Sharon Block

It’s one of the most vexing challenges facing the labor movement: how to wield influence in an era increasingly dominated by technology giants that are often resistant to unions. Are workers best served when unions take an adversarial stance toward such companies? Or should labor groups seek cooperation with employers, even if the resulting deals do little to advance labor’s broader goals? ...But Sharon Block, a senior Labor Department official under President Barack Obama, argued that the deal was defensible. Ms. Block pointed out that the guild had taken something of a hybrid approach between cooperation and antagonism, lobbying for policies such as a minimum earnings standard for drivers and allowing passengers to tip, both of which have been enacted in New York. “There are situations in which taking the half loaf can be worthwhile,” Ms. Block said.

According to the official records, U.S. workers went on strike seven times during 2017. That’s a particular nadir in the long decline of organized labor: the second-fewest work stoppages recorded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics since the agency started keeping track in the 1940s. ...Beyond the growing number of union alternatives, demonstrations by employees are part of a rise in political activity overall. The years since the 2016 election have witnessed the largest protests in U.S. history, inspiring a lot of people—particularly college-educated twentysomethings—to demonstrate for the first time. And while a Black Lives Matter protest or a Women’s March on Washington may seem unrelated to work, they can inspire people to speak out for other causes. “I think there’s a real desire for working people to not segment their lives so much,” says Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Companies know that, too. That’s why places such as Comcast, Facebook, and Google gave workers time off to join political protests in 2016. The problem, Block says, is that political issues are often workplace issues, too. “Immigration, racial justice, gender equality—people are seeing these things as interconnected, and that’s giving rise to movements that aren’t so easy to characterize but are very powerful.”

Joe Kennedy started his push for “moral capitalism” by urging local business leaders to help address the country’s worsening income inequality. Now, the congressman is spelling out his ideas for how the federal government should tackle the problem.The Massachusetts Democrat spoke to a packed room at Harvard Law School on Monday, making his plea for a government unafraid to set new rules for a fair and just economy. ...Kennedy has clearly touched a nerve. Organizers had to move the Harvard event to a much larger room, due to crushing demand from students and the public, and a big waiting list remained. Sharon Block, a former Obama administration official who now runs Harvard Law’s Labor and Worklife Program, points to one reason the message resonates: The vast majority of people in the United States still feel like they’re struggling just to keep up with their bills, even after a nearly decadelong economic recovery.

The Labor Department is starting 2019 without confirmed officials in several key leadership posts, vacancies the business community fears could derail some policy initiatives. ... “I can certainly say there was nothing like this during our time,” Sharon Block, a former DOL policy office head under President Barack Obama, told Bloomberg Law. “These are not easy jobs. People learn how to do them and do them well. There’s huge value in having them stay. I can’t imagine doing the kind of work we did with the kind of vacancies they have.” The department still has career staff who are relied on heavily, she said. The WHD operated without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first five years of the Obama administration and under acting leadership for stretches of the George W. Bush era.

For years, many labor experts seemed ready to write the obituary of strikes in America. In 2017, the number of major strikes—those involving more than 1,000 workers—dwindled to just seven in the private sector. Indeed, over the past decade, there were just 13 major strikes a year on average. That’s less than one-sixth the average annual number in the 1980s (83), and less than one-twentieth the yearly average in the 1970s (288).In 1971 alone, 2.5 million private-sector workers went on strike, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—that’s 100 times the number, 25,000, who went on strike in 2017. ... Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, says labor’s renewed militancy reflects a broader shift in the zeitgeist. “When there’s a lot of collective action happening more generally—the Women’s March, immigration advocates, gun rights—people are thinking more about acting collectively, which is something that people hadn’t been thinking about for a long time in this country in a significant way.”

In a major win for labor advocates, a federal court issued a long-awaited ruling last week finding that corporations could be held responsible for issues like wage discrimination or illegal job termination, even if the employees were subcontractors or working at a franchised company. ... The appellate court decision could have implications for the new rule as well. “I think it’s really hard to see how the board goes forward with its proposed rule now,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Students at Iowa's Grinnell College pulled back Friday from a campaign to expand their two-year-old union over concerns that a Republican-dominated board in Washington could use it to strip all or most student workers of the right to bargain collectively. ... "This Board has shown that they have a view of the Act that is not very hospitable towards worker organizing," said Sharon Block, a former board member who now directs the Labor and Work Life program at Harvard Law School. "You just can't discount the possibility that they would reverse that docket again."

He’s the lil’ engine who couldn’t. The manufacturing motor President Trump vowed to jump start in the nation’s heartland sputtered and stalled Monday when General Motors announced it would cut as many as 14,000 jobs and possibly more — many of them based in the Midwest...“[Trump] was running around saying the auto industry was building more plants and creating more jobs,” said Sharon Block, director of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. “This would suggest, again, that he wasn’t being truthful with the American people.”

The Trump administration’s recent policy change on compensation for tipped workers when they wash dishes or clean tables will likely cause legal trouble again, some attorneys and former Labor Department staff say...Courts tend to defer to agency regulations and policy with the understanding that the agency is the expert, Sharon Block, head of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg Law. But that could be thrown out given perceived “flip-flopping” by the agency. Block was also the head of the Obama DOL’s policy shop. “Although I don’t agree with the position in the opinion letter, I do think it’s important that agencies get deference, though that has limits,” Block said. “If there’s no basis for why the agency has changed the interpretation, even under a doctrine where the agency should get significant deference, they may not meet that standard here.”

