Dreamer delay
QUICK FIX
— Democrats’ plans to hurry the Dream Act along hit a snag.
— White male union members may be the key swing vote in 2020.
GOOD MORNING! It’s Friday, May 3, and this is Morning Shift, your daily tipsheet on labor and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives, and suggestions to rrainey@politico.com, thesson@politico.com, ikullgren@politico.com, and tnoah@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @RebeccaARainey, @tedhesson, @IanKullgren, and @TimothyNoah1.
DRIVING THE DAY
DREAMER DELAY: House Democrats scuttled their plan to advance next week the Dream Act, H.R. 6 (116) — which protects so-called Dreamers brought to the U.S. as children — over intra-party disagreement about whether undocumented people with criminal records should be eligible for citizenship, POLITICO’s Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris report. “Always issues when it comes to immigration, but we’ll get through it,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said in a brief interview after attending a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Thursday. “I hope it’ll get to the floor.”
The legislation is on hold while Democrats scramble to draft language that can win support from pro-immigration advocacy groups and from key committee members. At issue is a section of the bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to commit three misdemeanors before being disqualified from seeking citizenship. More here.
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS
GIGGITY GIGGITY: A federal appeals court said Thursday that California’s stringent “ABC” legal test, which makes it harder for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees, applies retroactively, paving the way for thousands of gig workers to sue their bosses, POLITICO’s Ian Kullgren reports. “The California Supreme Court last year ruled in Dynamex Ops. W. Inc. v. Superior Court that businesses must prove three things to classify workers as contractors: that the worker is free from control of the employer in terms of their work performance; that the worker provides a service outside the employer’s normal business; and that the worker is ‘customarily engaged in an independent business’ that matches the type of work being performed.” The appeals court, in its decision Thursday, cited California courts’ “legal tradition” of retroactivity.
The decision rebuffs a DOL opinion letter issued earlier this week that concluded workers deployed by smartphone-based apps are independent contractors and not employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, citing a six-part test to determine the degree to which a worker is economically dependent on an employer. The state legislature is considering legislation to codify the ABC test.
“California businesses were already drowning in high taxes and labor costs, and the 9th Circuit just saddled them with a load of bricks,” Matt Haller of the International Franchise Association said in a statement. “Short of legislative relief or intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, California’s 76,000 franchise hotels, gyms, restaurants, and retail stores will live in legal uncertainty for the foreseeable future.” More from Kullgren here.
2020 WATCH
THE LABOR VOTE IN 2020: “The union vote could be key in both the primary and the general election,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver predicts, noting that Hillary Clinton’s comparatively weak performance among union members in the 2016 general election boosted Trump in several swing states. Clinton won a majority of union voters, as Democrats typically do, but only by 17 percentage points (compared, for instance to Barack Obama’s 34-point margin in 2012; Morning Shift is rounding Silver’s figures). “That roughly 18-point swing was worth a net of 1.2 percentage points for Trump in Pennsylvania, 1.1 points in Wisconsin and 1.7 points in Michigan based on their rates of union membership — and those totals were larger than his margins of victory in those states.”
Silver takes care to note that Clinton’s poor showing wasn’t entirely attributable to white male union members, but that was the union subgroup that flipped entirely to favor Trump, 53-41. Small wonder, then, that Joe Biden’s endorsement Monday from the International Association of Fire Fighters, a union that’s heavily white and heavily male — and that couldn’t bring itself to endorse either Clinton or Trump in 2016--made President Donald Trump pretty squirrelly. On Wednesday the president retweeted nearly 60 items meant to undermine the endorsement, and himself wrote in one tweet: “I’ve done more for Firefighters than this dues sucking union will ever do, and I get paid ZERO!” More from Silver here.
JOBS REPORT
IT'S JOBS DAY: Economists surveyed by Econoday predict BLS will report this morning that 180,000 new jobs were created in April, slightly lower than the March rebound of 196,000 new jobs. They forecast unemployment to remain 3.8 percent. The private payroll company ADP was much more confident, reporting 275,000 new private-sector jobs in April. “The job market is holding firm, as businesses work hard to fill open positions,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said earlier this week. “The economic soft patch at the start of the year has not materially impacted hiring.” At 8:30 a.m. you can find BLS's April jobs numbers here.
