Free Republic

Federal labor officials said Tuesday they don’t expect to decide before Thursday on whether to seek an injunction on behalf of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to stop a union-backed group from encouraging worker walk-outs that are expected to culminate Friday. That’s the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. The world’s largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., on Friday filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. It said the demonstrations organized by union-backed OUR Walmart threaten to disrupt its business and intimidate customers and other store workers....

The movie stars Oscar nominees Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as two gritty women who try to take over a failing urban school. Oscar winner Holly Hunter plays a headstrong but compassionate union official fighting the women’s plans. The film played to an appreciative crowd last week at the Republican National Conventional in Tampa, with many movie goers driven to tears before the end credits rolled. Democrats also got a peek at the film yesterday, courtesy of a screening held by Democrats for Education Reform. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, acknowledged the film’s power and “sense...

Madison - As Democrats plan to submit more than a million signatures Tuesday to recall Gov. Scott Walker and five other Republicans, state election officials are preparing to go to court this week to try to ensure any elections are scheduled on the same day. Keeping recall elections for Walker and the others on the same day would save money and lessen logistical problems for local clerks. But Democrats behind the efforts argue that if one recall election is delayed it should not hold up others. State law gives the Government Accountability Board 31 days after receiving petitions to determine...

Should people be forced to be part of a union just for receiving checks to look after their own story? Fox Business Network interviews Robert and Patricia Haynes, who discuss the Michigan law that forces them to join a union because they care for their kids with cerebral palsy.

A new survey from Public Policy Polling (D) shows Ohio Democrats and public employee unions likely to win a big victory on Tuesday in the referendum on Republican Gov. John Kasich’s anti-public union bill, SB-5. The poll shows only 36% of Ohioans will vote to support the law, while a decisive 59% oppose the bill and will vote to repeal it. Kasich’s own approval mirrors those numbers, with only 33% approval and 57% disapproval. Kasich was elected in the 2010 Republican wave, defeating incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland by a 49%-47% margin. However, when asked if they could vote again, the...

We may never know how he did it. It could have involved some sort of broad scale mind control experiment. Perhaps he brought in somebody from over the border in Delaware to cast a spell on the state legislature. But in New Jersey – a state generally defined by partisan warfare between liberal Democrats and really liberal Democrats – Governor Chris Christie has met the public workers unions on the field of battle and sent them running like pigs from the gun. New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees, the...

Equity among workers is one of Republican Gov. John Kasich’s most consistent arguments in favor of Ohio’s new collective bargaining law. The law, Senate Bill 5, will bring Ohio’s public workers closer in line with private sector workers, who, on average, pay more for health care benefits and have weaker pensions, Kasich repeatedly has said. Now the governor is weaving collective bargaining for federal workers – or lack thereof – into his support for the law. Even though SB 5 restricts collective bargaining for the state’s 360,000 public workers, they would still be better off than federal workers, Kasich recently...

The pension funds for state and local workers in the United States are understating the amount they will owe workers by $1.5 trillion or more, according to some economists who have studied the issue, meaning that the benefits are much costlier than many governments and taxpayers thought. Doubts about government pension accounting have been voiced by analysts for years, but with shortfalls in state and local pension plans exacerbated by the recession, the push to refigure pension fund shortfalls has gained political momentum. The trillion-dollar gap arises from the government method of accounting, which several experts say significantly underestimates the...

Politico reports: Sen. John Thrasher, former state GOP chairman, looks like he has filed a bill (SB830) to starve unions like the Florida Education Association, SEIU, AFL-CIO, firefighters, police unions or AFSCME by banning the Democratic-leaning organizations from using salary deductions for political purposes. The legislation also says any "public employer may not deduct or collect" union dues, etc. Lastly, it says that any public employee who didn't specifically authorize the use of his money could be entitled to a partial refund. The Florida Times Union reported last January: The University of North Florida's College of Education and Human Services...

Yeah, we get it. The unions in Wisconsin are mad because Gov. Scott Walker is taking them on head first, so the raging crowd shot is completely necessary. However, I think AP is missing the bigger story. Why are they not talking about the protesters depicting Walker as Hitler? As I recall, the mainstream media was all over LaRoche supporters mixed in with the Tea Party crowds depicting Obama as Hitler. Problem is LaRouche supporters have absolutely nothing to do with the Tea Party, they just help the media’s narrative as portraying the Tea Party as racists. Don’t believe me?...

Law enforcement are now searching for Democratic senators boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair plan Thursday in an attempt to bring the lawmakers to the floor to allow Republicans to move forward on the bill. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said that Democrats were "not showing up for work" and that police were searching for them to bring them to the floor. He said the last time such an action had happened was in the 1990s and said he was not sure how much authority law enforcement officials would have to compel Democrats to show up....

In Delaware, 50 union workers, including 20 Electrical Workers (IBEW) members are at work and paying their bills and mortgages thanks to economic recovery money that is also saving Amtrak millions of dollars in new equipment.Those jobs are part of the as many as 3.3 million jobs that President Obama’s  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act saved or created since it was signed into law in February 2009. In the three months prior to passage of the legislation, the nation had lost 2.2 million jobs–more than 8 million jobs disappeared during the Bush administration. The Delaware workers are converting old and abandoned dining...

Republicans love to bash Education Minnesota, claiming the statewide teachers union and its powerful lobbying force essentially control the Democratic Party. But this legislative session, the union is alienating even some of its DFL allies. Observers say relationships are strained because of the union's resistance to proposed reforms — particularly bringing in new teachers and stabilizing the statewide pension for educators. "I'm just absolutely frustrated with some of the stances they're taking on the issues," said DFL Rep. Marsha Swails, who is an English teacher at Woodbury High School. "Maybe all those folks in the Education Minnesota building are a...

ATLANTA — The chief of the world's biggest airline is encouraging his employees to call police if they feel threatened by union representatives he says are showing up at their homes unannounced. Delta Air Lines' two biggest work groups — ground workers and flight attendants — have yet to resolve representation following Delta's 2008 acquisition of Eagan-based Northwest Airlines. Both groups were nonunion at pre-merger Delta, but union at pre-merger Northwest. Ground workers include gate, reservation and ticket agents and ramp and cargo workers. Along with flight attendants, they number roughly 50,000 employees at Delta, a spokeswoman has said. CEO...

TRENTON — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is looking at ways to privatize jobs to save money as he tries to find to plug a projected $11 billion budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year. Christie will sign an executive order today to create a task force to recommend ways to privatize jobs. The administration did not specify which jobs or how many could be privatized. Speaking on New York radio station WCBS, Christie said he’s looking at privatization as a way around the “sweet deal” former Gov. Jon Corzine made with state workers union. Earlier in the week, Christie...

America is awash in deficit spending. President Obama and his allies in Congress are flooding the economy with funny money, but the average American isn't seeing a dime. In fact, the average American can barely hold on to his job. In the midst of an outpouring of federal dollars intended to spark job creation, unemployment remains stubbornly stuck at almost 10 percent, with underemployment much higher. So where is this river of federal money going? The Obama administration's $787 billion "stimulus" dollars seem, in good measure, to have disappeared into a black hole. But in the midst of our jobless...