Free Republic

Federal agents are not the only ones trying to remove people from the Buffalo area who have entered the country illegally. If Bill Bing, a carpenters union official, discovers workers at local construction projects suspected of being in the country illegally, the union tips off authorities. That information has led to some raids and arrests, he said, although the detention last month of 32 individuals suspected of being in the country illegally and working at projects was not his tip. "We were not directly responsible for the information on those two raids," said Bing, the local representative for the Northeast...

LAUSD .. schools are under-enrolled. "There are places where we have schools that are basically four blocks away from each other — and at a time, that made sense," Rodriguez says. Now, he says, "Buildings built for 1,000 kids may have something like 400. "It's expensive." ... Today, LAUSD's enrollment is around 514,000, a number that the district estimates will fall below half a million by 2018. But L.A. Unified's costs have not gone down. They've gone up. This year's $7.59 billion budget is half a billion dollars more than last year's. The nation's second largest school district is facing...

There’s a fun little food fight breaking out in the state of Illinois this week which is sure to have public worker union advocates spitting nails. There was a recent vote among members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union authorizing a strike if Governor Bruce Rauner did not cave in to their demands. In response, the governor set up a new website inviting citizens to apply for government positions.

Union leaders in California continued a protest even after neighbors and police informed them they were at the wrong house because their target, Rep. Steve Knight (R., Calif.), had moved away months ago. The group of over 50 protestors, who arrived in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) vans, carried a fake coffin to the house to send a message that Knight's votes in Congress were "killing" them, according to a report in the local Antelope Valley Press. Police arrived at the scene to alert the union protestors that they were in the wrong place, but the activists—who had already been...

Union leader says some stations continue to follow Obama 'catch and release' directives Some border patrol stations have been slow to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement executive order and instead have continued former President Barack Obama’s “catch-and-release” policies, according to a union official. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told LifeZette that he raised concerns Thursday with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello. He said he is confident that issue soon will be corrected. But Judd said as recently as Thursday, some border patrol stations were still releasing border-jumpers, often without even issuing notices to...

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) on Friday picked up the backing of the head of the nation’s largest teachers union in his bid to lead the Democratic National Committee. In a statement announcing her personal endorsement, National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García said she knows Ellison will be a unifying force for Democrats. “Keith’s emphasis and well-documented commitment to party building and grassroots organizing in every community is exactly what we need as the nation finds itself at a crossroad under the divisive Trump administration,” she said. Eskelsen García’s endorsement comes just hours after the Service Employees International Union called...

It appears that somebody is getting the message, at least in South Carolina. A growing movement around the nation in support of right to work policies has dealt one blow after another to organized labor. The latest edition of the story comes to us out of South Carolina where one of the nation’s larger unions has been attempting to organize workers at the Boeing plant. That proposal came up for a vote this week and the results speak for themselves. Employees rejected the plan and the final vote wasn’t even close. (Fox News) Nearly three-quarters of eligible production workers at...

The Michigan Education Association has for years promoted a claim that public school teachers are so underpaid that many live in poverty. The facts show it would require extraordinary and highly unlikely circumstances for a full-time teacher in the state to meet the official definition of poverty. Michigan’s largest teacher union recently enlisted a new ally in promoting this narrative: Royal Oak Mayor Mike Fournier. The MEA wrote in a press release that Fournier “knows educators who’ve watched their pay drop to poverty levels due to step freezes and state-mandated health care premium increases.” Fournier’s wife teaches at the Waterford...

The Taylor Public Schools support staff members went to Lansing to conduct a protest against their own union recently. They are taking steps to separate from the SEIU Local 517M and represent themselves. One Taylor support staff union member explained their complaints (click for video).

In the 47 years between 1964 and 2011, just three states adopted a right-to-work law – Louisiana (1976), Idaho (1985) and Oklahoma (2001). But in the last five years, five more states have made it illegal for employers to make workers pay unions as a condition of employment: Indiana (2012), Michigan (2013), Wisconsin (2015), West Virginia (2016) and Kentucky (2017). In the opening days of its 2017 legislative session, Missouri took a step toward becoming the 29th right-to-work state, when its Republican-controlled House approved a bill to adopt the policy. Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana all passed right-to-work laws when...

