Around 10,000 hotel workers went on strike over Labor Day weekend, picketing for better pay and working conditions in 25 hotels across nine cities, including Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Seattle, and Honolulu. UNITE HERE, the country’s largest hospitality union, had conducted several months of unsuccessful contract negotiations with leading hotel chains such as Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt before escalating the dispute. The strikes, which lasted between one and three days, took place over the last holiday weekend of the summer and involved housekeepers, front desk attendants, bellhops, restaurant staff, and other hotel workers.

At issue, union officials say, is that while the hospitality industry’s profits have recovered from the extreme downturn during the pandemic, it has maintained the service and staffing reductions from that period. As a result, workloads for employees have increased while pay has stagnated. 

“Many [workers] can no longer afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to, and painful workloads are breaking their bodies,” Gwen Mills, the international UNITE HERE president, said in a statement. “We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”

The weekend strikes could herald more to come—potentially also in New Haven, Providence, and Oakland—if contract negotiations continue to be difficult to resolve. In press releases, UNITE HERE highlighted last summer’s rolling strikes that impacted 65 hotels in Los Angeles, during which the union conducted brief work stoppages around the city over several months. Eventually, workers won wage increases of up to $10 more per hour over the five-year contract.  

As the Labor Day weekend strike unfolded, Michael D’Angelo, Hyatt’s head of labor relations for the Americas, told AP, “We are disappointed that UNITE HERE has chosen to strike while Hyatt remains willing to negotiate.” The AP also reported that a Hilton spokesperson said that the chain was “committed to negotiating in good faith.” 

The Covid pandemic all but halted the hospitality industry, as occupancy rates hit historic lows. The union says that the industry has largely rebounded, with gross profits in 2022 surpassing those from 2019. But, the union found that staffing has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, which they say creates a higher burden for those who remain in the industry. And while responsibilities have increased, many workers say that wages have not kept up with rising costs.  

Edwin Solis, who works in the housekeeping department at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, said that life in the Bay Area has become increasingly expensive. “Everything goes to groceries and gas,” Solis said. Over the weekend, Solis was among hundreds of union members who were demonstrating downtown, some of whom wore signs that read “respect our work” and “one job should be enough.” Solis told Mother Jones that to make ends meet many of his coworkers have taken on second jobs. He was frustrated that the industry’s increased profits have not translated to higher wages for employees. 

The industry trade organization, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said that a May survey of hoteliers revealed that 86 percent of respondents had increased wages over the past six months—though they did not specify by how much—and 67 percent said they were experiencing staffing shortages. 

As the cost of living has surged in the aftermath of the pandemic, higher pay has become a top priority for UNITE HERE. Josh Stanley, a union leader in Connecticut, explained that “while wages have grown somewhat, in terms of real buying power, they are lower than they were in 2020.” The union’s Hawaii chapter said that a survey of nearly 4,000 members found that 76 percent could not afford an unexpected bill of $500. 

The “decentralized” hospitality industry poses a unique challenge for labor unions because each hotel negotiates its own contract with workers, according to Richard Hurd, a professor emeritus at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. In recent decades, UNITE HERE has made an effort to coordinate contracts across all the unionized hotels in each city. This has also given the union a leg up, Hurd said, as several contracts negotiated before the pandemic have ended around the same time. “Now they have a critical mass of cities where contracts had expired, where they believe they can use some leverage by staging strikes,” Hurd says.

“Now they have a critical mass of cities where contracts had expired, where they believe they can use some leverage by staging strikes.”

Hurd also noted that UNITE HERE, in line with the hospitality industry at large, has a high proportion of women and immigrant members, which has been reflected in the union’s leadership and priorities. Mills, the union’s first female president, noted in a statement about the strikes, “Hospitality work overall is undervalued, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s disproportionately women and people of color doing the work.”

In Honolulu, about 5,000 workers from seven hotels went on a three-day strike, from Sunday to Tuesday. Nerissa Acdal, who has been a housekeeper at the Westin Moana Surfrider for nine years, was among them. She said that she regularly works “exhausting” ten-hour shifts, cleaning sixteen rooms in a day. Acdal told Mother Jones that mandatory overtime has become commonplace after the pandemic, and she often skips lunch to finish her work on time.  

During the pandemic, many hotel guests chose to opt out of daily room cleaning—a practice that continues today. In fact, union members say several days without housekeeping creates even more work when a guest checks out, but managers often don’t offer staff additional time to finish the job. “We don’t have any choice,” Acdal says. “We have to rush.” 

UNITE HERE has pointed out that the pressure to compensate for inadequate staffing can result in worker injuries. Francisco Tobin, who runs banquet events, has spent thirty years working at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut. He went on strike with around 125 of his coworkers this past weekend. He told Mother Jones that his responsibilities expanded after the pandemic because he needed to cover for positions, like those who bring food to waitstaff, that had been eliminated. Two years ago, he slipped and fell while delivering food from the kitchen, and tore his quadriceps tendon, which required surgery. 

The impact of the strikes on contract negotiations is still unclear, but members like Solis, the housekeeper in San Francisco, are optimistic about returning to the bargaining table soon. Members hope that hotel chains can meet their demands for higher wages and better workloads. If they don’t, Solis says, “we are ready” to return to the picket line. 

Around 10,000 hotel workers went on strike over Labor Day weekend, picketing for better pay and working conditions in 25 hotels across nine cities, including Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Seattle, and Honolulu. UNITE HERE, the country’s largest hospitality union, had conducted several months of unsuccessful contract negotiations with leading hotel chains such as Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt before escalating the dispute. The strikes, which lasted between one and three days, took place over the last holiday weekend of the summer and involved housekeepers, front desk attendants, bellhops, restaurant staff, and other hotel workers.

At issue, union officials say, is that while the hospitality industry’s profits have recovered from the extreme downturn during the pandemic, it has maintained the service and staffing reductions from that period. As a result, workloads for employees have increased while pay has stagnated. 

“Many [workers] can no longer afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to, and painful workloads are breaking their bodies,” Gwen Mills, the international UNITE HERE president, said in a statement. “We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”

The weekend strikes could herald more to come—potentially also in New Haven, Providence, and Oakland—if contract negotiations continue to be difficult to resolve. In press releases, UNITE HERE highlighted last summer’s rolling strikes that impacted 65 hotels in Los Angeles, during which the union conducted brief work stoppages around the city over several months. Eventually, workers won wage increases of up to $10 more per hour over the five-year contract.  

As the Labor Day weekend strike unfolded, Michael D’Angelo, Hyatt’s head of labor relations for the Americas, told AP, “We are disappointed that UNITE HERE has chosen to strike while Hyatt remains willing to negotiate.” The AP also reported that a Hilton spokesperson said that the chain was “committed to negotiating in good faith.” 

The Covid pandemic all but halted the hospitality industry, as occupancy rates hit historic lows. The union says that the industry has largely rebounded, with gross profits in 2022 surpassing those from 2019. But, the union found that staffing has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, which they say creates a higher burden for those who remain in the industry. And while responsibilities have increased, many workers say that wages have not kept up with rising costs.  

Edwin Solis, who works in the housekeeping department at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, said that life in the Bay Area has become increasingly expensive. “Everything goes to groceries and gas,” Solis said. Over the weekend, Solis was among hundreds of union members who were demonstrating downtown, some of whom wore signs that read “respect our work” and “one job should be enough.” Solis told Mother Jones that to make ends meet many of his coworkers have taken on second jobs. He was frustrated that the industry’s increased profits have not translated to higher wages for employees. 

The industry trade organization, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said that a May survey of hoteliers revealed that 86 percent of respondents had increased wages over the past six months—though they did not specify by how much—and 67 percent said they were experiencing staffing shortages. 

As the cost of living has surged in the aftermath of the pandemic, higher pay has become a top priority for UNITE HERE. Josh Stanley, a union leader in Connecticut, explained that “while wages have grown somewhat, in terms of real buying power, they are lower than they were in 2020.” The union’s Hawaii chapter said that a survey of nearly 4,000 members found that 76 percent could not afford an unexpected bill of $500. 

