Free Republic

Seeking to wow a crowd of conservative activists on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker decided to trumpet what first made him a Republican hero: his crusade against organized labor.In what many saw as a boast that he could handle Islamic State, Walker talked of besting labor and said: “If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same across the world.”With that red meat line at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference(CPAC), Walker won raucous applause about the episode that thrust him on to the national stage–his success in pushing through legislation in 2011 to curb...

The Wisconsin Senate narrowly approved a "right-to-work" bill on Wednesday that would bar private-sector employees who work under union-negotiated contracts from being required to join their unions or pay them dues. The bill, which would make Wisconsin the 25th U.S. state with a right-to-work law on the books, cleared the Republican-led Senate on a 17-15 vote following hours of debate marked by periodic angry shouts from opponents in the Senate gallery. Supporters of organized labor chanted "Shame!" as the legislation was passed and sent for further consideration to the state Assembly, where Republicans also hold a majority. One Republican senator,...

Aside from the obvious objections to allowing the creators of Healthcare.gov get more involved in the education of America’s youth, a new reason to resist the creepily altruistic “Common Core” curriculum has surfaced. New Common Core teaching materials instruct second graders that land owners are intrinsically evil, that business owners are inherently greedy, and Saul Alinsky radicals are the saviors of the everyman. (Besides – and I know this should seem pretty obvious – do you really want the architects of a 17 trillion dollar debt teaching our kids things like basic math?) According to Fox news, a textbook company...

Matt Walker, son of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tells Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that he thinks the institutional left is afraid of his father. In addition to attending Marquette University, Matt Walker is also currently the regional vice chairman of the midwest division of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). [snip] A recent report from The Daily Caller detailed an extraordinary level of hateful rhetoric after University of Wisconsin-Madison College Republicans sent out a campus-wide email supporting Gov. Walker’s recent budget proposal. But liberals on the campus responded with such vitriol and hatred—rather than having a civil discourse...

"..........The right-to-work debate comes in the wake of the 2011 fight over Walker's law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers. That law also prohibited the automatic withdrawal of union dues for public workers, like the right-to-work measure would do in the private sector. Walker administration spokesman Cullen Werwie said between 1,800 and 2,000 people were inside and outside the Capitol at midday and there had been no arrests. After the rally, protesters filed into the Capitol rotunda and joined the ongoing hearing. While union members were vowing to fight the measure and try to sway Republicans to...

It’s beginning to look like an all-out offensive by the Teamsters against the two largest education unions in Clark County. Teamsters Local 14 has filed a public records request for the names, job classification and work location for members of the Clark County Education Association, the union representing the School District’s 17,000 teachers. Teamsters Local 14 secretary-treasurer Larry Griffith confirmed the request was made but he wouldn’t say anything more. The move could be viewed as an organizing effort by the Teamsters to represent the district’s teachers, labor law experts said. The Teamsters are in the midst of a fight...

".......A Feb. 18 email from [Rebecca] Blank blatantly implores alumni to call state legislators to complain about the proposed education cuts. “If you choose to contact your legislator on behalf of the university, I encourage you to thank them for engaging in an active discussion about the university budget, tell them you recognize that the state is facing a difficult budget situation and that the university must do its share along with other state agencies, but that a budget cut of the magnitude called for in the proposed budget is just too big and will have a significant negative impact...

KING, Wis. — At the old union hall here on a recent afternoon, Terry Magnant sat at the head of a table surrounded by 18 empty chairs. A members meeting had been scheduled to start a half-hour earlier, but the small house, with its cracked walls and loose roof shingles, was lonely and desolate. “There used to be a lot more people coming,” said Magnant, a 51-year-old nursing assistant, sighing. The anti-union law passed here four years ago, which made Gov. Scott Walker a national Republican star and a possible presidential candidate, has turned out to be even more transformative...

A literature professor at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater has offered students in her courses extra credit for attending a Thursday evening rally against budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin System proposed by Gov. Scott Walker. The professor is Beth Lueck. On Wednesday, Lueck notified students in her freshman English class about the exciting extra-credit assignment. “UWW students have organized a non-partisan [sic] rally with students, faculty, and community members on the UW Whitewater campus against Gov. Walker’s proposed $300 million cut to the UW system, along with speaking out against attacks on shared governance and faculty,” Lueck wrote. Protest...

Amid depressed turnout and pent-up frustration with the Springfield status quo, Illinois voters last November ousted Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, awarding billionaire venture capitalist Bruce Rauner a five-point victory. The five weeks since Rauner took office as Illinois’ first Republican governor in a dozen years have offered a vivid illustration of the truism that elections have consequences — consequences that will be paid disproportionately by the state’s poor, working class, and middle-income citizens. Rauner fired the opening salvo in his war on workers earlier this month, issuing an executive order that allows public employees to opt out of paying fees...

