Free Republic

Like many speakers, as a starting point for anecdotes, or as an establishment of credentials, I sometimes start out my lectures by mentioning how long I’ve been with my current employer, how long I’ve had my license, or how long I’ve been in my industry. Last week, I caught myself as I mentally added up the latter, and realized that I have been in the workforce now for forty-four years. Yes, that IS a long time for a 52-year-old. But it is probably a story worth recounting, particularly when Labor Day rolls around, because as I think back on my...

~~~Sparring with ObamaOn Monday, Obama criticized Walker for his actions without naming the governor."He is bragging about how he destroyed collective bargaining rights in his state," Obama said in a Labor Day speech in Boston. "And (he) says that busting unions prepares him to fight (the terrorist group) ISIL. I didn't make that up. That's what he said."..The governor hit back Monday, saying Act 10 had saved billions of dollars through lowering the compensation packages of public workers."What we did in Wisconsin was taking the power away from the big government union bosses and put it back in the hands...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did this in 2011. He signed legislation eliminating the power of unions to bargain over government benefits and work rules, and strictly limited bargaining over wages. This enabled Walker to transform a $3.6 billion budget shortfall into a surplus and $2 billion in tax cuts. Savings came not just from cutting government pay, but also from operating more efficiently. Much has changed since the first observance of Labor Day more than a century ago. A union movement formed to defend blue-collar laborers now fights primarily to help white-collar workers expand government. The union movement has changed...

In a Labor Day message, posted to YouTube by The White House on Saturday, President Obama called on Americans to remember what the upcoming holiday is really about. “I wanted to take a moment to talk to you about the real meaning of Labor Day – a day we set aside every year to honor the hardworking men and women who fought for so many of the rights that we take for granted today. “Among those rights, the president highlighted “the eight hour work day, 40-hour work week, weekends, overtime pay, a minimum wage, safer workplaces. health insurance, Social Security,...

Myles UdlandSeptember 2, 2015Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk thinks the labor market is more than strong enough to justify interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve In an email on Wednesday, Sløk writes that he continues to talk to clients who don't believe the US economy is anything other than weak, "not good," or on the verge of recession. But the indicators Sløk is looking at show nothing of the sort. In fact, the opposite. Last week, we highlighted charts from Sløk that showed, to him, an economy picking up steam. On Wednesday, Sløk turned his focus to the labor market,...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become a lightning rod for controversy under President Obama, with its aggressive actions fueling sustained warfare between business and labor. From the labor board’s bitter fight with Boeing, to the creation of new union election rules, the NLRB has repeatedly moved to the forefront of political debate, drawing in Congress, the White House and even the Supreme Court. The NLRB’s latest bombshell was dropped on Thursday, when the board determined the waste management agency Browning-Ferris should be considered a “joint employer” of temporary workers. The decision expands the definition of what it means...

When Ready for Hillary, a pro-Hillary Rodham Clinton “super PAC,” wanted to take out a million-dollar loan five months before it planned to go out of business, it turned to a bank that was founded to guard the savings of New York City garment workers.When the Democracy Alliance, an influential club of liberal donors, sought to recruit members in advance of the 2016 elections, the bank’s president helped to make introductions.And when workers-rights groups wanted to embarrass Walmart and the Gap for unsafe working conditions at factories supplying their stores, Amalgamated Bank, which manages $40 billion in pension fund assets,...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) just issued a ruling likely to destroy the franchise business model. To understand how far-reaching this could be, it should be noted that almost 9 million Americans work at over 780,000 franchised businesses. From Jiffy Lube to Terminex to Wendy’s, franchises enable many Americans to run their own small businesses without having to design and market everything from scratch. Franchising is a particularly important opportunity for minority entrepreneurs. Franchises are almost 50 percent more likely to be minority-owned than non-franchised businesses. If this ruling stands, minority Americans won’t get that chance. The recent ruling...

Why should a union representing workers who are not employees of McDonald’s be empowered to squeeze concessions out of McDonald’s? Why did Willie Sutton rob banks? In a party-line decision, the Democrat-dominated National Labor Relations Board has decided that employees of contractors can be treated as employees of other companies when . . . well, when it is convenient for Democratic constituencies that they be so treated. The underlying case involved an operator of recycling centers, Browning-Ferris Industries of California, which uses subcontractors to staff some of its facilities. Firms have many reasons for using subcontracted labor, one of which...

You can rightly complain about the things which go on inside the White House, the State Department, the Justice Department or the EPA and all of the headline grabbing controversies which erupt from them. None of them, however, may be up to nearly as much mischief as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) though it doesn’t seem to catch the attention of the media nearly as much. This week they were at it again and while a bit on the wonky side, a new wrinkle in the rules could spell big trouble for America’s employers and many, many workers....

