Free Republic

In St. Johns County, on the Atlantic shore of Northeast Florida, more than 55% of public school teachers paid their union dues this last year. Despite that, nearly 3,500 teachers are facing the threat of having their union representation revoked. At the same time, in Southwest Florida, only 16% of law enforcement officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office paid union dues last year. Their union is under absolutely no threat of being decertified. A year after Governor DeSantis signed into law a sweeping anti-union bill requiring most public sector unions to boost the rate of members paying dues or...

The out-of-control airline pilot who tried to down an Alaskan Airlines flight midair told cops he had taken magic mushrooms before the flight, it emerged Tuesday. Joseph Emerson, 44, an off-duty commercial airline pilot, went off the rails while sitting in the cockpit jump seat of a flight between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco on Sunday — trying to cut the fuel to the engines before he had to be held down by crew members. Even while restrained, Emerson tried to open the emergency doors on the Alaskan flight, which was being operated by Horizon Air, as the pilots frantically...

Privacy Notice An Alaska Airlines passenger inside the cockpit attempted to seize control of a plane headed from a Seattle airport to San Francisco on Sunday, the airline said. A pilot told air traffic controllers a person riding in the cockpit of flight 2059 attempted to turn off the aircraft's engines in flight. An airline's pilots, or pilots at other airlines, will occasionally ride a cockpit "jump seat" when traveling in an official capacity or commuting to another airport. The passenger, who has not been named, was an off-duty pilot and has been arrested by Port of Portland Police Department,...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

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...

The department store will probably disappear in the next ten to twenty years, according to everyone who still cares about department stores. Writing in the early months of the pandemic, the New York Times predicted that lockdowns would deal the killing blow. If they didn't disappear outright, "there is expected to be an enormous reduction in the number of stores in each chain, which once sprawled across the American continent like a pack of many-headed hydras." That sort of bleak language – "many-headed hydras" sprawling across a continent – paints a bitter picture of an institution that was once a...

With a looming implementation date of Saturday, July 1st, Leon County circuit judge J. Lee Marsh denied a plea on Tuesday to prevent a portion of the law that bars government workers from having union fees automatically deducted from their wages. The decision arrived after three unions and three union members from South Florida sought a temporary injunction against the imminent changes. This decision follows a similar ruling on Monday where a federal judge refused a similar request made by teachers unions. The law in question, SB 256, was signed into effect by Governor Ron DeSantis last month, sparking the...

Executive Summary The political Left often criticizes—and the mainstream media frequently report on—the network of center-right nonprofits funded by billionaire entrepreneurs Charles and David Koch. But few politicos know of a left-wing leviathan in Washington, D.C., with a reach rivaling that of the Koch network. This study by the Capital Research Center documents a shadowy web into which nearly $600 million flowed in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. Operating under the aegis of “philanthropy,” this network is housed in and staffed by a for-profit, privately held consultancy called Arabella Advisors, LLC. Arabella manages four nonprofit...

Republican candidates can win in November if they prioritize important issues. Chief among them are supporting the freelance economy and opposing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The GOP can appeal to disaffected independents and Democrats who feel voiceless without moderating their conservative beliefs. Here in Virginia, freelancers and their allies, alike, are making their voices heard by opposing bad bills. If Republicans want to win, they should join the fight for freelancers now. The Current Status of Freelancing in AmericaFreelancing is pro-family, pro-freedom, pro-free market— the very essence of conservatism. Men and women who freelance better prioritize...

Left-wing billionaire George Soros is reportedly backing a new leftist news outlet that openly advocates on behalf of labor unions. The New York Times reported that in “a moment of political turmoil, economic change and a pandemic-driven focus on how we work, labor has become a hot news beat.” Specifically, “[t]he new brand of labor journalism runs the gamut from conventional newspaper reporting to outright advocacy.” The “most ambitious” of the new entrants into this news beat is a video-centric outlet called a More Perfect Union, led in part by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) former presidential campaign manager and...

