Free Republic

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 Michigan Education Association is directing people to a website that insults and vilifies a 37-year member who authored a widely distributed letter explaining why she wants to leave the state’s largest teachers union. Lansing School District teacher Mary Davenport wrote a letter that was sent to thousands of teachers to alert them that if they want to quit the union it would only allow them to do so in the month of August. Many teachers have complained about this so-called August window. Since Davenport’s letter was distributed, the website MEAMatters.com has invited union members to respond online. The website...

After being compelled to pay thousands of dollars in union dues over 37 years as a teacher, Mary Davenport thought the least it could do was create a harmonious workplace. Davenport says she got the opposite, which has taken a toll personally and professionally. The veteran teacher still has five years before retirement, and says she just wants to survive it. “I believe the union and management work together to target certain employees for dismissal, and that has been the case with me,” said Davenport. Davenport claims she is being cited for vague and trivial offenses, like using her computer...

Powerful public-sector unions are facing another high-profile legal challenge that they say could wipe away millions from their bank accounts and make it tougher for them to survive. A group of California schoolteachers, backed by a conservative group, has asked the Supreme Court to rule that unions representing government workers can’t collect fees from those who choose not to join. Half the states currently require state workers represented by a union to pay “fair share” fees that cover bargaining costs, even if they are not members. The justices could decide as early as next week whether to take up the...

The union that exploited Michigan’s home-based caregivers for the best part of a decade has seen its revenue tumble since the scheme that enabled the exploitation ended. SEIU Healthcare Michigan reported $5,398,383 in dues and fees in 2014. That's just 48 percent of the $11,307,314 it reported for 2012, the last full year during which the union's dues skim was in place. The information was contained in a financial disclosure report the union submitted to the federal government 57 days after the March 31 deadline it is apparently required to meet. The disclosure finally took place shortly after Michigan Capitol...

LiUNA General President Terry O'Sullivan. (Photo: Penny Starr/CNSNews.com) (CNSNews.com) – When asked at an American Petroleum Institute (API) event on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. about the claim that the Keystone XL Pipeline and other oil and natural gas infrastructure projects only provide temporary jobs during the construction phase, union President Terry O’Sullivan, said the claim was “moronic." “I think it’s one of the most moronic things that I’ve heard come out of the administration and every politician,” said O’Sullivan, whose Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) represents workers in both the U.S. and Canada. Canada has been seeking...

Labor leaders and the higher education community are closely watching to see if other politicians follow Walker’s lead.“I don’t think it’s an immediate threat elsewhere, but it’s still a big concern,” said Mark F. Smith, senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, which has slightly less than 200,000 higher education members.David Bergeron, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said he expects more such fights in upcoming years.“I think that this is just part of the evolution of attacks on … public benefits and on public sector employees of all sorts,” Bergeron said.------------ As Republican Gov. Scott...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) 80% has issued yet another clarion call to House Republicans urging them to abandon GOP leadership’s desperate ploys to bring Obamatrade back to life and instead vote against Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and stop President Obama from getting even more power in his final years in office. “The House is preparing to vote again tomorrow on providing fast-track executive authority to the President. If adopted, it will be sent immediately to the Senate for final consideration,” Sessions said, before correcting misconceptions peddled far and wide by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)...

When the opportunity came to give testimony on a “Steve Cook” bill prohibiting public school pension spiking scheme benefiting its current and past two presidents, the Michigan Education Association remained silent. The state's largest teachers union chose not to testify during a legislative hearing on a bill forestalling such schemes in the future. The hearing also considered a second bill closing the door on the practice of paying school and government employees for time spent doing union business. At the same hearing, however, the state’s other major teachers union, a branch of the American Federation of Teachers, talked and talked...

Government and public school employees in Michigan have the legal right to resign from a union whenever they choose to do so. That ruling, handed down by Administrative Law Judge Julia C. Stern in September of 2014, is now poised to be unanimously upheld by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the agency responsible for labor law administration and dispute resolution in this state. On Tuesday, MERC voted to pursue adoption of Stern’s finding that the Michigan Education Association’s so-called August window, which limits when school employees can withdraw from the union to one month each year, violates the state’s right-to-work...

Based on his employee evaluations, Bob Mroczek is the type of person you want in the classroom with students. As a paraprofessional, Mroczek’s evaluation includes the following comments from teachers: “Wonderful with the students! Willing to do whatever asked! Shows a positive attitude and is very helpful!” “I don’t care where you schedule Bob. Just don’t take him from my class.” “Can you clone Bob?” His supervisor concluded an evaluation: “Clearly, Mr. Mroczek’s contributions to H.H. Dow [High School] are recognized by students and colleagues. We hope he is able to return to the role of paraprofessional next year even...

