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LPE Originals

Nursing on Demand: The Gig Economy Comes for Health Care

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

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

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

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

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.

LPE Originals

Between Slavery and Incarceration: an Interview with Christopher Muller

An expert on the history of mass incarceration explains why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why recent decades have witnessed rising class inequality in prison admission rates, and why functionalist explanations of incarceration often cloud our scholarly and political thinking.

LPE Originals

“Business Goes To The Wage Cutter”: Abusive Labor Practices And Unfair Competition

Antitrust enforcers have recently begun to treat abusive labor practices — such as worker misclassification and noncompete agreements — as unfair methods of competition. But this approach is not new. Since the early twentieth century, labor advocates, legislators, and judges have all recognized that when employers mistreat their workers to obtain cost advantages, they harm both workers and their competitors.