Free Republic

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck a huge blow against a much-abused presidential power yesterday in invalidating Craig Becker's 2010 appointment to the National Labor Relations Board. I think it's great news -- the recess appointment is an outdated accommodation for the executive branch, and no president from any party should have such power...But bear in mind that although this decision does resemble a recent one by the D.C. Circuit, it isn't about Obama's flagrantly illegal appointments to the NLRB from last January. This calls nearly all recess appointments into question, and it gives the Supreme Court a...

At the behest of unions desperate for new members, the U.S. Labor Department plans to make a major regulatory shift. The change has no basis in existing law or precedent, and it will harm labor-management relations while costing billions of dollars. A shocking change in American labor relations is brewing at the U.S. Department of Labor, which is expected sometime soon to alter a major regulation. The change involves a new interpretation of the “advice exemption” of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. Specifically, businesses would have to disclose the names of, and fees paid to, attorneys and consultants...

The Buena Vista School District saw an alarming drop in enrollment in 2010-2011. The fall head count had 888 students while the spring count just a few months later had 773, a 13 percent drop. At that time, the Saginaw County district was $51,593 in debt, the first time it had overspent in years, according to the Michigan Department of Education. Nonetheless, in June 2011 — in the midst of red ink and falling enrollment — the Buena Vista Education Association and the school board agreed to a three-year union contract deal that continued the practice of taxpayers paying 100...

The IRS? It’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31 separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not only endorsed President Obama for election and re-election, but a union whose current president, Colleen Kelly, was a 14-year IRS agent and now is both union president and Obama administration appointee (of which more in a moment). It’s about 94% of NTEU union contributions going to Democrats in the Senate and House in 2012 — candidates who campaigned as vociferous opponents of the Tea Party. And the recently released...

A North Carolina teacher is brain-washing students telling them Republican policies are hurting schools.EAG News reported: It appears that one North Carolina teacher is getting into the spirit of the new Common Core learning standards that promote the use of “informational” texts in the classroom. According to the StopCommonCoreNC.com, a fourth-grade teacher with Henderson County Public Schools gave students a brief reading assignment, titled “Raleigh’s Educational Plan.”(continued)

Labor is mounting an all-out push to fill the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the agency faces the prospect of being sidelined for the rest of President Obama’s second term. Unions of all stripes have told Senate Democrats that they need to move on all five of Obama's nominees to the labor board, even if it takes a controversial change to filibuster rules to make it happen. “Without this, there's nothing [to protect workers],” said Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America. (CWA) “It's a floor and now the floor is caving in as well.” The...

The Michigan Capitol Confidential article about a leaked document from the Service Employees International Union on how the union hopes to continue its "dues skim" against home-based caregivers is interesting, but more significant is how the union explains the whole unionization scheme. The crux of the debate is over the unionization of more than 45,000 home-based caregivers. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, which is representing some of those forced to be in the union, maintains that the skim was illegal because the caregivers are not state employees — they work for private individuals who happen to receive public money. If...

For folks too young or too unaware what has happened to our economy the past 30 years, here is an answer. Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush and the Republican Party are responsible for what we know as "Reaganomics," an economy that continues today resulting in few "labor unions” and the resulting low wages and lack of worker benefits. Newly elected Reagan’s (1981) first attack on the middle class economy was his dismantling a labor union representing 11,000 striking air traffic controller employees, whom he “fired.” Their PATCO union was destroyed. Reagan and his rich, conservative friends (not one who needed job...

Ariel Castro was charged Wednesday with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape in the Cleveland, abductions now dominating national news. Castro was a school bus driver from 1991 to 2012, during which time he was accused of domestic violence. Do they perform background checks on school bus drivers? Yes. Potential Ohio school bus drivers submit to a state and federal criminal background check before they can be hired. Once they are behind the big wheel, a computer checks the drivers’ names against state arrest records on a nightly basis. A federal criminal background check is supposed to...

DETROIT (WWJ) - Detroit’s emergency manager says the city is bleeding much more red ink than originally thought. That’s what Kevyn Orr told WWJ City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas in an exclusive one-on-one interview. “The situation is severe,” Orr said. “It’s worse that we originally thought. It ain’t good.” With just 39 days under his belt, Orr is already putting the final touches on a draft of his 40-plus page financial report, which must be submitted to the state on Monday. “I’ve been spending virtually every day from March 25 when I got here, looking at the city’s financials. This...