Clark County management has informed its largest union that employees won’t receive salary or benefit increases anytime soon, citing a new state law and contending that the contract between the county and Service Employees International Union Local 1107 has expired. The freeze is expected to end in August or early September, when the county expects to have a new contract in place with the union. The county and union go to arbitration on July 1. Both sides had already planned to go to arbitration before a new state law was passed, after two years of fruitless negotiations for a new...

Thousands of Chicago Teachers Union members and their supporters blocked a downtown stretch of LaSalle Street early Tuesday evening, staging a show of force amid an intensifying contract battle.. "You have to remember that what you're fighting for is not just a fair contract, it is the history of fair contracts," CTU President Karen Lewis told supporters gathered outside the Thompson Center. "And if we have a chance, this is it. This is the time where you have to stand up and tell 'em all, 'No, we're not going to take that.' " **SNIP** Chicago Public Schools says it is...

Scott Walker’s war on Wisconsin’s public colleges will result in lower quality and higher debt for students and families, which is precisely what his right wing political patrons at the Bradley Foundation have been planning for decades. Wisconsin students have experienced first hand Scott Walker’s assault on public higher education over the last four years. Double-digit tuition increases and historic, unprecedented budget cuts have resulted in declining enrollment, rising costs, and exploding student loan debt for millions of Wisconsin families. The groundwork for Walker’s crusade against public higher education in Wisconsin was first being laid as Walker began his political...

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that the war waged by the Jeffco teachers union against school district staff, particularly those in the communications office, was the most vitriolic in history. We couldn’t figure out why the union would be such abusive bullies to staff members – not even elected officials. And, now, the reason is clear. Documents recently uncovered show that the teachers union and other school staff were using the Jeffco Schools communications department as a de facto campaign headquarters – and had been since at least 2003 (see last picture of memo). With a contentious election...

“Bad news always seems to drop on Fridays,” Dave Vanness, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, wrote on a blog which appeared on the blogroll that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) maintains. “Friday May 29, 2015 was a particularly bad news day for Wisconsin and for all of us who believe in academic freedom,” he avers. “On that day, Joint Finance Committee of the State of Wisconsin passed Omnibus Motion #521 on a 12-4 party-line vote, including a $250 million biennium budget cut to UW System, major changes to shared governance (a huge topic...

As part of the negotiations to get Proposal 1 on the May 5 ballot, Gov. Rick Snyder reportedly promised to veto a potential repeal of the state's “prevailing wage” law. This law prohibits awarding government construction contracts to the lowest bidder, unless the contractor pays the equivalent of union wages that often exceed market rates. Studies have shown that this adds hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the cost of government infrastructure projects, including school construction and road repairs. Snyder has not denied those reports, and even though voters turned down the proposed sales tax hike in May, there...

Hillary Rodham Clinton told the president of the National Education Association that she would listen to teachers if elected president, a simple promise Monday that impressed the president of the nation’s largest labor union. “She used the most important word that I was personally looking for, the word ‘listen’,” said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the NEA, which represents mostly K-12 teachers and paraprofessionals and has 3 million members. Garcia met privately with Clinton, a Democrat who is running for president, at NEA headquarters as part of the union’s endorsement process for the 2016 campaign. The NEA has invited both...

Here’s how the scam works: Near the end of each academic year, APSCUF informs their members that it miraculously found an extra $25 per person in dues that it doesn’t need. The union then portrays itself as an honest broker and offers the money back as a “rebate.” The rebate form gives members three options for their $25: 1. Let the union keep it; 2. Donate it to APSCUF’s political action committee; or 3. Have it sent back to them. Presenting this “found” money with these options and urging members to donate to APSCUF’s PAC has proven extraordinarily effective —...

Ballot initiative threatens state worker retirement security A coalition of anti-union, anti-public employee groups, including the National Right to Work Committee, launched their latest attack against public employee pensions and the hard-earned retirement security of state workers. Their misleading campaign, called the “Voter Empowerment Act of 2016,” would undermine collective bargaining and require voter approval for changes to pensions and other retirement benefits, including medical insurance. “This dangerous initiative is a real threat to the financial security of our members and all public employees,” said Yvonne R. Walker, Local 1000 president. “It is more important than ever to become a...