If you think the supply chain problems, empty shelves in stores and higher inflation are problems now, wait a few weeks; they are likely to get worse. And this isn't a result of hurricanes, the pandemic or other acts of nature. It's all due to political incompetence that starts in the Oval Office. Here's one prominent reason the supply shortage of goods from fruits and vegetables to gasoline to toys for Christmas will go from a headache to a crisis. We are now witnessing the end of four decades of labor peace in America. Two prominent companies, Kellogg's and John...

Despite being a politician all his life, and never having worked in a blue-collar job, resident Joe Biden declared, "I'm a union man," when he announced his presidential campaign at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh in April 2019. What our president really loves is big government and political power, and there is no more reliable money trough for Democrats than unions. According to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending, Biden's campaign received $27.5 million in contributions from unions, compared with $360,000 from unions that went to former President Donald Trump's campaign. So, it is no surprise that the president and...

Greg Lalevee is standing in the midst of a truly epic collection of construction equipment at his union’s training center, just off the New Jersey Turnpike. This former sand mine, which his union uses to train workers in construction equipment, is bristling with cranes, pile drivers and dozens of other pieces of heavy machinery. But before showing off a construction arsenal vast enough to raise a skyscraper on the spot, Lalevee is enthusing about his union’s good fortune as Congress finally pays attention to infrastructure. “When President Biden announced his plans, for us to hear that — it was nirvana,”...

In honor of Labor Day, the United Auto Workers recapped some union history last week; tellingly, most of it was misleading or more than a century old.The UAW trotted out bumper sticker rhetoric like “the elimination of child labor, establishing the 8-hour workday as well as the weekend, raising the standards for education, skill levels, wages, working conditions, quality of life for all workers, and a voice in the workplace.”Like good leftists, they explained that their mission has a long way to go, including “fighting voter suppression bills.”The voter suppression claim is intriguing, considering how anti-immigrant and racist national unions...

Suit seeks to overturn union-withdrawal windows.. A railway worker is petitioning the Supreme Court to stop unions from forcing members and nonmembers to fund union political lobbying against their will. The worker asks the Court to draw on its 2018 Janus decision, which barred public sector employers from mandatory union dues on First Amendment grounds. The petition, filed Tuesday, argues the 5-4 ruling did not go far enough in cracking down on union attempts to subvert right-to-work laws through mandatory dues deductions. "This case is an ideal vehicle to resolve the exceptionally important question whether the First Amendment or the...

California’s high-speed rail plan is running on fumes. Whether the actual train ever runs is anyone’s guess. The project is seeking to withdraw an additional $4.1 billion in funding, the last of a $10 billion bond approved by voters in 2008. Voters approved that measure, thinking it would be used to connect the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Instead, it’s being requested in order to connect Merced to Bakersfield — the still-incomplete first stage of the project, which covers less than half of the hoped-for distance. The project has been (forgive me) a train wreck from the beginning....

This past year was one of the most tumultuous in memory. Widespread economic collapse, social and societal upheaval, violent riots, an acrimonious election cycle, and a worldwide pandemic are just a few of the major sources of upheaval. These sorts of massive disruptions to the norm create opportunities for change and improvement. Some use those opportunities productively to work for solutions that fix real problems and improve lives. But sadly, many use these disruptions to cynically advance their own agenda while feigning concern for the plight of others. Unfortunately, organized labor falls into this latter group. In a time when...

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...

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...

Ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft could be on the brink of shutting down in California after a judge ordered them to reclassify independent contractors as employees.  Why? All companies employing freelancers or individuals partaking in freelancing must comply with Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), the new anti-gig work law. It seems benign on the surface. Once readers peruse the bill’s language, they discover its nefarious goals.  It erroneously claims the “misclassification of workers as independent contractors has been a significant factor in the erosion of the middle class and the rise in income inequality.” And its federal companion bill, the PRO Act—supported by Democrats like...