Excellent new report co-authored by William Herbert (@highered-cb.bsky.social) on academic freedom in union contracts. Check it out!

This Day in Labor History: March 18, 1970. Postal workers around the nation went on strike. This was illegal but the workers won and forced the Nixon administration to give in. This ushered in a decade of militant public sector organizing that ended when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers!

You can’t starve the public sector to excellence Most people understand a basic truth: you get what you pay for. Skip maintenance on your roof, and you shouldn’t be surprised when leaks appear. The same is true of government. If we want a high-funct...

The central constraint on public-sector performance is not the power of unions—it is chronic underinvestment.

@hshierholz.bsky.social + @joshbivens-econ.bsky.social: If we want a high-functioning public sector, we need to pay for it.

There is no shortcut.

The report is free to download at the University of Southern Maine's DigitalCommons: digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/laborcntr_pu...

Finally, even though Maine is more organized than the national average, there's still much work to be done. Maine's leisure and hospitality industry, which encompasses tourism and plays an outsized role in the state's economy, is almost entirely non-union (0.1% union membership).

Third, the average wage premium is even higher for women ($6.80 an hour) and workers without a college education ($7.03 an hour). Women workers have a slightly higher union membership rate in Maine, due in part to high unionization in the state's public sector.

Second, we find that the union wage premium in Maine is substantial: union members make $6.00 an hour more than non-members on average.

First, we find that Maine's union membership rate is 10.5%, slightly higher than the 2022-2024 national average of 10.0%, and that the state's public-sector unionization rate (41.1%) is considerably higher than the 2022-2024 national average (33.6%).

For the Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education, Kevin Van Meter (@americanwork47.bsky.social) and I wrote a report on the state of organized labor in Maine. Here are some of our findings 👇

Send Me Photos of Your Amazon Package Labels! An attempt to crowdsource an understanding of the company's outbound network

Really interesting citizen social science project by Benjamin Y. Fong at @ArizonaState. Send him photos of your Amazon Package Labels! open.substack.com/pub/onthesea...

Have collective bargaining data a click away by registering and contributing for our Contract Research Site: webforms.hunter.cuny.edu/ncscbhep/vie... Access begins on October 1 for registrants to this contribution-based platform.

Excited this database is seeing the light of day! The National Center's contract research site is going to be a game changer for anyone involved in academic collective bargaining.

The @cunyslu.bsky.social State of the Unions 2025 is out! The report documents how citizenship status and sector of employment help shape unionization rates among immigrants. Read the full report here: bit.ly/CUNYSLUstateofunions

In New York City, immigrants more likely to be unionized, report finds - The Chief Foreign born workers in New York City are more likely to be union members than workers born in the United States, according to a report published in August by CUNY scholars Ruth Milkman and Joseph van...

The Trump Admin’s scapegoating of immigrants, cruel policy of mass deportation, & attacks on union rights are pages from the same authoritarian playbook…NY is a city of immigrants & a union town. We can fight fascism w/strong unions & active solidarity. thechiefleader.com/stories/immi...

Immigrant Labor is the Backbone of New York City Unions, New Report Shows - Documented A report by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies shows that immigrant workers represented a majority of New York City union members.

A report by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies shows that immigrant workers represented a majority of New York City union members.

America now has more unemployed people than job openings for the first time since April 2021.

These findings underscore what many of us in the union movement already know: defending our immigrant fellow workers is inextricable from labor's broader fight against the current administration's anti-union offensives.

In part, this due to the number of naturalized citizens working in the highly-unionized public sector. However, we find that in the private sector, foreign-born workers in general are more likely to be union members across the US, in New York State, and in the NYC metro area.

Of course, foreign-born workers are not a homogeneous group. In NYC, the disparity in union membership rates is even higher comparing native born and naturalized citizens, particularly when considering workers who arrived in the 90s.

Given the Trump administration's relentless attacks on immigrant workers, our special section this year focused on foreign-born workers and union membership. We find that in NYC, foreign-born workers have slightly higher rates of union membership than native born workers.

Much recent union organizing has been spearheaded by younger college-educated workers, either in professional or other service sector jobs. We find that, indeed, those with at least some college education tend to have higher union membership rates.

It still pays to be a union member. Across all the areas we analyzed, we find a union wage premium, with an especially dramatic gap in the areas of New York outside NYC.

As we find year after year, NYC is more than holding its own in terms of union membership. Despite a gradual decline over the past two decades, union density in the city is still more than double the national rate.

On Labor Day, Ruth Milkman and I released the 2025 @cunyslu.bsky.social State of the Unions report. Here's a few highlights from our findings: (🧵) slu.cuny.edu/2025/08/25/t...

Philadelphia’s Blue-Collar Municipal Workforce Is on Strike AFSCME District Council 33 represents the blue-collar city workers who make Philadelphia run. After sacrificing through the pandemic and years of bruising inflation, they say they’re on strike so they can afford to live in the city they serve.

AFSCME District Council 33 represents the blue-collar city workers who make Philadelphia run. After sacrificing through the pandemic and years of bruising inflation, they say they're on strike so they can afford to live in the city they serve.

NYPD Assault on CUNY Gaza Encampment Shows Why We Need Sanctuary Universities My lived experience of Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship drives my opposition to the current US crackdown on dissent.

Brilliant op ed by my CUNY colleague Ángeles Donoso Macaya on the need for sanctuary campuses

Americans favor labor unions over big business now more than ever This piece was also published on Medium. For decades, Americans were evenly divided in their relative support of labor unions and big business, but that’s no longer the case. Now, Americans are more l...

@aaronsojourner.org and Adam Reich @epi.org: Americans favor labor unions over big business now more than ever www.epi.org/blog/america...

Illinois State University Is Facing a Potential Faculty Strike Elite institutions of higher education tend to grab most headlines. But non-elite public colleges have dealt with relentless austerity for decades — which is why Illinois State University faculty just...

Elite institutions of higher education tend to grab most headlines.

But non-elite public colleges have dealt with relentless austerity for decades — which is why Illinois State University faculty just voted to authorize a strike.

William Herbert, Jacob Apkarian of the @highered-cb.bsky.social and I have an article in this volume the Journal that documents new unionization of faculty, graduate and undergraduate workers, and post-docs over the last year. Check it out! thekeep.eiu.edu/jcba/vol16/i...

Trump’s DOGE campaign accelerates 50-year trend of government privatization The president’s executive orders are part of a decades-long trend of shrinking government’s role while expanding private sector control over public services.

Trump's #DOGE initiative accelerates a 50-year trend of government privatization. Government contracting reached $1.98 trillion in 2023, 7% of the total economy.
Nathan Meyers @umassamherst.bsky.social #economics #ElonMusk