David Weil was one of Biden’s best appointees. The author of the classic book The Fissured Workplace, Weil is an expert on all the ways that corporations cheat workers out of earnings.
Biden reappointed him to the job he had under Obama, as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. In the intervening years, Weil has been my colleague as the dean of Brandeis University’s Heller School, where he has become an even more astute critic of labor abuses such as wage theft, misclassification of gig work, and the government’s underutilized powers to defeat them.
Word of this evidently reached corporate boardrooms. Weil’s confirmation was blocked by Republicans in committee for months. Democrats finally forced a Senate floor vote. But on Wednesday, three Democratic senators—Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and a novel faithless Democrat, Mark Kelly of Arizona, refused to support cloture and Weil went down, 47-53.
Read Full Article »