Free Republic

No one wants to watch an innocent man suffocate under the knee of a cop while bystanders plead for his life. Yet millions now have that haunting image seared into their memory. The question to ask in response is simple: what could have been done to prevent this? While I’m in quarantine and can’t see my students, I imagine their predominantly minority faces and wonder how can I keep them from a similar fate? Policy recommendations to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell George Floyd have ranged from defunding the police to ending qualified immunity and military surplus...

There is no longer any reason to regard the union movement in the United States as working to support the interests of its dues-paying members. Instead, it has become a fundraising adjunct to the Democrats, one using the force of coercion to confiscate a portion of members’ paychecks and send most of it to the party that is working to depress their wages by flooding the labor market with illegal immigrants. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO and therefore the top labor leader in the United States, is now all-in on protecting illegal immigrants. ... The Democrats need millions of...

Labor organizations will no longer be allowed to skim dues money from the checks of Medicaid patients under new rules adopted by the Trump administration. The Department of Health and Human Services's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services adopted new regulation that will prohibit states from siphoning money from caregiver reimbursements to third parties. The rule takes direct aim at state policies enacted to enrich union coffers. "State Medicaid programs are responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars are dedicated to providing healthcare services for low-income, vulnerable Americans and are not diverted in ways that do not comply with federal law,"...

Years in the making, the Democrat Party’s transition away from a political institution fighting for American workers and citizens is now complete, as evidenced by a series of actions taken by leaders and rank-and-file members since the election of Barack Obama as president. First, the most recent outrage, as reported by the Washington Examiner: Democrats are fighting hard for the right of Mexican workers to vote by secret ballot on union matters, just a few years after they fought to weaken the requirement for a secret ballot in U.S. union elections. The Democrats are demanding secret union ballots in Mexico...

Even at this late date in the presidential race, a few things stand out to those who have followed Hillary Clinton's career as a Marxist sympathizer and greedy politician/foreign policy Conan "The Destroyer" type. It is the refusal of the mainstream media and even some of the conservative media, to really dig into her past and even open actions to see things that would greatly disturb an honest, educated person, namely her accepting large amounts of money from Organized Crime and her relationship with a woman who gave all appearances of being a Cuban propaganda asset at the least, and...

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...

It’s taken nearly five years of administrative battles, legislative interference, and lawsuits, but the California state government has finally counted farm workers’ votes in a union election at the state’s largest fruit grower, Fresno-based Gerawan Farming. The final verdict, tallied on Tuesday, explains why the Jerry Brown administration and Democratic statehouse leaders did everything in their power to destroy the votes without counting them. The margin: 1,098 workers voted “no” to the United Farm Workers, with only 197 workers voting in favor of UFW representation. There still are 635 disputed ballots, but even the math geniuses in Sacramento can see...

Hillary Clinton had strong words for the Trump administration and Republicans on Friday while addressing the American Federation of Teachers, saying the fundamental rights of Americans are what’s at stake this November. Speaking at the labor union’s conference in Pittsburgh, Mrs. Clinton slammed the administration’s separations of families at the border as inhumane and indecent. “I believe with all my heart that the test of any society is how we treat the most vulnerable among us, particularly our youngest, our oldest, our people with disabilities, and right now, my friends, our country is failing that test,” she said. “We have...

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is blistering at a proposed regulation that would prevent the union from siphoning fees from American workers’ Medicaid payments. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a proposed rule Tuesday that would require Medicaid payments to go directly to healthcare workers, ending a 2014 Obama-era rule that let third parties, such as unions and insurance companies, skim off a share of the paycheck before the worker saw any of it. The SEIU, one of the largest public-sector unions in the U.S., referred to the proposed rule “as part of the [Trump] administration’s broad,...

JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court. Under Illinois law, public employees are forced to subsi­ dize a union, even if they choose not to join and strongly object to the positions the union takes in collective bar­ gaining and related activities. We conclude that this arrangement violates the free speech rights of nonmem­ bers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern. We upheld a similar law in Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977), and we recognize the importance of following precedent unless there are strong reasons for...