Last January, Walmart announced their upcoming initiative to offer a job to any honorably-discharged U.S. military veteran, set to begin on May 27. It was an idea that the White House applauded, with Michelle Obama saying that “Wal-Mart is setting a groundbreaking example for the private sector to follow.” As you might imagine, the AFL-CIO doesn’t like that at all. Behold, a statement from their president, Richard Trumka, on the “White House facilitating Walmart’s public relations move”: Walmart’s recent announcement of a plan to hire returning honorably discharged veterans is more about public relations than honoring our heroes. That this...

After a nearly four-month delay in the release of the information, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power made public five years of payroll data without workers names on Tuesday. Average employee pay rose 15% over the last five years to $101,237 in 2012, according to records obtained by The Times. The median household income for Los Angeles residents – the public utility’s customers – fell over roughly the same period, from $48,882 in 2008 to $46,148 in 2011, the latest year for which U.S. Census numbers are available. The DWP's politically powerful employee’s union is still opposing release...

In another blow to the nation's dwindling labor unions, an appeals court on Tuesday struck down a federal rule that would have required millions of businesses to put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union.

A federal appeals on Tuesday court struck down regulations that would require posters about union rights in the workplace. The court said the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) violated the First Amendment when it mandated that businesses place notices in the workplace and on their company websites informing employees of their rights to unionize. Business that failed to comply would have faced charges of promoting “unfair labor practices.” Industry groups, which quickly challenged the rule after it was issued, cheered the ruling. Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, pledged to remain vigilant against...

San Antonio Park police violently beat a woman who had walked into the wrong room at a gas station, then arrested her brother for trying to video record the altercation. They also deleted the footage from her brother’s camera while charging the woman with felony assault on a peace officer. But her brother managed to recover the footage that contradicts the police version of the story. Christina Oliver, who ended up with a broken nose and black eye, told her story to KENS 5:

A group of charter public school advocates, private-sector business people and state employees have been meeting to come up with ideas on how to provide better public education at a lower cost through technology and competition. The group hopes to provide a “value school” model costing about $5,000 per pupil, reports The Detroit News, which broke the story. If it works, this would mean an education at substantially less than the $13,000 school districts receive now in per-student revenue or even the roughly $7,000 per pupil they receive strictly from the state. Most of the criticism of the program has...

“Our teachers haven’t had a raise for the last three years.” — Ed Hughes, clerk and candidate for president of the Madison School Board There are a lot of employees who haven’t seen their pay go up in three years, but the vast majority of Madison public school teachers aren’t among them. And yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re taking home more money. Confused? Welcome to the world of public school teacher compensation, post-Act 10. Hughes isn’t the first public school representative whose definition of “raise” doesn’t jibe with the way the rest of the world defines “raise” — i.e.,...

LA teachers oppose feeding 200,000 students Breakfast in classroom. Teachers Union vs SCIU Rush Morning update

The newly-revived Hostess snack cake company created a stir late last week when it indicated it wouldn’t be allowing any unions. As the Wall Street Journal reported:  Chief Executive C. Dean Metropoulos (of Metropoulos & Co, one of the two companies reviving the brand) said the company will pump $60 million in capital investments into the plants between now and September and aims to hire at least 1,500 workers. But they won’t be represented by unions, including the one whose nationwide strike sparked the 86-year-old company’s decision to shut down in November.“We do not expect to be involved in the union...

When it comes to public employee pension politics, the Eagles got it right with Hotel California: “You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” The San Jose City Council, facing huge budget deficits tried to honor the will of the people by terminating life-time pension benefits for Council members. But they just learned ending wildly expensive retirement benefits may be wildly more expensive than staying in the plan. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which manages most public employee retirement benefits in California raised San Jose’s cost of checking-out of the pension plan by 584%.

Obama’s big money corporate donors included: AT&T--$4.6 million Microsoft--$2.1 million Boeing--$1 million Chevron--$1 million Genentech--$750,000 Deloitte--$500,000 FedEx--$500,000 Coca Cola--$430,000 Bank of America--$300,000 Xerox--$250,000 ExxonMobil--$250,000 Northrup Grumman--$100,000 Verizon--$100,000 Obama also hauled in $250,000 checks from each of the following unions: The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the National Education Association.

