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10 Wins Against Inequality to Celebrate in 2024
Champions in the fight against inequality face formidable challenges in 2025. But by working together at all levels—from the shop floor to state houses to the halls of Congress—we can still find ways to build power.
Dec 31, 2024
In dark times like these, shining a light on successful efforts to reverse our country’s extreme inequality is more important than ever. As we looked back on 2024, we actually found plenty to celebrate. Here are 10 inspiring wins that deserve more attention.
1. Labor Breakthrough in the South
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Whatever happens on the national political stage over the next four years, local communities can still win important fights for a more just society.
Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region. “This is a David and Goliath fight,” UAW President Shawn Fain said after the Mercedes loss. “Sometimes Goliath wins a battle. But David wins the war.”
2. Union Momentum at Amazon
Organizing workers at Amazon—now the nation’s second largest private employer—has been a white whale of the labor movement for years. Aside from a breakthrough union election win in Staten Island, puncturing the e-commerce giant’s anti-labor strategy has been challenging. That is, until this year, when the Teamsters made sizable gains.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled this summer that Amazon should be considered a joint employer of the delivery drivers it subcontracts, opening up that class of workers to organize. And organize they did—according to the Teamsters, over 5,000 drivers have joined the union at nine Amazon locations. Warehouse workers have made advances as well. In California, Amazon employees in San Francisco and at the company’s air hub in San Bernardino are now demanding union recognition.
3. Grocery Mega-Merger Blocked
For the past two years, the United Food and Commercial Workers union has led a coalition of more than 100 organizations against the proposed merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. The union predicted the mega-merger would result in “lost jobs, closed stores, food deserts, and higher prices.”
By contrast, corporate executives stood to make a killing. At Albertsons alone, the proposed merger agreement would’ve delivered as much as $146 million to the firm’s top 10 officials.
On December 10, one federal court judge and another in Washington state sided with the Federal Trade Commission and issued temporary injunctions against the deal. The following day, Albertsons threw in the towel on what would’ve been the biggest grocery store merger in U.S. history. “This is the first time the FTC has ever sought to block a merger not just because it’s gonna be bad for consumers, but also for workers,” FTC chair Lina Khan said shortly after the decision.
4. Ballot Wins on Taxes, Wages, Paid Leave
Despite the red wave on November 5, voters in several states passed ballot initiatives to adopt inequality-fighting policies that most Republican politicians oppose.
In the red states of Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska, voters approved guaranteed paid leave, while Missouri and Alaska also passed state minimum wage hikes.
Washington state voters rejected a hedge fund-financed ballot proposal to repeal the state’s path-breaking capital gains tax on the rich. They also beat back an effort to gut a state-operated long-term care insurance program. In Illinois, voters adopted a nonbinding measure expressing support for an extra 3% tax on income of over $1 million.
5. TurboTax Got Turbo-Trounced
In 2024, for the first time ever, over 100,000 Americans filed their tax returns digitally directly to the IRS. The agency’s Direct File system went live in 12 pilot states, breaking the dominance that for-profit tax preparation companies have enjoyed for years.
“This is an important fight to ensure greedy tax prep companies don’t continue to rake in money from filers who are simply doing their civic duty,” wrote Public Citizen’s Susan Harley for Inequality.org.
Direct file also advances racial justice. Color of Change and the Groundwork Collaborative exposed how Intuit’s TurboTax and H&R Block target Black and low-income communities for costly and unnecessary services.
Unfortunately, this fight is not over. House Republicans are urging President-elect Donald Trump to kill the IRS’s free direct file service on day one of his second administration.
6. Biden’s Worker Protection Spree
President Joe Biden adopted a range of pathbreaking executive actions to protect U.S. workers—including safeguards against toiling in extreme heat, broader overtime pay coverage, and new measures protecting organizing rights. He also authorized rules to crack down on bosses who misclassify employees as independent contractors or force them to sign noncompete agreements.
The beauty of executive actions: no need for Congressional approval. The downside: The next president has the power to roll them back.