The “decentralized” hospitality industry poses a unique challenge for labor unions because each hotel negotiates its own contract with workers, according to Richard Hurd, a professor emeritus at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. In recent decades, UNITE HERE has made an effort to coordinate contracts across all the unionized hotels in each city. This has also given the union a leg up, Hurd said, as several contracts negotiated before the pandemic have ended around the same time. “Now they have a critical mass of cities where contracts had expired, where they believe they can use some leverage by staging strikes,” Hurd says.

“Now they have a critical mass of cities where contracts had expired, where they believe they can use some leverage by staging strikes.”

Hurd also noted that UNITE HERE, in line with the hospitality industry at large, has a high proportion of women and immigrant members, which has been reflected in the union’s leadership and priorities. Mills, the union’s first female president, noted in a statement about the strikes, “Hospitality work overall is undervalued, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s disproportionately women and people of color doing the work.”

In Honolulu, about 5,000 workers from seven hotels went on a three-day strike, from Sunday to Tuesday. Nerissa Acdal, who has been a housekeeper at the Westin Moana Surfrider for nine years, was among them. She said that she regularly works “exhausting” ten-hour shifts, cleaning sixteen rooms in a day. Acdal told Mother Jones that mandatory overtime has become commonplace after the pandemic, and she often skips lunch to finish her work on time.  

During the pandemic, many hotel guests chose to opt out of daily room cleaning—a practice that continues today. In fact, union members say several days without housekeeping creates even more work when a guest checks out, but managers often don’t offer staff additional time to finish the job. “We don’t have any choice,” Acdal says. “We have to rush.” 

UNITE HERE has pointed out that the pressure to compensate for inadequate staffing can result in worker injuries. Francisco Tobin, who runs banquet events, has spent thirty years working at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut. He went on strike with around 125 of his coworkers this past weekend. He told Mother Jones that his responsibilities expanded after the pandemic because he needed to cover for positions, like those who bring food to waitstaff, that had been eliminated. Two years ago, he slipped and fell while delivering food from the kitchen, and tore his quadriceps tendon, which required surgery. 

The impact of the strikes on contract negotiations is still unclear, but members like Solis, the housekeeper in San Francisco, are optimistic about returning to the bargaining table soon. Members hope that hotel chains can meet their demands for higher wages and better workloads. If they don’t, Solis says, “we are ready” to return to the picket line. 

A year after a union contract won “historic heat protections” for UPS drivers, the Teamsters are still pushing the company to do more to protect workers in vehicles that can reach up to 120 degrees. Multiple employees told Mother Jones their vehicles are still hot—and dangerous.

For Jeff Schenfeld, a UPS driver working outside of Dallas, a typical shift requires more than 200 stops, sometimes involving multiple packages—entering and exiting the truck at least 400 times a day. “You’re back and forth, back and forth,” he said. In July and August, when the average high temperature in Dallas is 96 degrees, Schenfeld dreads rummaging for packages in the back of his truck. 

Because of climate change, summer temperatures have risen significantly across the country. A recent study found that heat waves are hotter, last longer, and cover larger areas than they did 40 years ago. 

Last August, a 57-year-old UPS driver named Chris Begley collapsed during his shift in McKinney, Texas, and died at a hospital four days later. An OSHA investigation summary said that he died of heat stress, a description that a UPS spokesperson claimed was inaccurate. But regardless of the official cause of Begley’s death, it underscored the potential dangers of working in extreme heat for many union members.  

The Biden administration recently announced an OSHA rule proposal to set a national heat safety standard for both indoor and outdoor workers. Delivery drivers, like workers in construction and agriculture, are uniquely vulnerable to extreme heat. A Politico analysis of OSHA data from 2015 to 2022 found that after construction workers, delivery and mail workers had the second-highest rates of heat-related illness. Drivers for Amazon and FedEx contractors have raised concerns about working in the heat, and lawmakers recently urged the US Postal Service to expand heat protections. 

Last summer, the Teamsters union, which represents more than 340,000 UPS workers, made heat a centerpiece of prolonged contract negotiations with the shipping company. The agreement, which averted what could have been an economically devastating strike, promised to raise full-time pay to $170,000 by the end of the five-year agreement. The company promised to increase airflow and lower temperatures in their iconic brown package trucks and ensure that all vehicles purchased after January 1 of this year would have air conditioning. UPS also vowed to replace 28,000 existing trucks with air conditioned ones—though the prospect was once described by a company spokesperson as unfeasible because of frequent stops. Today, only a small portion of the existing fleet has air conditioning. 

“Workers across industries and in virtually every geography are saying [heat] is a new danger that we are confronted with more and more days of the year,” Anastasia Christman, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, said. The UPS agreement is likely the first private-sector contract to explicitly include heat protections, she said, calling it “first in class.” 

But promising change and implementing it are two different things, and one year later, some UPS employees say that ratifying the contract has not improved their working conditions in summer temperatures. Many workers who spoke to Mother Jones described feeling pressure to keep up the pace and take fewer breaks, even in extreme heat. 

While the company has made good progress on installing more fans, heat shields, and induction systems in trucks, air conditioning appears to be the most intractable change. Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz says the company’s lag in replacing trucks with air conditioned ones is “unacceptable.” 

“The safety of our employees is our top priority,” Genneviev Bowman, a UPS spokesperson, told Mother Jones. The company said that managers “are monitoring to make sure they take their breaks, particularly in hot weather. We’re confident that our policies are followed by an overwhelming majority of our drivers and management. And we take corrective action when we become aware that a policy is not being followed.”

UPS spokesperson Jim Mayer said that the company will also “continue to purchase and deploy new vehicles with AC as quickly as possible.” UPS said that some trucks with air conditioning had been purchased this year—though the company would not say how many. In late June, CNN had reported that no new vans had been purchased. 

The union contract also required that the company conduct heat safety training and allow workers to follow best practices. The company suggested that I speak with Jeff Wigglesworth, a driver in Phoenix, Arizona, where average summer temperatures are above 100 degrees. Wigglesworth is a member of the safety committee at his center and told me that supervisors are attentive to employee wellbeing—providing ice and fresh fruit, and conducting “lunch box checks” to see if people are eating properly. Still, even he said there are limitations. “We can educate all we want,” he said. “But it’s their body. They know their body better than I would.” 

Doing strenuous activity in extreme heat can be dangerous. “If you combine heavy levels of exertion with exposure to high heat, then the body can rapidly overheat,” said Robert Harrison, an occupational health specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Harrison said it’s particularly a risk for outdoor workers.

Multiple employees told Mother Jones that their supervisors keep a close eye on productivity metrics like the number of stops made per “on-road” hour. Kyle Burroughs, a driver outside of Denver, described being chastised by a manager for slowing his pace on a hot day. Burroughs said that experiences like that “discourage people from being safe” and get in the way of following advice laid out by the company’s own training, such as taking additional breaks when overheated. 

Dallas-area UPS driver Reginald Lewis said that delivery loads often increase during the summer, which, combined with the heat, makes it difficult for drivers to complete their routes on time. Lewis said requests for help often go unmet. “There is a pressure to get the job done,” he said. “We’re told, ‘We don’t have that many people on hand. You gotta go out there and try to do it on your own.’” 

Mayer, the UPS spokesperson, said that “package volumes go up and down for a variety of reasons, many beyond our control, and we do our best to manage workloads.”

Nathan Morris, a physiology professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, explained that the heat will inevitably affect worker productivity: “If you try to keep the same work rate and stress the body out, it’s going to put a huge strain on the heart. At a certain point, people just can’t work as fast.” And workers who aren’t given scheduled breaks will likely take unplanned ones, as one study of occupational heat stress Morris worked on found. “You’re losing that worker efficiency anyway,” Morris said. 

