Please note this event is happening from 4PM – 6PM CEST, or 16:00 – 18:00 in Sweden.
To prevent a downward spiral of vast disparities in economic and political power in the United States of America, Professor Benjamin Sachs together with Professor Sharon Block have written a report with the aim to offer an intervention that promises to contribute to this effort. The idea is rewriting American labor law in a manner that is explicitly designed to enable workers to build collective economic and political power: “The Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Economy and Democracy” (the report).
In order for American labor law to succeed in this mission, it must enable workers to build collective organizations that can countervail corporate power wherever that power impacts workers’ lives. Among others, the report recommends adopting a system of sectoral bargaining to complement worksite level negotiations, implementing a menu of representational choices – including works councils – at the firm level, and strengthening workers’ ability to engage in collective action including through digital picket lines.
Lately conservatives in the U.S. – including the American Compass think tank and politicians like J.D. Vance – have begun advocating for some of the same reforms called for in the report: sectoral bargaining, works councils, and workers on corporate boards. Professor Sachs will use his talk to outline the reforms called for by Clean Slate and those called for by this strand of conservativism. He will compare the proposals in order to highlight where the two groups are aligned and where they diverge (on the level of policy design, motivation for reform, and overall vision for the U.S. economy), and offer some ideas about what we can learn from this unexpected political development.
ABOUT BEN SACHS
Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry and faculty co-director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School and served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
