The Best of thte Week’s News:

• Electricity deregulation cost Texans $28 billion extra over 20 years. (WSJ)
   
• The Senate Parliamentarian rules that a $15 minimum wage can’t be part of the COVID relief package. (Rolling Stone)
   
• U.S. labor law is broken, but what would an Amazon union drive look like under Canadian labor law? (Nation, Jacobin)
   
• Amazon-owned Twitch bans Amazon’s union-busting ads. (Vice)
   
• Hillman board member Danny Glover joined voting Amazon workers  in Alabama. (Portside)
   
• Amazon accused of meddling with mysterious mailbox and McDonald’s surveilled organizing workers. (Vice) 

The Best of the Week’s News:

• Pandemic UI has run out in rural Pennsylvania and people are hurting. (Belt) 
   
• Amazon workers in Bessemer, AL began voting by mail to decide whether their location will unionize. (Slate, Guardian, CBS)
   
• Some Amazon workers are looking ahead to an organized future, while Amazon is spending over $3200 a day to defeat the organizing drive. (WBUR, Intercept, TNR) 
   
• Philly is facing an avalanche of evictions, and court documents still don’t ensure due process for tenants. (Philly Inquirer) 
   
• NYC shelter exec Victor Rivera has been fired and placed under criminal investigation after a Times investigation aired allegations of sexual violence and financial impropriety. (NYT)

The Best of the Week’s News:

• With appointments and executive orders, Biden signals that organized labor is a high priority in his administration. (LA Times)
   
• What is the National Labor Relations Board and how does it affect the labor movement? (Teen Vogue)
   
• Google workers in 13 countries announce the formation of Alpha Global, a global union alliance. (The Verge)
   
• GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene floated an antisemitic conspiracy theory that a space laser might have caused a deadly California wildfire. (Media Matters)

The Best of the Week’s News:

• The assault on the U.S. Capitol was an insurrection fueled by lies and planned in plain sight. (Dissent, In These Times, ProPublica)
   
• Now it can be told: How the New York Times really got the Pentagon Papers. (NYT)
   
• Everything we know about Google’s audacious new union. (The Verge)
   
• “Lazy, Money-Oriented, Single Mother”: Notorious union-busting consultants surveil workers. (VICE)
   
• In a final gift to big business, Trump’s labor department prepares to further erode the rights of gig workers. (Input)