Free Republic

Taxpayers in Will County have offered its public employees a hefty pay raise and are willing to pick up 90 percent of the cost for their health insurance, but that’s not good enough for members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1028. The labor stats show 35 percent of government workers are in a union, compared to just 6 percent of private-sector workers. The same report shows that unionized public sector employees are paid 27 percent more than private-sector workers. “County employees pay one percent of their salaries for single coverage and two percent for...

With the news last week that Machinists’ union members employed by Boeing in Puget Sound overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract that would have meant years worth of work on the new Boeing 777X, much of the attention was focused on what it would mean for union members’ future and where the work would go following their rejection. As the long-term contract they voted down had numerous concessions, it is understandable that it would have been a hard sell to get the members to accept it. Yet, that hard sell by local union leaders did not take place. In fact, the...

"IT'S A DREAM JOB: Mark Rosenthal, who pulls in $156,000 a year as head of Local 983 of District Council 37, nods off at his desk during one of a series of postlunch naps that have outraged members of the union’s executive board. “He eats lunch when he arrives at work at 2 p.m. Then, like clockwork, he goes to sleep with a cup of soda on the table and the straw in it,” said Marvin Robbins, a union vice president. “Then he wakes up, looks at his watch and says, ‘I have to get out before the traffic gets...

•Unions have changed their historic approach to immigrants and immigration. Up through the 1970s, unions were openly hostile to immigrants. But now unions are treating the 11 million undocumented workers as potential union members and recruiting them. •An agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department actually requires this — if a union and an employer are engaged in a dispute over organizing workers, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is barred from pursuing an immigration investigation of the workplace under this agreement

Hostess Brands Inc. said Tuesday night that mediation talks with its bakers union failed and the company will proceed with plans to close down and sell its assets.

The news about the bankruptcy of Hostess, maker of the Twinkie and other legendary junk foods, touched off some memories of growing up in a mid-sized Midwestern town in the 1970s and '80s. No, not that kind of memory, though come to think of it, the 1980s was the last time I actually ate a Hostess snack. What I'm recalling has a lot less nostalgic charm: the whole phenomenon of a kamikaze labor union that keeps demanding more for workers--who end up getting nothing when their employer goes belly-up. That's pretty much what the unions did, or tried to do,...

During a speech today in Washington D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the looming debt disaster a "manufactured crisis" and said "there isn't a fiscal cliff." "There is no fiscal cliff," Trumka says in prepared remarks to the National Mediation Board Conference in Washington on Thursday. "What we’re facing is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit." Obama met with Trumka earlier this week, in addition to other far left leaders, to discuss economic policy. Apparently a $3500 tax increase on every family doesn't serve as...

Breaking windows will stimulate the economy, according to a leading public pension advocacy group. Skeptical? The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) has not literally endorsed breaking windows, but a report recently published by the organization relies on the same economic fallacy. According to NIRS-whose membership consists principally of public employee unions, the pension plans in which they participate, and the actuarial and investment firms that serve them-the best economic stimulus is not tax cuts or unemployment checks, but increased pension benefits to public-sector retirees. Each dollar of pension benefits produces $2.37 in economic output, NIRS says, creating millions of...

Conventional wisdom has Ohio being vulnerable to a Democratic rollback in 2012 after a GOP sweep in 2010. Approval ratings for Governor John Kasich have been low after his reforms of public-employee unions in a state where Big Labor is thought to have a wide reach. However, a new Quinnipiac poll on a proposed right-to-work reform may indicate that their power is not as broad as first thought: Despite the overwhelming victory by organized labor and its allies in repealing SB 5 in this past election, by 54 – 40 percent Ohio voters favor the idea of passing a “right-to-work”...

Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. One protester told TheDC that all the “Occupy” activists were being paid to protest, and that his union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 100, approached him about the money-making opportunity. “I have nothing nice to say about Local 100. … They just told me ‘you wanna make sixty bucks? So c’mon,’” the protester said. Other “Occupy CPAC” protesters were unwilling to speak on camera...

SEIU Healthcare 775NW is hiring a Lead internal organizer to lead a team of eight organizers who are focused on leadership development, the “Leaders In Action” field team, working with public and private sector home care workers. This team develops leaders and builds networks to take action in a variety of campaigns.

