Free Republic

Emails released by the State Department Monday night show that the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's top unions, had direct access to the office of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Several emails show that requests from Tina Flournoy, union President Randi Weingarten's assistant at the time, for private meetings or phone calls were given priority by Clinton. For example, in a July 20, 2010, message to Clinton's private account "HDR22@clintonemail.com," Flournoy, using her American Federation of Teachers address, said: "Have a little issue I would like to discuss with you over the phone. Not...

Rosemary Stawasz wasn't sure what Michigan's right-to-work law, enacted at the end of 2012, would mean for her. Stawasz, a special education teacher with the Van Buren Intermediate School District, worried about what would happen if she exercised her new right to not be forced to financially support the local teachers union. Under the previous law, paying union dues or fees was a condition of employment. Now, she had a choice. Educators can find out more about that choice at www.AugustOptOut.org. “I have had no problems at all," she said of the decision she made to leave the union. "The...

Powerful and well funded, 1199 SEIU has unprecedented reach into city and state government. ... Medicaid is one of the primary sources of funding for the hospitals employing workers from 1199 SEIU, the powerful hospital and nursing-home employees’ union. ... The union’s clout can be assessed by several measures: the sheer size of its membership, its spending on campaigns and lobbying, and the depth and breadth of its connections with New York’s ruling elite. With well over 300,000 members in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York (where over half of that total resides), 1199SEIU is the largest union...

A Civil War monument in Petersburg was vandalized at some point early Saturday morning. The Monument to Union Soldiers stands on Wakefield Street and is across from Walnut Hill Elementary School. Petersburg police and the National Parks Service are working together to investigate the damage. If you have any information that could help investigators, call Petersburg police at 804-732-4222 or Crime Stoppers at 804-861-1212.

A college student was sexually molested at LaGuardia Airport by a uniformed TSA agent who demanded she go into a bathroom with him after she got off a flight so she could be searched for a weapon, sources told The Post. The 22-year-old victim, who is Korean, had gotten off a Southwest Airlines flight from Salt Lake City around 8 p.m. Tuesday when the agent, identified as Maxie Oquendo, 40, approached her near the B4 gate of Terminal B. Ogendo then asked her to follow him so she could be searched to see if she was carrying a knife or...

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...

America! It’s the land where anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make their mark if they’re willing to put in the elbow grease, ingenuity and drive to carve a path to success. Or, you could just join a union. An elementary school teacher has been allowed to keep his job even though he was late for work 111 times over a two-year period.In a decision filed Aug. 19, an arbitrator rejected an attempt by the Roosevelt Elementary School to fire 15-year veteran Arnold Anderson from his $90,000-a-year job, saying he was entitled to progressive discipline.Anderson was...

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,...

In 2005, the Michigan Education Association had 130,882 voting (active) members that were teachers and support professionals. According to recent disclosure documents, in 2015 the state's largest teachers union has 96,561 members, a decline of about 34,000 since 2005, or 26 percent. The numbers on the most recent MEA membership came from the Portage Education Association’s website which cites MEA Secretary Treasurer Rick Trainor as its source. The numbers significantly differ from the MEA’s federal report from the previous year. The MEA didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on its overall decline in membership. There are four main reasons...

In an apparent effort to make it even more difficult or even stop school employees from exercising their right under right-to-work to not pay union dues or fees, the state’s largest teachers union has quietly set up an obscure post office box address to which members must send the required opt-out paperwork. It's P.O. Box 51 East Lansing, MI 48826. Based on a letter the Michigan Education Association sent to members who had tried to get out, and discussions with some of them, resignation requests sent to the regular union headquarters address will not be honored. An extensive search of...

The National Labor Relations Board on Monday blocked a historic bid by Northwestern University football players to form the nation’s first college athletes’ union, dealing a blow to a labor movement that could have transformed amateur sports. In a unanimous decision, the board said the prospect of having both union and nonunion teams could lead to different standards at different schools—from the amount of money players receive to the amount of time they can practice—and create competitive imbalances on the field. The ruling dismissed a stunning decision in March 2014 by a regional NLRB director in Chicago who said football...

The Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, routinely submits financial reports to the federal government, as it is legally required to do. But the reports can leave outsiders wondering about the source of the roughly 30 percent of its income that is categorized under the heading of “All Other Receipts.” That’s the only description the Michigan Education Association provides to account for more than $30 million of its annual income. Specifically, on its 2014 LM-2 disclosure form, the MEA reported over $38 million in receipts from unspecified sources under the "All Other Receipts” heading. “This is something that...

Chicago Public Schools officials on Monday proposed a $5.7 billion operating budget for the upcoming school year that relies on $480 million in new funding from state government that might never come. School leaders conceded the spending plan contains a mix of “unsustainable” borrowing and limited classroom cuts that they say they must begrudgingly make because of a $676 million payment for teacher pensions that’s due at the end of the school year. There also are numerous fiscal wild cards in the mix, including budget adjustments that might ensue should CPS reach an agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union on...

Former Broward Teachers Union President Pat Santeramo appeared in court Monday to face new federal fraud charges. According to court records filed Friday, Santeramo, 67, was indicted on two mail fraud charges and is accused of misappropriating more than $35,000 from the Broward school district's accountability program from 2006 to 2011. The program was set up to provide training and teachers programs.

"There will be blood. There will be repercussions." Such is the common threat made against those who dare take on the union juggernaut. Michigan’s State Rep. Shenelle Jackson (D-Detroit) made the threat clear in 2012 during the passage of that state’s law on worker freedom. "What you're doing today will only serve to empower [Democrats]. We will win back this chamber, possibly take the Senate back and certainly win the governorship.” Unfortunately for Rep. Jackson and her allies, the exact opposite happened. Not a single state representative or senator who voted for right-to-work lost in the general election and the...

At the National Education Association annual convention, the nationwide teachers union passed an action item warning its members about right-to-work laws that “undermine high-quality education for every child.” But critics of the NEA say what right-to-work laws really undermine is the union's ability to promote a far-left ideology that violates the values of conservative members the union boasts of representing. In Michigan, teachers pay $183 a year to the NEA as part of membership in the Michigan Education Association. The NEA's Michigan affiliate also tries to make it hard for members of any political persuasion to leave, notwithstanding Michigan's right-to-work...

The principal of an innovative West Harlem public school killed herself the day after her students took the state Common Core exams — which were later tossed out because she cheated ... Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, 49, of Teachers College Community School, jumped in front of a B train in the 135th Street station ... She was pulled out from under the train and taken to Harlem Hospital, where she died eight days later. The city Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a suicide. The leap came at 9:20 a.m., less than 24 hours after her 47 third-graders wrapped up three days sweating...

"There will be blood. There will be repercussions." Such is the common threat made against those who dare take on the union juggernaut. Michigan’s State Rep. Shenelle Jackson (D-Detroit) made the threat clear in 2012 during the passage of that state’s law on worker freedom. "What you're doing today will only serve to empower [Democrats]. We will win back this chamber, possibly take the Senate back and certainly win the governorship.” Unfortunately for Rep. Jackson and her allies, the exact opposite happened. Not a single state representative or senator who voted for right-to-work lost in the general election and the...

Hillary Rodham Clinton shed her usual sunny demeanor last week and snarled at Republicans in general and one presidential candidate in particular. “Republican governors like Scott Walker have made their names stomping on workers’ rights, and practically all Republican candidates would do the same as president,” Clinton growled at Manhattan’s New School. “I will fight back against these mean-spirited, misguided attacks. Evidence shows that the decline of unions may be responsible for a third of the increase of inequality among men. So, if we want to get serious about raising income, we have to get serious about supporting union...

City officials are pushing property-tax hikes, sales-tax hikes, and even a commuter tax and financial-transaction tax. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s wish for a $474 million sales-tax increase to help pay for the county’s growing pension debt has been granted. The hike pushes the sales-tax rate back up to 10.25 percent in Chicago – the same as it was when Preckwinkle took office in 2010. And that’s not the only new tax residents have to face. Preckwinkle is just the latest local leader to usher in a tax increase. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a new tax earlier this...