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During the 2024 election campaign, the Republican Partys historically fraught relationship with organized labor appeared to be changing. Several influential Republicans reached out to unions, seeking to cement the loyalties of the growing ranks of working-class Americans who have been backing Donald Trumps presidential runs and voting for other members of his party. During Trumps first bid for the White House, the percentage of votes in households where at least one person belongs to a union fell to its lowest level in decades. In 2021, Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator at the time, wrote a USA Today op-ed supporting a unionization drive at an Amazon facility. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, walked a United Auto Workers picket line in 2023 in solidarity with striking workers. As the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Trump spotlighted International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean OBrien with a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Conventionrewarding the union for staying neutral in that campaign after endorsing Joe Biden four years earlier. Yet O’Brien shocked many in the convention crowd by lambasting longtime GOP coalition partners such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable for hurting American workers. Once in office, Trump continued to signal some degree of solidarity with the blue-collar voters who backed him. He chose former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), a Teamsters ally, to be his second-term labor secretary. Im a sociologist who has been researching the U.S. labor movement for over two decades. Given conservatives long-standing antipathy toward unions, I was curious whether the GOPs greater engagement with labor portended any kind of change in its policies. Fumbled at the starting line The GOPs various outreach efforts during the 2024 campaign led University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, a scholar of declining labor power, to write, Is a pro-labor Republican Party possible? More than six months into Trumps second term, I would say that, based on the evidence thus far, the answer to Posners question is a resounding no. In late March 2025, Trump issued an executive order stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. Overnight, twice as many federal employees lost their union protections as there are members of the United Auto Workers union, making the action the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history, according to Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin. While affected unions have challenged that action and similar subsequent ones in court, the Trump administration is moving on to other agencies. In August, over 400,000 federal employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency saw their union contracts terminated and their collective bargaining rights dissolved. Everett Kelley, the American Federation of Government Employees president, described the attacks on federal workers as a setback for fundamental rights in America. Tariffs, other policies arent helping The Trump administration has pitched its erratic tariff policies as a boon to U.S.manufacturing, including in the automotive industry, once the foundation of the U.S. labor movement. In reality, U.S. car producers are struggling to keep up with rising tariff-related costs of raw materials and parts. The number of factory jobs has fallen to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, a supporter of targeted tariffs to buttress the domestic auto industry, criticized the administrations trade policy in April 2025, saying, We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates. Other administration actions cast as relief for struggling workers are unlikely to deliver as advertised. The no tax on tips provision in Trumps huge tax-and-spending package excludes the nearly 40% of tipped workers whose earnings fall below the federal income tax threshold. Tipped workers make up a tiny share of the low-wage workforce. Culinary Workers Local 226, a powerful Nevada union representing many tipped workers in Las Vegas and Reno, supported the provision. Yet it blasted the overall package, calling it a big, horrible bill for its windfalls to the rich instead of the working class. Removing the watchdogs The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for ensuring that management and labor adhere to provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. Passed in 1935, that law estalished workers fundamental rights to collective bargaining. The board is responsible for conducting union elections, investigating allegations of unfair labor practices and outright abuses by employers, and enforcing court orders when employers or unions are found to have broken labor laws. Presidents regularly use vacancies to tilt the ideological balance of the board to a more or less labor-friendly position. Trump, however, went further. Soon after he was sworn in for a second term, Trump fired the National Labor Relations Boards general counsel along with board member Gwynne Wilcox, who was only halfway through her five-year term. Wilcoxs dismissal was unprecedented and violated the National Labor Relations Act provision on board personnel changes. Wilcoxs removal left the body without a quorum, preventing it from responding to appeals or requests for review and allowing employers accused of violating workers rights to delay any settlement. The Trump administration has left those important NLRB jobs vacant for months, although it has nominated two management-friendly replacements, both of whom awaited Senate approval in mid-August. In the meantime, the agency is unable to hear labor disputes. Disempowering the NLRB is a long-standing Republican tactic, suggesting more continuity with past GOP attacks on labor than a new era of partnership. Hawley standing out To be sure, Republicans dont all agree with one another on the importance of supporting workers and labor rights. One who has stood out so far is Hawley. The relatively pro-labor Republican senators stance led him to partner with Sen. Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, to cosponsor the Faster Labor Contracts Act. This new bill would force employers to negotiate a contract in a reasonable time frame with employees once they have voted in favor of forming a union. Hawley also joined with Democrats to reintroduce a bill that would ban dangerous work speed requirements in warehouses. Hawley said, when summarizing his efforts on behalf of working people, Its time we deliver for them. The Missouri senator is not completely alone. Sens. Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both Republicans, have backed some labor-friendly legislation in the spring and summer of this year. GOP leaders in Congress are not moving those bills forward so far, likely in part due to pushback from Republicans and their allies outside Congress. And there are limits to Hawleys labor friendliness. He voted for Trumps tax-and-spending package, despite publicly airing his misgivings about the harm it may cause his blue-collar constituents. Meanwhile, his past partners in the more labor-friendly wing of the GOP now occupy prominent administration posts. Yet they have largely fallen silent on union issuesexcept, in Rubios case, to oversee the firing of well over 1,000 State Department employees, many of them members of the American Foreign Service Association union. Trump’s labor approach echoes Reagans style Another GOP presidential administration courted segments of the labor movement to divide a key Democratic constituency, only to take actions that weakened unions. In 1980, for example, Ronald Reagan sought and won the endorsement of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. A year later, he fired 13,000 striking members of that union. The Teamsters union also backed Reagantwice. It endorsed him in 1980 after he pledged during the 1980 campaign not to pursue anti-labor policies. Although he broke his promise, personal outreach from Vice President George H.W. Bush in the lead-up to the 1984 election earned him the Teamsters endorsement a second time. What seems clear in my view is that whenever the GOP has tried to cast itself as a labor-friendly political party, it has emphasized symbolism over substance, favoring using rhetoric embracing workers who belong to unions versus taking actions to strengthen labor rights. Jake Rosenfeld is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Wingstop calls itself the wing experts. But Michael Skipworth, CEO of the 2,800-location fast casual chicken chain, likes to highlight a different distinction hes proud of, having nothing to do with food. People dont think about a chicken wing restaurant being a digital powerhouse, Skipworth tells me. Today, after spending years taking cues from outside the restaurant industryairlines, beauty brandshe has built exactly that: a thriving e-commerce business that just happens to sell Americas favorite protein. In the second quarter of 2025, diners spent more than $1 billion at the 31-year-old chain, ordering wingsboneless and bone-inand chicken tenders in custom combinations of 12 flavors ranging from Original Hot to Spicy Korean Q to Mango Habanero. (Popeyes, for comparison, reported $1.5 billion in sales in Q2.) They placed nearly three-quarters of those orders through digital channels including Wingstops app, MyWingstop. Over the past several years, Skipworth, who has been CEO since 2022, has invested $50 million in rebuilding the companys tech stack from scratch. The decision to rely on proprietary technology helped the company assemble a database of nearly 60 million customers it can target (and retarget) with timely, personalized ads and promotions that encourage repeat visits and larger orders. Thats exactly what happened when Wingstop reintroduced its crispy chicken tenders earlier this year. A record number of new customers showed up to try them, while others found a reason to come back. During Wingstops July earnings call, Skipworth said that the revamped menu item drove reactivation of lapsed customers at a level we haven’t seen from any menu innovation in the past two years. Although the company saw a rare drop in same-store sales last quarter, its first in three years (Skipworth attributed the 1.9% drop to temporary consumer anxiety), overall sales are up 14% and revenue is up 12%. Already this year, Wingstop has opened as many stores as it did in all of 2023; its on pace to surpass 2024s net new openings, too. Recently, Skipworth talked to Fast Company about Wingstops tech wins, including AI-enhanced kitchen revamps that cut order wait times in half, and its first-ever loyalty program, launching next year. Years ago, Wingstop decided to stop using third-party companies for online orders, opting to build its own system, MyWingstop, from scratch. Hows it going? We went live a little over a year ago, and since then weve seen our digital customer database grow by 30% to almost 60 million strong and growing. Today, digital sales are over 70% of our sales mix. Youve publicly credited this customer database with boosting the successful relaunch of chicken tenders earlier this year. How did that happen? During the relaunch of tenders, we leveraged MyWingstop to target specific consumers who we thought, based on experience or look-alike profiles, would be chicken tender users. We acquired a record amount of new guests during this relaunch; those new guests, as you might expect, over-index younger, most [ordering for one]. We also reactivated lapsed users at a record pace. These lapsed users looked very different from the new guests; theyre a little bit older and placing larger orders, likely for a family. This all speaks to the long-term opportunity we have for tenders. There are 1.6 billion chicken tenders served annually in the U.S., and we feel like were just scratching the surface. How many of the 1.6 billion are yours? Not enough! Not nearly enough. As a parent of young children, I can confirm that my household consumes its fair share of chicken tenders. How do you find these lapsed and potential diners, like me? Our customer database is more than email, phone number, name, and order history. We invest and enrich that data to have over 300 data points on every single guest. It has a lot to do with what else our guests are interested in, what other brands they engage with, what platforms theyre on. We can get really targeted on social and in paid search. Some Wingstop locations are using AI in the kitchen now, to help cooks and other back-of-house employees. What do these smart kitchens do? Were roughly a 30-year-old brand and really havent invested much of anything, up until this point, in back-of-house technology. We built an AI-enabled machine learning model customized to every restaurant, telling employees what to