Labor – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org The Law and Political Economy Project Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:45:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://lpeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-LPE_Favicon_512px_BlackBG-450x450.png Labor – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org 32 32 Nursing on Demand: The Gig Economy Comes for Health Care https://lpeproject.org/blog/nursing-on-demand-the-gig-economy-comes-for-health-care/ Mon, 30 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11679 In 2013, Tim Maughan published a short story called Zero Hours, which describes a day in the life of Nicki, a 19-year-old zero-hour contract worker. Before Nicki gets out of bed, she grabs her tablet and bids “like mad” on various retail shifts. Eventually, she secures shifts at Pret-a-Manager and Boots, a beauty and pharmacy chain—though both shifts pay below the national minimum wage.

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]]> Tech’s Turn to Trump was a Labor Story, and the Response Should be Too https://lpeproject.org/blog/techs-turn-to-trump-was-a-labor-story-and-the-response-should-be-too/ Thu, 19 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11650 As Elon Musk yoked his public persona to far-right politics, there was consternation in the liberal media. How could an entrepreneur who builds electric cars in California turn into a Trump-saluting Texan? Numerous think pieces offered to disentangle the threads of his psychology, his fascist family history, or whatever else might explain the otherwise inexplicable. In reality...

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]]> Some of the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship https://lpeproject.org/blog/some-of-the-best-new-lpe-and-lpe-adjacent-scholarship-2/ Thu, 22 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11591 With summer just around the corner, are you looking to indulge in some juicy, page-turning scholarship? As always, the Blog has you covered. So throw those Capri-Suns in a cooler, grab your favorite e-reader, and load up some of our favorite forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles for your next trip to the beach, park, or (let’s be real) library. ** ** ** Sahil Agrawal, Melissa Barber...

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]]> Beyond Redistribution: Rethinking UBI and the Politics of Automation https://lpeproject.org/blog/beyond-redistribution-rethinking-ubi-and-the-politics-of-automation/ Wed, 07 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11562 Without a Department of Education, who will assist the borrowers of billions of dollars of student aid? Without Social Security field offices or Internal Revenue Service staff, who will administer benefits or investigate tax fraud? And with a massively reduced workforce at the General Services Administration, who will handle the procurement of more than $84 billion of products and services for...

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]]> Federal Labor Unions Strengthen the Administrative State https://lpeproject.org/blog/federal-labor-unions-strengthen-the-administrative-state/ Mon, 05 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11534 Since taking office in January, President Trump has waged an all-out assault on the federal workforce. The attack is multi-pronged and raises a dizzying number of statutory and constitutional questions—everything from how reductions in force must be conducted under the relevant civil service laws to whether the Supreme Court’s precedent in Humphrey’s Executor, which protects members of independent...

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]]> Labor Organizing In a Time of Legal Chaos https://lpeproject.org/blog/labor-organizing-in-a-time-of-legal-chaos/ Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11508 Over the past two months, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has followed the Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” to the letter. And one thing it has been trying to break quickly is public sector unions. In early March, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) unilaterally terminated the collective bargaining agreements between it and airport...

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]]> A Call To Defend Free Speech From Weaponized Allegations of Terrorism Ties https://lpeproject.org/blog/free-speech-weaponized-allegations/ Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11501 Today, the Trump Administration is engaged in a broad assault on campus life, with repression of speech in defense of Palestinian rights as the tip of the spear. This includes arresting, detaining, and threatening with deportation members of university communities for speech the government opposes. In this climate, many institutions of higher education are trying to keep their heads down, or worse...

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]]> Racial Capitalism and the Assault on Federal Workers https://lpeproject.org/blog/racial-capitalism-and-the-assault-on-federal-workers/ Tue, 08 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11492 How should we understand the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI programs and the federal workers assumed to have benefited from these programs? Commentators such as Adam Serwer and Karen Attiah, focusing on the dismissals of senior Black government employees and the purging of a federal workforce largely composed of Black and other racially diverse staffers, have identified the crackdown as...

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]]> Why Labor Can Defeat Trumpism https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-labor-can-defeat-trumpism/ Tue, 01 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11463 Our best bet for beating back and defeating Trumpism lies in a revitalized labor movement. Thanks in part to an inspiring surge in workplace organizing in recent years, organized labor is one of the few social forces with the legitimacy, resources, and leverage to expose and fight back against Trump’s sham populism. But can workers and unions continue their forward momentum under the new...

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]]> Statement on Recent Events https://lpeproject.org/blog/statement-on-recent-events/ Thu, 13 Mar 2025 20:23:46 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11412 This is a perilous moment for our democracy and country. We are in the midst of an authoritarian assault on institutions central to free speech and self-governance, from universities to media to the bar–leading nearly 1000 law professors to name this a moment of constitutional crisis and one university president to compare our times to that of Joseph McCarthy. We are profoundly concerned about the...

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