a union contract if RTW were implemented in Missouri.
- RTW laws have not succeeded in boosting employment in states that have adopted them. In fact, RTW laws have no causal impact on job growth or unemployment, contrary to the claims of its proponents.
- RTW laws are associated with lower wages and benefits for both union and nonunion workers. In RTW states, the average worker makes 3.1 percent less in hourly wages than the average worker with similar characteristics in non-RTW states. This pattern of lower wages in RTW states is also true for women workers and workers of color.