"....This year, ahead of a competitive presidential primary, Walker is out to distinguish himself again, this time with an ambitious push against another pillar of liberal Wisconsin. According to the Washington Post,the Republican governor will slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years,a 13 percent reduction in state funding.Team Walker says it’s just bookkeeping, a simple cut that comes with an even exchange: a two-year tuition freeze and new flexibility for administrators who want to set pay scales and campus construction priorities. “These reforms will give the U.W. System the power to transform higher...

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has no dues-paying members on the Moriarty, New Mexico police force, but that’s not stopping the union from demanding the city negotiate with it anyway. The city’s police officers voted in 2011 to create a collective bargaining unit affiliated with AFSCME to negotiate employment contracts on their behalf, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Two officers joined, the majority did not. Those two have since left the department. The seven officers currently employed by the city are not union members, though the union still claims to represent them.

The Michigan Education Association has dropped an unfair labor practices complaint against Grand Rapids Community College, and also dropped its request for suspension of an election to “decertify” a union local which represents college secretaries. The decertification vote was authorized when one-third of the nearly 100 members of the Grand Rapids Community College Education Support Professionals signed a petition requesting it. The MEA filed its complaint and request a few weeks later. Supporters of the election say time was of the essence because the local bargaining unit’s contract expires June 30 and contract negotiations are set to begin April 1....

A Harper Creek Community Schools special education teacher says her credit has “suffered irreparable” damage and her local union has attempted to humiliate her. The reason, she says, is that she refused to turn over personal banking information that would let the union automatically deduct her dues. Terri MacKenzie made her claims in a lawsuit she filed against the Michigan Education Association, the National Education Association and the Harper Creek Education Association in Calhoun County district court. Her trial is set for later this month. The dispute dates back to September 2012 when the MEA was implementing its e-dues automatic...

Raymond Ventrone figured there had to be a better way to get people to surrender guns than offering “a few hundred dollars or a Giant Eagle gift card.” “I've never thought that was much incentive to turn a gun in for guys who make $2,000 or $3,000 a week selling drugs,” he said. “Let's go a step further and offer them a career.” Ventrone, business manager of Boilermakers Local 154 in Banksville, convinced his union to partner with Pittsburgh and Allegheny County police departments to establish a “Guns for Opportunity” program that offers anyone who turns in a gun the...

New Republican Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois is taking on the most powerful special interest in the state - public employee unions - and he's getting some support from Democrats. In truth, Rauner has little choice. Public union pensions are out of control. The pension crisis in Illinois is easily the worst in the nation and the Rauner administration is already looking for ways to cut benefits - a move that would have been considered sacrilegious previously but is now being considered even by Democrats. Also, Rauner issued an executive order: prohibiting unions from collecting so-called fair share fees from...

The Pacific Maritime Association suspends weekend vessel operations at all 29 ports along the West Coast. For the second time this week, terminal operators controlling the West Coast ports have raised the stakes in contract negotiations with their dockworkers. On Friday, the Pacific Maritime Assocation (PMA) said it would suspend weekend vessel operations at all 29 ports along the West Coast. “After three months of union slowdowns, it makes no sense to pay extra for less work,” PMA spokesman Wade Gates said in a statement. “Especially if there is no end in sight to the union’s actions, which needlessly brought...

Reflections on the days when a labor leader led our nation, on the great man's birthday... As the author writes this column, dozens of ships, each one laden with tens of thousands of truckloads of cargo, are sitting in the Pacific, parked for weeks at a time in a line, waiting for the longshoremen to stop their slowdown and get back to work. Modern containerships are measured in TEUs, a unit of measure specific to the transportation industry. The standard intermodal container (so-called because it can be transported by truck, rail, or ship, easily transferred from one to the next...

Anti-union forces claim UAW ‘stuffed’ ballot box. Workers in Alabama are staging a fourth attempt to kick the United Auto Workers (UAW) out of their plant following claims that stuffed ballot boxes derailed their last vote. Employees at the NTN-Bower Corporation, a ball bearings manufacturer, have unsuccessfully tried to boot the labor giant out of their factory for two years. Workers voted to decertify the UAW in an earlier election, but an Obama-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) panel threw out the election. Another election was held in January of this year. The UAW prevailed, but it was later revealed...

Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget calls for essentially removing the public service language from the University of Wisconsin System's mission to focus more on workforce development, according to language released Wednesday morning. The Wisconsin Idea has long been the core philosophy of the UW System, driving campuses to extend their reach into communities and "every family in the state." That mission also is linked to Wisconsin public radio and TV. The Walker budget cuts $5 million in state funding from the public service media. State funding makes up about 10% of the budget for their programming operations, according to a...