Economy

May 3, 2019 - This week Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee led an anti-union meeting at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant, where last month workers petitioned for an election to join the United Auto Workers. The public and journalists were shut out of the event, which showed how government officials and corporations in the South work together to bust unions.

April 12, 2019 - North Carolina is now the third state in the South to order utilities to excavate all of their coal ash pits and move the toxic material to lined landfills. Duke Energy wants to charge its customers for the work, but some state lawmakers are trying to prevent that from happening. Meanwhile, the company is challenging the order.

March 28, 2019 - In 2001, the U.S. nuclear industry began hyping plans for new commercial reactor construction, which had skidded to a halt after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. But utilities' ambitious and expensive plans have fallen apart, leaving ratepayers in some Southern states forking over millions of dollars for nothing.

March 1, 2019 - A new coalition seeks to end Duke Energy's electric monopoly in North Carolina in hopes of hastening the shift to clean energy. There's also an effort underway to bring competition to the electricity market in Florida, where Duke operates as a regional monopoly.

January 31, 2019 - While federal employees are legally entitled to back pay missed during the government shutdown, employees of federal contractors are not — but some members of Congress are trying to change that.

January 31, 2019 - New data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the share of Southern workers belonging to unions barely declined from 2017 to 2018, while the number of employees in the South represented by a union was unchanged.

January 16, 2019 - The federal shutdown ordered by President Trump in a bid to get congressional funding for a $5.7 billion wall at the Mexican border is now the longest in U.S. history. With 800,000 workers furloughed or working without pay, and millions of contractors idled, the economic pain is widespread — and disproportionately affects African Americans.