As ObamaCare rolls out, some of its biggest backers from labor to D.C. lawmakers are having second thoughts. It's a sign that the idea of ending this national nightmare isn't about to go away. Late last week, the 22,000-member United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers dropped a bombshell on the Obama administration, not only withdrawing its support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but also demanding its repeal. The reason: ObamaCare subsidizes low-paid non-union workers in small companies that don't insure their employees, while leaving union shops with ObamaCare's higher health care costs and a 40%...

Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) issued a statement today, responding to the sale of the iconic Twinkies brand.  In response to Metropoulos & Co. CEO C. Dean Metropoulos' statement to The Wall Street Journal that the company will not hire union workers when reopening four former Hostess Brands bakeries, BCTGM International President David B. Durkee issued the following statement on behalf of all BCTGM members:The BCTGM is pleased to see that Hostess Brands LLC, the newly formed snack cake company created by Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co, has announced that it will be reopening four Hostess...

The company that bought the Twinkie, HoHo and Ding Dong brands out of bankruptcy is gearing up to reopen plants and hire workers, but it won't be using union labor. Hostess Brands new incarnation of the baking company that liquidated in Chapter 11—is reopening four bakeries in the next eight to 10 weeks, aiming to get Twinkie-deprived consumers the classic snack cake starting in July. Chief Executive C. Dean Metropoulos said the company will pump $60 million in capital investments into the plants between now and September and aims to hire at least 1,500 workers. But they won't be represented...

The bankrupt assets of Hostess Brands, Inc., the company responsible for Twinkies, Ho Ho's, Sno Balls and Ding Dongs, are being put back to work by a buyout firm. What's not being put back to work are the former Hostess unionized employees. The unionized workers had been on strike when the company folded late last year. The company had imposed a contract that would cut its 19,000 workers' wages — 15,000 of whom belonged to the workers from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) — by 8 percent. (The Teamsters was Hostess' largest union, followed...

A new union was born recently in the Ann Arbor suburb of Dexter when several transportation employees in the Dexter Community Schools rallied together to form the West Washtenaw Bus Drivers and Monitors Association. The new union is part of a growing type of labor organizing in Michigan, that of local-only unions. What makes many of these new unions special is that they are formed after workers rejected established larger unions. The now former International Union of Operating Engineers members started a campaign earlier this year to leave their international union. The members were inspired by the success of Roscommon...

The new owners of Hostess are starting up production again. But there's no mention of labor unions. The maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs was involved in a crippling labor dispute last year, ultimately leading to the company shutting down and selling its assets. Roughly 15,000 of 18,500 employees lost their jobs.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Mike Perrone, national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO (PASS), which represents over 11,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, including systems specialists and aviation safety inspectors, released the following statement regarding the continued furloughing of FAA employees: "The furloughing of FAA employees is having an impact on the aviation system and the flying public is noticing. Systems specialists, aviation safety inspectors, aeronautical specialists, examiners and thousands of other FAA employees work behind the scenes to ensure that planes take off and land on time, equipment is restored, and planes are safe to fly. These employees...

Out-of-state donors have apparently been very generous to one of the candidates for Governor of Virginia. Even though he claimed recently that three-quarters of his campaign contributors are Virginians, new campaign finance reports show that Democrat Terry McAuliffe has gotten nearly 80-percent of his money from donors outside Virginia. The nonpartisan "Virginia Public Access Project" found that in the first quarter of this year, McAuliffe accepted nearly 700-thousand dollars from labor unions and other groups in DC. Another one-point-two million came from donors in New York, Chicago, and L-A -- and the effort was helped by former president Bill Clinton.

Washington, DC – House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) issued the following statement today after Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Huerta announced that a five percent budget reduction due to sequestration would result in the furloughing of thousands of air traffic controllers and potentially disrupt the travel plans of the flying public: “The FAA’s management of sequestration is quickly going from bad to worse. Given that the FAA’s budget increased more than 100 percent over the last 15 years, finding five percent in savings shouldn’t need to significantly...

