The Breuer Building Gets Landmark Status—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week
Can the "abundance movement" solve America's transportation issues? Plus, Spain cracks down on Airbnb listings, the best furniture and decor from New York design week, and more.
A burgeoning cadre of thinkers is promoting the idea of abundance to solve America's biggest issues, including health care, energy, and housing: supply, they say, is the panacea. But in terms of transportation, are more cars really an answer? (Bloomberg)
The Breuer Building in New York, once home to the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, has been granted landmark status. But that designation only applies to certain parts of the modernist address, and doesn't include its galleries. Here's what the building's new owner, Sotheby's auction house, says it plans to do. (The New York Times)
For New York design week, Dwell's senior home guides editor Megan Reynolds popped by the Javits Center to scour its emerging designer showcase. From a spiky jewelry "box" to a loofahlike metal sconce, here's what she uncovered at North America's largest furniture fair. (Dwell)
Bad actors in Brooklyn have been bilking homeowners out of deeds through various schemes, and Black and brown residents are particularly at risk. Now, the borough's councilmembers have announced a plan to combat these white-collar criminals and dox them in the process. (Hell Gate)
As Spain faces a lack of housing, critics of Airbnb say the short-term rental platform is to blame, with mass demonstrations being held across the country. In response, the government has ordered Airbnb to remove 66,000 listings—but it won't happen overnight. (The New York Times)
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Axios
26 minutes ago
- Axios
Bullet's Sports Bar owner looking to sell
One of New Orleans' most beloved 7th Ward bars is on the market. Why it matters: Bullet's Sports Bar has been a cornerstone of New Orleans drinking, second-lines and live music for three decades. What he says: "This industry is gone," Rollins "Bullet" Garcia Sr. tells Axios New Orleans. "The young people don't want this." But, he says, "my son is mad because I promised him this place. But why would I give him something where I don't see a future?" Zoom in: Garcia is looking to sell the business as well as the A.P. Tureaud Avenue building that's been its home since 2020. The intrigue: The decision to sell, however, endangers another example of what New Orleans artist and photographer L. Kasimu Harris calls " Vanishing Black Bars." Harris first started documenting Black-owned bars in 2018, and his photography of the community, camaraderie and culture that New Orleans' editions offer has landed his work in museums around the country. He first wrote about it for The New York Times in 2020. "I think a lot of people are unaware and taking it for granted" how much these establishments mean to the city, Harris says. "These places are closing. … But it's not all lost." Fun fact: Bullet's is one of the city's remaining bars where you can order a set-up — a classic Black bar order where the bartender gives you a cup of ice, a pint of liquor and a cup of your favorite mixer. That, too, is becoming less popular, Garcia says, but his back-bar is still stocked with hundreds of palm-sized bottles of tequila, vodka, whiskey and gin. The order's origin is hard to pin down, but it's a win-win for customers (who can easily pace their drinking) and bartenders (who don't have to pour drinks for the same person over and over). A set-up, Harris says "says I'mma be here for while." "You order a set-up, you're truly lounging," Harris says. The fact is, Garcia says, the neighborhood around Bullet's has changed a lot since he first got into business, which has made it harder to keep things going. Post-Katrina gentrification is a big part of that. "When I first got in, in this area here, we had a lot of customers that were craftsmen, carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers," Garcia says. Many of them have, over the years, been memorialized on a poster near the door that honors customers who have died. What's next: There's no exact timeline for the sale as Garcia looks for a buyer, he says, who can do right by the business and the people who have supported it for so long.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Palm Beach County administrator position: A look at the salary, timeline and four finalists
Palm Beach County will soon have a new county administrator. And for the four finalists, the days ahead of the expected Tuesday, June 17 announcement will be exhausting ones. Individual meetings with each of the seven commissioners will occur Monday, June 16 in their respective offices, the day before the vote to hire an administrator. The interview sessions are expected to take up most of the day. The finalists are Deputy County Administrator Patrick Rutter, Assistant County Administrator Isami Ayala-Collazo, County Clerk Joe Abruzzo, and Keith Clinkscale, the county's director of strategic planning and performance management. The position, is expected to pay around $450,000 a year. The position is open because Verdenia Baker — the first woman and the first Black person to lead Palm Beach County's government — is retiring after 10 years as county administrator. Following the one-on-one closed interviews with the commissioners, the finalists will attend a community event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Residents, who cannot attend, can view the session on Channel 20, the county's television station, where it will also be live-streamed. The candidates will introduce themselves. Then, questions, submitted by the public, online or in person, will be asked of each of them. The moderator will randomly select the questions, and candidates will have up to three minutes to respond. Meanwhile, The Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches has invited the finalists to attend a "Meet & Greet" with chamber members from 5:30-7 p.m., Wednesday, June 11. Only chamber members can attend the event at the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches, 401 N. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach. The two outside applicants — Cornell Wesley, director of the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity for Birmingham, Alabama, and Eric Johnson, the city manager of Norcross, Georgia — withdrew their names from consideration last week. Wesley told The Post that he had important commitments that he could not postpone, preventing him from attending next week's interviews. He noted that the interview dates were adjusted and that he was prepared to be interviewed based on the initial schedule. 'I had asked to come on another date, but the county was unable to accommodate my request,' Wesley said. Efforts to reach Johnson for comment were unsuccessful. Todd Bonlarron, an assistant county administrator, has been appointed interim administrator until a new administrator is hired. He did not apply to become administrator. His salary has been set at $350,000 a year. The candidates will be publicly interviewed by the county commission at the Government Center Chambers in West Palm Beach from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 17. The session will be televised on Channel 20 and live-streamed. The candidates will answer the commissioners' questions in a rotating order. They will have up to three minutes to respond. A commissioner can then ask a follow-up question. Once the interviews are completed, the commissioners will publicly discuss which candidate should be chosen. Each commissioner will indicate their preferred candidate on a ballot. More: Palm Beach County's next administrator has big shoes to fill | Editorial More: Retiring Palm Beach County administrator Verdenia Baker looks back on a career of firsts If a candidate receives four votes, that person will become the next administrator, replacing Verdenia Baker who retired on June 1. A deeply divided county commission voted 4-3 this year to skip on a national search. Instead, it chose to depend on a volunteer task force to narrow the candidates down to six applicants. More than 200 applied. If no one can secure the necessary majority necessary on June 17, the commission will start a true national search for a new administrator by hiring a recruitment firm. Three commissioners — Mayor Maria Marino, Marci Woodward, and Gregg Weiss — initially insisted upon this option. Mike Diamond is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He covers Palm Beach County government. You can reach him at mdiamond@ Help support local journalism. Subscribe today. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County to meet to select new administrator on June 17
Fast Company
2 hours ago
- Fast Company
The Georgia electric school bus factory shows the far-reaching consequences of Trump's federal funding cuts
As the administration of President Donald Trump dismantles reforms enacted under Joe Biden, workers and management at a Fort Valley, Georgia, school bus plant are thriving because of the same policies. On Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order that would freeze future spending under two Biden-era laws: The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized funding of more than $2 trillion. Under Biden, those grants often went to companies that supported worker unions, according to the Center for American Progress. Several workers at Blue Bird Corp., a school bus manufacturer with 1,500 union employees at its plant in Fort Valley, said that support transformed their workplace. They pointed to better job conditions under a union contract and said that the company has thrived under a grant and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to federal support for electric buses. Observers, including former acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, said that Trump's actions could mean an abrupt end to successful government programs that have already improved the lives of workers across the country and added to companies' bottom lines. 