Labor

Google has been quietly urging the US government to narrow legal protection for workers organizing online. During the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board broadened employees’ rights to use their workplace email system to organize around issues on the job. In a 2014 case, Purple Communications, the agency restricted companies from punishing employees for using their workplace email systems for activities like circulating petitions or fomenting walkouts, as well as trying to form a union.

Apparently, Verizon's beleaguered media group is laying off 800 employees -- 7 percent of its staff -- and is focusing on fewer areas to revive its fortunes. Verizon CEO K Guru Gowrappan said in an email to staff that the business would focus on mobile and video-focused products. Yahoo-branded entertainment and news platforms are particularly important to the unit’s strategy. 

In 2018, women comprised 20% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.  This represents an increase of 2 percentage points from 18% in 2017.  In 2018, only 1% of films employed 10 or more women in the above roles.  In contrast, 74% of films employed 10 or more men.  Women accounted for 8% of directors, down 3 percentage points from 11% in 2017.  This is 1 percentage point below the 9% achieved in 1998.

Today, Americans can choose between four nationwide wireless carriers – but that choice is now threatened by the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. If allowed to proceed as proposed, this merger will condense the market to just three national carriers, leading to higher prices, foreclosing the entrance of new competitors and eliminating jobs. And while the companies have promised that this deal would speed the roll out of 5G and improve rural service, the facts belie these claims. This deal offers no meaningful public benefit and threatens vast consumer harms.

In this paper, we draw upon a nascent but fast-growing empirical economics literature on the earnings effect of labor market concentration to estimate how the Sprint–T-Mobile merger would affect earnings of workers at the US stores that sell the wireless services of the merging firms and their competitors. We find that the merger would reduce earnings in the affected labor markets.

Silicon Valley technology firms are known for giving stock to their workers, a form of compensation that often helps employees feel invested in their companies. But tech workers are now starting to use those shares to turn the tables on their employers. As many tech employees take a more activist approach to how their innovations are being deployed and increasingly speak out on a range of issues, some are using the stock as a way to demand changes at their companies. Employee shareholder proposals may ultimately not be effective since shareholder-led proposals are often shot down.

A Verizon separation plan will reduce the company’s payroll by 10,400 employees, almost 7 percent of its workforce. The plan was announced earlier in 2018 and the reductions are part of a voluntary program to reduce Verizon’s headcount as they embark on a 5G focused restructuring. Since recently taking over the CEO helm, Hans Vestberg has embarked on a restructuring of the company, with a focus on seizing the 5G opportunity and reducing Verizon’s emphasis on legacy services. 

The big and powerful are getting bigger and more powerful — and the clear and dominant winners are big cities. With wealth, jobs, and power increasingly concentrated in a few large cities, we are witnessing a growing economic and political divide between urban and rural America. As we've previously written, it's part of a larger dynamic favoring "superstar" countries and companies, too — behemoths that appear positioned to dominate the future global economy. This fuels us-versus-them. New cool technologies hit cities first, be it 5G, autonomous transportation or drone delivery.

The White House is releasing a five-year plan to strengthen education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), developed by the National Science and Technology Council Committee on STEM Education and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The plan seeks to ensure that all Americans have access to quality STEM education and safeguard America’s place as the global leader in STEM innovation and employment.