The federal government must have funds from the stimulus bill (known as the Recovery Act, or by its acronym ARRA) allotted by March 19, 2009. That's 30 days after it was signed into law, and less than two weeks from......

Hilda Solis was confirmed as Secretary of Labor this week. After a bumpy confirmation process in which her nomination was held up by questions about her role as a lobbyist for the Free Choice Act while also serving in Congress, she was approved overwhelmingly by the Senate.Unions are happy with Soli...

A few minutes ago Harry Reid announced that there will be a final confirmation vote at 4:30 EST today.  That means that Republican leader Mitch McConnell—husband of Elaine Chao, George W. Bush's secretary of labor, whose appointment was never subject to a cloture vote—determined it ...

State unemployment insurance funds have been going broke left and right.  There are disputes between some states and the Obama administration about money going to state UI funds, and the transfer of the funds will require strong oversight to make sure states use the funds as intended.   Fa...

OK, I couldn’t resist that one.  But the real question is…does anyone in Washington bother to pay their taxes? Having just filed mine, and seeing just how much I paid, this all sets me back on my heels a bit. Apparently even the guy picked to head the Treasury Dept. (including the IRS) ...

With the number of mass layoffs announced by U.S. companies over the past two weeks approaching 100,000, you might wonder why we don't have a Labor Secretary hard at work in the Frances Perkins Building yet. The Senate Health, Education,......

Smell that fresh air? A new breeze is blowing. Ever since the Wagner Act legalizing unionization passed 74 years ago, right wingers have been trying to gut it. Corporations at first ignored it altogether until forced by the Supreme Court to surrender their opposition. With a post-Roosevelt Republica...

by Walter Brasch The chairman of the Republican National Committee may have begun an irreversible descent into a future as a fear-bound paranoid victim of functional amnesia, possibly caused by a hysterical post-traumatic event such as the overwhelming victory of Democrats in the 2008 election and t...

This blog post attempts to show that the new OCLC Policy (blogged here) effectively anulls a longstanding principle of US law, that work performed by government officials and employees is forever in the public domain. In a library context, this has always meant that Federal libraries are not only fr...

The waiting area of the New York Department of Labor Office is getting increasingly crowded. It's not just the economy, more people are showing up because they can't get anyone on the phone. One unemployed sheet metal worker said his attempts to get an error on his form fixed have proven fruitless. ...