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Trump reaches deal with Carrier
By TED HESSON
Updated 11/30/2016 01:47 PM EST
Presented by the Retirement Security Coalition
With help from Marianne LeVine, Cogan Schneier, and Timothy Noah
TRUMP REACHES DEAL WITH CARRIER: President-elect Donald Trump surprised skeptics Tuesday night by fulfilling a campaign pledge to save "close to 1000" jobs at a Carrier Air Conditioning plant in Indianapolis, according to a company tweet. Trump himself tweeted late Tuesday that he and Pence will travel to Indiana Thursday to announce the deal ("Thanks Carrier"). Carrier, a unit of United Technologies, became a punching bag for candidate Trump in February after a cellphone video went viral of the bosses announcing the impending loss of 1400 jobs (eventually that climbed to 2000). The deal, much of it negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence's staff in Indiana — where he's still governor until Jan. 9 — extends state tax credits to Carrier. In addition, the New York Times reports, Trump has agreed to "tone down" his threats to slap a 35 percent tariff on air conditioners that Carrier imports from Mexico back to the U.S.
"The victory is largely a symbolic one," write POLITICO Pro's Cogan Schneier and Timothy Noah, "given that the U.S. has been losing more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs each year to overseas competition." And it "doesn't present much of a model moving forward for reversing deindustrialization." University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers tweeted Tuesday night: "Every savvy CEO will now threaten to ship jobs to Mexico and demand a payment to stay. Great economic policy." Still, Schneier and Noah write, "Trump's credibility as a tribune of the working class should get at least a brief reprieve." More here.
GOOD MORNING. It's Wednesday, Nov. 30 and this is Morning Shift, POLITICO's daily tipsheet on labor and employment policy. Send tips, exclusives, and suggestions to mlevine@politico.com, cschneier@politico.com, thesson@politico.com, and tnoah@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @marianne_levine, @CoganSchneier, @tedhesson and @TimothyNoah1.
CHAO FROM LABOR TO TRANSPORTATION: President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to be his Transportation Secretary, his transition team announced on Tuesday. Chao served as Labor secretary for eight years under President George W. Bush, which made her the longest-tenured Bush Cabinet member. "She was a terrible Labor Secretary," Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Morning Shift. "She cut the enforcement budgets and … OSHA protections, thereby leaving workers less safe and more likely to be cheated on their wages." A 2008 GAO report said Chao's Wage and Hour Division "inadequately investigated complaints from low-wage and minimum wage workers alleging that employers failed to pay the federal minimum wage, required overtime, and failed to issue a last paycheck." Labor unions and federal employees didn't much like her, either; after she left in 2009 DOL staffers threw a a " good riddance" party.
But Chao was popular with the business community, to whom her department offered much assistance in complying with regulations. Hal Coxson, a shareholder at the management-side law firm Ogletree Deakins, said Chao "distinguished herself as Secretary of Labor. The standard initiatives that came out of the Labor Department ... were much less anti-business than they had been previously."
BARLETTA TALKED DOL WITH TRUMP: Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) told Trump press pool reporters Tuesday that he's under consideration for secretary of labor. Barletta sits on the House Education and the Workforce Committee; perhaps more significantly, he's one of the few members of Congress to hitch his wagon to Trump early in the primary season. If nominated, Barletta would likely try to roll back many Obama labor regulations, including the department's fiduciary rule, which requires broker-dealers to consider only their clients' best interest when providing retirement advice (Barletta voted to block the rule in April).
Then there's immigration. Barletta waged a battle against undocumented immigrants as mayor of Hazleton, Pa. As Dominicans from New York and New Jersey poured into that city, Barletta pushed through local ordinances that, among other things, fined landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants $1,000 a day. "What I'm doing here is protecting the legal taxpayer of any race," Barletta told the Washington Post in 2006. "And I will get rid of the illegal people." A federal judge struck down the ordinances one year after they passed. More from POLITICO Pro's Marianne LeVine here.
NATIONWIDE WAGE PROTESTS: The SEIU-funded Fight for $15 campaign sponsored protests in 340 cities across the country Tuesday, including strikes at Chicago's O'Hare and Boston's Logan airports, where baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, and skycaps joined picket lines. The campaign, led by the Service Employees International Union, demands higher wages, union rights, health care, and a halt to deportations, among other goals. McDonald's and other fast food workers went on strike, as did Uber drivers in two dozen cities. Reuters reported arrests of demonstrators in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass., and in New York, more than 200 activists gathered at dawn in Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street protests began five years ago. Terrence Wise, a Burger King worker and Fight for $15 organizing committee member, told the Guardian the protests would be part of an intensifying effort. "With the new administration taking office, we're going to double our pressure," he said. "We're going to take bigger and bolder action." More from the Guardian here.
Since Fight For $15's inception in 2012, low-wage workers have won $61.5 billion in annual raises, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Employment Law Project. "To put these wage gains in context," the report says, "this $61.5 billion raise ... is more than 10 times larger than the total raise received by workers in all 50 states under Congress's last federal minimum wage increase, approved in 2007." Read the full report here.
CORRECTION: A version of Morning Shift distributed to subscribers on Tuesday stated, erroneously, that SEIU did not respond to our request for comment regarding the Chamber of Commerce's claim that as an employer SEIU "fails to walk the walk on paying $15 an hour and honoring union organizing rights." In fact, a spokesperson for the union did respond to our query; we somehow missed seeing the email. "We understand that all Fight for $15 organizers are paid at least $15 per hour based on a 40 hour work week," SEIU's Sahar Wali said. "All SEIU employees are paid at least $15 an hour and have ability to join together in a union." Morning Shift regrets the error.