UNIONS
NEW RULE BLOCKS HOME HEALTH WORKER PAYMENTS TO UNIONS: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service issued a rule Thursday that prohibits states from allowing a portion of Medicaid payments to providers to be diverted automatically to unions that represent health care aides, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports. “The workers can now opt to have union dues deducted from their paychecks or make contributions to a retirement fund.” Leslie Frane, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, the biggest union representing home health care workers, said her organization will join in lawsuits to block the rule.
Conservative groups such as the the National Right to Work Foundation (which brought the landmark Janus v. AFSCME suit) and the Freedom Foundation have been fighting to halt automatic union deductions. A group of Minnesota home-based care providers backed by NRTWF petitioned the Supreme Court late last year to challenge a Minnesota state law that permits home care workers for Medicaid recipients to unionize. “This move by the Trump administration will put as much as $150 million per year back in the pockets of families who need it most,” Ashley Varner, Vice President of Communication for the Freedom Foundation said in a statement. More from POLITICO here. Read the rule here.
DEMOCRATS INTRODUCE MAJOR LABOR BILL: House and Senate Democrats introduced the "Protecting the Right to Organize Act” Thursday, a sweeping bill that would strengthen collective bargaining rights and increase penalties to employers when they violate labor laws, POLITICO’s Rebecca Rainey reports. The bill, introduced with 140 House and Senate co-sponsors, would, among other things, permit the NLRB to level monetary fines against employers that terminate a worker wrongfully or that, in violating the National Labor Relations Act, cause a worker to suffer economic harm. “There are currently no meaningful penalties for predatory corporations that use unlawful tactics to discourage workers from organizing a union," said Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who introduced the legislation in the House. More here.
DIVERSITY
EEOC COULD GET A QUORUM: Cloture was filed Thursday on the nomination of Janet Dhillon to serve as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, teeing up a full Senate vote next week. Her confirmation would give the EEOC a quorum for the first time since early January. The Senate HELP committee cleared Dhillon’s nomination along party lines in February, after it failed to advance in 2017 and 2019. Testifying before the committee in 2017, the corporate attorney said she would focus on clearing the commission's case backlog and cutting the number of new lawsuits filed by the EEOC. She called litigation a "last resort" and conciliation measures a "win-win for all."
AT THE BORDER
HOW REMAIN IN MEXICO WORKS: As the Trump administration has expanded the number of non-Mexican asylum seekers it compels to wait in Mexico while their U.S. asylum cases are pending, asylum officers are growing “increasingly uncomfortable with their role in the process” and have complained to their union, Vox’s Dara Lind reports. In interviews, members of the asylum officers’ union said “decisions to let an asylum seeker stay are often reviewed — and blocked or overturned — by asylum headquarters.”
“For decades, officers made judgment calls on whether a person could stay in the US to await an asylum hearing,” Lind explains. But, under the policy, formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” officers say they no longer have that authority. “I’m not adjudicating that case. It’s like someone else sticking their hand inside me, like a glove,” an officer told Lind. The 9th Circuit temporarily paused a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy last month as it reviews the administration’s appeal of the ruling. More from Lind here.
CHANGES AT CBS: “CBS News is set to announce sweeping changes to its two major news programs as early as next week,” the Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali reports. “The latest shake-up means CBS News will for the first time have a woman as president and likely both of its major daily news programs anchored by women.” The changes come just over two months after Susan Zirinsky took over as president of the news division, where she “has pledged to do a top-to-bottom overhaul after two years of tumult at the network.” More from the Huffington Post here.
COFFEE BREAK
— “Teachers union embarks on 2020 primary endorsement process,” from POLITICO
— “Trump signs ambitious EO to strengthen federal cyber workforce,” from POLITICO
— “Shanahan orders clampdown on sexual assault, harassment,” from POLITICO
— “Foxconn Chairman Heads to Wisconsin After Meeting With President Trump,” from The Wall Street Journal
— “Trump Fed pick Stephen Moore withdraws amid GOP opposition,” from POLITICO
— “Where the Good Jobs Are,” from The New York Times
— “For black Americans, experiences of racial discrimination vary by education level, gender,” from Pew Research Center
— “Trump strengthens protections for religious health workers,” from POLITICO
THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT!
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