Free Republic

Having watched Big Labor buy the White House for Joe Biden in 2020, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has taken a page out of the same playbook. Last month, the governor, who reportedly has designs on the Oval Office himself one day, handed a taxpayer-funded sweetheart deal to one of his state’s largest public employee unions. The state’s new collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 gifts its 35,000 state employee members a nearly 20 percent pay raise over four years, including a 4 percent raise this year. That adds up to...

The state of Illinois reached a new contract agreement with members of the AFSCME union that will cost taxpayers an additional $620 million over four years. Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday announced the agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The state's previous contract with the union expired at the end of June. The $620 million in additional costs amounts to a raise of nearly 18% during that time. About $200 million of that would be during the current fiscal year. “Illinois is a pro-worker state, and when it comes to workers’ rights, my administration is...

Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that government employees could not be forced to pay a union to keep their job. The top four public labor unions in the U.S. lost more than 200,000 members since the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that government employees could not be forced to pay a union to keep their job, a new report shows that. The Commonwealth Foundation released the report, which found that the top four public labor unions – AFT, AFSCME, NEA, and SEIU – lost nearly 219,000 members altogether since the Janus v. AFSCME ruling. “The Janus decision to end forced...

<p>The filing arose from a case in Connecticut where the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the largest unions in the United States with 1.6 million members, sued to demand that Connecticut National Guard members on state active duty had the right to unionize during the Covid-19 lockdowns.</p>

We are each of us ultimately responsible only for ourselves and our own actions, yet the degree to which we may be held accountable for the misdeeds of others apparently varies by political party affiliation. On Wednesday, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published on its website what can only be described as a hit piece on Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson in which reporters Molly Beck and Patrick Marley highlighted the fact that Johnson is “taking fire from a liberal group for accepting more than $13,000 from a Washington state business owner who refused to hire Muslims and replied to emailed jokes...

Today, Landmark Legal Foundation filed a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court in Belgau v. Inslee. In this case, public-sector workers sued Washington Governor Jay Inslee and their union, AFSCME Council 28, the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE), over the deduction of union dues from their paychecks. This case is one of many arising from steps taken by public-sector unions to avoid the restrictions from a groundbreaking Supreme Court case in 2018, Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31. In Janus, the Supreme Court overruled forty-year-old precedent to protect workers’ First Amendment rights. No longer would nonunion members...

NEW YORK (AP) — Ahead of Labor Day, unions representing millions across several working-class sectors are threatening to authorize work stoppages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement amid calls for concrete measures that address racial injustice. In a statement first shared with The Associated Press, labor leaders who represent teachers, autoworkers, truck drivers and clerical staff, among others, signaled a willingness Friday to escalate protest tactics to force local and federal lawmakers to take action on policing reform and systemic racism. They said the walkouts, if they were to move forward with them, would last for as long...

The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) launched a national ad calling for Congress to provide $1 trillion in financial assistance to states, cities, towns and school districts in the next coronavirus relief package. The union that represents public sector workers will stress that without more funding, its members will be laid off or furloughed and schools won’t be able to open safely, according to plans first shared with The Hill. “The coronavirus is wrecking state and local budgets. If the Senate doesn’t act, it will mean painful cuts to essential public services across America. Fewer teachers...

WASHINGTON — The head of the nation’s third-largest labor union said that the Democratic Party should not change its rules to award Bernie Sanders or any other candidate the nomination if they finish the primary with the most delegates but less than a majority. “We can’t change it. We can’t change it. We’ve got to live with the process, and I believe that there were improvements in that process,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), told Yahoo News. Saunders’s comments, in a 45-minute interview for Yahoo News’ podcast “The Long Game,” came...

Controversy continues to roil this week’s upcoming Democratic presidential primary debate in Los Angeles amid an ongoing labor dispute, anger over the tightening qualification standards and discontent with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez. The debate, which was originally slated to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was moved to Loyola Marymount University after AFSCME Local 3299 — the union representing more than 25,000 University of California service and patient technical care workers — and the state school forced UCLA to inform the Democrats and its media partners to abandon plans to host the debate at...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new collective bargaining agreement last week that has outraged the main labor union representing EPA employees. According to the president of the union—the American Federation of Government Employees—the EPA is “trampling on federal employees’ rights and ignoring the law” with the new agreement. So what are the draconian provisions that have the union so exercised? Well, perhaps the biggest change is that EPA employees will have an automatic right to work from home only one day a week instead of two. But the reason the union is up in arms has less to do...

