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During a rally with SEIU today in California, Clinton said "America needs a raise", directing her comment at Trump who once said "wages are too high"..

United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams said his union won’t endorse Donald Trump for U.S. president, all but assuring support for Hillary Clinton as she closes in on the Democratic nomination. Williams said the UAW will wait until the conclusion of the Democratic primary before endorsing a candidate. Clinton has 2,293 delegates to 1,533 for rival Bernie Sanders, according to data compiled by the Associated Press. Clinton needs only 90 of the remaining 939 unallocated delegates to lock up the nomination, according to the AP’s data.

On March 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a one-line ruling on a case that would have brought right-to-work protections to public employees across the country. The court said that a lower court decision would stand, meaning government unions in non-right-to-work states can still get public employees fired for not paying them. But since the decision was the result of a 4-4 tie rather than a majority ruling, it does not affect the entire country — only the western states covered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case was decided earlier. The case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers...

Two of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies, labor and environmentalists, are clashing over an effort to raise tens of millions of dollars for an ambitious voter turnout operation aimed at defeating Donald J. Trump in the November election. The rift developed after some in the labor movement, whose cash flow has dwindled and whose political clout has been increasingly imperiled, announced a partnership last week with a wealthy environmentalist, Tom Steyer, to help bankroll a new fund dedicated to electing Democrats. That joint initiative enraged members of the nation’s biggest construction unions, already on edge about the rising influence...

A report from the state House Fiscal Agency shows that there has been a steady decline in the number of police officers in Michigan, falling 15.4 percent from 1990 to 2015. The report does not go into why this is, but here’s one theory: Pension underfunding is crowding out government spending, including hiring decisions. Consider that the state police retirement system now costs between 57 percent and 63 percent of the Michigan State Police’s total payroll. It is not because the benefits are lavish. It is because the state is trying to pay for promises that it made in the...

Their signs may have read “united for students” but little about the recent teachers’ strikes in Chicago and Detroit public schools actually benefited the city’s children. That’s because teachers in both cities have staged “sickouts,” forcing schools to close and sending roughly 450,000 students into the streets of two of America’s most dangerous cities. At the helm of these protests are unions that use collective bargaining disputes to call on teachers to leave the classroom and block traffic during rush hour. These strikes are just the latest example of how unions can manipulate workers and taxpayers to advance their own...

Add one more investment to the list of CalPERS’ controversial investments: a privately run state highway. The retirement fund recently purchased 10 percent of Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. The firm runs a 157-mile stretch of highway that runs across northern Indiana from Illinois to Ohio. California’s state engineers’ union says it’s a horrible investment that sinks government employees’ money into a project that, ironically, is hostile to government employees. The toll-road company is the first of what fund managers anticipate will be more investments in infrastructure and transportation projects as the $291 billion system broadens its reach into those...

Monopolies were and are considered universally evil except when it comes to unions. We hear quite a bit about inequality today. This seems to be the mantra in the waning of the Obama Administration with the President saying, “Income inequality is “the defining challenge of our time.” This is all code for another of President Obama’s descriptions of the same policy, the need to, “Spread this wealth around,” or in other words “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.” Let’s spread the wealth around and end inequality. One of the President’s and the Democrat Party’s...

This is the first of a two-part series on the Central States pension fund. The second part looks more closely into why its investment performance suffered. Real estate investments in Las Vegas casinos and hotels once threatened the integrity of a Teamsters pension fund that the federal government wrested away from corrupt trustees and organized crime after five years of legal battles. A quarter-century later, the professionals who replaced them—Central States Pension Fund administrators; the Goldman Sachs & Co. and Northern Trust Global Advisors fiduciaries; and Department of Labor regulators—stood watch while the financial markets accomplished what the mob had...

