Free Republic

I really hope this video goes viral. These union goons don't even care that their violence is being caught on camera:

The board of mediators appointed by President Barack Obama to help resolve a 3½-year contract dispute between the Long Island Rail Road and most of its unions rejected the LIRR’s claim that it can’t afford to give workers raises. […] The presidential board recommended annual raises for workers averaging 2.83 percent over six years, and increased health care contributions for all workers. It did not call for any changes in LIRR pension plans or to any work rules. […] The MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) would agree to raises, but only if they were funded by other concessions. That includes the...

DWP union chief refuses to turn over financial records to auditor The politically powerful head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s largest union has refused to cooperate with a city audit of two nonprofit trusts established to improve relations between management and labor at the city-owned utility. City officials began trying to account for more than $40 million in ratepayer money poured into the nonprofits after The Times reported in September that the DWP had only scant information about how the money has been spent. The nonprofits, the Joint Training Institute and the Joint Safety Institute, are...

Union Verdi is preparing more strikes to step up pressure on Amazon in Germany, its biggest market outside the United States, in a dispute over pay and conditions, German media reported. Workers at Amazon centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig will walk out for at least one day on Monday, Heiner Reimann of Verdi told daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten. The union has organized several short strikes this year in a bid to force the world's biggest Internet retailer to accept a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals for the mail order and retail sector, which are more generous than...

The workforce is even more stratified by race than you'd imagine. The differences in unemployment rates, participation rates, and average earnings between whites, blacks, and Hispanics aren't just stark. They're also sturdy, rarely yielding over the last 40 years. The racial gaps are stark at the job level, too. Whites account for about 81 percent of the workforce. But there are 33 occupations counted by the BLS (particularly those on farms, around heavy machines, in doctor's offices, and in C-suites) where whites officially account for nine in ten of all workers, or more. Here they are.

A Michigan Education Association union in the Upper Peninsula has listed the names of the school employees who left the union as part of the state's right-to-work law, leaving some to question whether the MEA is trying to create a hostile workplace environment. The MEA 17-B/C union newsletter listed the name of 16 employees from four school districts in the U.P. who decided against paying dues or fees to the union and it also listed the services they no longer will get now that they're not part of the union. Kathi Moreau, a counselor at Stephenson Area Public Schools, left...

Thousands of Detroit streetlights are dark. Many more residents have fled. Donors are replacing ambulances that limped around for 200,000 miles. Millions in debt payments have been skipped. Is there really any doubt the city is broke? A judge starts exploring that question Wednesday in an unusual trial to determine whether Detroit indeed is eligible to scrub its books in the largest public bankruptcy in U.S. history. Unions and pension funds are claiming the city failed to negotiate in good faith before filing for Chapter 9 protection in July. …

The United Federation of Teachers has spent decades pleading for more money for public schools. So eyebrows might have shot up when it turned down federal Race to the Top funds at its UFT Charter School. Well, the mystery’s been solved. While tens of thousands of teachers around the state will be subject to new yearly evaluations, UFT Charter School chief executive Sheila Evans-Tranumn says her teachers won’t have to. That’s because, as a charter, her school is allowed to opt out of the evaluation system, as long as it hasn’t taken Race to the Top money. And it’s chosen...

Protesters shouted names at tourists, calling them “losers” and “jerks” as they walked inside the Cosmopolitan on Saturday, Oct. 5. The Culinary Union Local 226 put on the rally as part of the ongoing negotiations between the hotel and the union to sign a deal. The Alliance to Protect Nevada Jobs posted the video on YouTube and says they wanted to demonstrate that union protesters are compromising potential tourists from coming back to Las Vegas. “You don’t do that by calling tourists those names and berating them when they come here to spend their money in our city,” said Ron...

One of the benefits of Mark Anderson’s home security camera feed was that he could check to see if a package he had been waiting for was delivered while he was at work. It was delivered all right, but just how it was dropped off had the LaGrange, Ga., man flabbergasted. Anderson told TheBlaze Friday he installed the security cameras more to keep an eye on his disabled mother while the family was away during the day, rather than actual security issues (he has four Great Danes that he said good security assurance for that). Once back at his desk...

