Free Republic

A Michigan Senate bill currently under consideration aims to require employers to share employees' name, home address, cell phone number, work address location, and personal email address with labor representatives every 90 days. Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, sponsored Senate Bill 169. “The intent here is to make sure that individuals who are legally required to represent employees have the information on who they are actually required to represent and the ability to contact them and fulfill their requirements of representation,” Cherry said during Thursday testimony in front of the Senate Labor Committee. Sen. Thomas Albert, R-Lowell, said the bill is...

California’s Legislature passed a bill Monday to create a government panel that would set wages for an estimated half-million fast food workers in the state, a first-in-the-U.S. approach to workplace regulation that labor union backers hope will spread nationally. The bill, known as the Fast Act, would establish a panel with members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders composed of workers, union representatives, employers and business advocates. They would set hourly wages of up to $22 for fast food workers starting next year and can increase them annually by the same rate as the consumer-price index, up to a...

A former iron workers union president was sentenced to 42 months in prison Wednesday for ordering and participating in the violent extortion of non-union workers at a construction site. Jeffrey Veach, 57, the former president of an Indiana chapter of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers (BSOIW) was charged for his role in the incident in 2018, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). He and co-defendant Thomas Williamson, a business agent for BSOIW, each pleaded guilty in January to one count of extortion conspiracy, the DOJ said. “Under the pretext of serving their union,...

LANSING, MI - The Michigan House joined the Senate in voting to repeal prevailing wage Wednesday afternoon, officially unraveling a law that had guaranteed union-level wages on public construction sites for half a century. It's an idea forwarded by Protect Michigan Taxpayers, a group funded largely by the Associated Builders and Contractors. They circulated a petition for the initiative and, having obtained enough signatures, sent it to the legislature for consideration. The legislature could have let the issue go to the ballot, but chose to take it up and approve it on Wednesday. Shortly after the Senate passed it 23-14,...

MADISON, Wisconsin — Before prevailing wage reform supporters celebrated a big win in the state Senate on Tuesday, the prevailing war of words between a state lawmaker and a key lobbyist heated up. In a letter obtained by Wisconsin Watchdog, former Republican Assembly speaker and prevailing wage defender John Gard informs state Rep. Bob Gannon, R-Slinger, he wants to “set the record straight” about an accusatory email Gannon sent members of the media and others last week. A story in Right Wisconsin suggests Gard had been given “privileged access” to Republican members of the Legislature before the Assembly Republican caucus....

MADISON, Wisconsin — State Rep. Rob Hutton led the Assembly effort this session to kill Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law, the wage inflator that has cost taxpayers untold billions over the past 8o-plus years. But the Brookfield Republican, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall — or the lack of votes in the Senate for full repeal — is getting behind a compromise amendment he says would go a long way to reforming prevailing wage. On Monday, Hutton announced he is co-authoring a proposal by state Sen. Frank Lasee, R-De Pere, that would repeal prevailing wage for all local units of...

Madison— Republican legislative leaders kick-started the stalled Wisconsin budget Wednesday by leaving two controversial pieces out of the bill and brokering a deal on a third piece to hold down state borrowing for highways. Though GOP lawmakers are again moving ahead on the budget and scheduling a key committee vote for Thursday, the way ahead remains murky. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said he didn't have the support yet to pass the budget bill yet in his house and he and Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) could not give a firm timeline for passing out of the budget a financing...

If Chris Fisher is right, there's a good chance that the Michigan Legislature will pass a bill to repeal the state's prevailing wage law. "I believe the votes are there in both the House and Senate to do it," Fisher, the president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan, told Capitol Confidential. "We just need to make sure we get all three pegs of the stool — the Governor, the House Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader.” Michigan's prevailing wage law mandates that union-scale wages be paid on construction work funded by taxpayer dollars, regardless of the winning bidder...

Right-to-work legislation has been introduced in Indiana and may actually win Gov. Mitch Daniels’ signature by the time Super Bowl Sunday arrives on Feb. 5. The Great Lake State may need to follow suit to compete economically. Before it does, however, the people of Michigan should note that one city — Bay City —leapt headlong into the labor fray Monday night. Its city commission voted to amend the city’s prevailing wage ordinance to exempt contracts under $100,000 in value. The previous threshold was only $10,000. It also — quite significantly — eliminates the prevailing wage mandate when Bay City shares...

President-elect Barack Obama's plan to jolt the economy by overhauling the nation's roads, bridges and transit systems has local officials clamoring for their share despite questions as to whether the program will actually work. "California's fiscal house is burning down," state Treasurer Bill Lockyer declared recently after a California regulatory board halted financing for some 1,600 infrastructure projects because of the state's nearly $15 billion deficit. California's woes are far from unique, as the deepening economic crisis has wreaked havoc on state budgets across the country. At least 40 states are running deficits, forcing governors to raise taxes and trim...

http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/742.html Conservation Efforts California Law: Pay volunteers by Sam Wardle Very few people in their right (or left) minds would argue that volunteerism is a bad thing. Strangely enough, though, that is exactly what the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) did last summer when they fined the Sacramento Watersheds Action Group (SWAG) almost $50,000 for, what else, using volunteers and students to clean up Sulphur Creek in the city of Redding. In a bizarre mix of bureaucratic fumbling and union resentment, it has apparently become illegal in the state of California to do work that you are not paid...

Los Angeles Daily News Another sad tale of greedy union leaders Will lobbyists succeed in wiping out California volunteerism altogether? By Mark Mix Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - This summer, a legislative roadblock in Sacramento could create a multiple charity pileup, halting creek restoration projects across the state, as well as park construction, library renovations, and Habitat for Humanity, a program that builds homes for the poor. Unbelievably, under current California law, if a nonprofit group receives any taxpayer funding for a charitable venture, and pays even one of the workers on the project, that project may not accept any...

"This was like a Bomb Going Off in the Environmental Community" - Labor Union's Prevailing Wage Law in California Now Threatens Environmentalists Most people have never heard of the strange pork barrel animal that helps keep state construction costs astronomically high - othewise known as "prevailing wage law." That could be about to change. Under a recent ruling by California's Department of Industrial Relations, the environmental group Heal the Bay will now have to pay all its volunteers the prevailing wage because under amendments to the California Labor Code pushed during the Gray Davis administration, receiving governmental assistance turns construction...