Congress should boost NLRB funding to protect workers’ well-being
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) enforces the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the nation’s fundamental labor law that guarantees most private-sector workers the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining. Years of static funding has undermined the Board’s ability to fulfill its statutory mission, to the detriment of workers and the economy. The chronic under-resourcing of the Board has created challenges in its enforcement capacity amid the surge of union interest—and unfair labor practices. As Congress debates upcoming budget and spending legislation, it is critical that lawmakers boost NLRB funding to protect workers’ well-being.
NLRB funding has remained flat
The Board’s staffing level has not kept up with the growth in the national private-sector workforce. The number of full-time employees at the NLRB dropped by nearly 31% from 1,789 to 1,320 between 2006 and 2019. During the same period, the number of covered workers per NLRB staff increased by 50%, from one full-time employee per 74,809 workers to one full-time employee per 112,201 workers, as shown in the figure below. Further, staffing levels at regional offices, which typically handle the intake of complaints filed by workers, dropped by 33% between 2010 and 2019.
Enforcers take action to protect workers from workplace violations at Domino’s and Family Dollar stores: A snapshot of state and local enforcement actions across the country
Series: The New Labor Law Enforcers
State attorneys general, district attorneys, and localities like cities are increasingly key players in protecting workers’ rights. This new series by Terri Gerstein provides snapshots of enforcement and other actions to protect workers’ rights by these new and emerging labor law enforcers at the state and local level. Gerstein is an EPI senior fellow and director of the state and local enforcement project at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program, who has chronicled the growing influence of these new enforcers.
Recent cases brought by state and local enforcers include the recovery of $2 million for workers of a Seattle Domino’s franchisee that underpaid workers and didn’t give required notice of schedules; citation of Massachusetts Family Dollar stores for $1.5 million for thousands of meal break violations; and prosecution of several cases involving egregious violations of wage payment, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation laws.
Here’s a snapshot of some enforcement actions in early 2022.
The Seattle Office of Labor Standards obtained a $2 million settlement with a Domino’s franchisee that violated fair workweek, minimum wage, and overtime laws. The employer, with 14 locations in Seattle and more than 30 through the Puget Sound area, allegedly violated the city’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance, which requires large retail and food service employers to provide workers with their schedules at least 14 days in advance and provide workers with good-faith estimates of their work schedules, among other requirements. Domino’s also allegedly paid below Seattle’s minimum wage for all time worked in Seattle, and didn’t pay overtime when workers were assigned to multiple locations for over 40 hours per week. The Seattle Office of Labor Standards also reached a settlement for more than $250,000 with a national traffic control company that paid below the city’s minimum wage, among other violations.Read more
How public-sector workers are building power in Virginia
Until recently, the Commonwealth of Virginia was one of three states in the country with a state prohibition on local public-sector bargaining. In 2020, a coalition of labor advocates and public-sector unions representing thousands of working families across Virginia joined together as the “Stronger Communities, A Better Bargain” coalition and successfully lobbied the Virginia General Assembly to approve legislation (H.B. 582/S.B. 939) repealing the prohibition on local public-sector bargaining.
The repeal permits local governments to bargain collectively with their employees upon the approval of a collective bargaining ordinance or resolution. Since the repeal took effect in May 2021, multiple Virginia localities have seen remarkable organizing efforts by and for public-sector workers to pass strong collective bargaining ordinances.
Alongside these efforts, we at The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (TCI) have provided timely and accessible research on how collective bargaining helps close disparities in pay and benefits for public employees in specific communities.
U.S. trade deficits hit record highs in 2021: More effective trade, industrial, and currency policies are needed to create more domestic manufacturing jobs
The U.S. goods trade deficit reached a record $1.09 trillion in 2021—an increase of $168.7 billion (18.3%) from the 2020 trade deficit—according to new U.S. Census Bureau data. The broader goods and services deficit reached $859.1 billion in 2021, an increase of $182.5 billion (27.0%). These records were driven by a $576.5 billion increase in goods and services imports, including a $501.8 billion increase in goods imports.
