Here are the highlights of what you missed if you weren’t on our July Labor Community Briefing call. Want the full analysis, the data behind these headlines, and the chance to ask questions in real time? Join us on the next call.

A single inexperienced activist, a brand-new hire with no organizing background, built majority support among 65 eligible coworkers in a matter of months using nothing more than break-room and parking-lot conversations. He became the most-liked employee and a top salesperson deliberately, to shield himself from discipline and gain credibility. The playbook is the EWOC model: DSA and UE coaching rank-and-file workers to organize their own stores from the inside, with the identical approach now spreading to restaurants and foodservice.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act passed the House 230 to 193 and is now in the Senate, carried by Josh Hawley. A broad industry coalition is now fully mobilized against it. The National Association of Manufacturers and the Associated General Contractors warn it will upend industry-specific bargaining norms and damage workplace relationships. The Retail Industry Leaders Association says the rigid 90-day statutory clock will generate conflict, not contracts. The National Restaurant Association calls the bill a sweeping change to private-sector labor law that will produce arbitration outcomes impractical for sustainable businesses.

The federal monitor’s 16th report detailed Fain’s retaliatory firing of VP and election rival Rich Boyer, including for refusing to funnel benefits to Fain’s fiancee and her sister. The DOJ has launched a grand jury inquiry. Monitor Neil Barofsky also previously documented Fain’s firing of Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock on similar grounds and ordered both Boyer and Mock reinstated. Fain’s response: he admitted threatening to fight the monitor in a parking lot and called the grand jury probe “election interference, plain and simple.”

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court held that for-cause removal protections at the FTC are unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that when an agency executes a congressional mandate against private parties, it exercises executive power, full stop. The Fed, however, gets a carveout under Trump v. Cook, on the basis of a distinct historical tradition going back to the 1700s. The practical fallout is already playing out: ex-EEOC Commissioner Jocelyn Samuels dropped her reinstatement case, and Gwynne Wilcox’s path back to the NLRB is likely finished.

The Massachusetts Nursing Association put 4,000 nurses on the picket line at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in what became the largest nursing strike in state history. What was planned as a one-day action stretched into a week when the hospital made good on its commitment to bring in 1,300 travel nurses, locking out the striking nurses until they returned. No deal was reached. The MNA accused the hospital CEO of being overpaid, but the Boston Herald reported that at least 100 BWH nurses were among the most highly compensated in the profession, with the highest-paid nurse taking home $412,299 in 2025 and ten others clearing $300,000.

•  Keith Sonderling’s Senate HELP Committee confirmation hearing opened July 16. His planned DOL agenda includes a new four-factor joint employer test, a rolled-back independent contractor rule, and increased scrutiny of unemployment insurance and H-1B visas.

•  Amazon avoided joint employer classification in the BTS/Palmdale DSP case, settling for two weeks back pay to up to 84 drivers.

•  Lori Chavez-DeRemer is heading up the new American Workers First PAC, billing itself as championing workers, skilled trades, and labor-friendly economic policy.