Free Republic

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation announced today that Brighton Area Schools and the local union “have removed illegal language from a contract in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Brighton High School teacher who said the union and district were violating his freedoms under Michigan’s right-to-work law.” The union president for the Brighton Education Association blasted the lawsuit when it was filed last week. "It would behoove Mr. Neuman and the Mackinac Center to check their facts before filing and publicizing this lawsuit that is 100 percent untrue," Ellen Lafferty told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus....

Eighty-eight teachers over the last decade have been permanently removed from Colorado classrooms for sexual improprieties – the vast majority violating young victims from their own schools. ... not a single teacher lost their license for simply being a weak educator of children. To get decertified, records show it usually takes felony-level criminal allegations or lying on the teaching certificate application about lesser crimes. Karla Danzeisen says she spent years teaching Spanish to Denver high school students in a fog of pain pills, cocaine and methamphetamines. She told Halsne, “I was using drugs every day. I was going to teach...

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Milwaukee Board of School Directors President Michael Bonds doesn’t like what he calls “biased” coverage by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Erin Richards. So he’s asking the state’s largest newspaper to take Richards off the beat and assign a different journalist to write about Milwaukee Public Schools — or else. “I just requested that we have somebody who’s objective, who’s going to give the readers the truth and everything about what’s going on … we want a new reporter or else we’re going to cut off all ties with the Journal in terms of communication with them,”...

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has released the 19th edition of its annual Report Card on American Education, where it ranks states’ education policy based on six areas: state academic standards, charter school laws, home-school regulations, private school choice programs, overall teacher quality and policies, and digital learning opportunities. Its findings highlight an old fact: more spending does not translate into better outcomes for K-12 students. States spend an average of $11,153 per pupil on education. The District of Columbia topped the list at $29,029 per student – nearly triple the national average – yet achieved only mediocre results....

KENOSHA – The issue of the Kenosha Casino is a hot-button issue in the 2014 race for Wisconsin Governor as Scott Walker (R-Wauwatosa) is yet to make a decision on whether he would approve the casino. However, one union that has been actively campaigning against Scott Walker in Kenosha entered into an agreement with the Menominee Indian Nation. The United Food and Commercial Workers Working Families Advocacy Project, an arm of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, has been active in the State of Wisconsin trying to turn out the vote in the Racine and Kenosha Areas. On September...

The AFL-CIO national campaign to build stronger communities by empowering eligible immigrants to become citizens and fully engage in the democratic process has become a reality in New Jersey, with the opening of the state’s first labor-led naturalization and community center.The We Are One New Jersey Hudson County Center officially opened on Oct. 28 in Jersey City. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre joined the New Jersey State AFL-CIO for the opening ceremony, along with Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.), New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech, New Jersey State AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Laurel Brennan...

IMPORTANT: This information should not be downloaded using government equipment, read during duty time, sent to others using government equipment, or sent to anyone while in a government building because it involves election related activity.When you cast your ballot for the Nov. 4 election, you will be voting for more than just the candidates running for office. You’ll be deciding your future as a government worker.If you vote for candidates who don’t value government employees and the important work that you do, you’re sending a signal that your pay, your benefits, and your job are fair game.We need more elected...

A recent Journal Sentinel editorial concerning Gov. Scott Walker's budget-saving Act 10 reforms attempts to take readers to an alternate universe, complete with happily negotiated labor contracts and good governance that didn't require hard decisions from lawmakers in Madison ("A trip to Scott Walker's parallel universe where Act 10 never happened," Our View, Oct. 21) . One would indeed need to be in an alternate universe to expect a world free of the dysfunction that has plagued state and federal government. In no universe real or otherwise were powerful labor bosses and their unions ever going to make meaningful concessions...

The California city of Palmdale was ready to roll out the red carpet this summer when a Japanese company agreed to build a $60 million factory on a city-owned, vacant parcel on the southwest side of town -- but now the company is taking its project out of state and critics say union greed is to blame. As many as 300 people were slated to work at the 400,000-square-foot plant, painting and wiring light rail cars under a huge contract with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It was a coup for Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, and a plan that...

Teachers in Wisconsin's public schools have learned a major lesson from the state's landmark 2011 law neutering public sector unions, with more than a third dropping out of their labor organization. Given no choice but to join and pay dues to the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) for decades, teachers have for the last three years been able to opt out. And that is what tens of thousands have done as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, also known as Act 10. “Given the evidence, it shows that the union's hold is softening," Patrick Wright, vice...

