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    Carrier Plant Is Bustling, but Workers Are Wary as Trump Exits

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCarrier Plant Is Bustling, but Workers Are Wary as Trump ExitsThe president championed an Indiana factory facing a shutdown four years ago. Hundreds of jobs were kept, and overtime abounds. Can the revival last?Less than a month after President Trump’s victory in 2016, he worked out a deal to keep to keep the Carrier plant in Indianapolis open.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesDec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETFor the workers fortunate enough to remain employed at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory, which Donald Trump singled out as a symbol of American manufacturing distress in 2016, these should be the best of times. The assembly line is churning out furnaces seven days a week, overtime is abundant, and shares of Carrier are soaring even as Covid-19 ravages the overall economy.But that’s not how Anthony Cushingberry, a 24-year veteran of the factory floor and a union steward, sees it. “The trust left a long time ago,” he said recently after completing a 10-hour shift as a materials associate, taking deliveries of parts and shipping out scrap. “Some of us think they are stockpiling equipment so they can close the factory later.”That’s a worry that has only intensified for workers like Paul Roell, a Trump supporter who fears that after the president leaves office, Carrier management will dust off old plans to move the factory’s 1,050 jobs to Mexico.“Trump is the reason we have our job, and as long as he was in office, we were safe,” Mr. Roell said. “We don’t have the leverage anymore.”That is open to debate, but it’s clear that without Mr. Trump’s intervention even before he took office, the factory would never have become so prominent, if it had survived at all.The furnace-maker’s turn in the spotlight began in February 2016 with a 3-minute-32-second video of a Carrier executive announcing that the factory would be closed, with production shifting to a facility near Monterrey, Mexico. Workers in Indianapolis make more in an hour than their colleagues in Mexico do in a day.“This is strictly a business decision,” the executive told the booing, cursing workers before telling them to quiet down. Mr. Trump soon warned on Twitter that as president he would force Carrier, then part of the conglomerate United Technologies, to reverse its decision.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York Times“The trust left a long time ago.” Anthony CushingberryIt didn’t take that long. Less than a month after his victory, Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor at the time, worked out a deal with the company to keep the factory open. In exchange for $7 million in state tax breaks, Carrier would preserve about 700 blue-collar jobs, while laying off 632 workers.Since then, the 2016 deal itself has become a political Rorschach test. The loss of nearly half the positions, plus the tax incentives that United Technologies received, underscored the limits of Mr. Trump’s powers to save jobs, even as his supporters hailed his role in keeping the plant open at all.The factory has managed to hang on since then and even prosper. But even relatively well-paid blue-collar workers don’t feel secure. The real winnings have gone to Carrier shareholders, whose shares have more than tripled since the company was spun out of United Technologies in April.And now, with Mr. Trump about to leave the White House, the factory is at a turning point. It is operating seven days a week, with mandatory overtime for workers. Carrier has been hiring, adding some 300 workers and bringing the total work force to nearly 1,050.The hiring has helped morale improve since it bottomed out in 2018 with rising absenteeism and machine breakdowns. “I still go in and keep on pushing every day,” said Robin Maynard, who manages 13 to 15 workers as a group leader and is looking forward to retiring in two years.New hires have helped offset absenteeism, Mr. Maynard said, but not all of the newcomers could handle the job and were quickly let go. “They just weren’t factory material,” he said.James Adcock, an official with the United Steelworkers, which represents the Carrier workers, said there was hiring every week. “We’re not quite where we were in 2016,” he said, “but we are working toward that.”And for those who can handle the pace, the Indianapolis plant offers a shot at a solidly middle-class lifestyle, with wages of more than $20 an hour, with time-and-a-half pay on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays.“Financially, it’s good,” Mr. Cushingberry allowed, noting that some workers are making more than $80,000 a year. By contrast, the warehouses and logistics centers that are hiring nearby pay much less, in the range of $15 an hour. But many workers say they can’t handle the pace, however rich the rewards.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 18, 2020, 7:11 a.m. ETStocks close the week on an uncertain note.Catch up: Coinbase files for initial public offering.Restaurant chains are finding it difficult to navigate differing regulations.“You feel worked to death,” said Rod Smith, a 17-year veteran. “When you work 30 days straight, where is the light at the end of the tunnel?” Despite the recent additions to the work force, Mr. Smith feels Carrier should be hiring more aggressively, rather than working its existing employees so hard.