Will that happen under Trump, a self-declared but dubious champion of the working class? We shall see. In the meantime, the National Employment Law Project and several other organizations have put together a guide on how state policymakers could enact similar standards at the subfederal level.
7. Grounding Private Jets
Did you know that private jets pollute 10 to 20 times more per passenger than commercial airplanes? And the typical private jet owner, with a net worth of nearly $200 million, actually pays a far smaller share of air safety fees than commercial coach passengers, according to Institute for Policy Studies research.
In 2024, Stop Private Jet Expansion, a 100-organization coalition, won two major victories in their campaign to block the expansion of New England’s largest private jet airport, Hanscom Field outside Boston. Massachusetts state rejected the developer’s environmental impact submission, demanding supplemental information. As part of a comprehensive climate bill, the state legislature also updated the charter of Massport, the agency that will decide the future of the airport, to require them to consider carbon emissions and climate change in their decision-making.
8. Arming Millions of Davids Against Wall Street Goliaths
Elon Musk has called for “deleting” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What’s his problem with this federal agency? For Musk and his finance bro buddies, it appears the CFPB has been overly effective in helping ordinary Americans stand up to big money interests.
Recently the agency announced it’s forcing shady “credit repair” companies to return $1.8 billion in illegal junk fees to 4.3 million Americans. The agency also just issued new limits on overdraft fees that will save consumers billions more. During its nearly 14-year history, the CFPB has won nearly $21 billion in compensation for victims of fraud, racial discrimination in lending, and other financial abuse.
“Weakening the CFPB, slowing its work, or steering it to favor industry over the public interest,” explains the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, “would give bad actors a green light to do their worst and further deepen this country’s racial wealth gap.”
9. Public Money for the Public Good
For four decades, procurement rules made it difficult for local and state policymakers to ensure that federally funded projects create good jobs. With megabillions in new public investment about to flow into infrastructure and clean energy projects, a labor-community alliance known as the Local Opportunities Coalition led the charge to get rid of these anti-worker vestiges of the conservative Reagan era.
Finally, in 2024, the Biden administration got the job done. Now state and local governments can give companies a leg up in bidding competitions if they commit to creating specific numbers of jobs with minimum levels of pay and benefits. They can also require hiring preferences for local workers and disadvantaged communities, ban the use of contract funds for union-busting, and prohibit employers from misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” to skirt labor laws.
10. Communities Standing up for Quality Care
Whatever happens on the national political stage over the next four years, local communities can still win important fights for a more just society.
One particularly inspiring example from 2024: the battles to protect county-owned nursing homes in rural Wisconsin against privatization. Study after study has shown that private equity-owned facilities have lower-quality care and higher mortality rates. And yet many Republican lawmakers are backing for-profit corporations’ efforts to take over this critical service.
As veteran community organizer George Goehl has reported, Wisconsin seniors put up a strong fight this year. They succeeded in ousting pro-privatization members of at least three county boards and are continuing to organize to protect their healthcare from corporate greed.
Champions in the fight against inequality face formidable challenges. But by working together at all levels—from the shop floor to state houses to the halls of Congress—we can still find ways to build power and move our country towards a just economy that works for everyone.
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New Report Sheds Light on the Pitfalls of AI-Powered 'Gig Nursing'
"These apps are a symptom of broken healthcare infrastructure that is now victim to corporate takeovers. Failing to act on both fronts poses risks to our healthcare system and the workers who power it," wrote one of the researchers.
Dec 17, 2024
While gig work is fairly common in a number of sectors in the American economy, a brief released Tuesday by the progressive-leaning think tank the Roosevelt Institute details how the gig model now has its tentacles in the healthcare industry, and argues it is creating new hazards for workers and patients.
The brief, authored by Groundwork Collaborative fellow Katie Wells and King's College London lecturer Funda Ustek Spilda, sounds the alarm over "on-demand nursing firms" such as CareRev, Clipboard Health, ShiftKey, ShiftMed, and others which have gained traction by promising hospitals more control and nurses and nursing assistants more flexibility.