The surge in the U.S. goods trade deficit extends a surge in offshoring that has eliminated more than 5 million manufacturing jobs and nearly 70,000 factories since 1998, with overlooked costs for Black workers and other workers of color, as we describe in this new EPI report.
While both imports and exports were depressed in 2020 due to the COVID recession, U.S. trade deficits increased sharply in both 2020 and 2021, as shown in the figure below. This is because the United States was unable to produce the goods needed to respond to the pandemic and to meet increased domestic demand for consumer goods.
However, contrary to popular opinion, the growth in U.S. imports was not just caused by increased domestic goods consumption coming out of the 2020 COVID recession. Imports explained more than 60% of the growth in U.S. goods consumption in 2021, and U.S. goods imports increased faster (21.3%) than domestic goods consumption (17.8%).
Profits, wages, and inflation: What’s really going on
If you’re following debates over inflation, you’ve probably read contradictory things in recent weeks about the relationship between it and whether it is workers (labor) or their bosses (capital) who will be able to protect their incomes from rising prices.
For example, some well-known economists have mocked the idea that inflation is related to corporate profiteering. Yet some of the world’s most influential policymakers have expressed concern that inflation could spark an outbreak of excessive wage growth. One of these policymakers essentially pled with workers to moderate their wage demands in coming months in the name of slowing inflation. Finally, a Nobel Prize-winning economist claimed not only that inflation has nothing to do with the distributional conflict between labor and capital, but that even raising the specter of this will make it harder for policymakers to tamp inflation back down.
So what is the real story about profits, wages, and inflation? Simply put, while changes in the relative bargaining power of labor versus capital are not the root cause of the inflationary shock in 2021, this relative bargaining power will crucially determine whether or not inflation sustains momentum throughout 2022 and requires more sharply contractionary macroeconomic policy to slow.
In turn, policy efforts (like, for example, transformative reform to labor law or ramping up anti-trust enforcement) to change the relative bargaining position of labor vis-à-vis capital would be highly desirable for lots of reasons—but they wouldn’t take effect quickly enough to be relevant to the current inflationary episode. Jawboning from policymakers is unlikely to stop any incipient wage-price spiral—but jawboning only workers and not capital owners to stand down in the distributive conflict is particularly perverse.
Project labor agreements on federal construction projects will benefit nearly 200,000 workers
President Biden recently signed an executive order (EO) requiring project labor agreements on federal construction projects over $35 million, a move that is expected to affect $262 billion in federal construction contracting and improve job quality for nearly 200,000 workers.
Project labor agreements (PLAs) are used primarily in the construction industry to establish the terms of employment for all workers on a project. Generally, PLAs specify workers’ wages and fringe benefits and may include provisions requiring contractors to hire workers through union hiring halls, otherwise establish a unionized workforce, or develop procedures for resolving employment disputes. PLAs often include language that prevents workers from striking during the project while also preventing employers from locking workers out.
PLAs are effective mechanisms for controlling construction costs, ensuring efficient completion of projects, and establishing fair wages and benefits for all workers. PLAs also help ensure worker health and safety protections while providing a unique opportunity for workforce development. These agreements can be written to engage local populations, provide jobs for underrepresented groups, and develop experience for apprentices.
Inflation and the policy response in 2022
As the inflation debate continues, it’s worth reiterating some important points that policymakers should keep in mind in coming months as they ponder what to do about inflation that emerged last year.
- The argument that too-generous fiscal relief and recovery efforts played a large role in the 2021 acceleration of inflation by overheating the economy is weak, even after accounting for rapid growth in the last quarter of 2021.
- The COVID-19 pandemic is the primary factor driving excessive inflation through demand and supply-side distortions. Going forward, the economic distortions imposed by COVID-19 are highly likely to become less extreme in 2022, providing relief on inflation.
