Free Republic

In a monumental labor dispute, approximately 45,000 dockworkers across the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are threatening to go on strike on October 1, potentially shutting down 36 ports that handle nearly half of the nation’s cargo from ships. The International Longshoremen’s Union (ILA) is demanding higher wages and an outright ban on the automation of cranes, gates, and container movements used in the loading and unloading of freight. A strike of this scale could have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. economy, especially if it persists for more than a few weeks. CBS News reports how experts suggest that consumers...

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump and chose to sit out the presidential election, marking the first time first time since 1996 that it did not endorse a candidate.

*** Here's another one that can fit right into the Make America Great restoration: Requiring unions to recertify with the workers they purport to represent.Sean Higgins, a former colleague at Investor's Business Daily, now at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has a great new piece on just how badly this cleanup is needed.He begins it this way: Imagine if you lived in a country where a vote held decades previous determined which party held control of the government and people had little to no say over who ran the party. That’s the situation many workers must deal with if they’re unionized....

When thousands of Boeing employees rejected a new labor contract, precipitating a strike that began Friday, they were at odds not just with management but also with the leaders of their union, who backed the proposed deal. Now, any attempt to reach an agreement must take account of the demands of the rank and file of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. What they want — significantly larger pay raises and far more lucrative retirement benefits than their leaders and Boeing agreed to — may be too much for management. But labor experts said the strength of the...

National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter ordered Starbucks to reopen “within a reasonable period of time” two Ithaca locations that closed after employees formed a union, stating that its move to “chill unionism” violated the National Labor Relations Act. Carter ruled on Friday that the May 2023 permanent closures of the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street Starbucks locations and failure to bargain with the union were unlawful, as the board found the stores were closed for “antiunion reasons” and in an effort to quell unionizations elsewhere. The NLRB similarly ordered on July 6, 2023, that the third...

Boeing factory workers went on strike early Friday morning after overwhelmingly rejecting a new union contract with the company. Around 33,000 machinists went on strike shortly after midnight on the West Coast after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union announced 94.6 percent of workers had voted to reject the proposal and 96 percent approved the stoppage. The work stoppage puts financial strain on the storied airplane maker, which has been struggling to repair its reputation after the door plug of a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, prompting regulatory...

The union representing the nation’s postal workers, who will handle millions of ballots as part of the mass vote-by-mail system, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Thursday. Voters are being asked to trust an election system in which a key part of the process of casting votes is controlled by an organization loyal to one candidate. In a press statement, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) announced its endorsement: The nation’s 290,000 active and retired city letter carriers represented by the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) are proud to announce our endorsement of Vice President Kamala...

Postal contractor Midwest Transport Inc. is winding down... An Illinois-based trucking and logistics company, which contracted with the U.S. Postal Service to haul mail has notified over 650 employees, including more than 480 drivers, that the carrier is ceasing operations ... Former truck drivers for Midwest Transport Inc. (MTI), headquartered in Robinson, Illinois, told FreightWaves that they received telephone calls from their regional managers late Thursday notifying them the company was winding down operations. ... According to an email sent to MTI employees and drivers about the closing late Friday, which was obtained by FreightWaves, the company stated that postal...

Boeing Co. is seeking to avert a crippling strike by its largest labor union as the clock runs out on the existing accord. Negotiations between the IAM District 751 union and the planemaker are always tense. This time though, the stakes are particularly high for Boeing, which make these contract talks particularly consequential. Here’s why. Maintaining labor peace is essential if Boeing wants to stabilize production and repair its battered finances. The aviation giant has been burning through cash, while its net debt has soared to $45 billion during five years of tumult. The company hasn’t reported an annual profit...

Amazon is challenging the structure of the National Labor Relations Board in a lawsuit that also accuses the agency of improperly influencing the outcome of a union election at a company warehouse more than two years ago. The complaint, filed Thursday at a federal court in San Antonio, mirrors legal arguments the tech giant made in front of the agency earlier this year after NLRB prosecutors accused the company of maintaining policies that made it challenging for workers to organize and retaliating against some who did so. In the new legal filing, attorneys for Amazon pointed back to a lawsuit...