“The company is trying to run it light to cut costs on manpower,” he said. Carrier declined to comment for this article, but the company recently raised its target for annual cost savings to $700 million from $600 million, and the pressure to find new efficiencies is intense.Demand for Carrier’s residential heating and cooling systems rose 46 percent in the third quarter, and the company raised its full-year sales and profit forecast when it reported earnings in late October.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesMr. Roell, a member of the Indiana National Guard, said the days he has to don his uniform and report for Guard duty are a welcome respite from the assembly line. “It’s not a vacation, but there’s more downtime,” he said.Employees were idled for several weeks in the spring after the coronavirus pandemic first struck, but they were soon classified as essential workers and went back to work. One employee died of Covid-19, and Carrier has adjusted production lines to create more space between employees while requiring masks and checking temperatures as people arrive for the day.To thank them for working through the pandemic in the spring, the company gave a party in a tent in June “with a chicken lunch and a pack of Life Savers as thanks,” Mr. Roell recalled, while other local employers gave bonuses and raises.At the same time, Carrier has made an unlikely emergence as a stock-market darling. Long a dull if steady performer overshadowed by the military business within United Technologies, it was spun out as an independent company in early April.The timing couldn’t have been worse — it was the depth of the recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak — and Carrier’s shares made their debut at $12. But a booming housing market, driven by low interest rates, has powered demand for new heating and air conditioning systems, said Deane M. Dray, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.So has a desire by Americans suddenly stuck at home to upgrade their ventilation systems, Mr. Dray said. Demand for Carrier’s residential heating and cooling systems rose 46 percent in the third quarter, and the company raised its full-year sales and profit forecast when it reported earnings in late October.“There’s a silver lining to working from home — it means work on the home,” Mr. Dray said. Carrier now trades around $38 a share, and Mr. Dray sees a further opportunity for the company as the new Covid vaccines are rolled out.The two leading vaccines need to be refrigerated well below freezing, which could drive demand for cooling systems worldwide. That, plus Carrier’s new freedom to maneuver as an independent company, bodes well for shareholders.“At United Technologies, Carrier was not a priority for growth capital,” Mr. Dray said. “They are finally in control of their own destiny.”The same cannot be said of workers like Mr. Smith, Mr. Roell or Mr. Cushingberry. And while the saga of Carrier’s Indianapolis factory is well known in political circles, it hasn’t even come up on earnings calls or otherwise registered for the analysts who cover Carrier on Wall Street. “This is below the radar screen for us,” Mr. Dray said.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York Times“Trump is the reason we have our job, and as long as he was in office, we were safe.”Paul Roell Carrier workers who held United Technologies shares in their retirement accounts received stock as part of the offering, but didn’t receive shares outright or otherwise take part in the spinoff. Carrier’s chief executive, David Gitlin, owns more than 200,000 shares, worth nearly $8 million.“It’s once in a lifetime, but it was a missed opportunity,” said Corey Austin, a Carrier employee who has worked on the assembly line for 17 years. But Mr. Austin, who earns $23.87 an hour, has no illusions about how lucky he is to still be employed at Carrier.His father and mother spent decades as assembly workers and United Steelworkers members at Diamond Chain, a factory in downtown Indianapolis that announced this year that it would close after operating for more than a century.Negotiations on a new contract at Carrier begin next year, and Mr. Austin hopes to see a raise when the new contract goes into effect. “Employees didn’t even know the spinoff was happening,” he said. “And a lot of employees don’t trust what management tells them. People are just in the mind-set of working every day.”In the past, new contracts have typically increased salaries by 50 cents an hour each year over three years.With or without Mr. Trump in office, Mr. Roell has no plans to look for a job anywhere else, despite his anxiety about the factory’s long-term prospects. In the meantime, he doesn’t foresee a break until Christmas Eve, and the last full day he was able to spend with his family was on Thanksgiving weekend.But with a salary of $25.96 an hour — and two children to put through college — the long hours and constant uncertainty are worth it. “It’s a pretty big worry,” he said. “I just turned 40, and I’m going to keep working there. Hopefully, they will stick around.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Unemployment Claims Show Impact of Layoffs as Virus Surges

