Workers are engaging in walkouts, strikes, and other collective activities tied to workplace health and safety, race, immigration, and a range of other issues. This workshop is designed to expose clinicians to the administrative process before the National Labor Relations Board, which is well suited for clinical courses. The panel will focus on low-wage and immigrant workers. After providing an overview of protected concerted activity under the statute, we will briefly describe some of our typical cases, the process and procedure, and the charging document. We will use breakout rooms to permit participants to focus on what interests them most, i.e., one with Peter Ohr on the Board process from the agency perspective, Angela Cornell on perspectives from a clinic that has filed dozens of board charges over a range of topics, and Shefali Milczarek-Desai and Jayesh Rathod on representing immigrant workers before the Board.
Low-wage workers have been on the losing end for decades. According to economist Thomas Piketty, in the last 30 years, the growth of income in the bottom 50% in the U.S. has been zero, whereas the incomes of the top 1% has grown 300%. We have the highest income inequality of advanced industrialized democracies. One of the themes of the conference is equity and representing low-wage workers, particularly workers of color and immigrants, is one way to advance economic justice and push back against bias and inequity.