When you think of an ideal teachers union president, perhaps what comes to mind is someone who cares deeply about children, learning, and improving the lives of educators. But if you're American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, you care more about inserting yourself into the far-left political sphere and constantly spewing out inflammatory rhetoric. Why a teachers union boss feels the need to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas war is beyond me, but there was Weingarten on social media Sunday, essentially blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Hamas killings of six hostages, including 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin....

Hotels in eight cities are affected by the strike. Further strikes could begin ‘at any time’ in Baltimore, New Haven, Oakland, and Providence, the union said. More than 10,000 employees associated with the Unite Here union began a multi-day strike on Sunday

More than 10,000 hotel workers at 24 hotels stretching from Boston to the West Coast to Hawaii went on strike early Sunday morning, disrupting travel during a busy Labor Day weekend. The hotels are reportedly still open but guests will deal with a skeleton staff unable to provide full services. UNITE HERE, the union representing the striking workers, says they are striking not just for better pay but also better working conditions, including the return of automatic daily room cleaning that many hotels dropped during the pandemic. “We’re on strike because the hotel industry has gotten off track,” Gwen Mills,...

Mondays and Wednesdays are loud at the vast Boeing factory in Everett, Washington. As the Machinists’ contract campaign heats up, the workforce has been serenading management at lunch with air horns, train horns, and vuvuzelas—plus chants of “Out the Door in ’24.” Forty miles south, in Renton, where workers construct the moneymaking 737, second shift workers have used their meal breaks to blast Bluetooth speakers at top volume with ’90s rap, death metal, ’80s pop, and opera—all simultaneously, said Jon Voss, a 13-year mechanic in the wings building. The resulting racket “really drove management and HR nuts.” The Boeing contract...

Yesterday, a federal grand jury in Kansas indicted seven individuals, including five current and former high-level officers of the Boilermakers Union for alleged roles in a $20 million embezzlement scheme that spanned 15 years. The defendants, led by 71-year-old former union president Newton Jones and 76-year-old former secretary-treasurer William Creeden are charged with widespread embezzlement of union funds. Over the last 15 years, the pair led a scheme that included more than $5 million in unnecessary luxury international travel and more than $2 million in salary and benefits to Kateryna Jones and Cullen Jones for no-show jobs. They weren't required...

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union joined calls for a Palestinian American to speak on the final night of Democratic National Convention, implying that the party risks losing the election amid ongoing protests over the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party,” the UAW wrote Thursday on social platform X. “If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election, the Democratic Party...

Both of Canada’s major freight railroads have come to a full stop because of a contract dispute with their workers, an impasse that could bring significant economic harm to businesses and consumers in Canada and the U.S. if the trains don’t resume running soon. Canadian National and CPKC railroads both locked out their employees after the deadline of 12:01 a.m. Eastern Thursday passed without new agreements with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference that represents some 10,000 engineers, conductors and dispatchers. ... All rail traffic in Canada and all shipments crossing the U.S. border have stopped... Billions of dollars of goods...

On Monday night United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain endorsed Kamala Harris at the DNC Convention in Chicago. Fain called Kamala Harris a “fighter” for the working class and denounced Donald Trump as a “scab.” During President Trump’s first term, he prioritized bringing manufacturing back to America. And that is exactly what he did. --SNIP -- And then on Tuesday, the day after UAW President Shawn Fain announced his endorsement of communist Kamala Harris, General Motors announced a loss of 1,000 high-paying engineering jobs – 600 of those job losses will be in Michigan.

In an open letter, sex workers laid out how a Harris administration could rein in danger and criminalization. ... SWOP Behind Bars’ communique maintains a respectful, even friendly tone—while still reminding Harris that millions of sex workers will be watching closely as Election Day draws nearer. Among them is SWOP Behind Bars, a branch of the national grassroots nonprofit Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA (SWOP-USA). SWOP Behind Bars provides legal and practical support for incarcerated sex workers and survivors of trafficking, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and forced criminality. ... At the top of the list is a clear call for...

In an interview with a Chicago radio station, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates claimed that her students’ awful reading and math scores should be ignored because testing is “junk science” rooted in “white supremacy.” “The way in which we think about learning and think about achievement is really and truly based on testing, which at best is junk science rooted in white supremacy,” Gates said in the interview, the Wall Street Journal reported.“If you have another hour, I can get into why standardized tests are born out of the eugenics movement,” she added. “And the eugenics movement has...