Histadrut Labor Federation has announced Sunday the Airport Authority will launch a strike action on Tuesday to demonstrate solidarity with airline workers who are protesting the government’s decision to approve the “open skies” agreement. During the strike, the Ben Gurion Airport will be entirely shut down for a number of hours, starting 5 am. According to the announcement, no services will be provided to foreign airlines during the strike. … Earlier Sunday, the cabinet approved the “open skies” agreement with a 16 to 3 majority, while striking airline employees protested in front of the building, clashing with security forces. The...

The Senate's bipartisan "Gang of Eight" oozed confidence on Thursday that they could deliver on their promise to pass the most significant immigration bill in a generation. Organizers gathered over 20 leaders from business, labor, religious and civil rights groups in order to display broad support for their plan. In an unlikely pairing, renowned anti-tax activist Grover Norquist stood alongside AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the leader of the nation's largest labor coalition. Senators from both parties yukked it up with jokes throughout the hour-long affair. "We'll oppose only those amendments that are intended to prevent a comprehensive solution from passing,"...

If there were any doubts that the oft-used term ‘comprehensive immigration reform' is a stalking-horse for amnesty, a new Senate proposal should dispel them. The measure, touted as a way to fix our ‘broken' immigration system, will do the opposite. Not only will it demean U.S. citizenship and rule of law, it also likely will produce adverse economic effects. The main feature of the 844-page bill is that it would allow millions of illegal immigrants to apply for legal residency and eventual citizenship. Significantly, the bill bears a strong union influence. And labor officials aren't bashful about it. Ana Avendano,...

Among the people who complained about the cost of Margaret Thatcher's funeral (and on this I happen to agree with them, especially in these financially hard times) are also some of the protesters, the "hate mob" at the funeral, who in fact increased those costs by indirectly forcing more security measures. This tells you a lot about the Leftists, in particular it exposes the difference between what they say and what they do. This funeral cost duplicity is in perfect parallel with the hypocrisy of claiming to be compassionate and wanting to help the working class people while implementing...

Forty percent of Colorado’s class of 2011 enrolled in a Colorado college or university needed remedial education courses in at least one subject in order to catch up to college-level work... in the core subjects of reading, writing or math. the new figures may jolt school board members, school and college leaders, policy wonks and parents. That’s because the state has changed the way it calculates remediation rates with the aim of making them more accurate. But by doing so, remediation rates for students from many districts look much worse. ... Using the old methodology a year ago, only 31...

Republicans have been so busy attacking each other lately that little attention is being paid to the antics of the left. The far left activists, including the Occupy movement and Anonymous, have been quite busy. The Occupiers are helping fast food workers strike for higher wages and a union. Their targets include Wendy's and Burger King in New York City. If they really wanted to help those workers, they would encourage them to attend college and find higher paying jobs. The founder of the Occupy movement, Adbusters, is organizing Occupiers to protest Goldman Sachs banks around the world. They would...

by John HillStand With ArizonaWebsite | Facebook | Twitter Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing a campaign to recall him from office. They are collecting signatures, and already have more than half the required amount with two months to go. This follows a re-election campaign last year which saw unprecedented amounts spent on both sides, as George Soros committed $10 million to oust "America's Sheriff". Joe was forced to spend his entire 'war chest' of $8 million to (barely) hold onto office - the closest race of his career. Why?Why is the Left in America so focused on a single county's...

A Florida father says he was shocked to find a note in his fourth-grade son's backpack suggesting that his teacher instructed students to write letters on their willingness to give up their constitutional rights. Aaron Harvey told WOKV.com that his 10-year-old son was told to write a note reading, "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure," after a civics lesson at the end of last year. Harvey said he found the note earlier this month and obtained the curriculum guide for the lesson, which he said was geared...

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents’ union president Chris Crane called on Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to abandon the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” in the U.S. Senate pushing immigration reform on Friday in a statement obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. “Senator Rubio was asked during a recent interview that ‘if you don’t get enforcement first, or securing the borders first, is that a deal killer for you?,’” Crane said. “And he replied ‘Absolutely…Because we will be right back here again.’ But the outline from the Gang of 8 offers legalization, or amnesty, before enforcement is accomplished. Senator Schumer admitted as...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bankrupt San Bernardino will resume paying into the state pension fund on July 1, but the California city will continue to renege on other debts including payments to bondholders, according to a new budget released late Thursday. Nearly a year after it halted contributions to America's biggest pension fund, San Bernardino will resume payments to Calpers at the start of the new fiscal year - but continue to not pay other creditors, according to the budget. San Bernardino will not make interest and principal payments on $50 million in pension bonds issued in 2005, according to...