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUnemployment Claims Show Impact of Layoffs as Virus Surges“It’s going to be a challenging few months,” one economist says. A new pandemic relief bill from Congress could soften the blow.Vacant retail shops in Columbus, Ohio. The rate of jobless claims has been rising as coronavirus cases remain high across the country.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ETThe surge in coronavirus cases is rippling through the economy, forcing employers to lay off workers at an extraordinarily high rate even as new vaccines and the possibility of more federal aid offer hope for next year.The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance remained elevated last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. After dropping earlier in the fall, claims have moved higher, dwarfing the pace of past recessions.Consumer caution, coupled with new restrictions on business activity like indoor dining, has pummeled the hospitality industry, lodging, airlines and other service businesses. The debut of a coronavirus vaccine offers the prospect of relief, but until mass inoculations begin next year, the economy will remain under pressure.“Businesses are closing, and as a result, we are seeing job losses mount — and that’s exactly what we were fearful of going into the winter,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “It’s going to be a challenging few months, no doubt.”Already, the pace of retail sales has dipped, as has the rate of overall economic growth. Few expect coronavirus cases to ease this winter, further holding back economic activity, but progress on a new aid bill on Capitol Hill could soften the blow.Last week brought 935,000 new claims for state benefits, compared with 956,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal variations, last week’s figure was 885,000, an increase of 23,000.There were 455,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed and others ordinarily ineligible for jobless benefits. That total, which was not seasonally adjusted, was up 40,000 from the week before.The move to limit business and consumer activity by government authorities was evident in the new data. In Illinois, which banned indoor dining on Nov. 20, claims rose by over 35,000. In California, where restrictions went into effect on Dec. 3, new filings jumped by nearly 24,000.At the end of November, more than 20 million workers were collecting unemployment benefits under state or federal programs, Labor Department data indicates. Although the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent in November from a high of 14.7 percent in April, the persistent layoffs highlight the economic fragility of many Americans.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 17, 2020, 4:35 p.m. ETThe Washington Post has 3 million digital subscribers.Coinbase, a top cryptocurrency company, files for initial public offering.Amazon wrongfully fired a worker in retaliation for organizing, a labor agency says.“We are not moving in the right direction,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “With the looming expiration of benefits, it’s even more worrisome.”The pain in the labor market is particularly acute for less-skilled workers, whose jobs and finances have been hit much harder than those of more affluent Americans.The S&P 500, the Dow Jones industrials and the Nasdaq composite index closed at record highs Thursday, capping a strong rally in recent weeks. Initial public offerings have been white-hot, minting thousands of paper millionaires in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.The housing market, too, has been robust, propelled by low interest rates that make mortgages more affordable as city dwellers escape to the suburbs.Total wages and salaries have bounced back to where they before the pandemic, at $9.6 trillion a month, after dipping below $8.7 trillion at the depths of the recession in the spring. But the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains well below where it was a year ago, underscoring the deep hole the economy is slowly working its way out of.Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress continued talks on Thursday on another pandemic relief bill, something that economists have warned is overdue. Without action, two key programs for unemployed workers — Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provides extra weeks of aid after state benefits end — will expire this month, cutting off payments to millions.In addition to extending those programs, the $900 billion package is expected to include stimulus payments of $600 to individuals, a $300 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits, and rental and food assistance. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act, approved in March, has been credited with helping the economy survive the depths of the lockdown in many parts of the country last spring. But partisan battles in Washington have held up renewed federal assistance for months.Economists have warned that without a new aid package from Washington, economic growth could be flat in the first quarter of 2021. What’s more, the abrupt end of unemployment benefits for millions could put a further crimp in consumer spending.Data released on Wednesday showed a 1.1 percent drop in retail sales in November, a disappointing start to the crucial holiday season. Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, expects economic growth to be weak for the next few months before picking up later in 2021.“Until we get a lot of people vaccinated, the economy will face a difficult test,” he said. “I don’t know if we will see an outright contraction or the loss of jobs, but the pace of improvement will slow markedly.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How the Economy Is Actually Doing, in 9 Charts