'We're making them school buses. They're making a lot of money.' At first glance, Blue Bird's story looks like it's solely about the power of unions to improve a workplace. Like many workers in the Deep South, workers at Blue Bird had tried to organize a union without success since the 1960s. In 2019, they began to gain traction. The majority-Black workforce was fed up with starting wages as low as $13 an hour, no official pay scale, and the resulting unpredictability—and rarity—of raises. The factory roof leaked, and some parts of the job, like working with hazardous pressure systems, felt unsafe, they said. What's more, the policy for time off was opaque: The company would 'give personal leave to who they want to, not when people might really need it,' said Dee Thomas, a 12-year veteran of Blue Bird who serves as USW Local 697's executive vice president. Blue Bird officials declined repeated requests by Capital & Main for comment. Workers began talking among themselves about a union. One member knew someone who was in the United Steelworkers union, and soon employees were talking to union organizers, meeting in parks, local churches and public libraries. In 2022, workers heard that Blue Bird—one of the country's only bus manufacturers with electric vehicle expertise — told investors they expected to bring in at least $1 billion in federal incentives encouraging public school districts to switch to electric school buses. They wanted a fair share of the proceeds they were helping the company make. 'We're making them school buses,' Thomas said. 'They're making a lot of money.' When the union campaign went public in early 2023, Blue Bird fought it, workers said. The United Steelworkers union filed unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that managers threatened to close the plant if workers voted for a union, surveilled employees as they talked with union organizers, and urged workers to vote against the union in mandatory employee meetings. (After the union election, the charges were withdrawn.) Guidelines under a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency helped the union organizing campaign, said Alex Perkins, a USW organizer and current staff representative for the Blue Bird union. The EPA's Clean School Bus Program, funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, required union neutrality at companies, banning them from using government funding to support or oppose union organizing activity. Activists said they reminded Blue Bird executives that the federal money they'd bragged to investors about might not be granted to 'union busters.' In response, the company tempered its opposition, Perkins said. In early May 2023, Blue Bird workers voted 697 to 435 to authorize the United Steelworkers union to represent them. A boost from Biden The victory was only a first step: The union needed to negotiate a contract with the company before workers' jobs would actually improve. Some of Blue Bird's potential customers, as well as federal grants, gave preference to companies that committed to good faith contract negotiations with workers. Su, who was acting secretary of labor at the time, had made quick contract agreements a priority for the Department of Labor. Most employers, on the other hand, drag out initial contract talks, and most first contracts take more than 500 days—more than 16 months—to be ratified, according to a recent Bloomberg Law study. There is no penalty for employers who drag out negotiations or even fail to sign a contract. Nearly one-third of all unions that win an election do not have a contract within three years, with more than a quarter never getting a contract at all. Workers weren't sure how Blue Bird would respond to negotiations, so they resolved to show the company that treating workers well could help its bottom line. In August 2023, with contract negotiations at Blue Bird in process, Melinda Newhouse, assistant to the United Steelworkers' international president, called in to a Los Angeles Unified School District public school board meeting about its pending $80 million contract for 180 electric school buses. 'When public investment is made, it should be done in a way that takes into account more than just the bottom line,' Newhouse told the meeting, referring to Blue Bird's new union. The district, bound by law to accept the lowest 'responsible' bid, chose Blue Bird. The company's then-CEO, Phil Horlock, called it 'the largest single order ever of EV school buses.' The same summer, the Biden administration threw some weight behind union workplaces. When the Department of Energy issued its call for proposals for Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grants, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, it said that automotive applicants had to describe how their project would benefit their community with high-quality jobs and support for collective bargaining agreements. If Blue Bird wanted to expand production, a union could help it get grants to do so. As contract negotiations entered their 10th month, Su visited Blue Bird. A longtime labor activist before joining the government, Su had made it her mission to urge companies to adopt contracts within one year. 'Too often workers who choose a union face significant delays in getting a first contract,' Su told Capital & Main. 'And that delay is not accidental.' In Fort Valley, Su urged Blue Bird executives and workers alike to ratify a contract before the first anniversary of the successful union vote. 'To their credit, Blue Bird took it on,' Su said. Management checked in with her regularly about the progress of bargaining, which Su saw as 'a strong sign of their good faith' and collaboration, she added. Workers came to feel that Blue Bird was collaborating with them, too. 