SEVENTH CIRCUIT DECLINES TO REVIVE HARASSMENT CASE: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to revive a sexual harassment case on Monday against SigmaTron International, an electronics manufacturer. The plaintiff in the case alleged she was sexually harassed by her supervisor and faced retaliation for filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A jury sided with the employee on her retaliation claim and ordered SigmaTron pay the plaintiff $300,000 in damages. SigmaTron then appealed. In her opinion, Judge Ilana Rovner wrote "there is no doubt that [the plaintiff] engaged in statutorily protected activity when she complained to SigmaTron's human resources manager that her supervisor was sexually harassing her and when she filed her charge with the EEOC. She added there was no question that the manufacturer 'took an adverse employment action against her when it terminated her employment.'" The court also concluded that "the jury did not award excessive damages." Read the opinion here.
GLASSDOOR: WAGES UP 3.1 PERCENT FROM PREVIOUS YEAR: Median annual base pay increased 3.1 percent to $51,372 between November 2015 and November 2016, according to Glassdoor, a jobs and recruiting site. The rise represents the largest year-over-year increase in three years. Los Angeles saw a 4.3 percent increase to $58,973 and San Francisco saw a 4 percent increase to $65,280. By contrast, Houston saw wage growth decelerate to 1 percent and had a median base pay of $54,173. More here.
TODAY: SEVENTH CIRCUIT HEARS GAY DISCRIMINATION CASE: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments today on whether employment discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII. The court granted a rare en banc rehearing of Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College in October after a three-judge panel issued a decision in July that said sexual orientation discrimination does not violate Title VII. With a full panel of judges, the court can overturn precedent and reverse that decision, Lambda Legal lawyer Greg Nevins, who will argue on behalf of the plaintiff, told Morning Shift. He said such a ruling would be "momentous" for gay and lesbian rights, as the Seventh Circuit would be the first federal appellate court to rule that Title VII protects against sexual orientation discrimination. "No longer would you hear people say you can get married on Sunday and fired on Monday, because this court will have said no you can't," Nevins said. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 9:30 CT. Reuters has more here.
SCOTUS TO CONSIDER IMMIGRATION BOND HEARINGS: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in Jennings v. Rodriguez, which considers whether immigrants in detention must be guaranteed a bond hearing. In the case, a federal appeals court found that immigrants in detention were entitled to a bond hearing after six months in custody, and every six months thereafter. SCOTUSBlog's Kevin Johnson explains that the federal government defends its current detention policy with the "plenary power" doctrine, which says it has absolute control over which immigrants can enter the United States and under which circumstances. The defendants contend that denying immigrants bond hearings violates their due process rights. Arguments begin at 10 a.m. ET. Read SCOTUSBlog's full preview here.
SENATE HEARING ON BORDER BOSS: The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. today to look at Border Patrol leadership under Chief Mark Morgan, who took office in October. Morgan was the first outsider to assume the top Border Patrol job since the agency was established in 1924. Morgan and Deputy Chief Carla Provost will testify at the hearing, which could touch on a recent spike in arrests along the southern border and a subsequent dearth of detention space. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is the chairman of the Republican-controlled committee and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is the highest ranking Democrat. More here.
ABOUT THAT WALL: Nearly eight in ten Trump voters want the president-elect to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to survey data released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday. Trump backers held more moderate positions on other aspects of immigration: roughly six in ten said undocumented immigrants fill mostly jobs that Americans don't want. Of course, the wall-wanting Trump voters might be a bit disappointed. The president-elect and his allies have dialed back claims about the wall since his election. More from Pew here.
NLRB: MASONIC TEMPLE VIOLATED LABOR LAW: The National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that the Masonic Temple Association of Detroit and 450 Temple, Inc., which own and operate Detroit's massive Masonic Temple, violated the NLRA by refusing to bargain with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 324. The union represents engineers and maintenance workers at the temple. The MTA and 450 argued that Local 324 never made a valid demand to bargain after a prior collective bargaining agreement expired, and that the union was not the exclusive representative of the majority of employees in the bargaining unit. An administrative law judge disagreed, writing that the union repeatedly asked to bargain, and that the companies "presented no argument or evidence to support" their argument that the union was not the exclusive bargaining representative of the workers. The NLRB upheld that ruling, and ordered the MTA and 450 Temple to bargain with the union and post notices to employees about their rights to bargain. The full decision is here.
—"Labor prepares to defend its victories on higher wages and worker rights," from The Los Angeles Times
—"More Law Degrees for Women, but Fewer Good Jobs," from The New York Times
—"Are your employees moaning too much? They do in Britain," from The Washington Post
—"Student Unionization Vote Count Will Extend Into December," from The Harvard Crimson
—"DC lawmakers to vote on generous paid family leave benefits; Bowser urges caution on bill," from The Associated Press
— "Young immigrants who came forward now worried about future," from the San Francisco Chronicle
—"What Trump's Secretary of Transportation Could Mean for Uber and Lyft," from Fortune
—"Mexico's Unemployment Reaches 9-Year Low in October," from The Wall Street Journal
THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT.
Tim Noah @timothynoah1
Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey
Ted Hesson @tedhesson
Ian Kullgren @iankullgren
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated how long Mike Pence will remain Indiana governor. He relinquishes the governorship on Jan. 9.
About The Author : Ted Hesson
Ted Hesson is an employment and immigration reporter with POLITICO Pro.
Prior to joining POLITICO in October 2016, Hesson spent more than a decade as a writer and editor with a focus on immigration policy. His work has appeared in National Journal, The Atlantic and VICE, among other outlets.
From 2012 to 2015, he worked as immigration editor at Fusion, a joint venture of ABC News and Univision.
Hesson holds a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Boston College.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, he lived in New York City before relocating to Washington, D.C.
In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar, listening to podcasts and practicing Spanish.
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