EW YORK (AP) — The sisters of a woman who was fatally shot in Washington after trying to ram her car through a White House barrier say she was not a criminal and police should not have shot her. "We're still very confused as a family why she's not still alive," Amy Carey-Jones said late Friday, speaking of her 34-year-old sister, Miriam Carey. "I really feel like it's not justified, not justified." Another sister, retired New York City police officer Valarie Carey, said there was "no need for a gun to be used when there was no gunfire coming from...

Not only are some federal employees working without knowing whether we’ll be paid, we’re also doing it without union representation on the job. -.....(The horror) So we find that Congress, besides possibly creating a new class of involuntary servitude for federal employees, has also acted to attempt to bust our union. (Seriously?)

The postmaster general says the Postal Service has no choice but to ask for an emergency rate hike given the agency’s dire finances. … The post office expects to lose $6 billion this year. It wants to raise stamp prices by 3 cents next year. …

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the 600,000-plus-member Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), often referred to as the Laborers’ Union, said that if Obamacare is not fixed, then “it needs to be repealed.” At a convention in Las Vegas of the AFL-CIO, with which the Laborers’ Union is affiliated, O’Sullivan took to the podium to endorse a proposition and then launched into a criticism of Obamacare, how it is hurting union members’ health coverage, and demanded it be fixed, adding that if it is not fixed, labor will make the issue a “big fricking deal.” … He continued, “We can’t...

Wonder bread is back almost a year after it vanished from shelves. Flowers Foods Inc., which bought Wonder from the now-defunct Hostess Brands, said the bread started returning to supermarket shelves Monday. The company, which also makes Tastykake and Nature’s Own bread, snapped up five bread brands after Hostess went out of business late last year. The $355 million deal included Butternut, Home Pride and Merita, which are all returning to shelves along with Wonder. … Flowers said Wonder bread is being made at that company’s existing plants. The 20 Hostess plants the company acquired as part of the deal...

Scranton's police and fire unions have received a judgment against the city for the overdue $21 million that the city owes the unions from a landmark arbitration ruling. The money was due July 2, but the city has not yet paid and is still seeking borrowing or selling an asset to honor the bill, Mayor Chris Doherty said. But the judgment means the unions now can seize city assets and sell them to collect what is owed, said city solicitor Paul Kelly and the unions' attorney, Thomas Jennings. "Whenever a judgment is granted, you can go to the sheriff and...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he hopes the White House will act within a week to address the growing concerns that labor unions have over the new health care law. … Unions want members to be eligible for the same federal subsidies available to low-income workers in the new health exchanges. …

With immigration legislation stalled in Congress, advocates are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to act unilaterally to stop deportations or grant legal status to some of the 11 million people now living in the U.S. illegally. Activists are stepping up acts of civil disobedience like one last month in Phoenix, where they blocked a bus full of immigrant detainees. And labor leaders plan to press the issue with a top White House official in an upcoming meeting. … “If Congress doesn’t move, the president has a duty to act,” said Ana Avendano, director of immigration and community action at...

Union activists and big labor supporters who were upset that people were gathering in Vancouver, Wash., to talk about worker freedom resorted to violence and intimidation Thursday night, which resulted in a Mackinac Center for Public Policy employee getting spat upon. F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy director at the Mackinac Center, was invited by The Freedom Foundation in Washington and the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon to speak about the benefits of worker freedom. However, he didn't even get out of his car before he was confronted by protesters. A protester with bullhorn disrupts a meeting about the policy implications...

California’s minimum wage would rise to $10 an hour within three years under a bill passed Thursday by the state Legislature, making it one of the highest rates in the nation. Washington state currently has the top minimum wage at $9.19 an hour, an amount that is pegged to rise with inflation. Some cities, including San Francisco, have slightly higher minimum wages. The state Senate approved AB10 on a 26-11 vote and the Assembly followed hours later on a 51-25 vote, both largely along party lines. Gov. Jerry Brown indicated earlier this week that he would sign the bill, calling...