Free Republic

Note: I'd like to see this used as a model for an executive order requiring right to work contracts for all federal government employees and contractors: (June 2014) (PDF) FACT SHEET: PROPOSED RULEMAKING TO IMPLEMENT EXECUTIVE ORDER 13658, ESTABLISHING A MINIMUM WAGE FOR CONTRACTORS On February 12, 2014, President Obama signed Executive Order 13658, “Establishing a Minimum Wage for Contractors,” to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for all workers on Federal construction and service contracts. The President took this executive action because raising wages will improve the quality and efficiency of services provided to the government. Boosting wages lowers...

On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and actor Danny Glover will join the March on Mississippi in order to protest a pattern of civil rights abuses against the company's predominantly African American workers. Also joining the march are Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, Sierra Club President Aaron Mair, hundreds of workers, civil rights leaders and social justice advocates. The march will end at Nissan's Canton factory, and the marchers will demand that the company start respecting its workers’ right to vote for a union free from fear and intimidation.

If the first weeks of 2017 are any indication, this could be a banner year for labor reform in the United States. Days into January, Kentucky became the 27th right-to-work state, sparking what could be a wave of labor reforms giving workers across the country more freedom. F. Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told The Huffington Post that Missouri and New Hampshire were next in line: “We may see up to 29 [states] before the spring,” Vernuccio said. “You’re definitely seeing a snowball effect, and more and more states are looking to...

The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has won the unfortunate award for "First Pension to Officially Run Out of Money." According to the New York Daily News, and a host of angry former truck drivers who've had their pension benefits slashed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has officially been forced to step in and take over payments to retirees of the Local 707, albeit at a much lower rate. Teamsters Local 707’s pension fund is the first to officially bottom out financially — which happened this month. “I had a union job for 30 years,”...

“This is a declaration of war, a war on the environment,” John O’Grady, an EPA union leader and agency employee, told E&E news. “It’s a declaration of war against children with asthma, against women of child-bearing age, against the elderly.” Trump is expected to ask Congress to cut EPA’s budget 24 percent and reduce the agency’s staff by 3,000 employees. O’Grady works out of EPA’s Chicago office where about 30 agency employees took to the streets to protest the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the agency. The Senate confirmed Pruitt in February.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics union membership hit an all-time low in 2016 of just 10.7 percent. That decline has consequences for unions like the AFL-CIO, which Bloomberg reports is dismissing dozens of staff members: The AFL-CIO is dismissing dozens of staff members as part of a restructuring amid continuing declines in union membership and fresh political threats to labor rights. “We will have to end support for some programs that don’t go to our core priorities,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein, who declined to discuss the number of staff affected. “This is about reimagining and realigning our...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 22, 2017AFGE says they hope to have an open dialogue with the agency’s new administratorWASHINGTON – AFGE commended newly-confirmed Administrator Scott Pruitt for opening a dialogue with frontline workers on his first day at the Environmental Protection Agency.“I am eager to see if Administrator Pruitt stands by his commitment to seek out guidance from the people who have dedicated their life’s work to protecting America’s air and water,” said AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. “EPA workers have been made a scapegoat for many of our country’s problems, when in fact, they have only been...

A hallmark of the federal bureaucracy under Obama was that it pushed the boundaries of government power at every step, especially when doing so helped groups allied to the Democratic Party. Labor unions are one of those groups. Even though many individual workers don’t favor the Democrats, the union hierarchy has hitched its fortunes to them. They’re always looking for any advantage that politicians or bureaucrats can give them. Back in 2014, Big Labor got excited over the possibility of unionizing college football players when the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Chicago ruled that members of Northwestern University’s...

Donald J. Trump redrew the electoral map with his rousing economic nationalism and evocation of a lost industrial age. It was a message that drew many union members to his cause. And now it is upending the alliances and tactics of the labor movement itself. In early November, workers at the Momentive chemical plant in upstate New York went on strike to beat back pension and health care concessions. By January, the workers were invoking some of Mr. Trump’s populist campaign themes — but with a twist. They planned to picket outside the Manhattan home of the billionaire Stephen A....

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Public sector unions in Iowa will have less authority to negotiate working conditions for teachers, nurses and correctional officers under a bill passed Thursday in the new Republican-controlled Legislature that critics say is aimed at crippling organized labor in the state. The legislation, expected to be signed into law by Iowa's conservative governor, will prohibit workers from collectively negotiating over health insurance, extra pay and several other items currently covered by law. It's expected to be one of the most significant bills of the legislative session, in part because of loud opposition from Democrats and...