AFGE has joined the AFL-CIO to call on both the White House and Congress to take immediate action and create enforceable safety guidelines to be put into place to help protect workers who could come into contact with infected Ebola patients.In separate letters addressed to House and Senate leaders from both parties, AFGE and the AFL-CIO asked Congress to provide the necessary funding or legislation "to ensure that workers and the public are protected." Among those protections is a request for a measure prohibiting retaliation against workers who publicly raise concerns about their facilities' preparedness, and another for compensating workers...

Germany’s pilots and train drivers are taking it in turns to bring the country to a standstill with strikes that have cost the economy tens of millions of euros in the last two weeks. Are unions abusing their power or standing up for their rights? After a 50-hour strike by the train drivers unions, GDL, Deutsche Bahn said the loss of the weekend’s services cost the company “tens of millions of euros”. One analyst said that the latest strike in escalating industrial action by pilots union Cockpit will cost Lufthansa €30 million. But all parties accuse the other of the...

Recently, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein ruled that the city of Stockton, California could reduce the amount it was obligated to pay in pension costs and could even leave the state’s retirement system (CalPERS). The significance of this decision is difficult to overstate. Pensions were long thought to be absolutely sacrosanct and unable to be cut, even in bankruptcy, especially since pension obligations are specifically protected under state law. Judge Klein’s ruling has highlighted the fact that political promises must bend to the reality of numbers. The impetus for this ruling was another creditor of the city of Stockton that,...

Japanese company's much-celebrated plans to build a light-rail manufacturing plant in Palmdale appear all but dead after months of clashes with local labor unions and community groups. Kinkisharyo International of Osaka said it is now looking at factory sites outside California, saying pressure from organized labor has made it difficult to do business in the state. Union officials and activists, however, argue they are simply trying to hold the company to environmental rules it should be following. Kinkisharyo won a $890-million contract to build 175 light-rail cars for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority two years ago.

This weekend, AFGE National President J. David Cox, Sr. and National Secretary Treasurer Eugene Hudson Jr. joined dozens of AFGE members to pound the pavement and get out the vote for this November’s elections.President Cox joined members in Charlotte, NC to hold a Labor walk and phone bank. Meeting at a local IBEW Union Hall on Saturday morning, members wore their blue & gold AFGE shirts and knocked on doors in the community to turn out voters for Senator Kay Hagan and other AFGE endorsed candidates.“This election is vitally important to government workers like us,” said Cox. “Who we elect...

In recent arguments against states requiring voters to show a photo ID, the United Auto Workers Local 6000 has compared concerns about voter fraud to belief in the fictional Loch Ness monster and Yeti. The union wrote on its Facebook page that requiring a photo ID for voting is the goal of the “billionaire funded” American Legislative Exchange Council, and is intended to create obstacles for voters who might support a more “progressive” agenda. When its own members, however, want to exercise their freedoms under the new right-to-work law in Michigan to opt out of paying union dues as a...

"As soon as I was given the choice, I left," Amy Rosno, a teacher with the virtual class program at the Waukesha school system, told FoxNews.com. "I never really understood the union anyway." Rosno said she had a better understanding once she was asked to be a representative for her department and attended her first WEAC meeting. "I realized that it was all political and not about teaching," she said. Teachers who spoke to the nonprofit education think tank EAGnews.org said they were glad to be free of the union's grip, especially because of the perception their dues were spent...

Kaiser Permanente and other health providers are putting pressure on the powerful California Nurses Association (CAN) in negotiations for reductions in medical staffing and compensation due to the implementation of California’s version of Obamacare. Union nurses on Friday tried to launch a new initiative by demanding an extra compensation supplement and more staffing to be prepared to fight the Ebola virus. But just three years after union nurses won huge contract gains by striking, Obamacare rules that cut patient access to care could now result in huge nurse layoffs. ... the California Nurses Association and other labor unions that campaigned...

This week the AFL-CIO threw its considerable weight behind Democrat-turned-independent Greg Orman in his bid for U.S. Senate in Kansas. This came on the heels of a debate that was all about defining who Greg Orman really is: ... The AFL-CIO won't run TV ads for Orman, spokesman Jeff Hauser said, but his campaign will now be incorporated into the union's extensive ground game there. The AFL-CIO had previously endorsed Kansas's Democratic Party's gubernatorial nominee, Paul Davis, who is locked into one of the country's most competitive gubernatorial contests with incumbent Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. During Wednesday's debate, incumbent Sen....

At the Shadow Party’s "Take Back America" conference in Washington on June 3, 2004, following a glowing introduction from Hillary Clinton, George Soros stepped to the podium to explain to the audience that when it came to electoral politics in the USA, he was a newcomer. Only his outrage over Bush’s invasion of Iraq had stirred him to get involved in the partisan struggle. "[I]t is the first time that I feel that I need to stand up and do something, and become really engaged in the electoral process in this country," Soros said.[1] This was far from the truth,...