In interviews, employees emphasized the gap between contract language and the day-to-day reality of the workplace—which the union is working to close. Organizers said many UPS workers don’t know the full extent of the protections guaranteed by last year’s agreement. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the organization’s progressive wing, has distributed wallet heat safety cards to drivers around the country, reminding them that the contract “protects your right to protect yourself from heat illness.” 

Asserting those rights can be difficult for some employees because enforcement of those rights happens through the potentially risky process of filing grievances with the union. After the complaint travels through a formal adjudication process between the union and the company, it can result in a monetary payout. Burroughs, the driver in Colorado, said that employees are often afraid that filing a grievance will negatively affect their career.

Isolated in their own trucks, some delivery drivers might feel that they are “experiencing the heat alone,” said Beth Breslaw, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union. When heat-related illness is framed by management as an issue of “personal responsibility,” said Breslaw, it is easy to overlook that workplace safety is the result of companywide policy. Organizers have been holding parking lot meetings, before or after shifts, to talk about heat-related issues, hoping to show workers that extreme heat is a collective problem—with a collective solution. 

As global temperatures continue their perilous climb, it’s likely that extreme heat will increasingly become the subject of labor disputes. Christman, from the National Employment Law Project, said that climate change is challenging the preexisting framework of workplace safety. Traditionally, workers have organized around “specific safety issues”—like a dangerous piece of equipment—but extreme heat is a pervasive, external problem, unconfined to a single workplace or geographic area. 

Extreme heat is likely to reshape all workplaces, and it will bring with it what Christman called an “ideological challenge” on a new scale. Soon—sooner than we may think—workplaces will not be able to continue with business as usual. “There’s going to come a point where those packages aren’t going to get delivered and those trucks aren’t going to be rolling out, because there’s not going to be any workers healthy enough to do it,” Christman said. “If workers aren’t kept safe, companies won’t be able to continue to function.”

Correction, August 27: This article has been updated to clarify that UPS has promised trucks will be replaced with air-conditioned ones.

Only some 40 percent of disabled people are employed. But even that low figure is buoyed by federal laws against employment discrimination—a target of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a right-wing transformation of government by a second Trump White House.

A key institution for the just treatment of disabled workers is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal bans on workplace discrimination. Viewed with distaste by many on the right since its founding through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the EEOC obtained nearly $4 million in 2023 for disabled workers subjected to employment discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Discrimination plays a significant role, according to Stetson University College of Law professor Robyn Powell, in unemployment among disabled people, who experience it at a rate about double that of people without disabilities.

In response to substantiated complaints, the EEOC can sue companies for discrimination on the basis of disability—among other categories, including race, gender, and age—and may reach a consent decree, where companies agree to changes in policy and practice, sometimes with financial settlements to the affected workers.

“Consent decrees are really critical in any kind of civil rights monitoring or systemic action.”

“Consent decrees occur when there is a big employer where we’re seeing systematic examples of discrimination,” Powell said. “If we can open up employment opportunities by tackling discrimination, it helps everyone.”

The decrees are quicker, cheaper, and sometimes more effective than lawsuits in combating workplace prejudice. But they have a notable enemy in the Heritage Foundation’s pet project.

Jonathan Berry, who was the chief counsel of Trump’s 2016 transition team and held multiple jobs in his administration, writes in Project 2025 that EEOC “should disclaim power to enter into consent decrees that require employer actions” not already explicitly required by law. Back in 2012, during the Obama administration, a Heritage Foundation employee testified before Congress that federal agencies habitually abuse consent decrees—a viewpoint still clear in Project 2025. 

“When we look at [Project 2025’s] specifics around the EEOC and consent decrees,” Powell told Mother Jones, “we can see that they really are trying to attack and decimate disability rights.” 

The EEOC and DOJ “have really been critical in protecting the rights of people with disabilities,” says Shira Wakschlag, general counsel and senior director of legal advocacy at The Arc, which serves people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. “Consent decrees are really critical in any kind of civil rights monitoring or systemic action.”

Anti-discrimination consent decrees tend to emphasize reform and accountability, with modest settlements compared to potential legal damages. In one representative case, a government contractor that did not provide accommodations to Deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, and that fired workers on medical leave, agreed to a $1 million settlement with updates to policies on medical leave, reasonable accommodation, and managerial training on the Americans with Disabilities Act, including five years’ monitoring for compliance.

Other types of Justice Department consent decrees also come under attack in Project 2025. Wakschlag says that’s very concerning for disability rights—federal consent decrees are used to fight the continuing institutionalization of disabled people, which violates both the ADA and the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling. 

Conservative attacks on consent decrees are not exactly new. “We’ve certainly seen pushes to either limit, restrict or get rid of consent decrees in agencies in prior administrations,” Wakschlag says. The Trump administration, notably, put a near ban in place on consent decrees between the Department of Justice and police departments that aimed to address police brutality.

If the EEOC’s ability to give consent decrees was diminished or ended, federal anti-discrimination legislation would be dramatically weakened. The agency could still provide technical assistance—such as instruction on how the ADA protects employees and applicants with visual disabilities, diabetes, or epilepsy—but losing the power to push companies to commit to treat disabled workers better, and monitor their progress, will harm disabled workers and strip them of remedies.

“We would see a huge shift in power dynamics,” Powell said, “where we would see that it would really tilt the balance of power more towards employers in these disability discrimination cases.”

When a man with painful cystic acne came to dermatologist Eva Rawlings Parker for help in a Nashville clinic, she couldn’t prescribe him doxycycline or minocycline, two medications she’d typically use to treat this condition. This is because the man was a roofer, says Parker, and these medications would have impacted his ability to tolerate heat. 

Parker’s patient was far from alone. Other common medications for physical health, like beta blockers, can impact people’s ability to handle heat. Many medications for mental health do, too.

Conventional wisdom tells people with conditions that make them unusually vulnerable to the sun, like the autoimmune disorder lupus, or are on medications that lead to heat sensitivity, to avoid staying outside when the sun is at its strongest.

“We know that workers have been dying because of chronic conditions that accumulate through heat stress over many years and decades that lead to shorter life spans.”

But for the one-third of US workers who must spend regular time outdoors, that advice bursts into flames. For some, such as farmworkers, hours and hours of heat exposure, with minimal or no reprieve, are just part of the job. Increasing heat waves and more frequent wildfires point to the need to find real solutions for outdoor workers—and highlight how labor and climate change are intertwined. 

Alongside heat waves getting worse and longer, which can trigger mental health episodes, more and more people are taking antipsychotic medications or antidepressants like SSRIs. Even before the toll of the Covid pandemic, the CDC estimated that more than one in eight adults took antidepressants. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, SSRI prescriptions for adolescents and young adults has increased by 63 percent.

Edward Flores, faculty director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, specializes in the conditions of low-wage and immigrant workers in California. He says the need for heat safety policy reform is acute. “We know that workers have been dying,” Flores says, “because of chronic conditions that accumulate through heat stress over many years and decades that lead to shorter life spans.”

Parker, the dermatologist, is acutely aware of how heat can trigger or worsen skin problems. She is co-chair of the American Academy of Dermatology’s group on climate change and environmental issues, and was an author of a 2023 review on the ways climate change can contribute to dermatological issues, including triggering flares of conditions like hidradenitis suppurativa—which causes painful lumps deep in a person’s skin—and skin cancer.

“The skin is really probably our most climate-sensitive organ, also a very large and complex organ, and it’s really the major interface to the environment,” says Parker, who is also a Vanderbilt University Medical Center professor. Her experience with patients, many of whom are low-income and migrant workers, lets her see firsthand just how challenging giving practical health advice can be in a warming world. 

People’s core temperature can rise much more quickly on SSRIs, for instance, putting them at increased risk of heat stroke. And there’s the challenge, says Rupa Basu, a heat epidemiologist with the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment: “It’s really hard to monitor core body temperature.” 