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – Nearly 3,000 production workers at Boeing’s South Carolina plant have voted not to join the Machinists, maintaining southern reluctance toward unionization. “We’re disappointed the workers at Boeing South Carolina will not yet have the opportunity to see all the benefits that come with union representation” said IAM lead organizer Mike Evans said in a statement. “But more than anything, we are disheartened they will have to continue to work under a system that suppresses wages, fosters inconsistency and awards only a chosen few.” The first round of voting began early Wednesday. A second round was set...

Corruption: Is it a coincidence that the two Trump Cabinet picks Democrats mounted their fiercest campaigns against happen to be the two that labor unions most wanted to go down in flames? Hardly. Senate Democrats were so determined to do the bidding of the teachers unions and block Betsy DeVos as Education secretary that they held an all-night session in which they railed against her, in the hopes that this would convince one more Republican to oppose her nomination. Having failed to achieve that goal, Democrats immediately turned their ire to the other Big Union target, President Trump's pick to...

As cities across Ontario finalize their budgets and try to squeeze out savings to expand public transit, something doesn't add up. Too many cities, including Toronto, are missing out on hundreds of millions in savings. That's because Ontario has a labour law loophole that's putting cities, companies and taxpayers at a huge disadvantage. The heated debate over road tolls in Toronto has distracted from a far simpler way of saving for public transit expansion. Here it is: Change the way construction projects are tendered. Right now, Toronto and too many other municipalities including Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie and the Region...

xit polls from the 2016 presidential election indicate that Hillary Clinton won the union household vote by only nine points, a much smaller margin than is traditional for Democratic candidates and a contributing factor in Donald Trump’s win, particularly in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect thinks Trump’s strength in union households may have been racial in nature. “Whites from union households preferred Trump over Clinton, 52 percent to 40 percent,” he wrote, citing an unidentified network exit poll. If accurate, race must have played a big part, but we lack enough...

The Washington region’s prospects aren’t all bad under the Trump administration. A top local economist joked at a recent business conference that demonstrators flocking to rallies in the District will drop bundles of cash, spurring growth from “protest tourism.” But the area is bracing for shock at the hands of a reinvent-the-rules president who routinely insults the city and a Republican-led Congress that for years has sought to shrink the federal government that is the area’s principal employer. Officials and analysts expect sharp cuts in federal nondefense spending, which would strain local budgets nationwide and pose a particular threat to...

With the aid of D.C. School and U.S. Education Department staff, Education Sec. Betsy DeVos eluded screaming protesters blocking the door of a D.C. public school where she was scheduled to meet with education advocates on Friday. […] After the meeting, DeVos issued a defiant statement, saying she won’t let protesters keep her from doing her job of improving the U.S. educational system: “I will not be deterred in executing the vital mission of the Department of Education. No school door in America will be blocked from those seeking to help our nation’s school children.” …

Roughly 381,000 kids were sent home this week from Chicago Public Schools with a partisan letter blasting President Trump and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. Chicago’s WGN reported Tuesday that officials with CPS angered parents by handing out letters that excoriate Republicans — and Republicans only — for budget problems. A letter distributed on Monday begins by saying that Mr. Trump and Gov. Rauner “attack those who need the most help” as a segue into the state’s financial woes. “CPS cannot run the school system that your children deserve with the funds we have,” the letter says. “Under the law, CPS...

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten is paid 10 times as much money as the average teacher, according to new federal labor filings. Weingarten earned nearly $560,000 in total compensation during the 2013-2014 school year, according to Department of Labor filings.That figure includes a total salary of $375,174 for the year, as well as more than $180,000 in additional benefits and expenses. The $50,300 she collected in “allowances disbursed,” which cover unnamed perks indirectly related to business, was just $6,000 less than the average teacher earned for the 2012-2013...

Statement of AFT President Randi Weingarten on the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education. “DeVos’ confirmation battle has a major silver lining: The public in public education has never been more visible or more vocal, and it is not going back in the shadows. This same public—from rural towns to urban centers, from liberals to conservatives—will now serve as a check and balance, and they will be fierce fighters on behalf of children. I am honored to be a soldier in that movement for children. “It’s telling that even when Trump had full control of the legislative and...

Senate Republicans on Monday advanced a measure that would add Colorado to the list of so-called "right to work" states, prohibiting mandatory union membership. Despite opposition from throngs of union members and leaders, as well as many in the business world, Republicans on the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee pushed the bill along on a party-line vote. Senate Bill 55, sponsored by Sen. Tim Neville of Littleton, would prohibit an employer from requiring someone to join an organized labor group or pay dues as a condition of employment. It also would create civil and criminal penalties for violations.