Paul Secunda takes on Wal-Mart in this new commentary for the Legal Times. Along with coauthors Melissa Hart and Marcia McCormick, he criticizes recent mandatory employee meetings at Wal-Mart that have allegedly pushed employees away from supporting the Democratic presidential nominee. They urge other states to follow the lead of New Jersey in adopting a Freedom from Employer Intimidation Act, which makes it unlawful for any employer to force its employees to attend employer-sponsored meetings whose purpose is to discuss the employer’s opinions on religious and political matters.

This report from UCLA so suggests:

Buoyed by a rising tide in California in general and Southern California in particular, U.S. unionization levels rose substantially this year, defying a decades-long trend of decline, according to a report by UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

“The State of the Unions in 2008: A Profile of Union Membership in Los Angeles, California and the Nation” shows unionization rates nationwide rising half a percentage point over the 2007 level, to 12.6 percent of all U.S. civilian workers in 2008. The rate rose one-tenth of a percentage point between 2006 and 2007. Prior to that, the last time U.S. unionization rates registered an increase was in 1979.

My colleague Paul Secunda recently wrote this pointed essay on the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision for the Workplace Fairness Blog.  Ledbetter made it harder for plaintiffs with Title VII pay discrimination claims to prevail by holding that the statute of limitations runs separately on each of a series of discriminatory pay decisions, even though the cumulative effects of the decisions may continue to be felt for many years thereafter.  Paul argues in his essay that Ledbetter is “absurd” inasmuch as it requires some victims of discrimination to file their claims before they have a fair opportunity to discern the discrimination.  He urges Congress to pass a pending legislative fix, the Lilly Ledbetter Pay Equity Act, and notes that the issue is one that divides the current Republican and Democratic presidential nominees.