Workers do have some legal rights to breaks and water, depending on the locale. California, Oregon, and Washington are the only states that mandate those breaks. And roughly half of crop farmworkers have no legal work authorization. That lack of legal status, and the threat of deportation, gives many workers reason to fear complaining about working conditions.

In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed a new set of rules which would help protect more than 36 million workers from heat-related illness or death. The proposed OSHA rules would require employers to monitor their workers for heat exhaustion symptoms, provide adequate water and shade, designate break areas, and provide mandatory rest breaks, among other things. 

In one landmark 2022 farmworker health study that Flores, of the University of California, worked on, nearly half of workers interviewed said their employer had no heat-illness prevention plan—such plans are required by state law, and may soon be required federally—and one in six did not receive state-mandated rest breaks. When that lack of respite causes illness, many farmworkers are unlikely to see a doctor: 23 percent of those interviewed had not had a doctor’s visit in the past year, even at clinics tailored towards migrants.

23 percent of those interviewed had not had a doctor’s visit in the past year, even at clinics tailored towards migrants.

But enforcement, if the rules are implemented, will be a challenge. For one thing, as Flores explained, California has very few Spanish-speaking OSHA inspectors—and none that he’s aware of in the Central Valley, which supplies 8 percent of America’s total agricultural output. (89 percent of California agricultural workers speak Spanish as their primary language.) Nationwide, many accounts exist of inspectors arriving at a workplace without being able to speak workers’ main language.

Summers, meanwhile, are only going to get hotter. Without adequate regulation and enforcement, workers will keep dying in the heat. As Bill Field, director of AgrAbility, a Department of Agriculture program for disabled farmers, put it: “If you go to the racetrack, all the horses have multiple fans blowing on them…Why? Because we care more about the horses than we do the people.”

The adversity brought on by the climate crisis, Flores said, makes it “all the more important to safeguard workers’, outdoor workers’, health and well-being with improved standards and enforcement.”

Whether or not it is legally required, there are steps that employers can already take—but seldom do—to make outdoor working environments safer. “It could be things like increasing water breaks,” Basu said, “or putting up structures to increase shade.”

When the sun beats down on workers, clothes that protect against ultraviolet light can be a useful tool. Research suggests that UV-protective clothing is more effective in preventing skin damage, blocking 96 to 98 percent of the sun’s radiation—by comparison, a cotton shirt will only block around 80 percent. But these garments also tend to be more expensive—protective long-sleeve shirts can easily cost $50 or more. Field believes that employers should cover the cost of UV-protective clothing for exposed workers.

“If I’m a legitimate apple grower or a peach grower in New Jersey, and I’ve got to hire people,” Field said, “I need to be able to budget for them to all have hats and water bottles and things that are going to protect them while they’re in the field.” 

Those changes wouldn’t just benefit workers who are chronically ill—prolonged heat can disable and kill anyone. “When we’re thinking about public health messaging,” Basu adds, “it’s so important to say it’s not just people who you would think would be at high risk.” 

In late April, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers finalized a $233 billion budget for the next fiscal year. One item in its 144-page official summary has sparked fear among disability advocates: dramatic changes to a vital home health aid program that may push more people into nursing homes.

A quarter of a million New Yorkers currently use CDPAP, a widely popular program launched in 1995, which facilitates Medicaid funding for home carers chosen by patients themselves at hours they arrange. Participants spoke to Mother Jones about how the program allows them to remain in their communities, rather than being institutionalized—a cause central to disability rights activism. Without access to workers who understand their needs, like assisting people with spinal cord injuries with toileting, those participants risk hospitalization, placement in restrictive long-term care, or both.

The program is run through “fiscal intermediaries,” which provide financial and administrative oversight; some specialize in helping certain groups, such as the Bengali immigrant community. Hochul’s plan would make the program an administrative monopoly: by October, one middleman—potentially an out-of-state, for-profit firm—will hold a $40 billion contract covering all 250,000 participants in the state. Currently, those intermediaries are subject to oversight by New York’s chief fiscal officer; under Hochul’s system, the new middleman wouldn’t be. In late July, some current intermediaries sued New York’s Department of Health over the changes.

Hochul has been incredibly critical of CDPAP, calling it a “racket.”

“This was a backroom deal that happened days before the budget was finalized,” said Kendra Scalia, a disabled public policy analyst and board president of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State, which supports both CDPAP providers and recipients. “It was never discussed with disabled communities.”

Hochul has been incredibly critical of CDPAP, calling it a “racket” and “one of the most abused programs in the entire history of the state of New York.” But 2022 audits by the state’s Medicaid Inspector General reviewed $37 million in claims—and found that 99 percent were accurate. Of $46,000 in documented overpayments, $41,000 was recollected. Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for evidence that the program has been abused.

It can already be difficult to get care through CDPAP. For Laura Mauldin, a graduate student when she applied in 2010, it took nine months—and an initial rejection—to get her partner, who had been sick with cancer for four years, approved for support.

“There was not an option to check for CDPAP” in home care applications at the time, said Mauldin. The request for around-the-clock care was eventually approved—allowing Mauldin to leave her apartment, with her partner in a worker’s care—but so late that Mauldin’s partner was only able to use it for three months before passing away.

Critics like Hochul see the potential for corruption in the fact that disabled people can hire family members—something Kendra Scalia first did by hiring her sister when she was in college.

“I felt really vulnerable to hiring strangers or welcoming strangers into my dorm room where there’s no oversight,” Scalia said. Her brother now has worked as her assistant for the past decade.

Some care workers feel they’ve been left in limbo on how Hochul’s changes will impact them. For the past 25 years, Tara Murphy has worked as a home care provider through CDPAP, after working as a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home. As a home carer, Murphy felt she’d be able to serve people better.

“I saw all the horrendous things and lack of care and neglect that were happening,” said Murphy, who is based in Troy, New York. “I knew I couldn’t change it, and I didn’t want to be part of the medical mafia.”

Now, Murphy is panicked over the impending changes to the program that helps employ her. She doesn’t know whether she’d be hired under the new monopoly, or whether her pay will be cut. “I’m sitting here every day,” Murphy said, “like, ‘Am I going to have a place to live? Am I going to be able to eat?’ 

1199SEIU, New York’s main health care workers’ union, has been critical of for-profits’ growing role in the program. Helen Schaub, the union’s interim political director, said that administrative costs have ballooned since a 2012 jump in the number of for-profit intermediaries. One of New York’s largest home care intermediaries, Schaub points out, is being run by embattled insurance giant Anthem.

Some users of the program who spoke with Mother Jones also expressed concerns that pay cuts could force their aides to look elsewhere for work, leaving both patients and workers in a difficult position. 

Lacey Tompkins, who works in advertising in New York City, says that CDPAP makes it possible for her to maintain a partly remote job as a disabled worker, with help getting to work despite hours that can change from week to week. “I can make my decisions and not [have] a standard set of hours,” Tompkins said.

Advocates with differing views agree on one thing: Hochul’s six-month timeline to transform the program is unreasonable and impractical. “Any serious company who is bidding on the work also believes that, because it’s a very daunting task,” said Schaub, of SEIU. “Privately, people in the [Hochul] administration have said, ‘We know that it can’t happen on that scale.’”

Update, August 13: This article has been updated to detail the current and proposed roles of the New York State Comptroller in reviewing the state’s CDPAP program.

When Veronica Fraley posted on X last week that she couldn’t afford her rent, the American discus star got help from a notable source. “I gotchu,” replied Flavor Flav, a founding member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy. “DM me and I’ll send payment TODAY so you don’t have to worry bout it TOMORROW,,, and imma be rooting for ya tomorrow LETZ GO,!!!”

Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Flavor Flav signed a five-year sponsorship deal with the US women’s and men’s water polo teams. And when it came to supporting Fraley as she competed for her country, he was joined by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Meanwhile, other athletes have turned to fundraising platforms like GoFundMe to make it to Paris and beyond. 

Many viewers tune in to the Olympics for these wholesome stories—an individual fighting through adversity to pull themself up onto the medal podium. But should we consider why these arduous journeys are needed in the first place? 

