Free Republic

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a proposal for a ‘Teacher’s Bill of Rights’ on Monday, which includes provisions to increase teacher pay, alter school board member term limits, and impose new school union regulations. Speaking at a press conference in Jacksonville, DeSantis detailed his proposal to lawmakers that would allocate $1 billion to increase pay for teachers across the state. If adopted, the proposition would increase funding for teacher salaries by $200 million dollar compared to the year prior. The proposal package also takes a swipe at teacher unions, outlining a series of regulations that would prohibit unions from deducting dues...

More than a million people have joined a day of protests and strikes, according to France's interior ministry, against plans to push back the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Some 80,000 protesters took to the streets of Paris, with demonstrations in 200 more French cities. President Emmanuel Macron called the reforms "just and responsible" - but they are facing a make-or-break moment.... The head of the big CGT union, Philippe Martinez, put the total number of protesters at beyond two million... ...The prime minister invoked the principle of "inter-generational solidarity" to justify the decision to make people work...

More than 7,000 nurses at two hospitals in New York City went on strike early Monday morning demanding better pay, better working conditions and more staffing. The strike began at 6 a.m. after nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Harlem failed to reach an agreement with hospital administration during a bargaining session Sunday night, according to the New York State Nurses' Association. [Snip] "Now they are faced with the added challenge of short staffing that has reached critical levels and could compromise their ability to provide the best quality care to their patients."...

There are fears union barons could be plotting the first general strike since 1926 when they meet at a 'war cabinet' later this week. Some of the country's top union bosses, including Mick Lynch, will meet at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to plan their next move after weeks of crippling walkouts. It will come just a day after they conduct talks with ministers amid ongoing pay disputes that have seen large parts of the country grind to a halt over the last year.

A judge on Friday temporarily blocked the state of California from implementing a landmark new law aimed at raising wages and improving working conditions for fast food workers. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang’s order came in response to a lawsuit by restaurant industry groups that are seeking a referendum on the November 2024 ballot in a bid to overturn the law. The law establishes a 10-member council empowered to set minimum wages as well as standards for hours and working conditions for California’s fast food workers.

In its latest effort to make permanent pandemic-era mandates for health care workers, the federal agency regulating workplace safety has submitted a final draft of rules to the White House budget office for review. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sees exposure to COVID-19 as a matter of workplace safety, in June 2021 issued a temporary emergency standard for health care facilities that include requirements around screening, ventilation, physical distancing, physical barriers, cleaning and disinfection, and masks. In December 2021, however, OSHA announced that it would stop enforcing all temporary emergency standard requirements except for a few related...

'European democracy is under attack': Roberta Metsola addresses EU Parliament corruption scandal By Euronews • Updated: 13/12/2022 - 11:31 Roberta Metsola address the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, France. Roberta Metsola address the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, France. - Copyright Philippe BUISSIN/ European Union 2022 - Source : EP Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, warned on Monday that there would be "no impunity" for those found guilty of corruption as she addressed what is perhaps the gravest graft scandal to hit the hemicycle in recent years. "Make no mistake, the European Parliament, dear colleague, is under...

The nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), declined by at least 59,000 members during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) disclosure reports. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, lost 40,107 members while the AFT, the nation’s second largest teachers union, declined by 19,078, according to the DOL reports. The decline comes as public schools added 95,000 educators from September 2021 to 2022. ... The decline in the NEA’s membership leaves the union with 2,496,627 million educators, the lowest union membership since 2006, 74...

President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing the infusion of nearly 36 billion dollars to prevent severe cuts to the retirement incomes of more than 350,000 teamster retirees and workers across the United States.

If you want to see the problem with American education, look at a chart illustrating the comparative growth in the number of students, teachers, and district administrators in our public schools in the period between 2000 and 2019. (See the chart below.) The number of district administrators grew by a whopping 87.6 percent during these years, far outstripping the growth in the number of students (7.6 percent) and teachers (8.7 percent).In illustrating the difference in these rates of growth, the chart also illustrates a fundamental change that has come over our nation as a whole during this period—a change in...

