Free Republic

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is suing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over its so-called union walk around rule. The lawsuit, which the Pacific Legal Foundation filed on behalf of the small business advocacy group, charges that OSHA’s rule illegally foists union activists onto non-unionized businesses. Attorneys with the legal foundation say OSHA has for decades allowed an employee representative to accompany an OSHA investigator on a workplace inspection, so long as the representative is in fact an employee. But in 2013, the agency issued a memo that said an employee representative could be someone who...

Justice: Three recent court victories got little in the way of headlines, but should be required reading for every corporate executive in the country. In each, companies refused to do what so many have done before -- tuck their tails in and settle out of court. Exhibit A is a case involving Texas-based Professional Janitorial Service and its yearslong battle with the Service Employees International Union. As it has done countless times before, the SEIU targeted the company with a vicious, all out "corporate campaign," designed to ruin the company's reputation and starve it of business, until it submitted to...

It was the boldest California housing policy proposal in years: Allow any residential project that complies with local zoning and sets aside as few as five percent of its units as affordable to be built “as of right,” removing review from local municipalities. The idea was to fast-track approvals and reduce the cost of building as the state struggles with a crushing housing crisis. But after three months of debate and widespread opposition, the proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown, meant to boost the state’s housing production in the face of record-high housing prices, appears to be dead. … Dozens of...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Bernie Sanders returned to the campaign trail on Monday and received the warmest welcome possible — a Labor Day breakfast, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, in the state that gave him one of his biggest primary wins. His mission: to help elect the Democrat who had run against him. "We are not talking about personalities," said Sanders, explaining why he'd endorsed Hillary Clinton and would be stumping against Donald Trump. "We are talking about which candidate will better represent the needs of the American people." Monday's speech was Sanders's first outside Vermont since the launch of his new...

The Obama administration released draft rules Wednesday that would govern how school districts allocate billions of Title I dollars meant to educate poor children, one of Capitol Hill’s most hotly contested education issues since Congress passed a new federal education law late last year. The debate has pitted the Education Department and its allies in the civil rights movement, who say they are trying to ensure that children in high-poverty schools get the federal aid they are due, against a wide range of opponents — including Republicans, teachers unions and district and state education leaders — who have accused the...

The roads in Illinois are in decay. This may be the first state to go bankrupt. The question is not if, but when. State unions are so greedy that they are destroying the very state. This is exactly how Rome fell — government employees against the people. Seven states have constitutional provisions that state employee pensions must come BEFORE everything, including debt payments. Since the legislature in New Jersey was Democrat, they fought Governor Christie on pension reform. Their solution? On the ballot in November, there will be a provision to amend the state Constitution to put employee pensions before...

Citizens of the developed world are watching Venezuela’s descent into financial and political chaos mostly, it seems, with amused detachment, safe in the assumption that we’ll never end up hunting our cats and dogs for food. But – since Europe, Japan and the US are making essentially the same mistakes as Venezuela’s past and present governments – we might want to question that certainty. Consider what’s happening in the third biggest US city: Chicago’s detective force dwindles as murder rate soars [see excerpt at source] Why should a city as apparently affluent as Chicago have such a nightmarish crime situation?...

A recent study by an Oklahoma think tank found that teachers’ salaries in Michigan are the highest in the nation when adjusted for the lower cost of living here. When salaries are adjusted to reflect the difference between prices here and the national average, Michigan teachers on average earned the equivalent of $69,888 in the 2015-16 school year. The study was authored by Byron Schlomach of the Oklahoma-based 1889 Institute, a free-market think tank. Schlomach said in an email he used salary data from a National Education Association survey. Michigan’s average teacher salary when unadjusted is $63,878, ranking 10th nationally....

Today, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president. The Teamsters General Executive Board unanimously voted to endorse the former senator and secretary of state. “We are proud to endorse Hillary Clinton for President of the United States,” said Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa. “She is the right candidate for the middle class and working men and women across the country. She will stand strong for the workers of America by fighting to reject job-killing trade deals, enforcing labor laws and working to provide retirement security for millions of people who have sacrificed so...

If the judge is on your side, you can win a case despite pathetic arguments. So if the cost of losing is near zero and the possible gain from winning is huge, why not launch a suit and see what happens? That’s the thinking behind a case challenging Idaho’s Right to Work (RTW) statute on the grounds that the state is taking property that belongs to labor unions when it allows workers to keep their jobs even if they don’t pay the dues demanded by the union. The theory of the suit is that Idaho’s law (and, logically, all other...

Listen, nobody needs to tell working people in this state about the union advantage. Collective bargaining transformed Las Vegas, and lifted up the entire entertainment industry. Across Nevada, each and every one of you continues to show us how unionism works. You do it in the building trades. You do it in our schools, hospitals, grocery stores, factories and too many places to name.When we stand together, wages go up. Consumers have more money to spend. Employers feel competitive pressure to do better for their workers. That’s the strength of collective bargaining and collective action. We have the power to...

Take a good look at the photo below of the audience at Hillary's Reno speech today. What is interesting, besides the SMALL size of the audience, is that a whole bunch of them are wearing AFGE shirts. That stands for American Federation of GOVERNMENT Employees. That's right, they work for the government. So the obvious question, since the speech was in the middle of the day, Reno time, is were those employees being paid while attending her speech? IOW, were they watching her speech on the taxpayer's dime?

Students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities will be allowed to vote to unionize under a ruling Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board that found that they are employees under federal labor law. The case arose from a union election petition filed by a group of primarily graduate students at Columbia University, who are seeking to form a union that will join the United Automobile Workers. The three Democratic members of the board made up the majority; the lone Republican member dissented. A fifth spot on the board has been vacant since last year. The...

The International Association of Fire Fighters, a politically powerful labor union, has abandoned its initial plans to endorse Democrat Hillary Clinton for U.S. president, the New York Times reported on Friday. Citing union sources, the Times said the Clinton campaign was told on Monday by IAFF President Harold Schaitberger that there was not enough support on the union’s board or its rank-and-file members for an endorsement of the Democratic front-runner.

Link only due to uncertainty of copyright rules with WV Metro News.

Keep an eye on this one.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYAcsj5Lw0    

With all the trouble that Rahm Emanuel has been having in Chicago lately, specifically with unrest surrounding his police department and other scandals, it’s easy to forget that he’s dealing with another serious problem: his city is nearly bankrupt. As with so many other large, Democrat run municipalities, the chief culprit here is the massively underfunded pension system for municipal workers. Their unions negotiated some real sweetheart deals for them over the years, but the costs were completely unsustainable. When the city began to go broke, no real compromise was ever offered by the unions so Rahm is left to...

The FBI carried out investigations Friday, spanning across several locations throughout Philadelphia. FBI agents seized dozens of cartons of files and computers at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 at 18th and Spring Garden Streets.

The FBI and other law enforcement officers fanned out across the region on Friday, executing a number of search warrants involving a local union boss and a Philadelphia city councilman. Agents were searching the home of Johnny "Doc" Dougherty, a bar called Doc's Union Pub, the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 and Councilman Bobby Henon's offices. Just recently, Action News has learned Local 98 dropped upward of $80,000 on lavish parties and events for honchos and lobbyists at the Democratic National Convention.

Since 2000, the union funneled about $30 million into political races... The union has a membership of 4,652, and assets of $37 million, records show.... A government filing shows that in 2015 Dougherty received $406,532 from the union, including $226,754 as salary...