anticipate in 15-minute increments so they can get in front of demand. We built a kitchen display system that uses imagery and gamification and swiping, all things our young workforce is used to doing with their phones. It also includes a consumer-facing order-ready screen that shows where their order is in the process of being made and when its ready. In a traditional Wingstop kitchen, theyre running paper kitchen tickets and relying on voice commands across the kitchen. Its pretty remarkable to think with that level ofIll call it an unsophisticated back-of-houseto be delivering an average unit volume of $2.1 million. But in this traditional model, our standard quote time is 20 minutes. When restaurants get busy, like on a Friday night, it can get up to 45 minutes. With this new kitchen operating platform, weve been able to cut that time down significantly, delivering an average speed of service of 10 minutes. During your last earnings report, you referenced general consumer uncertainty and anxiety. How is that affecting the way you are leading the company into 2026? Were in a unique position. We dont play in those $3, $5 value wars. Thats just not our model, and its not how consumers engage with our brand. We lean into qualityevery order at Wingstop is cooked to order, hand-sauced, and tossed. Our ranch and blue cheese are made from scratch in the restaurant every day. So we lean into ways to showcase quality and abundance, and consumers see value there. Were also building a loyalty program right now, the first for Wingstop. What should Wingstop fans expect from your loyalty program? Its not going to look like others in the restaurant space. Most brands that launch loyalty are doing it to acquire data about their customer. We already have that data, so its about more than driving sign-ups and having to discount and give away. Were going to lean into making customers feel special, making them feel unique, all through personalization. Our program is going to be about status and what that unlocks for you: early access to flavors, for example. Were taking most of our inspiration from outside of restaurants, like the airline industry and brands like Sephora and Ulta and the programs theyve designed that drive personalized engagement. In the spirit of personalization, whats your Wingstop order? Im an all-flats, bone-in lemon pepper, and then tenders with original hot. And ranch, no question.
Category:
E-Commerce
Imagine climbing a five-story ladder, putting you 54 feet off the ground. How careful would you be at the tippy top? How aware of your hands and feet and surroundings would you be? If you fell off at that height, youd hit the ground at 40 MPH. Now think about how many times youve driven 40 MPH in a residential or commercial district. People who are walking across the street and get hit at 40 MPH are almost guaranteed to die, but hit at 20 MPH, theyre almost guaranteed to survive. Were super careful on normal household ladders that only put us five or six feet off the ground, let alone the 54-foot ladder (i.e. the 40 MPH ladder). But driving 40 MPH on a city street? Meh, no big deal. Last month, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles installed a bright yellow, giant ladder in front of Richmonds minor league baseball stadium. They used visual markers that equated 10, 20, 30, and 40 MPH with corresponding fall heights, making the physics of speed brutally tangible. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} Think about that the next time youre driving along a street that has sidewalks and crosswalks. People who tell cops and reporters the pedestrian came out of nowhere are people who were driving too fast. Speed is deadly, but nobody seems to be slowing down. Speed kills Every day in America, more than a hundred people are killed in traffic crashes. Thousands more suffer life-changing injuries. Every day, for decades. Speed is a fundamental factor in those brutal crashes. We all know fast driving is the norm, so let it sink in that the vast majority of traffic fatalities and severe injuries are preventable. In a radical departure from traditional punishments, Virginia judges can now mandate speed-limiting devices on the cars of habitual speeders as early as July 2026. These units, known as Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), physically prevent a vehicle from exceeding posted speed limits by using GPS or sign recognition to control acceleration. In Washington State, a horrifying crash killed a mother and three children when someone barreled down the street at 112 MPH. That tragedy led to ISA legislation called the BEAM Act, named after the first initials of the four victims. Judges can offer ISA as an alternative to suspending a license, delivering a tangible, always-on safety measure rather than relying on human choice alone. This type of consequence for dangerous, antisocial behavior isnt new. For decades, vehicle-mounted breathalyzers have been installed to prevent intoxicated offenders from starting their cars. Some include cameras, GPS, Wi-Fi reporting, and driver-recognition tech, offering real-time logs of attempts and noncompliance. An attack on freedom According to Centers for Disease Control reports, breathalyzers slash repeat drunk-driving incidents by roughly 70%. Mothers Against Drunk Driving credits these devices with stopping millions of drunk-driving attempts. Dealing with drunk drivers is hardly controversial, but capping speed is seen in America as a direct attack on freedom. Still, weve reached a point where grieving family members have become effective safety advocates, helping their elected officials realize that tens of thousands of traffic fatalities and life-altering injuries could be prevented. New York lawmakers are proposing provisions forcing repeat traffic offenders to install ISA systems that cap speed to just 5 MPH over the limit. The New York City Department of Transportation tested ISA on 500 fleet vehicles, and recorded an 82% reduction in speeding on high-speed roads and a 64% overall drop. Thats reason to celebrate, because its a reminder that fleet managers can opt-in to these safety features without waiting for a court-mandated, behavioral-override technology. Just as seatbelts and airbags have become nonnegotiable safety layers, ISAand eventually impairment-aware ISAcould become layers of a systems approach to safety. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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