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...

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Friday signed a package of bills repealing the state's so-called "right to work" law that allowed workers to opt out of unions, a long-sought victory for labor organizers facing an era of diminished power. Whitmer became the first governor since the 1960s to roll back right-to-work legislation.

If anything can pull Joe Biden out of his basement, it’s the prospect of speaking at a union rally. If elected president – the verdict is not in yet – he is certain to promote federal legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, that would give organized labor almost everything it wants. And what it wants most of all is to force unionization upon reluctant employers and employees.The former vice president and Delaware senator isn’t shy about where he stands. “I make no apologies,” he said during his campaign kickoff speech in Pittsburgh on April 29, 2019. “I...

While Californians re-elected some extremely questionable super progressive Democrats, and possibly even replaced a Democrat District Attorney in Los Angeles County with a Soros DA, in the only statewide contests on the ballot they overwhelmingly voted for the conservative position. In addition to rejecting a return to affirmative action, as my colleague Alex Parker covered, California voters overwhelmingly voted to protect an individual’s right to contract, rejecting Big Labor’s attempt to take over the app-based gig economy in passing Proposition 22.Proposition 22, as I wrote last week, exempts app-based gig economy drivers from California’s terrible AB5 law and allows them...

Unions are supposed to protect the little guy, but we’ve allowed the bigwigs to start exploiting members for political interests, or for their own gain. With the announcement that the 20-year general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters will abruptly end his re-election bid, the organization’s reputation as a political force is in trouble. On Aug. 28, federal investigators served the IAFF a flurry of subpoenas, which the Wall Street Journal reports are part of a criminal probe focused on illicit payouts to Schaitberger from the firefighters’ pension fund. IAFF President Harold Schaitberger is, indeed, feeling the heat.The...

Uber and Lyft are preparing to suspend their ride-hailing services in California beginning on Friday morning unless an appeals court rules at the last minute they cannot be forced to treat their drivers as employees, rather than independent contractors. Lyft in a blog post on Thursday said it would suspend its California operations at midnight. Uber in a blog post said it would have to temporarily shut down unless the appeals court intervenes.

Democrats in Virginia aren’t wasting time with their first statehouse majority in 26 years—by repealing the state’s 70-year-old right-to-work law that has helped the commonwealth thrive. Twenty-seven states including Virginia have right-to-work laws that give workers a choice of whether to belong to a union. According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, the rate of job growth was two times higher in right-to-work states between 2008 and 2018 than in states where workers can be compelled to join unions or pay dues as a condition of employment. This disparity is the result of a confluence of pro-growth policies...

The presidents of the two largest teachers unions in the country, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), are supporting the impeachment inquiry on President Trump, announced Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday.

The UAW announced Sunday morning that it would strike "effective at midnight tonight" after contract negotiations fell through. During a press conference on Sunday, the union's vice president said it informed GM that its membership would follow through after the contract ended Saturday at 11:59 p.m.. "This is our last resort," said VP Terry Dittes. A spokesman said the strike impacts about 48,000 UAW workers at GM plants across the country.

resident Donald Trump Monday launched a Labor Day Twitter attack against AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka after the powerful labor leader Sunday said the nation's unions won't have "any choice" but to block the "unenforceable" United States-Mexico-Canada trading deal. "Just watched AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on @FoxNews and thought to myself how different he is on TV than he is when he is with me at the White House," the president tweeted. "Likes what we are doing until the cameras go on. We got robbed on Trade and everything else while his Dems just sat back and watched." "NAFTA is the...

Sanders, who is making his second straight bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, vowed “that war will come to an end when I am president. If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class in America, we have got to rebuild, strengthen and expand the trade union movement in America.” Sanders said if elected, he would aim to double union membership by the end of his first term in the White House in January 2025. His plan also calls for ending so-called "right to work" laws favored by Republicans and decried by organized labor for weakening a union’s ability to...

