This could be a game-changer for workers — if Democrats allow it

Plus, schadenfreude and news about... chemtrails?

Welcome to a Saturday night edition of Progress Report.

Tonight we’ve got a deep dive into what could be a groundbreaking, momentum-shifting long-term victory for working people in New York (and potentially other blue states) and a breeze through other important stories. We’ve also got a bit of a new look — let me know what you think of my new designs.

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It’s been a dismal year for workers’ rights, which have come under withering attacks at both the state and federal levels. Officials at the Department of Labor and NLRB have been fired or rendered inert, regulations have been loosened at the decree of Trumpian bureaucrats, negotiations have been dissolved, and organizing wins have been reversed by red state legislators. Even blue states have experienced backslides and outrageous vetoes, including Michigan and Colorado.

To put it bluntly, the bosses and billionaires have taken charge, now more than ever. This is a new fight, requiring new tactics and new tools, especially now that the Supreme Court is clearly aiming for the jugular of the NLRB. But where to start? In New York, a group of organizers and legal activists are betting that a bill dubbed the EmpIRE Act could play a key role in injecting new life into the movement and holding abusive corporations accountable

Here’s the context: New York is one of the few states where new worker protections have been enacted in recent years, with beneficiaries including farmworkers, Amazon warehouse employees, and gig workers. The problem is that when actually enforcing those laws is almost impossible, they aren’t worth much: workers can file a complaint, but it often takes an obscenely long time for the state department of labor to actually address it. Wage theft cases, which should be pretty open and shut, take anywhere between two to five years to get settled — in the event they get settled at all.

What’s more, workers have unwittingly signed away their right to legal action and instead are forced into a binding arbitration that generally preferences the employer. This act would allow them to sidestep that doomed fate.

The Solution: The EmPIRE Act would shift the balance of power considerably.

Should it pass, workers and unions would be able to file a legal complaint against management, and with the blessing of regulators, pursue it in court on behalf of the state. As a safeguard, the state could take over the case at any time, either to prosecute it or drop it if something seems fishy.

If the plaintiffs win, instead of the traditional fines paid entirely to the government, the civil penalties would be split between the state and the workers involved in the case. And instead of some general fund, the state’s share would be specifically funneled toward the DOL to boost its underfunded enforcement program. That’s key, because California, the only state with a similar law, has been using huge sums of money to plug the state’s budget gap (or doing nothing at all with it) instead using it to beef up labor law enforcement.

Advocates with the Center for Popular Democracy, who spoke to me for this story, estimate that the law could generate at least $100 million for the DOL every year. California generates double that.

Why it matters: Labor law violations have skyrocketed in tandem with the vast changes to the way people work, instigated mostly by technology and the pandemic. In many cases, the laws on the books simply are not equipped to handle this new era of piecemeal labor. New York has been more active than most states in updating its labor laws, passing new protections for workers in e-commerce warehouses, on farms, involved in fashion, and hooked into gig platforms.

But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and again, that’s just not happening nearly enough — there are only 150 investigators for a state with nine million workers. Instead of being relegated to submitting complaints and waiting what could be more than a year for investigators to even get in touch, the EmPIRE Act would allow workers to take action into their own hands.

The bigger picture: While individual workers would be empowered to file suits on their own, the bill will likely be far more useful for unions, worker centers, and other organizations that have the resources to amass complaints and staff necessary to pursue legal action. I know from years of experience that workers are often incredibly reticent to speak out about workplace abuses, often because they can’t afford to lose their jobs and increasingly due to fear of ICE agents.

Local union leaders and other established advocates are generally best equipped to earn the trust of scared workers and tease out their horror stories. The ability to file these lawsuits gives them a significant new tangible benefit to offer workers who are on the fence about organizing, as well as another way to keep bad employers in check.

Ideally, the specter of these enforcement actions — and perhaps a flurry of early lawsuits — will deter employers from committing so many violations.

The political situation: It took an extra month for the legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul to hammer out a budget compromise, and now there are only a few weeks left in the New York legislative session. So far, the act has 33 co-sponsors in the state Senate and nearly 70 in the Assembly, and it would no doubt pass if it came up for a vote.

