When President Grover Cleveland signed into law an 1894 bill establishing Labor Day as a federal holiday, mass industrial employment was well on its way to defining the US economy. Less than a century later, the country was firmly in the twilight years of manufacturing employment and labor strength.

The nature of work has changed drastically, especially for working class employment, as past editions of this newsletter have discussed. Gone is the lifetime employer. Instead, many workers today find themselves in short-term labor arrangements, known euphemistically as “flexible” work. It’s an employment practice that MIT Sloan’s Paul Osterman describes as creating “disposable workers,” driving down pay and benefits and making career advancement harder. And when one’s coworkers change from one day to the next, it’s harder for the social bonds that form the basis of workplace solidarity to take root.

Our new world of work calls for an updated understanding of workplace dynamics, as well as labor policies and practices that meet the moment. With Labor Day on the horizon, we take a look at the promise of sectoral bargaining and wage boards, the need for national workers’ compensation standards, how one union is supporting the development of workers’ cooperatives, and the role of class in America’s loneliness crisis.

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Labor Innovation

Why America Needs Worker Power

America’s system of labor laws is largely adapted to a 20th century industrial economy that no longer exists. The site-by-site bargaining approach enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is a poor fit for our increasingly fragmented work arrangements.

Shifting to industry-level bargaining, of the type practiced in Germany, among other European countries, could breathe new life into US worker organizing, writes UT Austin professor and New America co-founder Michael Lind. Wage boards and sectoral bargaining bring together labor, business, and other parties to negotiate wages and standards on an industry-by-industry basis.

Learn about what the future of bargaining could look like in Lind’s essay.

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American Prospect

How America Let Its Workers’ Compensation System Fail

Like a fixer-upper, America’s safety net has good bones, but has been left unmaintained for too long. Workers’ compensation is a case in point.

Each state manages its own workers’ compensation system, resulting in a patchwork of benefits that greatly differ by jurisdiction. Many injuries go uncovered. Insurers have captured a significant share of premium payments as profit, while paying out less and less. When workers do receive payment for an injury, just a fraction of lost wages and medical expenses typically are covered, leaving the rest of the tab to workers, their families, and public assistance programs. 

To make workers’ compensation better meet workers’ needs, argues David Michael, a former OSHA assistant secretary, the system must be federalized and employers made to pay the full expenses of injured workers.

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United Steelworkers

Building Workplace Democracy

Organized labor has a long history with employee ownership. On the face of it, the labor and employee ownership movements share similar goals: ensuring fair workplaces and giving workers their rightful slice of the financial pie. 

United Steelworkers has committed to supporting the development of worker cooperatives, which are collectively owned and operated by their members. The union transitioned from a focus on ESOPs, when the steel industry was struggling during deindustrialization, to supporting co-ops in recent decades.

Learn more about USW’s engagement with employee ownership.

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Slate

America’s Loneliness Trap

Much has been written about what observers have come to term the “male loneliness epidemic.” But a breakdown of loneliness by class, rather than by gender, reveals a more alarming trend, the writer Nick Keppler argues.

Several studies, including ones by the Kaiser Family Foundation and researchers with Harvard University, found that poor adults report feeling lonely at significantly higher rates than wealthier ones. One reason: greater isolation in low-wage work has hollowed out the sociality that used to define working-class life, especially in manufacturing.

The sorts of service jobs that compose the employment base for the modern working class are prone to high turnover. And increased reliance on subcontracting and gig work makes it common for workers to go about their day solo. What’s more, low pay means it takes more hours on the job to scrape by, so family and social life take a backseat.

Read Keppler’s call for us to take a new look at America’s loneliness crisis.