There are some athlete groups that have been questioning this idea. Global Athlete, which describes itself as “an international athlete-led movement,” is among them. According to the organization’s website, its members are “collectively addressing the imbalance of power between athletes and administrators” by pushing for better pay and working conditions, as well as rights like freedom of expression. 

Rob Koehler, the director general at Global Athlete, said in an interview that most of the problems the group is confronting come from the “outdated model” used by the International Olympic Committee, the non-governmental sports organization in charge of organizing the Summer, Winter, and Youth Olympic Games. 

“The majority of athletes can barely pay rent. The facade of when you become an Olympian, you’re set for life is so far from the truth,” he said. “They’ve invested 15, sometimes 20 years of their lives, putting school aside, putting jobs aside, and committing to the goal of going to the Olympics. And when they’ve finished, they sit in their bed lying awake at night, wondering, ‘What am I going to do next?’ There’s no career path for them afterward. That’s the reality.”

“It’s time to put the most important stakeholder first, which are the athletes, and start distributing to everyone.”

When asked about athlete pay, the IOC’s media relations team pointed to a news release in which its executive board “expressed its full support for fair financial reward for athletes.” 

According to public financial information posted on the IOC’s website, the committee—a privately funded non-profit association—earned $7.6 billion from 2017 to 2021. The IOC says that 90 percent of that revenue goes toward the Olympic Games, athlete development, and the Olympic Movement, which encompasses the IOC, the International Sports Federations, and the National Olympic Committees.

The same IOC release explains that the purpose of the national committees is “to develop the athletes, give them the best possible training and competition conditions, and support them in education and their daily life with regard to their profession.” Each of the 206 national committees choose the athletes to represent their country through a qualification process. 

The document referred to a statement from IOC Athletes’ Commission Chair Emma Terho: “Rewarding athletes financially for their achievements at the Games is commonplace for many National Olympic Committees and governments, while International Federations help to develop their sport worldwide and close the development gap between the haves and the have-nots. Each role is important for the athletes, and for sport overall, because without this work, the disparities between athletes around the world would be much wider than they are today.”

But Global Athlete sees the situation differently. “They use rhetoric to say that the National Olympic Committees pay for gold medals. Not every country does, but that’s not the point here,” Koehler said. “Every single athlete attending the Games should be able to earn from the revenues.” 

Koehler highlighted a study his group published in April 2020 in partnership with Ryerson University and the Ted Rogers School of Management that found that athletes only receive 4.1 percent of the Olympic Movement’s revenues via scholarships, grants, and achievement awards. In addition, just 0.5 percent of IOC funds go directly toward athletes, according to the study. Athletes are not allowed to negotiate these numbers. 

Meanwhile, the five largest professional sports leagues in the world—the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and English Premier League—distribute between 40 and 60 percent of their revenue to athletes. 

In the lead-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the IOC updated the Olympic Charter’s Rule 40, which, according to the Global Athlete study, had previously prohibited competitors from profiting from their association with the Olympic Games through unapproved, non-Olympic corporate sponsors. But the April 2020 study suggested that the relaxation of the international by-law had been largely ineffective, since less than 10 national committees had actually implemented the change. 

The IOC did not respond to a question about the study’s findings.

Koehler emphasized that athlete pay is not the only issue. He cited incidents at the Tokyo Games, specifically, where athletes were not permitted to breastfeed their babies while competing due to rules restricting bringing family and friends during the Covid pandemic. 

“We worked with leading breastfeeding organizations, the athletes spoke up, and they were forced to change the rules,” Koehler recounted. 

He also recalled the organization’s work with other athlete organizing groups to pressure the IOC to weaken Rule 50, which had stated, “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

Groups like Global Athlete and the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency that sets international labor standards, stress that collective bargaining is essential to improve athlete rights. 

While progress has been made, Koehler says that the IOC has blocked various pathways for athletes to engage in this bargaining. “The IOC Athletes Commission is required to sign the Olympic oath, which is a condition where you have to support all decisions of the IOC. You’ve lost your independence right away,” he stated. Because of this, athletes “sign away all their rights” when they attend the Games. 

Koehler noted that the athlete agreement required for Paris competitors mandates that they waive rights like the ability to “bring any claim, arbitration or litigation, or seek any other form of relief, including request for provisional measures, in any…court or tribunal [other than the Court of Arbitration of Sport], unless otherwise agreed in writing by the IOC.” 

Koehler argues that the IOC would actually benefit from negotiations with athletes, saying that in most cases, sports leagues with organized work forces have thrived due to increased buy-in from athletes. “If you look at the NCAA and what happened there, I think that’s the future for the IOC,” he said. 

In May 2024, the NCAA, its five major Division I conferences, and legal representatives for athletes arranged to settle three lawsuits about the ways schools compensate their athletes. The deal determines how former athletes will share the $2.78 billion in damages that the NCAA will pay and builds a new system for revenue sharing.  

That’s the future Koehler wants for the Olympics. “It’s time to put the most important stakeholder first, which are the athletes, and start distributing to everyone,” he said.

As this year’s temperatures continue to break records, farmworkers who toil in the heat remain one of the groups most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses. But another element of their jobs is making extreme heat even more dangerous: pesticide drift.

When it is hotter outside, pesticides tend to evaporate faster, explains Nicole Deziel, an environmental health scientist at the Yale School of Public Health. This, in turn, impacts how much of the pesticide actually reaches the crop. Any that doesn’t usually sticks around in the air—and can travel miles offsite. Pesticide drift means that the toxic chemicals spread further than ever intended, affecting farmworkers and adjacent communities.

Once airborne, those pesticides can linger in surrounding air for as long as five days, according to reports authored by the Pesticide Action Network, an advocacy coalition that opposes their pervasive use in industrial agriculture. Pesticide drift is a common problem that affects nearly every farming community in the US—whether crops are sprayed by hand, through fumigation, or via planes.

Now, the federal government is finally trying to tackle the issue. In mid-July, the Environmental Protection Agency announced rules that would incorporate pesticide drift into its guidelines for approving new products and active ingredients: it plans to assess drift-related health risks “earlier in the agency’s review process,” the EPA said in a press release. While the release didn’t directly mention climate change or extreme heat, the agency did tell Mother Jones that environmental justice was a key factor in the guideline change.

“With this change, the agency is furthering protections to bystanders wherever pesticide spray drift may occur, and thereby strengthening protections associated with the use of pesticide products,” said EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll.

The EPA’s new rules are intended to protect people from the effects of drift. But Jeannie Economos, a pesticide health and safety officer for the Farmworker Association of Florida, is skeptical that they will be effective, particularly because the guidelines only outline drift as a concern for mostly new products. The only existing products to get reviewed will be pesticides that manufacturers are trying to apply for a purpose not previously approved. (The EPA does periodically review pesticides that it has already approved, and on Tuesday banned one, Dacthal, because of the reproductive health risks it posed to pregnant people.)

The tendency of pesticides to evaporate under heat is so well documented that multiple agricultural agencies and university departments have put out specific guidelines asking farmers and growers to be mindful of the temperature in order to reduce potential drift. A study published last year in the journal Nature found that hotter and more humid conditions brought about specifically by climate change made pesticides evaporate more quickly.

But one important part of understanding pesticide drift on a hotter planet is that we don’t know exactly how every pesticide will react to extreme heat—information that could be vital to understanding how long they’ll stick around post-application, and how far they’ll travel, according to Emily Marquez, senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network. “Now that it’s getting hotter, there’s maybe more potential for things to change, or be less predictable,” says Marquez.

That makes farm work more dangerous in a number of ways, says Yale’s Deziel. “If it is hot, workers may be less likely to wear full, personal protective equipment—they may have more skin exposed,” she says.  

Even if workers do wear personal protective equipment, like gloves, heat can actually increase the amount of pesticides that penetrate safety gear, according to research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2019.