- The worry that inflation “expectations” among workers, households, and businesses will become embedded and keep inflation high is misplaced. What matters more than “expectations” of higher inflation is the leverage workers and firms have to protect their incomes from inflation. For decades this leverage has been entirely one-sided, with workers having very little ability to protect wages against price pressures. This one-sided leverage will stem upward pressure on wages in coming months and this will dampen inflation.
- Moderate interest rate hikes will not slow inflation by themselves. The benefit of these hikes in convincing households and businesses that inflation is taken seriously by policymakers needs to be weighed against their possible downsides in slowing growth.
Inflation in 2021 was not driven by generalized macroeconomic overheating
Dean Baker recently authored a strong post surveying the evidence about inflation and macroeconomic overheating. I’ll just add one or two points to his argument. In the last quarter of 2021, rapid growth in gross domestic product (GDP) pushed it 3.1% above the level it had reached in the last quarter of 2019 (the last quarter unaffected by COVID-19).
Should this level of GDP have put severe stress on the economy’s ability to produce it without inflation? Not really—inflation was low (and falling) in 2019. The economy’s supply side has been damaged since 2019, but it’s easy to overstate this damage. While employment was down 1.8% in the last quarter of 2021 relative to 2019, total hours worked in the economy is only down 0.7% (and Baker notes in his post that including growth in self-employed hours would reduce this to 0.4%). While some of this is due to people working longer hours than they did pre-pandemic, most of it is due to the fact that the jobs that have yet to return following the COVID-19 shock are much lower-hour jobs than average. Since labor is only about 60% of the inputs into production, the 0.4% decline in economy-side hours would only generate about a 0.2% decline in output, all else equal.
The unequal toll of COVID-19 on workers
The surge of the Omicron variant in the United States sickened millions, hospitalized young people at record rates, killed Americans at a far higher rate relative to other high-income countries, and led to widespread work absences and societal disruptions.
Household Pulse Survey (HPS) data reveal stark inequities in COVID-19-related outcomes by income. Among working-aged Americans, those with 2019 household incomes less than $25,000 were 3.5 times as likely to report missing an entire week of work mainly due to their own or loved ones’ COVID-19 symptoms, relative to those earning $100,000 or more (Figure). The United States does not collect national COVID-19 surveillance data by income or occupation, so the HPS data are among the best sources for evaluating disparities, although the survey response rate is low.
Strong job growth despite Omicron shows the strength of this recovery
Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning. The report showed an increase of 467,000 jobs in January—far exceeding expectations.
What to watch on jobs day: Omicron will weigh heavily on the labor market
While the official pandemic recession ended two months after it began, it is clear the pandemic is not behind us, as the Omicron variant has driven a huge uptick in COVID caseloads. On Friday, I’ll be looking for the fingerprints of Omicron on the jobs report, including top-line payroll jobs as well as labor force participation. I’ll also continue to track sector-level job shortfalls, notably the lack of public-sector job growth, and differences in the economic recovery by race and ethnicity. With the release of January data comes annual benchmarking procedures as well: the establishment survey is benchmarked to unemployment insurance tax records and the household survey incorporates new population controls.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID tracker shows that nearly seven times the number of cases were reported during the January reference week (January 9-15) compared with the December reference week. Average new caseloads exceeded 800,000 in the week ending January 15, the peak of Omicron in the United States. This is nearly five times the peak level during the Delta surge (164,000) and more than three times the peak last winter (250,000). The labor market experienced a slowdown in payroll employment growth during the Delta surge, and that is likely to happen again in January (or even a temporary decline).
The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey also provides striking evidence of what to expect in the January jobs numbers. The number of people not working between the survey periods ending on December 13, 2021 and January 10, 2022 rose by 6.5 million. This dramatic rise is primarily due to a three-fold increase—5.8 million more people—reporting they did not work because they were caring for someone or sick themselves with coronavirus symptoms. Figure A illustrates the dramatic uptick in people not working because they were caring for themselves or someone else in the most recent survey.