Big Labor warned Democratic presidential contenders Wednesday against taking union support for granted, adding that Dems would need to be more honest about the party’s record on workers’ rights, reports said. The president of the AFL-CIO labor union, which represents 12.5 million union workers, addressed a closed-door meeting with representatives from each campaign in attendance before the second round of debates Wednesday in Detroit. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka argued that “both parties” needed to take responsibility for U.S. labor laws that benefit corporations to the detriment of the middle class.

National Education Association—held its annual convention in Houston the beginning of July. Attended by thousands of delegates on behalf of teachers and educators across the country, the meeting includes a Representative Assembly where resolutions and new business items are proposed and voted on. This year, 6,000 NEA delegates (a low attendance compared to previous years) approved teaching the concept of “White Fragility” in trainings and staff development, endorsed “the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade,” and called on the U.S. government to “accept responsibility for the destabilization of Central American countries… and that this destabilization is a root...

In a move that has the supermarket industry scratching its head, the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW, is singing its own praises for negotiating a wage increase that is already common practice among some of the largest non-union businesses.Last month, Kroger stores in Kentucky and southern Indiana agreed to increase wages for part-time workers and new hires to $10 an hour, keeping one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains in line with its competitors on employee pay.It’s the same song, different day for union leaders who think they deserve reward and recognition for implementing changes that business executives and...

A few years ago, Marriott debuted a new app at hotels in five cities that was supposed to save housekeepers time by telling them which rooms to clean. It was a disaster. Housekeepers ended up yo-yoing between rooms on different floors, ignoring messy rooms just down the hall. If anything, the cleaners felt that the app made them less efficient, and they worried about being disciplined by their bosses for failing to finish their work on time. “A wild-goose chase” is how Rachel Gumpert, a spokeswoman for Unite Here, the labor union that represents Marriott’s housekeepers, describes the episode. Several...

Two powerful, left-wing public unions lost over 90 percent of non-member fees after the Supreme Court ruled against forcing non-members to pay union dues. In other words, until June of 2018 we lived in a country where public sector workers who chose not to join their respective unions were still forced to pay union dues, which are called agency fees. These agency fees represented 70 to 80 percent of union dues and were forcibly removed from the pay checks of public workers who wanted nothing to do with far-left unions that spend billions of dollars every year to elect Democrats....

Labor unions say they are withholding support for a Green New Deal unveiled by Democrats last week to transition the American economy away from fossil fuels, arguing the loosely-defined plan could kill jobs if its architects aren’t careful. The cool response from unions underscores the challenge facing Democratic presidential hopefuls who support aggressive action on climate change but must also win back the blue-collar voters that swept President Donald Trump to victory in 2016. Democratic presidential hopeful Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have already thrown their support behind it. The resolution’s backers say the plan...

Government labor unions are losing dues-paying members at an unprecedented rate, which is good news for workers and bad news for liberal coffers. The mass exodus is forcing leaders on the left to address a serious problem: Their decades of financial backing from fat cat union bosses may be coming to an end.

The union representing the United States' air traffic controllers is suing the Trump administration over pay that's frozen as part of the partial government shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic controllers are among the 420,000 federal employees who have been deemed essential and have been ordered to work without pay during the shutdown, which began on Dec. 22 due to an impasse over funding for a wall along the U.S. southern border. This story developing. Check back for updates.

AFGE President Cox to President Trump: “Sign this bill, end this shutdown, and stand up for America’s workforce.”WASHINGTON – Democrats plan to officially introduce legislation to reopen the federal government at the start of the 116th Congress. The funding measure funds six of the seven remaining appropriations bills through the remainder of fiscal year 2019. The legislative package also includes a Continuing Resolution (CR) until February 8 for the Department of Homeland Security and a 1.9% pay adjustment for federal workers.“We fully support the House Democrats’ plan to end the shutdown and reopen the government,” said American Federation of Government...