‘Unrig the economy for working people’: the California candidate who wrote updated labor laws

Marni von Wilpert helped draft Protecting the Right to Organize act, and now wants work toward implementing it

Legislation that would modernize federal labor law began with a handful of lawyers meeting, of all places, in an ice-cream shop.

“We wrote for hours what we would do to amend the National Labor Relations Act,” said Marni von Wilpert, a member of the San Diego city council who was then an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Bringing together “our collective experience as labor lawyers over the years, really trying to unrig the rules so that working people could have a fair shot”.