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    Nearly a year after the coronavirus outbreak, the full impact of the pandemic on the U.S. economy remains unclear. Some of the most obvious indicators are in conflict: As some companies report enormous profits, nearly 10 million more Americans are now unemployed compared with last February, and hundreds of thousands are expected to have filed […] More

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    Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged and Commits to Ongoing Bond Purchases

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFed Leaves Rates Unchanged and Commits to Ongoing Bond PurchasesCentral bank officials left rates near-zero at their December meeting and tied bond buying to their employment and price goals.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, said Wednesday that the central bank will keep interest rates near zero to support the economy as coronavirus cases surge nationwide, adding that “a full economic recovery is unlikely until people are confident that it is safe to re-engage in a broad range of activities.”CreditCredit…Al Drago for The New York TimesDec. 16, 2020Updated 5:26 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials pledged to help the economy through the painful pandemic era, making clear at their final meeting of the year that the central bank would continue cushioning businesses and households by keeping interest rates at rock bottom and buying government-backed debt for the foreseeable future.The Fed’s chair, Jerome H. Powell, said at a news conference after the meeting that the central bank would keep its effort to bolster demand going “for some time,” adding that the “the next few months are likely to be very challenging.”The Fed cut interest rates to near-zero in March and has been buying about $120 billion in government-backed debt each month to soothe markets and help shore up growth. The central bank explicitly tied its bond-buying program to its goals of full employment and stable inflation in its December policy statement. The move suggested that the Fed expected to continue its purchases for some time, given how far the economy is from meeting those goals.The committee said the Fed would continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities at the current pace “until substantial further progress has been made toward the committee’s maximum employment and price stability goals.”Mr. Powell said the policy decisions were intended to show that the Fed would “deliver powerful support to the economy until the recovery is complete.”He used his post-meeting remarks to paint a picture of a bifurcated economy, one in which many businesses and households face acute economic pain in the near-term, coupled with the expectation that the economy would snap back once vaccines were widely available — a development that he guessed could come about as soon as midyear.The United States could then see a long period of unbroken growth, Mr. Powell predicted, signaling that he and his colleagues were prepared to leave rates low for years on end as they try to return the labor market and broader economy to full strength.Government policies are “trying to work together to try to create a bridge across this economic chasm that was created by the pandemic, and for many Americans, that bridge is there, and they’re across it,” he said.“But there’s a group for which they don’t have a bridge yet,” Mr. Powell added, suggesting later that more help from Congress is needed to help fill the gap. “It’s the 10 million people who lost their jobs, it’s the people who may lose their homes. You see the many, many millions of Americans who are waiting in food lines in their cars these days.”He said the economy would need the Fed’s support for some time because while officials expect it to grow at a healthy clip starting in the middle of next year, “it is going to be a while before we really are back to the levels of labor market conditions that we had early this year.”The central bank’s summary of economic projections, released Wednesday, underlined Mr. Powell’s patient point. They showed that Fed officials had a slightly more optimistic outlook for growth and unemployment at the end of 2020 and in coming years than they had been in September. The central official now sees unemployment declining to 5 percent in 2021, versus a previous prediction of 5.5 percent, and sees gross domestic product coming in at 4.2 percent versus 4 percent.Despite that upgrade, the median Fed official continued to project interest rates near-zero through the end of 2023, demonstrating the central bank’s plan to move glacially coming out of the crisis.While the Fed promised to do what it could to help the economy, Mr. Powell also stressed its limitations. He repeated his call for more fiscal stimulus, saying that the continuing rise in virus cases and the lapse in funding for several programs that were helping households and businesses stay afloat posed challenges.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Panel Finds ‘Serious Concerns’ With Mexican Labor Reforms