Deziel, who has been studying pesticides for more than a decade, points out that the health risks are not negligible: everything from nausea, skin irritation, or headaches in after short-term exposure to problems to cancer, reproductive problems, and neurological effects after long-term exposure.

Economos has been working on the issue for decades, and has worked with the EPA and other agencies to try to ensure that proposed rules or guidelines put farmworkers first. Often, she says, even after rules change, there’s more work to be done.

“We fought for 20 years and we won in 2015 to get better protections for workers [from pesticides],” she said. “So it took only 20 years to do that. But then you have the problem of compliance and enforcement.”

Another complicating factor, she says, is that a huge portion of farmworkers endangered by pesticide drift are immigrants. Most US farmworkers are foreign-born, and many take part in a seasonal immigration program, the H-2A visa, which means they are authorized to come into the country to assist growers with different aspects of the growing season, particularly harvesting, and must then return to their country of origin. In 2022, over 350,000 people came into the US through the H-2A program. 

A large, temporary, nonresident workforce means that for any exposures that happen, a large portion of people won’t be in the US long enough for longer-term or chronic illnesses from pesticide exposure to appear, according to Economos. An untold number of workers cycle in and out of the program, she says—and might never return, because people with health conditions are often not accepted in following years. If a short-term illness arises, workers are disincentivized from complaining, since their employer controls access to their immigration status and housing.

The EPA did not respond in time to questions about farmworkers’ employment or immigration conditions being used to suppress reports of pesticide exposure.

A 2024 Univision investigation found that after a worker in North Carolina, José Soria, was exposed to an herbicide based on the toxic compound paraquat, in 2020, his employer discouraged him from seeking medical care for painful blisters that developed on the left side of his body. He eventually required surgery to reconstruct the skin that was exposed. 

In Economos’ eyes, simply regulating pesticides is too small a step given the scale of harm they cause—instead, she says, we should be thinking about ways of farming that reduce or eliminate pesticide use.

“If they really wanted to protect farmworkers, then they wouldn’t be approving these horrible formulations,” she says.

On Monday night, after the triumphant entrance of former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Teamsters Union general president Sean O’Brien addressed the Republican National Convention.

“I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did,” O’Brien said. “Today, the Teamsters are here to say: ‘We are not beholden to anyone or any party.’”

As president of the 1.3 million member union, O’Brien has proved to be willing to work with Republicans even as the rest of the labor movement has rallied around Democrats. While the AFL-CIO, NEA, and UAW endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, O’Brien met privately with Trump and donated $45,000 to the Republican National Committee’s convention fund. (According to the Washington Post, it was the Teamsters’ first major donation to the GOP in years, though they also donated $135,000 to the Democratic National Convention last December.) O’Brien’s appearance at the RNC further signaled his willingness to break from recent Teamsters history—the union supported Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020.

But, on an economy-themed night at the convention, O’Brien did not endorse Trump and it’s unlikely his union ever will. O’Brien did praise Trump’s “backbone” for inviting him, over the objections of anti-labor Republicans. And, in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life, O’Brien said, “He has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”

The Teamsters president, who has described himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” faced criticism from within his union over his budding relationship with Trump. As Mother Jones recently reported:

O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

On Monday night, O’Brien acknowledged that the Teamsters and the GOP seldom agree on issues, but said that a “growing group” is willing to consider the union’s perspective. He named both Missouri senator Josh Hawley and vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance. Hawley and Vance have both appeared at picket lines despite a history of opposing pro-union policies. They both spoke out against the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen collective bargaining rights.

Not all of O’Brien’s points landed well with the convention’s audience. His urge for both parties to put “American workers first” elicited cheers, but the crowd’s enthusiasm waned as he described the need for legal protections for unionizing workers and labor law reform. “The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations, and this is real corruption,” O’Brien said.

Trump, in particular, has proven to be weak on pro-union policies. As Mother Jones previously reported his administration dealt a series of blows to organized labor:

[Trump] reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law and investigates unfair labor practices. Led by a Trump appointee, the NLRB made what the Economic Policy Institute described as an “unprecedented” number of decisions “overturning existing worker protections.” The rulings constrained employees’ ability to form unions, organize at the workplace, and bargain with management. 

Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have supported a series of anti-labor rulings. In 2018, the court rejected a legal precedent that allowed public-sector unions to collect mandatory fees from nonmembers to support the cost of collective bargaining—a crucial source of revenue. Earlier this year, the Court sided with Starbucks in a case involving workers fired while they tried to form a union. The decision overturned an NLRB order to reinstate the workers.

It’s unclear if O’Brien will be given a chance to speak when the Democrats meet next month in Chicago. On Monday afternoon, O’Brien told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that he had not received a reply to his request to speak at the Democratic National Convention. “Crickets,” he said to Cavuto.

Later that day, Reuters reported that the Teamsters’ leadership is considering endorsing no one in the 2024 presidential race, because of “deep internal divisions” within the union. Such a decision would be a rebuke to Biden, who has campaigned on his pro-labor record. A Teamsters spokesperson told Reuters that no final decision has been made.

“At the end of the day,” O’Brien told the crowd gathered in Milwaukee, “the Teamsters are not interested if you have a D, R, or an I next to your name. We want to know one thing: what are you doing to help American workers?”

On Monday night, after the triumphant entrance of former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Teamsters Union general president Sean O’Brien addressed the Republican National Convention.

“I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did,” O’Brien said. “Today, the Teamsters are here to say: ‘We are not beholden to anyone or any party.’”

As president of the 1.3 million member union, O’Brien has proved to be willing to work with Republicans even as the rest of the labor movement has rallied around Democrats. While the AFL-CIO, NEA, and UAW endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, O’Brien met privately with Trump and donated $45,000 to the Republican National Committee’s convention fund. (According to the Washington Post, it was the Teamsters’ first major donation to the GOP in years, though they also donated $135,000 to the Democratic National Convention last December.) O’Brien’s appearance at the RNC further signaled his willingness to break from recent Teamsters history—the union supported Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020.

But, on an economy-themed night at the convention, O’Brien did not endorse Trump and it’s unlikely his union ever will. O’Brien did praise Trump’s “backbone” for inviting him, over the objections of anti-labor Republicans. And, in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life, O’Brien said, “He has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”

The Teamsters president, who has described himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” faced criticism from within his union over his budding relationship with Trump. As Mother Jones recently reported:

O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

On Monday night, O’Brien acknowledged that the Teamsters and the GOP seldom agree on issues, but said that a “growing group” is willing to consider the union’s perspective. He named both Missouri senator Josh Hawley and vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance. Hawley and Vance have both appeared at picket lines despite a history of opposing pro-union policies. They both spoke out against the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen collective bargaining rights.

Not all of O’Brien’s points landed well with the convention’s audience. His urge for both parties to put “American workers first” elicited cheers, but the crowd’s enthusiasm waned as he described the need for legal protections for unionizing workers and labor law reform. “The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations, and this is real corruption,” O’Brien said.

Trump, in particular, has proven to be weak on pro-union policies. As Mother Jones previously reported his administration dealt a series of blows to organized labor:

[Trump] reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law and investigates unfair labor practices. Led by a Trump appointee, the NLRB made what the Economic Policy Institute described as an “unprecedented” number of decisions “overturning existing worker protections.” The rulings constrained employees’ ability to form unions, organize at the workplace, and bargain with management. 

Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have supported a series of anti-labor rulings. In 2018, the court rejected a legal precedent that allowed public-sector unions to collect mandatory fees from nonmembers to support the cost of collective bargaining—a crucial source of revenue. Earlier this year, the Court sided with Starbucks in a case involving workers fired while they tried to form a union. The decision overturned an NLRB order to reinstate the workers.

It’s unclear if O’Brien will be given a chance to speak when the Democrats meet next month in Chicago. On Monday afternoon, O’Brien told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that he had not received a reply to his request to speak at the Democratic National Convention. “Crickets,” he said to Cavuto.