The public employee unions have a pretty sweet deal with the government which is very similar to the benefits enjoyed by their civilian counterparts. Some of their workers are authorized to spend a certain amount of what’s known as “official time” conducting union business while they’re on the clock and supposedly doing the business of the taxpayers. There are supposed to be limits on this benefit, but in agencies such as the Veterans Affairs Department, just how much of this is going on? Don’t ask the agency’s administrators because it turns out that they have no way of tracking...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday that he spoke with Vice President Mike Pence about how the White House can implement on a federal level parts of the Republican governor's contentious policy that all-but eliminated collective bargaining for public sector unions in the state. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-4181638/Gov-Walker-White-House-interested-Wisconsin-union-law.html#ixzz4XUPfcvLd

The two Republicans who broke ranks with their party and announced they would vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos have received thousands of dollars from the nation's largest teachers union.Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have each benefited from contributions from the National Education Association. Collins received $2,000 from the union in 2002 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murkowski, meanwhile, has received $23,500.The NEA represents 3 million members, making it the wealthiest and most influential union in the country. The NEA, along with other labor groups like the American Federation of Teachers, has waged a fierce campaign against...

Speaking at an event organized to oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda in Washington, D.C. Thursday, American Federation of Teachers President Elizabeth “Liz” Davis said that Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is more frightening than the Ku Klux Klan. “Of course, you know that there are some scarier things that are coming up … one of them is Betsy DeVos,” Davis said. “That frightens me more than the Klan, because Betsy DeVos is a multi-mega millionaire who has managed to buy her way to a position of influence that could actually change the face of what we know...

For the past several years, the state’s largest teachers union has engaged in an ongoing public relations campaign that has distorted facts and promoted inaccuracies about Michigan’s public school system. Michigan Capitol Confidential has documented many of the inaccuracies over the past five years. The most dramatic case of the union’s not telling the truth was its claim that Gov. Rick Snyder had cut $1 billion from school budgets. In a 2013 Facebook post, MEA President Steve Cook wrote, “Shortly after taking office, one of Snyder’s bold initiatives to ‘reinvent Michigan’ was to cut over $1 billion from the education...

As part of its broader package of rules for the 115th Congress, the House of Representatives revived the Holman Rule, a provision that allows House members to propose amendments to spending bills that closely manage federal agencies. These "retrenchment" amendments can affect details down to individual federal salaries and the number of staff in an office. ... The restoration of the Holman Rule means merely that when it comes to firing a federal employee, the president's signature on an act of Congress can do it. It doesn't seem extraordinary that the heads of the federal government should be able to...

Mish ShedlockJanuary 7, 2017 In a major setback for organized labor, Kentucky passed right-to-work legislation and repealed the state’s prevailing wage law. “Organized labor suffered its first major legislative setback due to the 2016 elections on Saturday, when Kentucky Republicans gave final approval to right-to-work legislation and repealed the state’s prevailing wage law. Both bills are expected to be signed into law by the governor, and will take effect immediately. Labor leaders were equally troubled by the legislature’s move to gut the state’s prevailing wage law. Such laws require that employers pay certain minimum wages on work funded by public...

As the latest legislative session came to a close, Michigan House Republicans failed to put a stop to two union schemes that are ripping off taxpayers. It is bizarre that, despite having a huge majority, the GOP continues to allow unions to misspend tax dollars for the sole purpose of enriching their officials. Earlier this year, the state Senate passed two bills ending these special union deals. Senate Bill 279 dealt with union pension spiking schemes, in which the state’s largest union teamed up with school districts to pretend its officials are still working for schools when they really are...

Four years after Michigan’s right-to-work law was passed, the state’s largest teachers union appears to be taking a different response to the fact that school employees no longer have to pay union dues or fees. The Michigan Education Association has significantly cut back the amount it spends on collection agencies sent after school employees who didn’t pay dues. It has also created a new high-paying position — a director of membership engagement — according to documents filed with the federal government. Attempts to engage school employees who can no longer be legally compelled to pay dues would make sense considering...

Baltimore City’s Police Union is sounding the alarm because they say the department is in crisis due to the fact that it has too few officers. According to a new report, there are more than 100 fewer Baltimore City PD officers than last year, with the union saying this poses a safety concern as officers are being overworked. The police union president calls the situation “dire.” ... You don’t have enough police officers to patrol the streets safely protecting themselves, much less protecting the citizens of Baltimore,” said Lt. Ryan. Baltimore ended last year with the second highest number of...