'We worked together,' the company and the union, said Perkins, who was also on the bargaining committee. In May 2024, just shy of the one-year deadline, Blue Bird and the union agreed to a three-year contract that went into effect the following July. The agreement raised the lowest-paid workers' wage to around $22 an hour, standardized the retirement plan, established a profit-sharing agreement and created a health and safety committee with trained staff. It also formalized the collaboration that had evolved between Blue Bird and workers over the course of negotiations and established regular meetings among worker representatives, management and the CEO to discuss concerns in the workplace and ideas for improvement. 'A union relationship is a partnership,' Horlock said at the official signing of the union agreement. '[Secretary Su] explained that to me, and I'm grateful we listened and we did it. We got it done.' The same month the union contract went into effect, Blue Bird got a Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant worth nearly $80 million to expand electric bus production—and with it, union jobs. In the company's grant application, Blue Bird highlighted its 'efforts to work jointly' with the United Steelworkers and touted its commitment to 'good faith negotiations' with the union. USW also sent a letter of support with the application outlining how the company and union would work together. Today, workers say the union has made their jobs better with raises, improved safety and lower turnover. Public records suggested that the unionization effort has continued to pay off for Blue Bird, too. During the first quarter of 2025, Blue Bird reported 'near record quarterly profits,' Horlock said in the company's February earnings call. Horlock attributed the company's performance to its investments to upgrade facilities, develop new products and 'continu[ing] to enhance the plant working environment for employees.' Horlock stepped down as CEO in February but remains on the board of directors. Blue Bird's experience under Biden-era policies provides a prime example of how companies can actually benefit from unions — once they stop fighting them, said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. 'There are a lot of common interests between the union and the company,' he said. The union can benefit the company by giving management workers' insights, gained from firsthand experience on how to solve problems, he added. And, as with the Steelworkers, many unions have connections with elected officials who can shape policy to create additional jobs and more stable employment. 'It only helps the Steelworkers to have Blue Bird get more funding,' Wheaton said. All of that reflects the Biden administration's strategic and intentional support of unions, said Ian Elder, national director at Jobs to Move America, an advocacy organization that works to lift labor standards. The previous administration was 'enacting a form of industrial policy [with] an intention to cultivate industries that create good, sustainable careers' while 'addressing climate change, protecting the environment, and protecting communities from environmental harm,' Elder added. Funding freeze Today, Blue Bird and its workers enjoy a kind of success that's likely to become rare as the Trump administration ends the kinds of policies that made Blue Bird's collaboration possible. The contract at Blue Bird was 'a seed of the kind of change that is possible,' Su said. 'That is even more important than ever now, when we have an administration that speaks about being pro-worker, but does things that are horribly anti-worker.' Indeed, Trump's sweeping funding freeze hit the Clean School Bus Program — and its provisions rewarding good faith contract negotiations — leaving its remaining $2 million in funding unspent. The EPA has made no announcement of new funding, though existing awards are still being paid out. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has issued orders to begin eliminating new emissions standards that favor electric vehicles, consumer subsidies for buying them and federal funding to support their development. In a similar vein, the Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grants that paid off for Blue Bird have been spent, with no additional funding — or a program to replace it — in sight. Su's replacement as secretary of labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was initially lauded as a pro-worker Republican, but she has yet to promote policies in support of unions. Although Chavez-DeRemer has posed for multiple photo ops with workers, she has also recanted her support for the PRO Act, the pro-union bill backed by the Biden administration, and declared her support for right-to-work legislation that is widely understood to be anti-union. She also endorsed a Trump agenda that includes effectively canceling project labor agreements with unions for federal construction work; eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and removing union input from registered apprenticeship programs. The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and Department of Labor did not return requests for comment. Meanwhile, the Blue Bird union's officers remain optimistic that their collaboration with the company will survive Trump's changes. There are nearly two years left on their current contract—enough time, they think, to prove to Blue Bird that companies and workers do better when they work together. 'The culture is changing at Blue Bird,' Thomas said, pointing to their ongoing advice to management and other contract wins. 'Management will be changing as well. . . . They are going to get it right.'