Later that day, Reuters reported that the Teamsters’ leadership is considering endorsing no one in the 2024 presidential race, because of “deep internal divisions” within the union. Such a decision would be a rebuke to Biden, who has campaigned on his pro-labor record. A Teamsters spokesperson told Reuters that no final decision has been made.

“At the end of the day,” O’Brien told the crowd gathered in Milwaukee, “the Teamsters are not interested if you have a D, R, or an I next to your name. We want to know one thing: what are you doing to help American workers?”

This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here.

As president, Donald Trump’s tax policy heavily favored corporations and the wealthy. Trump’s signature tax legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, overwhelmingly benefited those groups. 

But as a presidential candidate, Trump campaigns as a populist. In his 2024 campaign, he’s touting a proposal to end federal taxation on tips. He made the announcement last month in Nevada, a key battleground state with a large service industry that relies on tips. 

“For those hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy, because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips,” Trump said. “We’re going to do that right away first thing in office because it’s been a point of contention for years and years and years, and you do a great job of service.” 

This week, Trump’s proposal to end taxes on tips was one of 20 “promises” included in the official 2024 Republican Party platform: “LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!”

Trump’s plan to end taxes on tips may help him politically with service industry workers. His campaign is urging people to write “Vote for Trump for NO TAX ON TIPS!” on their restaurant receipts.

Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to implement Trump’s plan and end federal taxation of tips. Notably, the bill would only exempt tips from income taxes, and not payroll taxes, which represents the majority of federal taxes owed by low-income workers. 

Only the best-paid workers would benefit, but why should a waiter who earns $60,000 a year pay less taxes than someone making the same amount in a grocery store?

But the proposal, if it were ever implemented, could have a detrimental effect on most tipped workers. The primary beneficiaries would be people who own and operate hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that employ tipped workers—in other words, people like Trump. 

First, many people who rely on tips earn so little money that they already pay no federal income taxes. For example, half of all servers earn $32,000 or less. A server with a family who earns $32,000 does not owe any federal income tax and, therefore, would not benefit at all from Trump’s proposal. 

The bigger issue is that the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour. The tipped minimum wage has not increased since 1991. Combined with tips, these workers are supposed to earn a minimum of $7.25 an hour. That is not close to a living wage in the United States in 2024. 

As a result, seven states (Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) have eliminated the tipped minimum wage and require all employers to pay their employees the same minimum wage regardless of whether they receive tips. The Biden Administration requires “federal contractors to pay tipped workers the same minimum wages as others.” Major cities like New York and Chicago have recently implemented similar policies. Numerous other cities and states are considering following suit. 

The hotel and restaurant industry has been desperate to halt the momentum of state initiatives to raise the minimum wage. The National Restaurant Association, which represents restaurant owners, has endorsed Trump’s proposal. 

Historically, “many restaurants and rail operators embraced tipping because it allowed them to ‘hire’ newly freed slaves without having to pay them.”

Eliminating taxation on tips could sap support from efforts both to eliminate the tipped minimum wage and raise the minimum wage overall. While most service industry workers would receive little or no benefit from eliminating income taxes on tips, many would benefit from increasing their minimum wage to $15 an hour or higher. The Tax Policy Center notes that this tradeoff would be particularly brutal for “‘back of the house’ staff such as dishwashers, who often receive only a small share of tips, enough to qualify as tipped workers but not enough to live on, or to pay taxes.”

That’s why the Restaurant Workers United, a labor union that represents many of the industry’s workers, opposes Trump’s plan. “The call to end taxes on tips is just a misguided way of trying to fix a problem of uplifting the lower class,” Elyanna Calle, a bartender and RWU organizer in Austin, said. Saru Jayaraman, president of the labor advocacy group One Fair Wage, calls Trump’s proposal “not just the wrong solution, but a fake solution.”

There are some tipped employees—including the 10 percent of servers that earn $60,000 or more—who would significantly benefit from ending income taxes on tips. But why should these higher-paid tipped workers get a special tax benefit while those making the same income in industries without tips are excluded? Why should a waiter who earns $60,000 a year pay less taxes than someone making the same amount in a warehouse or a grocery store? 

There is no clear answer to these questions, other than the proposal to end taxes on tips may have political benefits for Trump.

Ending federal taxation of tips could prompt more industries to shift from paying wages to soliciting tips. In addition to potential tax benefits for employees, it would transfer some of the responsibility for paying workers from the business to its customers. For example, the Wall Street Journal notes that “[a]n auto-body shop could restrain its prices and wages and strongly encourage tipping as a way to get untaxed income to workers.”

If there is a significant shift to tipping over wages, it would also increase the cost of the proposal. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that incentivizing more tipping by ending federal taxation could cost the federal government up to $500 billion over 10 years.

According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “tipping in the United States is rooted in a racist system which was designed to keep African Americans in an economically and socially subordinate position following the end of slavery.”

Prior to the Civil War, notes a conference fact sheet, “tipping was frowned upon: it was viewed by many as an aristocratic, European practice that was incompatible with American democracy.” But after the elimination of slavery, “many restaurants and rail operators embraced tipping because it allowed them to ‘hire’ newly freed slaves without having to pay them—they would be forced to work for tips alone.” The practice was designed “to keep African Americans in an economically and socially subordinate position.” 

Even today, it continues, “40 percent of people who work for tips are people of color.” Further, studies show that “customers discriminate against African-American servers, consistently tipping them less than White servers regardless of the quality of service.”

The movement to end the tipped minimum wage to create a single fair wage for all workers is about recognizing the dignity and worth of all workers. Trump’s proposal would push the United States in the opposite direction, making millions of Americans even more dependent on wealthy patrons. 

This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here.

As president, Donald Trump’s tax policy heavily favored corporations and the wealthy. Trump’s signature tax legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, overwhelmingly benefited those groups. 

But as a presidential candidate, Trump campaigns as a populist. In his 2024 campaign, he’s touting a proposal to end federal taxation on tips. He made the announcement last month in Nevada, a key battleground state with a large service industry that relies on tips. 

“For those hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy, because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips,” Trump said. “We’re going to do that right away first thing in office because it’s been a point of contention for years and years and years, and you do a great job of service.” 

This week, Trump’s proposal to end taxes on tips was one of 20 “promises” included in the official 2024 Republican Party platform: “LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!”

Trump’s plan to end taxes on tips may help him politically with service industry workers. His campaign is urging people to write “Vote for Trump for NO TAX ON TIPS!” on their restaurant receipts.

Republicans in Congress have already introduced legislation to implement Trump’s plan and end federal taxation of tips. Notably, the bill would only exempt tips from income taxes, and not payroll taxes, which represents the majority of federal taxes owed by low-income workers. 

Only the best-paid workers would benefit, but why should a waiter who earns $60,000 a year pay less taxes than someone making the same amount in a grocery store?

But the proposal, if it were ever implemented, could have a detrimental effect on most tipped workers. The primary beneficiaries would be people who own and operate hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that employ tipped workers—in other words, people like Trump. 

First, many people who rely on tips earn so little money that they already pay no federal income taxes. For example, half of all servers earn $32,000 or less. A server with a family who earns $32,000 does not owe any federal income tax and, therefore, would not benefit at all from Trump’s proposal. 

The bigger issue is that the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour. The tipped minimum wage has not increased since 1991. Combined with tips, these workers are supposed to earn a minimum of $7.25 an hour. That is not close to a living wage in the United States in 2024. 

As a result, seven states (Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) have eliminated the tipped minimum wage and require all employers to pay their employees the same minimum wage regardless of whether they receive tips. The Biden Administration requires “federal contractors to pay tipped workers the same minimum wages as others.” Major cities like New York and Chicago have recently implemented similar policies. Numerous other cities and states are considering following suit. 

The hotel and restaurant industry has been desperate to halt the momentum of state initiatives to raise the minimum wage. The National Restaurant Association, which represents restaurant owners, has endorsed Trump’s proposal. 