Practically speaking, these "new Uber-style apps use algorithmic scheduling, staffing, and management technologies—software often touted by companies as cutting-edge 'AI,' or artificial intelligence—to connect understaffed medical facilities with nearby nurses and nursing assistants looking for work," according to the brief.
The authors, whose research was largely based on interviews with 29 gig nurses, argued that these apps "encourage nurses to work for less pay," do not offer nurses clarity when it comes to scheduling and amount or type of work, are not sufficiently concerned with worker safety, and "can threaten patient well-being by placing nurses in unfamiliar clinical environments with no onboarding or facility training."
These platforms are also using the same tactics asthe ride-hailing serviceUber when it comes to lobbying state legislatures in order to shield themselves from labor regulations, according to the authors, who noted that larger hospital systems in the country have included gig nurses in their operations since 2016.
The researchers argued that while the rates on a platform like ShiftKey can be higher for nurses and nurses assistants, nursing on-demand platforms can create a race to the bottom for wages: "The nurses and nursing assistants who use these apps must pay fees to bid on shifts, and they win those bids by offering to work for lower hourly rates than their fellow workers."
When the nursing on-demand firms classify the workers as self-employed, nurses and nursing assistants are also exposed to higher risk because they are "excluded from the protections of local, state, and federal law on minimum wage, overtime pay, workers' compensation, retirement benefits, employment-based health insurance, and paid sick days."
Workers are also rated based on facility feedback and determinations made by the algorithm, and can be penalized if they cancel a shift because they are sick or have a conflict, per the report.
"In at least one case, a nursing assistant went into work at a hospital while sick with Covid-19 because she could not figure out how to cancel a shift without lowering her rating," according to the authors.
By way of background, the authors of the brief also argue that the often-invoked "nursing shortage" is actually misleading term. In fact, there is no shortage of available nurses and nursing assistants, but rather a "growing number of nurses and nursing assistants who refuse to accept chronically understaffed, underpaid, unsafe, and high-stress workplaces," according to the brief, which cites outside research.
In fact, many of the workers interviewed said they would continue working for nursing on demand services because broadly speaking they like the work. According to the brief, interviewees said "over and over again how important flexible schedules are to their lives, especially their own caregiving, be it for children, spouses, or elders"—though the authors of the study wrote that this does not mean the concerns expressed by the workers are not worth paying attention to.
The rise of gig nursing is taking place on the backdrop of increasing corporate ownership over the healthcare industry writ large, including the rise of private equity ownership of medical facilities and medical staffing agencies.
"Policymakers need to be proactive and step in to regulate these platforms and provide proper labor protections for all nurses, gig and non-gig alike," said Wells in a Tuesday statement. "But these apps are a symptom of broken healthcare infrastructure that is now victim to corporate takeovers. Failing to act on both fronts poses risks to our healthcare system and the workers who power it."
Wells also toldThe Guardian that the gig companies don't release data and the industry is unregulated, meaning the true extent to which the U.S. healthcare system is leaning on gig nurses is unknown—but she said it is clearly a growing trend.
These on-demand nursing apps can also have a negative impact on patients, according to sources the authors spoke with. One nurse recounted that "there have been times when I've been unable to access patient records or find supply closets."
"Other workers report that the lack of management and resources can result in major safety lapses for patients, such as gig nurses not being able to get updated information on patient medications or instructions about whether patients need help with feeding," the authors wrote.
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Democrats Renew Effort to End Private Equity Looting
"Union-busting, pollution, and bankruptcy aren't side effects of the private equity model: They are the model," said one campaigner backing the bill. "It's a smash-and-grab, plain and simple."
Oct 10, 2024
Less than a month away from the U.S. general election, over a dozen congressional Democrats on Thursday renewed their fight to "fundamentally reform the private equity industry" with a bill that Rep. Mark Pocan said "will finally hold these predatory firms accountable and protect workers from being plundered by corporate greed."