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPanel Finds ‘Serious Concerns’ With Mexican Labor ReformsA new report examining Mexican labor reforms required under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement highlights one of the biggest trade challenges for the incoming Biden administration.Susana Prieto Terrazas, center, in coveralls, is among the labor activists who have faced arrest for challenging the Mexican labor system.Credit…Jose Luis Gonzalez/ReutersDec. 15, 2020Updated 2:23 p.m. ETLeer en españolWASHINGTON — Mexico has made progress in putting in place the sweeping overhauls to its labor system required by the new trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, but serious challenges still remain, according to a new report by an independent board set up to evaluate those changes.The report, the first to be issued by the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board, highlights one of the foremost trade challenges for the incoming Biden administration: ensuring that the goals of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which went into effect this year, are realized.The trade pact, which replaced the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement, sought to improve labor conditions and pay for Mexican workers, as way to prevent companies from undercutting American and Canadian workers by moving their factories to Mexico. Among other changes, the agreement called for sweeping overhauls to Mexico’s laws and institutions to make its unions more democratic, and set up independent bodies like labor courts to enforce those changes.Ben Davis, the director of international affairs at the United Steelworkers and the chairman of the independent board, said it “remains to be seen if Mexico’s labor reforms will allow its workers to escape the poverty wages that have done so much damage to them, and — through unfair competition — to workers in the U.S.”Michael Wessel, a labor adviser to the United States trade representative who helped to create the board, said the Biden administration’s efforts would be crucial in determining whether U.S.M.C.A. was ultimately deemed a success.“The incoming Biden administration must devote considerable time and energy to making U.S.M.C.A. work,” he said. “Support for new trade agreements will depend, in part, on how successful the changes in the U.S.C.M.A. are in advancing the rights of workers and achieving identifiable and significant change.”The changes are an attempt to address what politicians on both the right and left see as one of NAFTA’s main failings: its role in encouraging factory owners to move their operations to Mexico.When NAFTA was introduced in the 1990s, economists and politicians argued that it would be a powerful force for raising wages for workers in Mexico, putting the Mexican economy on a more even and secure footing with the rest of North America. But since the agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexico’s less-skilled workers have experienced limited wage gains.Progressive Democrats in the United States contend that this lackluster performance stemmed in part from a deep corruption of the Mexican labor system. In particular, they have blamed “protection contracts,” or fake collective bargaining agreements made by unions that are company controlled, without the input of workers. These agreements lock in low wages and poor working conditions, and could make up as many as three-quarters of collective bargaining agreements in Mexico, according to the report.Workers and activists who challenge this system can face harassment, arrest and violence, the report says. American labor advocates have recently pointed to the case of Susana Prieto Terrazas, a Mexican labor activist who was arrested on charges of trying to organize workers in the state of Tamaulipas in June, shortly before the new trade pact took effect.As part of a labor law passed last year, Mexico is setting up independent labor courts and monitors, and trying to recertify hundreds of thousands of collective bargaining agreements between companies and their employees by secret votes before May 1, 2023, among other provisions.In its first report, the board commended the Mexican government for continuing its efforts to expand labor rights despite the scale of the undertaking and the complications of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it identified “a number of serious concerns” with the enforcement of Mexico’s new labor law that it said must be promptly addressed.It said that most unionized workers were not yet able to democratically elect their leaders; that the old system of protection contracts remains intact; and that workers who have tried to challenge these conditions have been fired, jailed or killed.The report adds that the pace of approval of new collective bargaining agreements is far behind where it should be, and that the process of setting up independent courts and monitors has been hampered by missed deadlines and a lack of resources. It also calls for more funding to help Mexicans set up independent unions and to build the capacity of Mexican labor inspectors to enforce the new labor rules.“Many of the changes promised to improve the lives of workers, in terms of union democracy, freedom of association and collective bargaining, remain to be implemented,” the report concludes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How Biden Can Move His Economic Agenda Without Congress