Historically, “many restaurants and rail operators embraced tipping because it allowed them to ‘hire’ newly freed slaves without having to pay them.”

Eliminating taxation on tips could sap support from efforts both to eliminate the tipped minimum wage and raise the minimum wage overall. While most service industry workers would receive little or no benefit from eliminating income taxes on tips, many would benefit from increasing their minimum wage to $15 an hour or higher. The Tax Policy Center notes that this tradeoff would be particularly brutal for “‘back of the house’ staff such as dishwashers, who often receive only a small share of tips, enough to qualify as tipped workers but not enough to live on, or to pay taxes.”

That’s why the Restaurant Workers United, a labor union that represents many of the industry’s workers, opposes Trump’s plan. “The call to end taxes on tips is just a misguided way of trying to fix a problem of uplifting the lower class,” Elyanna Calle, a bartender and RWU organizer in Austin, said. Saru Jayaraman, president of the labor advocacy group One Fair Wage, calls Trump’s proposal “not just the wrong solution, but a fake solution.”

There are some tipped employees—including the 10 percent of servers that earn $60,000 or more—who would significantly benefit from ending income taxes on tips. But why should these higher-paid tipped workers get a special tax benefit while those making the same income in industries without tips are excluded? Why should a waiter who earns $60,000 a year pay less taxes than someone making the same amount in a warehouse or a grocery store? 

There is no clear answer to these questions, other than the proposal to end taxes on tips may have political benefits for Trump.

Ending federal taxation of tips could prompt more industries to shift from paying wages to soliciting tips. In addition to potential tax benefits for employees, it would transfer some of the responsibility for paying workers from the business to its customers. For example, the Wall Street Journal notes that “[a]n auto-body shop could restrain its prices and wages and strongly encourage tipping as a way to get untaxed income to workers.”

If there is a significant shift to tipping over wages, it would also increase the cost of the proposal. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that incentivizing more tipping by ending federal taxation could cost the federal government up to $500 billion over 10 years.

According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, “tipping in the United States is rooted in a racist system which was designed to keep African Americans in an economically and socially subordinate position following the end of slavery.”

Prior to the Civil War, notes a conference fact sheet, “tipping was frowned upon: it was viewed by many as an aristocratic, European practice that was incompatible with American democracy.” But after the elimination of slavery, “many restaurants and rail operators embraced tipping because it allowed them to ‘hire’ newly freed slaves without having to pay them—they would be forced to work for tips alone.” The practice was designed “to keep African Americans in an economically and socially subordinate position.” 

Even today, it continues, “40 percent of people who work for tips are people of color.” Further, studies show that “customers discriminate against African-American servers, consistently tipping them less than White servers regardless of the quality of service.”

The movement to end the tipped minimum wage to create a single fair wage for all workers is about recognizing the dignity and worth of all workers. Trump’s proposal would push the United States in the opposite direction, making millions of Americans even more dependent on wealthy patrons. 

Teamsters union general president Sean O’Brien is set to speak at the Republican National Convention next week—the culmination of several months of courting former president Donald Trump despite his anti-labor record. 

With 1.3 million members, the Teamsters are one of largest and most powerful unions in the United States—and its leaders have not yet issued an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race. Representatives have emphasized that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC does not amount to one and that O’Brien also requested to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August. Spokesperson Kara Deniz told Mother Jones that the DNC has not responded to their request. 

Still, O’Brien’s planned visit to the RNC sets the Teamsters apart from other influential labor unions, who have largely rallied behind President Joe Biden’s re-election bid. Biden, who claimed the title of “the most pro-union president in American history,” has already been endorsed by several other major unions, including the AFL-CIO, NEA, and UAW.

O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

Experts say it’s unlikely that the Teamsters’ endorsement—which requires a poll of the general executive board—will go to Trump. Nevertheless, O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

The Trump administration dealt a series of blows to organized labor—the effects of which are still felt today. Yet an NBC poll conducted in January found that, while Biden is still faring better than Trump in union households, his lead is slimmer than it was in 2020. Some pundits say this slip is an indication that Biden is out of touch with the working class. After Biden met with AFL-CIO leaders on Wednesday, FOX Business host Larry Kudlow predicted that cost-of-living increases under Biden will drive rank-and-file members to vote for Trump. “Biden will win the union leaders, but Trump is going to take most of the rank-and-file who go to work every day, play by the rules, work with their hands and proudly wear their hard hats,” he said. “You can bet on that.” 

In January, O’Brien met privately with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the two posed for a photo with matching thumbs up. Later that month, the former president sat down with Teamsters leadership and rank-and-file members as part of a series of “presidential roundtables” at the union’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Trump teased the possibility of a Teamsters endorsement, despite the union, under O’Brien’s predecessor, endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. 

“Stranger things have happened,” Trump said. 

Labor unions are no longer the “behemoth” political forces they were in the 20th century, said David Macdonald, a political science professor at University of Florida. But their endorsement in the presidential race still carries weight and could influence undecided members in key swing states. 

The Teamsters have a history of endorsing Republicans even as the labor movement embraced Democrats. The Teamsters were the only major union to back Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and George H.W. Bush in 1988. 

Though Trump touts his support for the American working class, his record is staunchly anti-union. He reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law and investigates unfair labor practices. Led by a Trump appointee, the NLRB made what the Economic Policy Institute described as an “unprecedented” number of decisions “overturning existing worker protections.” The rulings constrained employees’ ability to form unions, organize at the workplace, and bargain with management.  

Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have supported a series of anti-labor rulings. In 2018, the court rejected a legal precedent that allowed public-sector unions to collect mandatory fees from nonmembers to support the cost of collective bargaining—a crucial source of revenue. Earlier this year, the Court sided with Starbucks in a case involving workers fired while they tried to form a union. The decision overturned an NLRB order to reinstate the workers.   

Biden’s progressive appointees to the NLRB included Jennifer Abruzzo, who has been hailed as a champion of worker’s rights. The board has worked to undo decisions made under Trump and, according to an analysis from the think tank Center for American Progress, reinstated more workers in one year than during the entire Trump administration. Additionally, Biden appeared at a UAW picket line in Michigan last year and signaled support for workers unionizing at Amazon in 2022. 

“Biden [has been] arguing that unions are an important part of a healthy democracy and a healthy economy, and urging workers to unionize,” said Joseph McCartin, a professor of labor history at Georgetown. “We haven’t seen that kind of leadership from the White House, arguably, since the New Deal era.” 

Trump, meanwhile, has tried to drive a wedge between union leadership and rank-and-file members over Biden. Last October, while the UAW was on strike, Trump addressed a recorded message to auto workers about Biden’s push for electric vehicles, arguing that union leaders who support Biden do not have workers’ best interests in mind. “And it doesn’t matter how bad they are, they’ll endorse a Democrat,” he said, “even though the Democrat’s selling you down the tubes.” 

O’Brien, weighing the chances of a second Trump presidency, may be making a calculated decision to develop a relationship with Trump. Or he could simply be responding to the significant number of Teamsters members who are Republicans. In a press release about Trump’s visit to Teamster headquarters, O’Brien noted that the union’s members “represent every political background.” Palmer, the union’s vice president, told Mother Jones that straw polls of members showed that around 46 percent supported Biden while around 37 percent supported Trump.

Straw polls of Teamsters members showed that around 46 percent supported Biden while around 37 percent supported Trump.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at University of California, Santa Barbara, said that O’Brien may be hoping to justify an eventual Biden endorsement to his Republican members. Some members found this idea distasteful. “They should not be catering to these Confederates within our union,” said Chris Silvera, secretary-treasurer of a Teamsters unit in Long Island City, New York. 

Richard Hooker, secretary-treasurer of a unit in Philadelphia, told Mother Jones that leadership should instead focus on “aggressively educating” members on how another Trump administration could harm the labor movement. He hopes O’Brien will have a “mic drop” moment at the RNC. If O’Brien doesn’t condemn Trump, Hooker says, the Teamsters need to have “some tough conversations” about how to move forward.