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LPE Originals

Property, Sabotage, and the Origins of Anti-Left Repression

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Between 1917 and 1921, twenty-one states passed criminal syndicalism laws. These laws, which were intended to help eliminate the Industrial Workers of the World, have largely faded from public memory. Looking back, however, we can see a formula for anti-left repression that has proven durable and widely appealing: the limitation of political speech and organizing in the name of property protection.
LPE Originals

You Didn’t Earn That

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When defending income inequality, high-earners often appeal to an old left-wing idea: that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labor and should be paid the value of their productive contribution. But does this idea make sense in a complex, interdependent economy?
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.