Full title: INTERCEPTED: Democrat Training Group Polls Hillary Clinton And Michelle Obama As Presidential Candidates Targeted training materials make it clear that the Democrats are seeking to “destroy Trump’s presidency,” offering a window into Democrat strategic thinking as the 2020 election heats up. Both Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama are included as top presidential contenders in activist polling as Democrats gauge support for either a Clinton or Obama run. National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), a well-funded 527 PAC bankrolled by the AFSCME labor union and others, is targeting Democrat activists with a poll that was provided to Big League Politics...

Two major public sector unions lost nearly 210,000 agency fee payers combined in 2018, according to recently filed reports showing the impact of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits forcing nonmembers to pay for collective bargaining and other nonpolitical expenses. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees saw a 98 percent drop from the prior year, leaving 2,200 agency fee payers. The Service Employees International Union lost 94 percent of their agency fee payers, reducing the number of agency fee payers to 5,800. The disclosure reports filed with the Labor Department last week provide an early snapshot...

President Trump should rescind EO 10988, decertify the federal employee unions, and drain more swamp. ... While any federal workplace reform is appreciated, President Trump missed an opportunity (“Fresh Air in the Swamp,” Review & Outlook, June 1.) He could have, and should have, simply rescinded President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 that recognizes the right of federal workers to bargain collectively. A strong case for its revocation can be made to the American public. Why should 2.2 million federal workers enjoy both robust civil-service job protection and union representation? No wonder why, according to the CBO, federal salaries are 16%...

Labor unions are collecting dues from public employees without their “affirmative consent” in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling that state laws requiring nonunion government workers to make such payments are unconstitutional, a new lawsuit alleges. The Freedom Foundation, a free market think tank based in Washington state, joined with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to sue on behalf of 10 government employees in Oregon who argue that union dues or fees should not be deducted from their paychecks after they officially resigned from their union. “This is one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever witnessed from...

In California, new lawsuits aim to make unions respect the Supreme Court's authority. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision from June in Janus v. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was clear: Public employees no longer are required to pay union dues, even for collective-bargaining purposes. This was no technical or ambiguous point. The court declared it an infringement of the First Amendment when the government forces workers to financially support organizations that they don't want to support. Case settled, right? Not entirely. Public-sector unions, especially in California, aren't used to finding themselves on the losing end of...

Govt. healthcare employees in Penn. & Conn. allege coercive payments. A pair of healthcare workers in the Northeast have filed lawsuits alleging that labor leaders have blocked them from resigning even after the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory public sector membership is unconstitutional. William Neely, a Pennsylvania-based psychiatric aide, has accused American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 13 of refusing to honor his resignation. Neely was a dues paying member of the organization for 15 years before requesting to cut ties in July, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that government agencies could no longer require paying...

A new lawsuit from a University of California health worker says her union won’t let her quit. Liliana Hernandez, who works in patient billing for UC Irvine’s health system, argues in her lawsuit that AFSCME Local 3299 is still collecting dues from her despite her repeated attempts to separate. And she wants to kill a state law that requires government to defer to union rules on such matters. She and her attorneys contend the slow response from her union and her employer violates the Supreme Court’s June decision in Janus vs. AFSCME banning public-sector labor organizations from collecting any kind...

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Janus vs AFSCME ended a practice of abuse of public sector employees by their unions. The decision prevents unions from forcing the payment of dues by non-members and is a major victory for our civil servants. Now it is time to stop similar corrupt tactics used by unions to force private sector non-union employees to pay dues. Thanks to a hand-out by the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), unions can collect involuntary dues from former members who recently cancelled membership. In 2013, the NLRB overturned the 1962 Bethlehem Steel decision, which set the...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME case has heartened conservatives throughout the nation, especially in non-right-to-work states such as California that require public employees to pay dues to their respective unions. Janus will, over time, reduce the power of these unions as they are forced to spend more time wooing members — and they will have less disposable cash to control state legislatures and city councils.