The catch is that Democratic leadership in the legislature is a bit more conservative than it should be, both ideologically and tactically. Lobbyists, largely for fast food franchisees, are working hard to scuttle the legislation, and the leadership will only bring it up if Gov. Hochul indicates that she’ll sign it. Right now, that is unclear, as is often the case with Hochul and legislation that business groups oppose.

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🫠 THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS

Louisiana: Always on the cutting edge of the most cultish conservative policy trends, Republicans in the Bayou have had a busy week.

The good news is that pushback from dentists and healthcare advocates helped kill a bill that would have ended mandatory fluoridation of public drinking water. The psychotic news is that a bill to ban “chemtrails” advanced out of committee on Friday, pushed on by Republicans who believe that the government is controlling the weather and that the white lines that trail planes are filled with chemicals.

Those lines are produced by hot airplane exhaust meeting the cold atmosphere, but GOP sponsor of the bill, Rep. Kim Landry Coates, claims that they what are actually made of nanoparticles of aluminum and other “nanochemicals.” When asked by a Democratic colleague which chemicals were found in the so-called chemtrails, Coates made a brave admission: “There is a few, some with long words that I can’t pronounce.”

😡 WITH DEMS LIKE THESE…

Colorado: I’ve long called Kathy Hochul the worst (but not most evil) governor in the nation for her insistence on watering down or vetoing popular legislation that would help working people and advance the goals of the Democratic Party. But you’re off the hook, Kathy, because Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this month seized the title with both hands.

Polis unleashed a torrent of vetoes on common sense progressive bills in May, starting with the Worker Protection Act (as I’ve extensively documented) and expanding to even more popular bills. This week, his zeal for libertarianism and private equity reached new heights, as he vetoed bills that would have banned software like RealPage, which landlords have used to collude and jack up rents, as well as a ban on surprise fees from ambulance services.

The ban on surprise ambulance bills passed houses of the legislature unanimously.

Nebraska: Democratic state Sen. Jane Raybould scored a win for her family’s giant local grocery chain by forcing through a bill that weakens the new paid leave requirement passed by 75% of voters in November. She’s still working to slow down the annual increase to the minimum wage, having run up against a filibuster by her fellow Democrats and one decent Republican.

Connecticut: Lawmakers voted to approve a bill that would provide striking workers with unemployment benefits after a week on the picket line, daring Gov. Ned Lamont to follow through on his threat to veto it. Oregon became just the third state to provide such benefits earlier this year.

🎻 THE TINIEST VIOLIN

Sleazebag: It’s been a rough month for Leonard Leo. First, the Vatican chooses a somewhat liberal Pope who believes in helping the poor. Now, Donald Trump has put his former judicial Svengali and the entire Federalist Society on blast.

Leo is the enormously influential conservative activist who has built an army of right-wing judges as well as a giant network for conservative think tanks, PACs, and other organizations bent on political and cultural takeover. He advised Trump on his three Supreme Court picks during his first term and helped install hundreds of ideological maniacs in the judiciary. Leo also came to control a more than billion-dollar war chest, which he has used to seed the far-right as well as line his own pockets.

A deeply repellant person in every sense of the word, Leo has now had the full wrath of MAGA turned against him, while his organization was purportedly cut off from influencing the president. Here’s hoping the far-right legal movement descends into recriminations and self-destruction.

DOGE LOL: A staffer with billionaire junkie Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was fired for saying in an interview that the government “is not as inefficient as I was expecting.”

I guess being rational and not tearing things apart for no reason made him one of the good guys, but he still took the job with DOGE and the Trump administration. If nothing else, perhaps his firing will open at least a few people’s eyes to this administration’s vindictiveness and disinteresting free speech.

☀️ HERE’S SOME GOOD NEWS

Speaking of DOGE: A former employee with the US Digital Service, the branch that was co-opted by Musk’s loser army, won a seat on the Haddonfield Borough Commission in New Jersey.

Itir Cole worked at the USDS for a year and a half before she was all but forced to resign; on her last day of work, the rest of the department was fired. Energized by the 18 months in public service, she decided to run for office, and is likely going to be one of many former federal workers who wind up winning elections over the next two years.

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