(CNSNews.com) - In the message he issued along with his budget proposal on Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama said he wants to see 4-year-old children in the United States enrolled in public schools.

Sam Grant nearly celebrated his eighth birthday party in jail. The North Carolina boy had been charged with two felony counts of discharging his BB gun. The parents of a then-seven-year-old North Carolina boy are beyond angry after their son was charged with two felony counts of possessing a BB gun. Just moments before the child was expected to answer to the allegations before a Catawba County judge — the charges were dropped. -- But their world got rocked when the received a letter from the Department of Juvenile Justice summoning the family to court. “They told us that they...

I remember reading an article in the Washington Monthly back in the late 1980s by one of the smugger liberal British columnists, Polly Toynbee. It captured part of the true derangement that Margaret Thatcher brought out in her political foes. It was called simply: “Is Margaret Thatcher A Woman?” It’s still online. It was a vicious attack on her having any feminist credentials. It included this magnificent lie: She has experienced nothing but advantage from her gender. Toynbee’s case is worth hearing out, but it’s an instant classic of the worst British trait: resentment of others’ success. No culture I...

More than two years after Scott Walker’s showdown with organized labor in Wisconsin, the official numbers for the state’s public sector union membership are in — and they are down. Way down. According a Labor Department filing made last week, membership at Wisconsin’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 40 — one of AFSCME’s four branches in the state — has gone from the 31,730 it reported in 2011, to 29,777 in 2012, to just 20,488 now. That’s a drop of more than 11,000 — about a third — in just two years. The council represents city...

Unionized government workers in Texas — including firefighters, police and teachers — don’t have the right to be accompanied by a union representative while being questioned during internal investigations, a divided Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. Such representation is a basic right for unionized private sector and federal government employees. But in a case begun by a Round Rock firefighter disciplined in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that state labor law doesn’t specifically confer a similar right to workers employed by state, county, city or local governments in Texas. “On its face, (Texas law) confers only one explicit right:...

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) plans to lay off more than 460 workers at a central Illinois plant that produces big mining trucks. The layoffs will shrink the work force at the Decatur plant by about 11%. The company said the reduction is needed to bring production at the plant in line with lower demand for mining equipment caused by falling prices for mined commodities and decisions by mining companies to shelve expansion projects. "While some cost-reduction measures such as temporary layoffs, shutdowns and shortened work weeks have already been implemented, more permanent measures must be taken in the near term," the...

The gloomy headlines for Caterpillar Inc. continue. The Peoria, Ill.-based equipment manufacturer (NYSE: CAT) said Friday it’s laying off 460 workers at its plant in Decatur, Ill., or 11 percent of the work force there, according to various media reports.The announcement comes a week after Caterpillar said it would temporarily cut up to 300 production jobs in South Milwaukee, or about 40 percent of the unionized work force there.But the Decatur cuts are permanent, Reuters reported.The company has cited a need to “bring production in line with demand” in both decisions.The series of actions include “some short-term temporary layoffs and...

March 28, 2013 is a day that will be marked in Michigan history. Worker freedom officially takes effect today. Soon, most workers in Michigan will have the choice of whether they want to financially support their union or not. Right-to-work simply means that a union no longer can get a worker fired for not paying them. Despite claims by unions, collective bargaining largely will remain the same. Unions still can negotiate with employers over wages, hours, working conditions and almost anything except for the requirement that workers pay them simply to keep their jobs. Now unions need to prove their...

[Sen. Carl Levin and] activists demanding more disclosure and regulations [of political donations] especially target corporations. So far as I know, the same activists are blithely indifferent to unions’ electioneering and have raised no criticism of the Obama administration’s roll-back of efforts by the Department of Labor to require more disclosure of what unions do with the monies they take from members. This silence on unions is odd, since they are at least as influential in elections as corporations, and unlike corporations, unions are far more focused in their giving; for example, they are far more likely to give to...

<p>The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has posted mug shots of 35 educators booked for allegedly colluding to raise standardized test scores.</p> <p>A 73-year-old principal, a middle school secretary, elementary school teachers, and other school workers are accused of being behind the nation's biggest cheating scandal.</p>