"It's long past time for billionaires and big corporations to stop gambling with hardworking Americans' and their communities' assets in service of corporate greed," declared Pocan (D-Wis.), who is leading the Stop Wall Street Looting Act with Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
"In Wisconsin, we've seen what happens when private equity firms like Sun Capital raid companies for their wealth and leave workers and communities to pick up the pieces," he noted. "When Sun Capital took over Shopko—a Wisconsin-based retail chain that had stood strong for more than 50 years—they drained it dry, buried it in debt, pushed it into bankruptcy, and abandoned roughly 14,000 workers."
"Private equity takeovers are legal looting that make a handful of Wall Street executives very rich while costing thousands of people their jobs, putting valuable companies out of business, and in the case of healthcare, is literally a matter of life and death."
Warren's state is also dealing with fallout from the industry. As The Boston Globereported Thursday, the legislation is "designed to rein in the growing power of private equity firms and limit the sort of leveraged buyout deals that led to the crisis at Steward Health Care, whose bankruptcy continues to roil communities in Massachusetts and seven other states."
The bill "was reintroduced in part as a response to the unfolding crisis at Steward, which before its bankruptcy was the nation's largest private for-profit hospital system," the newspaper noted. It follows the Senate's unanimous approval of a resolution to hold CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre in criminal contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with a subpoena to testify before a committee. Shortly after the vote—the first of its kind since 1971—he resigned.
"Private equity takeovers are legal looting that make a handful of Wall Street executives very rich while costing thousands of people their jobs, putting valuable companies out of business, and in the case of healthcare, is literally a matter of life and death," Warren, a former bankruptcy law professor, said Thursday. "Our bill is designed to close loopholes and end incentives for private equity pillaging—and it will make sure what happened at Steward never happens again."
As a fact sheet from the sponsors details, the bill would make private equity firms responsible for liabilities including debt, legal judgments, and pension-related obligations; limit how much money they can extract from companies; close a loophole they have used to conceal assets from bankruptcy courts; implement various protections for workers and customers; increase transparency; impose guardrails for receiving public funds; and drive real estate investment trusts out of healthcare.
"From healthcare to housing, millions of Americans are seeing private equity take over companies with the promise of improving services, only to strip them for parts and hurt both workers and working families," said Jayapal. "It's time for Congress to take action to protect Americans from the dangers of private equity and corporate greed, and that's exactly what our Stop Wall Street Looting Act will do."
The legislation is backed by Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), along with Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The bill is also endorsed by dozens of groups including the American Federation of Teachers, Americans for Financial Reform, Economic Policy Institute, Indivisible, National Employment Law Project, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, Service Employees International Union, Student Borrower Protection Center, Take on Wall Street, United for Respect, and Working Families Party.
"Union-busting, pollution, and bankruptcy aren't side effects of the private equity model: They are the model," said Porter McConnell of Take on Wall Street. "It's a smash-and-grab, plain and simple. That's why we are so pleased to see comprehensive legislation like the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress today. We created the loopholes in the law that allowed the private equity industry to thrive, and we can end them."
United for Respect co-executive directors Bianca Agustin and Terrysa Guerra stressed that "Wall Street private equity firms have proven themselves to be a parasite on workers, our economy, and American retailers by gutting companies for profit and driving mass layoffs. Holding billionaire profiteers accountable for the damage they do to our working families and communities is imperative to addressing growing economic inequality."
"The Stop Wall Street Looting Act will help close loopholes in our laws that for too long have allowed private equity to pillage companies and amass huge profits while workers lose their jobs and are left with nothing," they added. "United for Respect is proud to support this bill—and we need all legislators to join us in protecting workers and putting Wall Street on the hook for the havoc they reap."
While the bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the currently divided Congress, it's a clear statement from the sponsors where they stand, as early voting gets underway to determine the future of the Senate and House of Representatives as well as the next occupant of the White House—Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris or former Republican President Donald Trump.
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