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LPE Originals

Regulating Hours, Dismantling Work

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In recent decades, work hours have sharply diverged: high-wage workers are logging more time on the job, while low-wage workers face shrinking hours. Rather than trying to fix this imbalance by creating more work, policymakers should redistribute work through stronger overtime protections and a shorter workweek. Yet for this approach to succeed, highly paid white-collar workers will have to confront their own attachment to a work-based social order.
LPE Originals

When Workers Pierce the Corporate Veil: Brazil’s Forgotten Innovation

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In the early 20th century, foreign companies operating in Brazil would extract profits while using thinly capitalized subsidiaries to directly employ their workers. When things went wrong, workers were left with worthless claims while capital remained safely sheltered in the foreign-located parent companies. To address this issue, in 1937 Brazil adopted a novel legal innovation: imposing joint and several liability on parent companies for labor obligations. Recovering this history reveals that legal innovation often flows from the Global South, that limited liability is neither natural nor universal, and that seemingly technical corporate law doctrines are deeply entangled with questions of distribution, power, and sovereignty.
LPE Originals

What is the Point of Overtime Laws?

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When Congress eliminated taxes on overtime last summer, it framed the move as a win for workers. However, by encouraging people to spend more time on the job, the policy runs directly counter to the original purpose of overtime laws: to protect workers’ personal time and give them greater control over their lives. A better agenda would involve shortening the workweek, increasing the overtime premium, and banning mandatory overtime.
LPE Originals

Can DEI Workers Strike Back?

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Even as the Trump administration seeks to dismantle DEI in the name of “merit,” the law it distorts still harbors possibilities for resistance. Title VII prohibits retaliation against employees who oppose discrimination, and workers purged for their past DEI efforts should consider pursuing retaliation claims against their employers. Such lawsuits would raise the costs of anticipatory capitulation, while also providing some measure of relief to workers already harmed.
LPE Originals

Union Busting is (Morally) Disgusting

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As legal protections for labor organizing face existential threats, the American labor movement must confront a deeper challenge: the erosion of social norms that once condemned union-busting as morally wrong.
LPE Originals

Why Not a Faculty Union?

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Despite a recent surge in campus organizing, tenured faculty at private universities haven’t unionized. Why is this? The conventional answer is that the Supreme Court said they can’t. Fortunately, the conventional answer is wrong.
LPE Originals

Nursing on Demand: The Gig Economy Comes for Health Care

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New Uber-style firms like CareRev and Clipboard Health use algorithmic scheduling, staffing, and management technologies to match understaffed medical facilities with nearby nurses and nursing assistants looking for work. These companies, while promising flexibility, are facilitating a race to the bottom among healthcare workers and contributing to the erosion of America’s already-strained health care system.
LPE Originals

Beyond Redistribution: Rethinking UBI and the Politics of Automation

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Silicon Valley tech bosses often promote Universal Basic Income as a progressive solution to job losses caused by automation. However, by portraying such displacement as inevitable rather than socially determined, these proposals obscure the critical role that power structures and market dynamics play in shaping technological innovation. They also fail to address how automation further concentrates control over technology, production, and data.
LPE Originals

Federal Labor Unions Strengthen the Administrative State

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Many unitary executive proponents argue that federal labor rights undermine presidential power. This position is simplistic and short-sighted: labor rights offer the executive a different, more valuable form of power – expanded state capacity – that is necessary for modern presidents to deliver on their political priorities. And they so do in a manner that is more democratically accountable than any of the likely alternatives.
LPE Originals

Labor Organizing In a Time of Legal Chaos

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Amid growing federal attacks, public sector workers can’t count on the courts for protection. Instead, they should take inspiration from the trade unionists who organized before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.
LPE Originals

A Call To Defend Free Speech From Weaponized Allegations of Terrorism Ties

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When students, staff, or faculty are accused of being associated or “aligned” with terrorist organizations, universities may be pressed to take immediate and harsh action, if only to quell media attention and appear compliant with this lawless Administration’s wishes. Universities must prepare for this possibility, learn about the underlying legal frameworks, and refuse to operate on the basis of fear rather than legal necessity or moral principle.