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NELA Urges DOL Agenda In The First Hundred Days
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January 2021

Announcements

Legislative News

Executive Nominations

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Announcements

The historic inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took place yesterday without violence. Sadly, this peaceful transition was not a forgone conclusion. Although I am rarely there these days, I was in the NELA office in downtown DC on Tuesday. There were and still are, groups of armed military personnel, with a military vehicle on every street corner on L Street, in the entrance of every alley, and in hundreds of other locations across our beautiful city. Securing the inauguration was a massive effort of working women and men in the National Guard.

The pandemic and this moment in our political history have made it clearer than ever before that working people are at the heart of everything we need and care about. Working people give us health care; vaccine distribution; childcare and teaching; plentiful food in well-stocked grocery stores; and yesterday they ensured the peaceful transition of power. In this January 2021 edition of On The Hill I want to start by thanking you, our members, for all the work you do, every day, to ensure justice and dignity for the working people of our nation.

NELA Urges DOL Agenda In The First Hundred Days

In case you missed it in the December 2020 edition of On The Hill, NELA has already begun its engagement to contribute our members’ ideas and expertise to help shape policy change that is long overdue for working people. A broad group of NELA members contributed ideas and edits to a NELA letter to the Department of Labor (DOL) Landing Team for the Biden/Harris administration. Focusing on the question asked by the DOL Landing Team—“what should this administration’s DOL tackle in the first hundred days?”—there were robust discussions leading to submission of a NELA letter setting out our recommendations.
 
In a press release issued by the Biden-Harris Transition team earlier this week, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. identified multiple executive actions for his first hours in office. These actions address several items we advocated for in our letter, including initial and immediate action to protect federal workers and federal contractors from COVID-19, and an Executive Order to ensure that the federal government interprets Title VII as prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in accordance with the Bostock decision.
 
The NELA Board, Vice President of Public Policy Karla Gilbride, Executive Director Jeffrey Mittman, and Legislative & Public Policy Director Laura Flegel will be working together to set out priorities for our Legislative & Public Policy work in the 117th Congress, and we look forward to engaging with you and with the new administration to advance workers’ rights.

Legislative News

December 2020 COVID-19 Relief Bill Provides UI Benefits & Rejects Corporate Immunity

After months of delay on the part of the Senate, a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill was  passed and signed into law December 27, 2020.

Although working people across the U.S. need much more support and help, as so many try to forge a path forward in a devastated economy and in families that are facing unemployment, as well as the deaths of loved ones who were wage-earners or caregivers of children or older relatives, passage of this bill was a long-overdue next step. A few of the highlights of the recently passed COVID-19 relief package include:

  • An 11-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits that were to expire in December 2020, including Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUA) that extends benefits to workers who are typically ineligible, including gig workers and independent contractors;
  • Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (FPUA) which provides an additional $300 per week to supplement state unemployment compensation;
  • A second round of direct payments up to $600 per individual; and
  • $8 billion for COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

Congress rejected the inclusion of any corporate immunity provisions. This is a victory that we and our allies fought hard to keep out of the bill. Thanks to all of you who lobbied against corporate immunity provisions and to our allies at Public Citizen and at American Association for Justice (AAJ), who led the fight to keep corporate immunity provisions out of this bill.

Executive Nominations

Judicial Nominations

As President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. took office yesterday, there were 46 federal judicial vacancies: 2 Circuit Court vacancies, 43 District Court vacancies, and 1 vacancy in the U.S. Court of International Trade. NELA’s hard-working Judicial Nominations Committee (JNC) will continue to work to ensure that those seats and all future federal judicial vacancies are filled expeditiously with fair-minded, highly qualified, independent, and demographically and experientially diverse nominees.

On November 19, 2020, NELA joined the Alliance for Justice and 70 other organizations on a Statement of Principles calling  on the Biden-Harris Administration to prioritize judicial confirmations. There is every indication that this Administration is committed to addressing these issues, but it will be important for every NELA member to keep the pressure on the Senate Judiciary Committee and on your Senators to ensure that these issues are prioritized.

There is good reason to be hopeful that the Biden-Harris Administration and the 117th Congress will prioritize the needs and well-being of workers, but we need more than hope. Your voices and your hard work are essential to keep the pressure on Congress to pass laws and enact courageous, far-reaching policies to remedy many of the ongoing injustices faced by working people. NELA will lobby with you on our priorities and will continue to track developments on the Hill and keep you, our members, involved.

If you are not already a member of NELA’s Legislative Action Team (LAT) please join the LAT. As you work to support and represent workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our COVID-19 microsite offers resources that we provide, as well as information and insights shared by you and your colleagues, Action Alerts, and more. In the fight against the confirmation of unqualified, anti-worker judges, and to address the harsh effects of institutional and individual racism, we want NELA voices to be counted.

Thanks to every one of you for all you do for NELA and for the working people of our nation. We wish you and yours a happy, healthy, safe, and a more just world in 2021.

Best regards,  
 
Laura M. Flegel
Legislative & Public Policy Director
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