A drawn-out dispute over the terms of the PLA — the project labor agreement — covering the construction of a new terminal at the Kansas City International Airport is now threatening to delay the planned demolition of the airport’s current Terminal A this fall and the subsequent construction work scheduled to begin in 2019. On one side of the impasse are Missouri construction union bosses. They are demanding that every single frontline job on the KCI project be unionized, and that all workers be forced to pay union dues or fees in order to participate. This big labor demand is...

While the Supreme Court heard oral argument, last week, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court of public opinion focused not so much on the constitutionality of the law in question, i.e. justice, but instead on the partisan impact of the decision, i.e. politics. The case concerns Mark Janus, a child-care specialist for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, who refuses to join the union. Nonetheless, by state law, Janus is forced to pay “agency fees” to AFSCME. Those agency fees are 78 percent of what a union member pays in...

How does a public-sector union work? Easy. First, the state creates a monopoly. The monopoly forces taxpayers to fund those workers, whether they do a good job or not. The union then coerces workers to pay dues regardless of whether or not they want to. Then the union uses those dues to help fund political advocacy that perpetuates their monopoly and the union's influence. So, in other words: racketeering. Among many significant problems with this arrangement, the most obvious is that it's an assault on freedom of association. If there is another organization in American life that has a license...

If your workplace is a union shop, are you forced to pay union dues? This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about that. When I worked at CBS and ABC, I was ordered to join the American Federation of Radio and TV Artists. That union had won a vote that gave them the right to speak for all reporters. I said, "I'm no 'artist.' I'm a reporter! I won't join!" But my bosses said they couldn't pay me unless I did. In right-to-work states, unions can't force people to join. But only 28 states are right to work. Aging socialist...

The Democrats want open borders, since their future election chances depend on massive demographic shifts through mass third-world immigration. To their consternation, the #SchumerShutdown fight whimpered out because the public doesn’t want more immigration. That avenue for increasing their voter base is closing on them. Democrats are ignoring another declining base of support to their hurt: organized labor. For decades, labor unions ensured victory. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer won his Senate Seat because labor unions held him crushed his Republican opponent in 1998. Unfortunately, despite two major opportunities for long-term pro-labor reforms, unions have seen Democrats taking them for granted....

This isn’t getting anywhere near the same amount of oxygen in the news cycle as the Net Neutrality story, but it certainly should be. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the tenure of Barack Obama was busy handing out all sorts of goodies to the unions which finance most Democratic political campaigns. One particular burr under the collective, conservative saddle was a new “reinterpretation” of rules regarding the obligations of larger corporations who authorize the operation of franchises under their name. I wrote about this back in 2015 when the rule was originally finalized and it was a deplorable...

Trump Ends Obama Contracting Rule President signs resolution overturning Obama's 'blacklisting' executive order President Trump on Monday repealed Barack Obama's blacklisting rule that would have benefitted labor unions in federal contracting. Trump signed a resolution passed by the House and Senate overturning the rule, which would have forced companies bidding for government contracts to report all allegations of unfair labor practices filed against them. Previously, contractors only needed to disclose incidents in which they had been found guilty of labor violations. President Obama issued the "blacklisting" executive order in 2014, saying it would lead to "economy and efficiency in procurement...

While Hillary Clinton is relying heavily on union support for a November victory, not all union members are forgetting the Clintons’ past. As Bill Clinton was walking in the Detroit Labor Day parade, he was heckled by someone shouting “No NAFTA Boy!” as he went by.

How’s about some commie ketchup on that burger? It’s extra red. A little Marxist mustard for your dog? What about a pinch of socialist sauerkraut on that bubbling bratwurst? Didn’t you know? That’s why you get the day off on Monday. That’s what your Labor Day barbecue commemorates: socialism. Delicious, juicy, smoky socialism with a side of potato salad (German, of course) and a game of Cornhole (everyone’s a winner!) – frills made affordable to Americans, American businesses and big government waste-fraud-and-abuse mills by, well, capitalism. I know, I’m a killjoy, and, call me a hypocrite, but I’m grilling out...

A new super PAC partnership between billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, the AFL-CIO and major public sector employee unions has triggered an angry backlash among the building trade unions -- dividing organized labor just as it ramps up its 2016 political programs. In letters delivered Monday to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the presidents of eight building trade organizations called on the AFL-CIO to cut ties with Steyer, whose opposition to an extension of the Keystone XL Pipeline infuriated unions that had championed the jobs that the oil pipeline would have created.