Millions of workers go to work every day for a company that isn’t actually their employer. The firm that sets their wages and schedules, and determines their benefits and how long their job lasts, isn’t the boss that actually cuts their paychecks. They are technically hired via a temp agency, a subcontractor, or another obscure “staffing agency” that supplies the worksite—like an Amazon warehouse or a school cafeteria—with auxiliary staff. The Trump administration is now quietly making it easier for companies to exploit these subcontracted and outsourced workers...According to Sharon Block, labor-law scholar at Harvard and former NLRB member under Obama, the new wording seems “intended to impose an even more onerous burden on parties trying to establish joint employer status. When you string together all the limiting adjectives that the Trump majority uses to describe the kind of control that must be established—essential, substantial, direct, immediate, not limited, not routine–it is hard to imagine how any party will establish joint employer status in other than the most obvious cases.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s view on affirmative action and employee rights to band together could see a dramatic shift under the court’s newly reconstituted conservative majority, legal scholars told Bloomberg Law...But the Trump administration filed a brief in Epic Systems suggesting that the NLRA’s safeguards for collective worker action only covers group conduct related to self-organization or collective bargaining. “That to me is the most serious and real area to think about an even more conservative Supreme Court changing the law,” Sharon Block, executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg Law. “In a world where 94 percent of the private sector isn’t engaged in activities related to collective bargaining, that would be a devastating development.”

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a hefty blow to teachers’ unions, a rash of new lawsuits has emerged that could further damage these labor groups...“Everybody knows where the end of this litigation road is, which is the Supreme Court,” said Sharon Block, the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “Janus is sadly not the end of the road. This road just got a lot harder.”

...Several worker advocacy groups have seized the moment to propose major overhauls to labor law, including the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, which is exploring policy proposals to reimagine collective bargaining by sector instead of by employer, and to give workers seats on corporate boards, among other recommendations. It’s not just a reaction to Trump, said Sharon Block, who runs the center with labor professor Benjamin Sachs, though she added he’s certainly making matters worse. “The little power that workers have, this administration seems to be bound and determined to diminish even more,” said Block, who served on the NLRB board and was a labor adviser to President Obama. “The time for tinkering around the edges has past. What we really need is fundamental change.”

A federal district judge in Washington struck down most of the key provisions of three executive orders that President Trump signed in late May that would have made it easier to fire federal employees....Sharon Block of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, who is a former senior Labor Department official and National Labor Relations Board member during the Obama administration, called the decision a “stinging rebuke.” “Judge Jackson reminds us that it is in fact the policy of our laws that public sector public bargaining is in the public interest,” she said.

The Labor Department has shown scant signs of progress on revising an Obama-era rule to expand overtime pay eligibility, more than a year after embarking on its mission...“When you do it right, this kind of rulemaking is hard,” said Sharon Block, who coordinated the 2016 overtime rulemaking as head of the Obama DOL’s policy shop. “I don’t think this Department of Labor has shown themselves to be able to do this kind of complex difficult rulemaking. I have no idea if they have the capacity to do it in the time they have left.”

Even before the Supreme Court struck down mandatory union fees for government workers last month, the next phase of the conservative legal campaign against public-sector unions was underway. In March, with the decision looming, lawyers representing government workers in Washington State asked a federal court to order one of the state’s largest public-employee unions “to disgorge and refund” fees that nonmembers had already paid. Similar lawsuits were filed in California, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Ohio...Beyond their legal claims, the cases share another striking detail: The lead counsel in each is a conservative lawyer named Jonathan F. Mitchell...Even so, Mr. Mitchell and his allies may get a favorable reception in the one court that really matters: the Supreme Court. “This court has shown itself to be so hostile to workers’ rights that they will find a way,” said Sharon Block of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, who is a former senior Labor Department official and National Labor Relations Board member.

Business lobbyists are urging the White House not to give former National Labor Relations Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce (D) another stint on the board when his term expires next month, sources tell Bloomberg Law...“This is an incredibly important issue,” former NLRB member Sharon Block (D) told Bloomberg Law of the joint employer decision. “It’s at the heart of having the law continue to be meaningful and to fit the realities of the workplace.”

An op-ed by Terri Gerstein and Sharon Block. It’s the American dream: We’re supposed to improve ourselves, get a better job, move on and up. But in too many instances, secret agreements between employers are stifling workers’ ability to parlay their hard work and experience into better-paying jobs and a chance to climb the career ladder. On Thursday, the attorney general of Washington State, Bob Ferguson, announced that he had obtained agreements from seven fast-food chains, including Arby’s, Carl’s Jr. and McDonald’s, not to use or enforce “no poach” or “no hire” agreements. Under these arrangements, franchisees pledge not to hire job applicants who are current or recent employees of the company or any of its franchisees, without the approval of the applicants’ employers. This crackdown on a widespread practice is a welcome development. But as Mr. Ferguson made clear in his announcement, he is still “investigating other corporate chains that utilize no-poach agreements.”

...Sharon Block, the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, told The Intercept that she has no doubt that conservative groups will aim to push the limits of the Supreme Court’s holding in Janus for cases like Yohn. “I’m afraid that Janus has opened up additional fronts in the war these groups are waging on public-sector unions and the labor movement more generally,” she said. “We will see litigation for years.”