The courts are fundamentally reshaping American law and liberty.
By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
We now know what it means to be essential. Flight attendants crossed the country at the height of the pandemic. Sanitation workers collected trash as it piled up in cities. And meatpackers, grocery store workers and delivery drivers kept America from going hungry. Some died on the job. Others grit their teeth through long shifts and appalling conditions, often for little pay. Now, many of them are demanding more. |
Last month alone more than 100,000 workers were preparing to strike, or already had. And this week, the National Labor Relations Board planned to send ballots to workers at Starbucks, which has tried to stave off organizing efforts for decades. If these workers succeed in forming a union, it could mark the beginning of a significant shift in the restaurant industry. |
Sara Nelson, the president of a powerful flight attendants union, the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A., has been at the vanguard of this fight. I first read about her a few years ago, after she called for a general strike during a government shutdown. She was vocal, unapologetically militant and eager to return the labor movement to its activist roots, challenging conservative politicians and confronting their allies. |
When she reached out to me a few weeks ago with an idea for a guest essay, I knew it would be fiery — a searing indictment of the corporations trying to quash the growing power of her movement. The piece, which we published this morning, focuses on the judges who, she says, are quietly dismantling the American dream of a society in which workers have the right to form a union and demand a seat at the table. She makes a powerful case for rethinking the kinds of judges nominated to the bench. |
"This isn't just an academic question, or even an economic one — it's often a matter of life and death," she writes. "Before he joined the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, as a judge on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, voted to allow the firing of an employee who abandoned an unheated company truck in a blizzard to avoid freezing to death. This is just one example of the judicial callousness toward workers that has put our livelihoods and lives in real danger." |
For most of its history, the Supreme Court, for example, has favored business interests, siding with corporations and bosses until Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack it with new justices. Now, as Nelson describes in her piece, the courts are once again undermining workers and subtly chipping away at American labor law. |
Almost a century ago, labor fought for — and won — the right to an eight-hour day and a living wage. But under relentless pressure from the courts, unions are being forced to relitigate these fights and others. |
A year from now, some 100 million Americans will head to the polls to decide the balance of power in the House and Senate. Democrats may well lose their Senate majority next fall — and with it their ability to confirm judges to the federal courts. With such high stakes, Nelson argues, the White House must act now to fill vacancies with union attorneys and worker advocates — experienced lawyers who know that strong labor laws and union contracts create workplace protections and rights for workers. |
None of the nine justices on the Supreme Court have ever belonged to a union. Maybe that should change. |
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