The Commissioner of Labor for Oklahoma, Mark Costello, was killed in a stabbing at a fast food restaurant in Oklahoma City on Sunday, local broadcasters reported, citing unnamed sources. Police declined to confirm that Costello was the victim but said one family member stabbed another family member at least four times with a knife after the pair agreed to meet at the restaurant following a fight earlier in the day. "So sorry to hear the tragic news about Mark Costello," Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett said in a Tweet. Local broadcaster News 9, citing unnamed sources, reported that Costello was...

On July 6th, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with the potential to affect an untold number of employers. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register at 80 FR 38515, drastically changes the DOL’s interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to overtime exemptions. The current rule, put in place in 2004, exempts employees with salaries of at least $455 a week ($23,660 a year) and who perform executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer duties from overtime regulations. In a Presidential Memorandum in March of 2014, President Obama directed the DOL...

I’m still not at the point where I’m willing to raise the possibility of Hillary losing the nomination to some number greater than 0% but there are some interesting smoke signals coming up on the horizon lately which might have me questioning the collective wisdom on the subject. Bernie Sanders is in Maryland this week attending the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting and making his pitch for why he’s a better candidate to support big labor than Hillary. (Clinton will be there after him.) Obviously he would like to have the support of the unions because, let’s face it, no...

Matthews: No one enforces immigration law because they want cheap labor - and votes for Dems Obviously, we’re used to a steady stream of crazy coming from the fine folks at MSNBC. Chiefest among the network’s primetime calamities is Chris Matthews, whose career is basically one, long, barely-coherent rant. Every now and then, though, it feels like one of his handlers stuffs his meds into a wad of peanut butter and Chris comes through with something approaching an actual truth. HTML5 video is not supported! Special: New Probiotic Fat Burner Takes GNC by Storm This, it seems, is one of...

It’s a progressive paradise.Public employees get 30 vacation days a year. Anyone who works over eight hours in a day gets paid time-and-a-half. Employees have strong rights.The minimum wage is high: 77 percent of the median wage.Environmental regulations are settled beyond the pressure of local economic interests. The forests and mountains are pristine destinations for ecotourism.Energy costs are kept high, pushing consumption down to a level deemed “socially beneficial”. Utilities have strong public backing and provide jobs to thousands.Union jobs in shipping are protected from outsourcing to cut-rate foreign competitors.The social safety net is buoyant and provides a solid working-class standard...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- President Barack Obama brings his push to raise salaries for low-income workers to Wisconsin, the state where Gov. Scott Walker built his expected run for the White House around curtailing collective bargaining powers and enacting a right-to-work law.

The Center for Energy Workforce Development estimates that nearly half of the electric power generation, transmission and distribution workforce may be replaced in the coming years due to baby boomer retirements. As the demographics change, the energy industry is challenged with replacing a massive number of experienced workers all at the same time. While the scope and magnitude of the issue is widely recognized, there is no single solution to the problem. A closer look at the workforce challenge reveals social, cultural, and economic factors that should be considered when forming an effective solution. The following is a look at...

With the rise of flexible working schedules, the freelance economy, and video conferencing, more Americans are getting their jobs done without ever heading into an office, according to new data from the American Time Use Survey released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among all workers, 23% report spending all or part of their day working from home. That’s up from less than 19% in 2003, the first year for which there’s comparable data.

A San Francisco-based driver for smartphone-based ride-hailing service Uber is an employee, not a contractor, according to a ruling by the California Labor Commission. The ruling, filed on Tuesday in state court in San Francisco, said Uber is "involved in every aspect of the operation." It is the latest in a host of legal and regulatory challenges facing Uber in the United States and other countries. Uber had argued its drivers are independent contractors, not employees, and that it is "nothing more than a neutral technology platform." If Uber drivers are employees, that opens Uber up to higher costs, including...

There are two kinds of commemorative days/weeks/months. There’s the nonprofit, “awareness” type, such as Black History Month or World Down Syndrome Day, intended to show solidarity for some cause. Then there’s the for-profit, commercial variety, like International Pickle Week or California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month, which are simply business marketing campaigns. And then there’s the profit-seeking effort masquerading as cause-promotion. That’s what June’s Immigrant Heritage Month is. Just as International Pickle Week was dreamed up by the Pickle Packers International trade association to sell more fermented cucumbers, Immigrant Heritage Month is a project that Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg dreamed...