FIRST IN SHIFT: Paid leave is polling better than ever before as advocates look to press candidates on the benefit headed into 2024, our Eleanor Mueller reports.
Eighty-five percent of voters in battleground states favor paid parental, family and medical leave, a new poll by Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners on behalf of advocacy group Paid Leave for All Action found.
That breaks down to 96 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of independents and 76 percent of Republicans. Ninety-six percent of young voters of color favored it, as did 84 percent of suburban women.
“These are the highest numbers that we’ve seen in a multistate poll, period, across party and demographics,” Dawn Huckelbridge, the group’s founding director, told Morning Shift.
Key to turnout? The poll also found that 65 percent, or almost two-thirds, of voters in battleground states are motivated to vote by the creation of a paid leave program. That includes 4 in 5 millennial and Gen Z voters who are considered low-turnout based on when they registered and how frequently they vote, and 4 in 5 young women, as well as 9 in 10 Black women.
“It makes clear that these issues are not simply workplace perks, but they are core economic issues for voters,” National Partnership for Women & Families President Jocelyn Frye told Shift. “It’s a tool to encourage policymakers to understand that this is an issue you can run on — and when you do run on it and win on it, people expect you to deliver.”
Throw it back: President Joe Biden campaigned on 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for all Americans — and, once elected, went on to include the benefit in his Build Back Better package. But Democrats stripped it out before passage amid opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who expressed concern about the program’s impact on small businesses and federal spending.
Since then, advocates have turned their attention to 2024 in hopes of installing lawmakers who can push it across the finish line next go-around. Right now, the U.S. is the only wealthy nation without a federal paid leave policy.
The game plan: A year out from the election, those same advocates are looking to research and polling to help them pressure candidates.
“There’s going to be a slew of research coming out in the coming weeks that will reinforce this,” Huckelbridge said. “We want to make clear that … when candidates champion these issues, they do win. I also think it’s clear that not enough of them are currently.”
GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, Nov. 27. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. It’s been 258 days since the Senate received Julie Su’s nomination for Labor secretary. Send feedback, tips and exclusives to [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @NickNiedz and @oliviaolanderr.
BACK TO REALITY: After this weekend’s turkey day, Congress has its work carved out to fund the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board.
To refresh: The House left without passing the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill, following disagreements within the GOP about the steep proposed cuts.
The White House said Biden would veto the House’s version — pointing in part to the fact that it had much lower funding levels than those struck between him and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this year — to say nothing of the opposition a bill with those funding levels would face in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
— Of note on the amendments: Before it broke down in the House, lawmakers successfully passed Republican-led changes to the bill by voice vote, including one nixing any funding for enforcement of the NLRB’s recent Cemex decision, which makes it easier for unions to win the right to represent workers. We previously noted some other amendments that caught our eye.
Big picture: Labor-H isn’t the only bill that will be competing for attention as the House gets back on Tuesday. Bills covering financial services, transportation and housing, agriculture and the departments of Commerce and Justice are also still in limbo.
Meanwhile: Labor agencies are expected to continue to receive funding at fiscal 2023 levels until February, thanks to legislation passed to avert a shutdown.
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POLITICS OF THE SAFETY NET: Americans are losing benefits, from child care help to food assistance to a pause in student loan payments. That could be trouble for President Joe Biden as he spends the next year trying to convince Americans they’re better off financially under his administration, Garrett Downs, Olivia, Michael Stratford and Marcia Brown report.
“The collective impact: a cascading set of new financial burdens that are disproportionately affecting women, young people and people of color — a core part of the Democratic electorate. Coming on top of stubbornly high inflation, they risk further undermining the president’s pitch that he’s rebuilding the economy ‘from the middle up and the bottom out.’”
The White House argues that though the administration didn’t succeed in its attempts to make many of the Covid emergency programs permanent, the current status quo is still far better than it was pre-pandemic.
On child care: Biden asked Congress for $16 billion to extend the child care program for another year, but Republicans have expressed doubt that more federal funding is the best way to address those needs. A potential compromise, such as a tax package incentivizing employers, might not fill the gap as well as additional funds, some critics worry.