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesElectoral College ResultsBiden’s CabinetDefense SecretaryAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Biden Can Move His Economic Agenda Without CongressUnion leaders and policy experts say the next administration could do plenty on behalf of workers through regulation and other powers.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. may be able to achieve his goals on labor policy even without a cooperative Congress.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesDec. 15, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETPresident-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ability to reshape the economy through legislation hinges in large part on the outcome of the two Georgia runoffs in January that will decide control of the Senate. But even without a cooperative Congress, his administration will be able to act on its agenda of raising workers’ standard of living and creating good jobs by taking a series of unilateral actions under existing law.“If you pay attention to what Trump did and go about it from a different viewpoint, you can accomplish a lot,” said Thomas M. Conway, the president of the United Steelworkers union. Much of this work will fall to the incoming labor secretary, whose department has the authority to issue regulations and initiate enforcement actions that could affect millions of workers and billions of dollars in income.Mr. Biden’s labor secretary could substantially expand eligibility for time-and-a-half overtime pay. In 2016, the Obama administration extended that eligibility to salaried workers making less than about $47,500 a year, but a federal court suspended the Obama rule, and President Trump’s Labor Department set the cutoff at roughly $35,500 rather than continue to appeal. The Biden administration could make millions more salaried workers eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay by reviving or expanding the Obama criterion and defending it in court.The Labor Department will also have an opportunity to fill several monitoring and enforcement positions created under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that are likely to go unfilled during the Trump administration. The accord, a revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, allows the United States to block imports from facilities in Mexico that curtail workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively. Pursued aggressively, the enforcement could help mitigate downward pressure on U.S. manufacturing wages stemming from unfair competition with Mexico.Mr. Biden’s Labor Department is likely to be more assertive in a variety of other enforcement efforts than its predecessor, which ended an Obama-era policy of typically trying to collect double the amount of wages that lawbreaking employers failed to pay workers under minimum-wage or overtime requirements.“Just getting back wages in small amounts doesn’t provide any incentives for companies to comply,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel of the National Employment Law Project, which has ties to the Biden transition team. The Biden administration is likely to revive the Obama approach.Revisiting Labor RulesUnion membership, which has dropped to 10 percent of U.S. workers from roughly double that figure in the early 1980s, could receive a significant boost during the Biden administration, which has signaled that it intends to work closely with the labor movement.Under Mr. Biden, the National Labor Relations Board is likely to be far more aggressive in punishing employers that appear to break the law while fighting union campaigns. It can issue a regulation making it easier for the employees of contractors and franchises to hold parent companies accountable for violations of their labor rights, such as firing workers who try to unionize.According to Benjamin I. Sachs, a Harvard Law School professor, the board could also seize on a legal provision that allows the federal government to cede jurisdiction to the states for regulating labor in certain industries. That could enable a state like California or Washington to create an arrangement in which gig workers, with the help of a union, negotiate with companies over wages and benefits on an industrywide basis in that state, a process known as sectoral bargaining.Under such a system, a union would have to show support from a fraction of workers in the industry, such as 15 or 20 percent, to be able to negotiate with multiple gig companies on behalf of all workers. By contrast, under federal law, the union would typically have to win majority support among the workers it sought to represent, a daunting challenge in a high-turnover industry like gig work.Other labor experts, like Wilma B. Liebman, who led the labor board in the Obama administration, affirm that the board can cede its authority to states but are more skeptical that it would do so in the case of gig workers.Helping Home-Care WorkersThe federal government, through its control of the Medicaid program, could accomplish something similar for home-care workers, who usually work independently or for small agencies that have little power to raise pay because states set the rates for their services. The agencies sometimes resist union campaigns aggressively for fear that allowing workers to bargain for higher wages will put them at a competitive disadvantage.A handful of Democratic-leaning states, like Washington, have addressed this issue by allowing workers to bargain with the state for rate increases that effectively apply industrywide, eliminating the downside that a single agency would face if it raised wages unilaterally.The Service Employees International Union, which represents home-care workers across the country, believes that the Biden administration could encourage other states to create such industrywide bargaining arrangements — for example, by making additional money available to states that adopt this approach. Hundreds of thousands of additional home-care workers could benefit.The federal government, under a provision in the Medicaid law that requires states to keep payments high enough to ensure an adequate supply of home-care workers, could also intervene directly to raise wages and benefits for these workers.