President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing the infusion of nearly $36 billion to shore up a financially troubled union pension plan, preventing severe cuts to the retirement incomes of more than 350,000 Teamster workers and retirees across the United States. The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal aid provided for a pension plan, the Biden administration said, and comes from the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he signed into law in 2021. Many union retirement plans have been under financial pressure because of underfunding and other issues....

The White House said the Central States bailout would help 40,000 workers and retirees in Michigan, 40,000 in Ohio and 22,000 in Wisconsin...

Hundreds of journalists at the New York Times went on strike Thursday, their union announced, after bargaining over their contract fell through Wednesday. The historic 24-hour walkout, which reportedly began at midnight Thursday, represents the first strike of its kind at the newspaper in more than 40 years. “Today we were ready to work for as long as it took to reach a fair deal, but management walked away from the table with five hours to go,” the NYT Guild tweeted Wednesday night. “It’s official: @NYTimesGuild members are walking out for 24 hours on Thursday. We know what we’re worth,”...

The United States have a lot of railroads — big national lines and short regional lines, freight railways that share their track with commuter lines, lines designed with high clearance for container stacktrains. And while there are still a few tycoons in the world, the days of the railroads being the shining monuments to a single millionaire's fortune are long past; many of our railroads, like most big corporations nowadays, are publicly traded and are therefore owned and controlled by the nameless, faceless fund managers of Wall Street. To have all these railroads, you need a lot of employees. Here,...

When the closely watched Georgia Senate race went to a runoff, nonprofit organizations that educate voters strained to ramp up operations again after Election Day. “It’s not just, ‘Find new canvassers and recruit new volunteers.’ It’s also, ‘Find new money,’” said Kendra Cotton, CEO of New Georgia Project — founded by Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who lost her second campaign to become the state’s governor last month. The project’s goal was to raise $1 million to inform voters about the runoff, help them find out where and how to vote through phone banking and text banking, as well as voter...

The House on Wednesday passed a measure that would avert a national railroad strike by forcing the adoption of a tentative labor agreement. The vote was 290 to 137. House members also voted 221-207 to approve a separate proposal to provide railroad workers with seven days of paid sick leave, with Democrats in favor and nearly all Republicans opposed. Both measures now go to the Senate. A 1926 law gave Congress the power to intervene in railroad disputes that threaten to disrupt the economy. President Joe Biden on Monday called on Congress to step in–despite his usual pro-labor, pro-union stance–saying,...

President Biden has asked Congress to intervene in a labor dispute between rail workers and their employers, hoping to quell an impending strike with the potential to upend the American economy. SMART Transportation Division, SMART-TD for short, a union representing conductors in the rail industry has rejected a deal brokered by the Biden Administration, upending the White House's efforts to avoid a strike before the holidays. With 51% of SMART-TD's members voting in opposition of the deal, the workers are poised to either strike, or be locked out by rail companies on Dec. 9. A potential strike could have devastating...

In September, President Biden called his administration's work with railroad companies and a dozen unions to avert a nationwide rail strike a "win for America." That supposedly winning deal unraveled last week when America's largest rail union voted to reject the deal. And now, after Biden and the White House told contradicting tales about how involved the president was in the latest attempt to negotiate a deal, he's thrown in the towel and admitted defeat in his efforts that saw him ultimately botch another attempt at leadership. In a statement on Monday evening, President Biden announced that he was "calling...

It looks like the trains may stop running on time for Christmas. On Monday, the SMART Transportation Division (SMART-TD), the largest railroad union in the country, narrowly voted down a contract offered by the White House. That means the possibility of a strike just in time for the holiday season. The SMART Transportation Division, or SMART-TD, which represents about 28,000 conductors, rejected the contract in a vote that garnered record turnout, the union said Monday. The contract was nixed by a slim margin, as just 50.8% of workers voted against it. The second-largest rail union, made up of engineers, voted...

Civil servants at several government departments will take part in a month of sustained industrial action from mid-December. Members of the PCS union who work for the Home Office, Border Force, Department for Transport and Defra are seeking better pay and conditions. Ports, borders, and all areas of transport, including driving licences, will be affected, as some workers take action for the entire month while others will walk out for shorter periods. PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said the exact details of the action will be announced nearer the time to give the government as little notice as possible. He...