FIRST IN SHIFT: A Bay Area startup is claiming the first labor neutrality agreement in the semiconductor industry, as firms begin to compete for CHIPS Act funding.
The company, Akash Systems, will announce today along with the union IUE-CWA and Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council that construction and production workers at its planned factory will be able to form a union without employer interference. The facility plans to employ about 500 people with about half working in production, according to a union spokesperson. (IUE-CWA and The NewsGuild, which includes the union representing POLITICO journalists, are both sectors of Communication Workers of America.)
The agreement got a nod from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) in a joint press release from the parties: It’s “a major victory for workers in Oakland and the manufacturing industry as a whole,” Lee said.
The manufacturer is seeking funding from the CHIPS Act, the Biden-backed law to subsidize the semiconductor industry, amid a flood of interest.
More union news: “Apple Illegally Withheld Benefits From Union Workers, US Labor Board Alleges,” from Bloomberg.
NO MORE KEEPING YOUR DOC: Medical schools aren’t turning out enough doctors to keep pace with the population, leading both Democrats and Republicans to look for ways to redesign U.S. primary care, our Daniel Payne and Erin Schumaker report.
“To deal with that dearth, the Biden administration and Congress are pushing policies to change how primary care providers are paid and to encourage nurses to take on larger roles. They’re facilitating virtual care’s expansion by lifting restrictions on when and how it can be used,” Daniel and Erin report.
Part of the investment: $100 million in grants set aside by the administration to train more nurses, including training to open primary care practices of their own.
TROUBLE AT THE
NASA recently decided to cut funding for its own mission to bring dust from Mars back to Earth, citing appropriations turmoil in Congress. But that hasn’t sat well with the group of California lawmakers, who say in a letter the decision “will cost hundreds of jobs and a decade of lost science.”
More in the workplace: “How Uyghur Forced Labor Makes Seafood That Ends Up in School Lunches,” from POLITICO Magazine.
Even more: “A 20-year-old Amazon employee died at work. Indiana issued a $7,000 fine,” from The Washington Post.
AI IN SACRAMENTO: California state officials in a new report warned the implementation of AI in government work must be done cautiously, our Lara Korte reports.
As in Washington: “In some cases, generative AI could improve state agency efficiency, like analyzing large amounts of public feedback on state policies or identifying communities that may need additional outreach. But the governor’s report also laid out a wide set of risks posed by the technology, like the ability to create misinformation,” Lara reports.
Gov. Gavin Newsom typically has not spoken out aggressively against AI, as development in Silicon Valley has been a major economic boon to California, Lara notes.
More in the states: “Keeping track of Chicago’s labor union wars,” from Axios.
DROPPING TEMPS UP URGENCY: Northern Democratic cities are bracing for a winter housing crisis for migrants, our Shia Kapos, Lisa Kashinsky and Katelyn Cordero report.
Part of the solution: “Federal Homeland Security officials have held legal clinics in all three states [Illinois, Massachusetts and New York] to help process thousands of migrants’ work permits more quickly. It’s a step local and state officials say is key to helping migrants provide for their families — and move out of the city and state-run shelters where they’ve been living in some cases for more than a year,” Shia, Lisa and Katelyn report.
More immigration news: “Apple’s Hiring Bias Case Reveals Big Tech Foreign Worker Dilemma,” from Bloomberg Law.
— “The Pension: That Rare Retirement Benefit Gets a Fresh Look,” from The New York Times.
— “Labor Group Plans Board Fight at Starbucks,” from The Wall Street Journal.
— “Your Local Newspaper Might Not Have a Single Reporter,” from The Wall Street Journal.
— “OpenAI Engineers Earning $800,000 a Year Turn Rare Skillset Into Leverage,” from Bloomberg.
— “‘Retirement isn’t that easy’: 3 people on working into their 90s and 100s,” from CNBC.
THAT’S YOUR SHIFT!