A May 10 election in West Virginia could leave the state’s new right-to-work law in peril. On that day, voters will decide whether to re-elect Republican Justice Brent Benjamin to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, or replace him, possibly with union-supported Darrell McGraw. McGraw, who is seen as leading the pack of those challenging the 12-term justice, is endorsed almost entirely by unions. If elected, he would be the fourth Democrat on the five-member court. Flawed Dane County ruling may show the way to killing RTW in West Virginia and nationally The main concern of those who favor...

California union workers will continue to be in the dark about how their dues are spent after a bill that would’ve forced unions to post this information online was killed along a party-line vote. California’s public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to...

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to praise workers in the Teamster union and attack Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. The union has not made an endorsement in the election so far, but typically backs Democratic candidates. Trump appeared to be referring to a series of "Teamsters for Trump" groups on Facebook, several of which has members numbering in the thousands. NPR reported this week on Teamsters member who normally back Democrats but prefer Trump this election.

The Treasury Department on Friday rejected an effort by the Teamsters Central States Pension Plan to cut benefits for 270,000 retired workers starting in July. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a letter to members of Congress that while the decision blocks the pending pension cuts, it does not resolve the issue because the pension plan remains severely underfunded and is projected to become insolvent within the next 10 years. …

Natural hair braiders like Nutall had excelled in their craft for years, learning braiding from their mothers and grandmothers. But now, the state was telling them they had to log more than 1,500 hours of education through an eight-week course with costs topping $12,000,

The head of one of America’s largest teachers unions said Wednesday that Donald Trump is creating “bullying environments” in schools nationwide that will take decades to repair. Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million member American Federation of Teachers (AFT), made her remarks during a conference call with reporters set up by the Democratic National Committee. “What we’ve seen with Donald Trump is that there is now a new phenomenon in schools called the ‘Trump Effect,'” Weingarten said. “It will take decades to overcome the way Donald Trump speaks and promotes violence, xenophobia and racism. This is creating bullying environments...

California's public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to know where their money's at," said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, a Republican. The two bills went down Wednesday on a party-line vote, after dozens of union members came out against the legislation....

If they care more about students than teachers’ unions, every school district in the country needs to pay attention to this: When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gave the boot to teachers’ unions, liberals predicted a disaster of apocalyptic proportions: Teachers quitting, slack-jawed, uneducated students meandering down vacant downtowns that closed shop. It turns out, though, that Walker’s “Act 10” may have been the best thing to happen to schools and teachers in decades. That’s because not only is teacher pay up for the best students, but without burdensome union rules, school administrators are empowered to make real changes they need...

US unions plan attack on Donald Trump in attempt to derail presidential bid Concerned labor group leaders are organizing ad campaigns and phone banks as Trump’s populist message on trade and jobs draws in union voters The prospect of a Donald Trump nomination has labor leaders scrambling to hold the line as the Republican frontrunner’s appeal to disaffected working-class voters threatens to upset the traditional political calculus. The majority of America’s almost 15 million unionized workers can be usually be relied upon to back the Democratic candidate in a presidential year, but leaders are concerned by Trump’s populist message on...

Recent discussions within Los Angeles labor groups reveal inherent hypocrisy within the “Fight for $15” campaign. Unions paid plenty of lip service toward this effort, which would raise the minimum wage to $15. The Los Angeles City Council is considering a measure that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020, and this month California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2022. It seems that unions should be celebrating this supposed win for workers – yet union leaders are currently seeking an exemption to the $15-an-hour minimum wage for union...

Wisconsin’s recent primary election gave Democrats another opportunity to take political shots at Governor Scott Walker’s 2011 signature collective-bargaining reform law, Act 10. Curbing the power of the public-sector unions had damaged the state, according to Senator Bernie Sanders. Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton declared that weakening collective bargaining was “making it more difficult for families.” This “analysis” of Walker’s reforms might play well at a political rally, but it ignores the evidence on the ground from the last five years. It all began on February 11, 2011, when Governor Walker declared that the state was broke. Years of...