A last-ditch drive ends in disappointment for Penn State, which loses to Nebraska, 17-14. Not having any timeouts crippled the offense, which completed two passes short of a first down, including one with seconds left, but couldn't stop the clock. This is a different Saturday in State College. Immediately after McGloin's final pass fell incomplete, the Penn State crowd cheered the team's effort: the cheering grew to a roar as the two teams again met a midfield, such as they did right before the game. Again, as occurred several times during the game, there were chants of "We love JoePa."...

Labor is poised for a big victory in Ohio Tuesday. PPP's final poll on Issue 2 finds 59% of voters plan to reject Senate Bill 5, with only 36% voting for approval. What might be most remarkable about the 23 point margin in this poll is that it's exactly identical to what we found the first time we polled on this issue all the way back in March. Voters were furious then and that anger has continued all the way to November. Democrats are almost unanimous in their opposition to SB 5, supporting repeal by an 86-10 margin. Meanwhile there's...

In response to a series of controversial decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill curtailing the power of the NLRB Thursday afternoon. The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act, H.R. 2587 is currently being voted on and is expected to pass the Republican-controlled House. An earlier vote on the bill on the floor passed 239-176, with all Republicans and six Democrats voting in favor. The bill would prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from ordering any employer to close, relocate, or transfer employment under any circumstance. The NLRB has been the...

Madison - A Dane County judge has struck down Gov. Scott Walker's legislation repealing most collective bargaining for public employees. In a 33-page decision issued Thursday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi said she would freeze the legislation because GOP lawmakers on a committee broke the state's open meetings law in passing it March 9. The legislation limits collective bargaining to wages for all public employees in Wisconsin except for police and firefighters. "It's what we were looking for," said Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat. Ozanne sued to block the law after Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca...

The Tennessee state legislature tomorrow will vote on a bill that would limit collective bargaining for teachers’ unions — the only government unions allowed in the state of Tennessee.The bill echoes the legislation the Wisconsin legislature passed earlier this year in the face of union protests and the flight of 14 Wisconsin state senators. Around that time, union protesters marched in Tennessee, too — but, in recent weeks, Tennessee’s version of a bargain-limiting bill has moved forward to relatively little national fanfare, even though both Tennessee Education Association activists and Tea Party supporters have continued to express strong views on...

H. L. Mencken defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. The National Labor Relations Board is haunted by the fear that a company somewhere might be creating jobs with a nonunionized work force. Boeing has run afoul of that fear by investing more than $1 billion in a new plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina. With only the flimsiest legal justification, the board wants to force Boeing to reverse course and locate the facility with its current operations in Washington State, where its workers are unionized. The NLRB’s claims are laughable on their...

The National Labor Relations Board's recent challenge to Boeing over the second 787 production line is malign nonsense. Laughably meritless on its face, it nonetheless poses a serious threat to both economic recovery and economic freedom. Such things must always be confronted and overcome. Briefly, the complaint filed by the NLRB's acting general counsel says Boeing engaged in unfair labor practices as it considered its expansion plans. So, 17 months after the company announced its decision and subsequently invested billions of dollars, hiring more than 1,000 workers in North Charleston, S.C., the complaint would have the company move the work...

When Governor Scott Walker took steps to limit the power of public-employee unions and return the power over policy to the voters of Wisconsin, many of us knew that the newly-elected Republican would start a wave of similar efforts in other states. However, it’s safe to say that one place we didn’t expect to see that wave break early on Plymouth Rock. Not only has the Massachusetts state House passed a new law barring all PEUs from collective bargaining on health care, it passed by a veto-proof majority — because Democrats pushed the bill: House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night...

Across the country, from Wisconsin to Ohio, Republican governors are battling Big Labor. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, in an interview with National Review Online, says that her state is the next front. But Haley’s foes are not graybeard professors or drum-banging state workers; she is facing off against bureaucratic activists in Washington, D.C. The National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency dominated by President Obama’s appointees, is attempting to block Boeing from building jets in Charleston, S.C. By producing planes in a nonunion plant thousands of miles from its base in Everett, Wash., the NLRB alleges that Boeing...