“We look forward to working with the Biden administration to make changes to the Medicaid program that can turn home-care jobs into good union jobs,” said Mary Kay Henry, the president of the service employees union.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 15, 2020, 6:45 p.m. ETBiden will name Gina McCarthy as the White House’s climate coordinator.Dominion’s C.E.O. defends his firm’s voting machines to Michigan lawmakers, denouncing a ‘reckless disinformation campaign.’Biden will nominate Jennifer Granholm for energy secretary.Using Federal Contract CloutOutside of specific agencies like the Labor Department, the Biden administration will have considerable leverage over the working conditions of the roughly five million workers employed by federal contractors and subcontractors.President Barack Obama signed executive orders raising the minimum wage for these workers to $10.10 an hour and entitling them to at least seven days a year of paid sick leave. Mr. Biden could raise the minimum wage for contractors much further — some are urging $15 an hour — while also mandating that they receive paid family leave and paid vacation days, as proposed by Heidi Shierholz, a senior Labor Department official under Mr. Obama.Mr. Biden could also use the federal government’s buying power to create more domestic manufacturing jobs, a goal he highlighted during the campaign. One approach would be to sign an executive order laying the groundwork for a Buy Clean program of the sort that California introduced in 2017.Under the program, contractors bidding on state infrastructure projects, like steel makers and glassmakers, must adhere to a certain standard for so-called embodied emissions, essentially the amount of carbon emitted when the material is produced, transported and used in construction. Tighter limits tend to favor domestic manufacturers over competitors in countries, like China, that are farther away and where production is often less environmentally friendly.“The incoming administration has broad power to put forth an idea like Buy Clean,” said Mike Williams, deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of unions and environmental groups. That includes establishing a way to measure emissions and creating a database in which manufacturers are required to disclose them.Promoting Job CreationWhile existing law requires the federal government to favor domestic suppliers in procurement, a variety of waivers allow agencies to award contracts to overseas companies. Mr. Biden noted during the campaign that the Defense Department spent billions on foreign construction contracts in 2018, and he has pledged to close such loopholes.The most aggressive version of this approach would be to revoke a broad waiver that allows agencies to treat purchases from dozens of countries with which the United States has trade relations — including Japan, Mexico and many in Europe — as though they were made in America. Mr. Biden has indicated that he is more likely to try to negotiate new rules with trading partners to address this issue.The Biden administration could also instruct contracting officers to broaden the criteria they use to assess bids. A set of contracting rules laid out in a 1984 law, along with Washington’s growing preoccupation with spending cuts in recent decades, led administrations of both parties to focus on seeking the lowest upfront price.But the Biden administration could elevate value over price — under the same logic that says a $30,000 Cadillac may be a better deal than a $25,000 Ford Focus. The approach would favor companies whose workers are better paid but also better trained and more productive than competitors’.Mr. Biden could set some of these changes in motion through an executive order stating that federal agencies should focus more on quality and working conditions when assessing value. But because executing many of these shifts would be a question of day-to-day management rather than sweeping changes, some policy experts have proposed that the Biden White House create a dedicated office to oversee procurement across the administration.Anastasia Christman, an expert on government contracting at the National Employment Law Project, compares the idea to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives that George W. Bush created in the early 2000s, whose goal was to scour the federal bureaucracy for ways that religious organizations could compete for government funds. In this case, Ms. Christman said, the objective would be to ensure that contracting officers across agencies are using the right criteria in awarding contracts.“It would help contracting offices think differently about how to do the assessment,” Ms. Christman said. “How do you ask right kind of follow-up questions? Why is this bid lower than all others? What is that resting on?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    A $900 Billion Plan Would Help the Economy, but Not Fix It

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesC.D.C. Shortens Quarantine PeriodsVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storynews analysisA $900 Billion Plan Would Help the Economy, but Not Fix ItWhile a compromise package gaining steam in Congress would provide urgent help to the economy, some people and businesses would be left out in the cold.The framework of a $908 billion stimulus plan includes several types of assistance that economists have been calling on Congress to approve for months.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBy More