Free Republic

United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain said “a great majority” of American union workers in the auto industry “will not vote for” President Joe Biden against presumptive Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. “Look, let me be clear about this. A great majority of our members will not vote for President Biden. Yes, some will. But that’s the reality of this,” Fain told Neil Cavuto: The majority of our members are going to vote with their paychecks, they’re going to vote for an economy that works for them, they’re going to vote for a president — when you...

ST. LOUIS — City Hall ended a renewed mask mandate for city workers Friday afternoon, just hours after putting it into place. City spokesman Nick Dunne said in a press release that the health department now just "strongly recommends" employees mask up indoors, citing a recent rise in reports of respiratory illnesses in the region. The turnabout followed confusion about the numbers the health department cited to support the mandate, predictable outrage from conservative talk radio, and a lukewarm reception from employees at City Hall, some of whom noted that visitors weren’t required to mask up as well.

PARIS (AP) – The Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors Wednesday because of a strike over contract negotiations timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the death of its creator, Gustave Eiffel. One of the world’s most-visited sites, the Eiffel Tower is typically open 365 days a year – though it is occasionally affected by strikes – and is expected to play a central role in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Some tourists were visibly dismayed upon seeing a big sign beneath its iron façade announcing the closure in multiple languages, and apologizing for the inconvenience. Others took photos anyway,...

Amazon workers in multiple countries went on strike for Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to protest the e-commerce giant’s labor practices. The strike is organized by the UNI Global Union, which represents workers around the world and said it has mobilized workers from more than 30 countries, including Italy, Germany and the U.S., to speak out against Amazon’s treatment of employees.

American CEOs should be allowed to import all the foreign workers they say they “need,” Nikki Haley told supporters at a New Hampshire campaign stop. “So for too long, Republican and Democrat presidents dealt with immigration based on a [annual] quota,” she told the roomful of supporters:

NEWBERRY, S.C. - Two childcare workers have been arrested after the Newberry County Sheriff's Office said they allowed children to beat up other children at a daycare facility. Both employees have been fired from their jobs and turned themselves on multiple charges on Thursday morning at the Newberry County Detention Center. The allegations of child abuse and neglect happened at Kids Unlimited of Prosperity, where the two women worked. Sheriff Lee Foster said the daycare reported the issue to law enforcement and has been fully cooperating. “I have no idea what the two daycare workers were thinking of that was...

LinkedIn is laying off more than 660 workers across its engineering, product, talent and finance teams, the employment-focused social media site announced Monday. “Talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business,” the company said in a news release. This marks LinkedIn’s second round of major layoffs this year, after it announced its plans to cut more than 700 jobs in May amid efforts to make “changes to our Global Business Organization (GBO) and our China strategy.” In a Monday email to employees, which was obtained by Insider, LinkedIn executives said the latest round of...

The Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, the largest union in Nevada, voted to authorize a strike against major casinos on Tuesday if contract disputes continue. The Culinary Union represents over 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and is one of Nevada’s strongest political forces. Over 95 percent of workers voted to authorize a strike Tuesday, the union announced. Over 40,000 members are currently working without a contract as the union seeks better pay, benefits and working conditions in negotiations with top casino companies including MGM International, Wynn and Caesars Entertainment.

President Biden made an unprecedented stop Tuesday, joining the picket line with striking autoworkers and marking the first time a sitting president has done so. The president stood in solidarity with United Auto Workers (UAW) at a General Motors facility in Van Buren Township, Mich., and spoke to the group via bullhorn alongside union President Shawn Fain. “Wall Street didn’t build the country. The middle class built the country. Unions built the middle class,” Biden, wearing a baseball cap and quarter-zip sweater, told the striking workers. “Let’s keep going; you deserve what you’ve earned, and you deserve a hell of...

General Motors has temporarily laid off most of the approximately 2,000 unionized workers at its Fairfax assembly plant in Kansas as a result of the ongoing UAW strikes. The move, which GM had warned was coming last week, is the largest ripple effect so far from the United Auto Workers' historic strike against all three Detroit automakers as the union demands a new contract that offers substantially better wages and benefits. But automakers have warned a strike threatens to make them uncompetitive against rivals, especially as the companies spend billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles.

A large batch of Ford workers at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne have been temporarily laid off as the company endures the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike. The company said Friday the number of workers was approximately 600, WWMT reported Friday. The workers affected are from the body construction department and the south sub-assembly area of integrated stamping, the outlet noted.

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” NBC News Business and Data Reporter Brian Cheung stated that auto workers are pushing for higher wages in part due to the massive inflation in recent years, but also because they “want to make sure that they can extract as much now, given the fact that we’re not past high inflation.” Host Andrea Mitchell said, “[L]et’s talk about the backdrop here: The workers gave up a huge amount in salary and pension benefits back when there was the government bailout. The auto industry was going bankrupt and the White House stepped in...

Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” anchor Jake Tapper asked Ford CEO Jim Farley why, after CEOs got large raises, they can’t “share the profits” with the workers to avoid a strike. Tapper said, “I just interviewed Shawn, the head of the UAW, the other day, and I wanted to pass on a question based on something he’d told me the other day, which is over the last four years, each of the big three car manufacturer CEOs in addition to their multi-million dollar salaries, they received on average a 40% pay increase. So why are the auto workers wanting a...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Ford President and CEO Jim Farley stated that he’s not opposed to giving workers pay increases, “But if it prevents us from investing in this transition to EVs and in future products like the ones we have now like a new F-150,” they won’t do that because they’ll go bankrupt. While discussing the pay raises demanded by the UAW in negotiations and pay raises for CEOs, Farley said that they have offered pay raises and are open to big pay increases, but the 40% that the UAW is asking for is too much...

Worker shortages, changing regulations, weakend supply chains and rising attention on working conditions and job quality have many businesses and workers reflecting this Labor Day on what lies ahead — and one time-tested model with bipartisan support could be a game-changer for workers and companies alike: Employee ownership. In every industry today, employee-owned companies — from grocery stores such as WinCo and Publix to Gore, the manufacturers of Gore-Tex, and Southwest Airlines — are demonstrating the promising potential to grow successful businesses while improving workers’ lives. This model can take different forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives, Employee Stock Ownership Plans...

President Biden informed Congress on Thursday of his intention to raise federal civilian workers’ pay by an average of 5.2 percent, taking a required step to advance the proposal outlined in his 2024 budget request earlier this year. In letters addressed to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Vice President Harris in her capacity as president of the Senate, Biden outlined his alternative pay plan for an across-the-board pay increase of 4.7 percent and locality pay increases averaging 0.5 percent, for an overall average increase of 5.2 percent.

Vice President Kamala Harris greeted supporters on Martha’s Vineyard Saturday on behalf of the Biden-Harris campaign. Her arrival at the idyllic, high-priced Massachusetts resort was touted as a "grassroots reception." However, access to the VP, on an island in which 75% of voters pulled a lever for the Democrat ticket in 2020, cost as much as $10,000. "I guarantee you not one working-class Democrat (was) invited to the Kamala event," long-time Martha’s Vineyard homeowner, high-profile attorney and longtime Democrat supporter Alan Dershowitz told Fox News Digital. The big-ticket appearance underscored growing concerns, according to many long-time island residents, on an...

As cost increases persist and workers try to keep up, buzzwords like “poverty wage,” “minimum wage” and “living wage” are coming back into the lexicon, shaping conversations about what it means to make enough and who decides where to draw the line. The federal minimum wage, which was last raised in 2009, stands at $7.25 an hour. A full-time employee, working an average of 40 hours per week on minimum wage, makes $15,000 annually (which puts these workers below the poverty line in many states). A recent study from SmartAsset found that the average American worker needs $68,499 in after-tax...

A group of California Democrats are expected to propose handing out unemployment benefits to striking workers. Language expected to be released in the coming days or weeks to provide striking workers with benefits from California's unemployment insurance program that is $18 billion in debt. The move comes amid historic strikes by both screenwriters and actors, forcing many movies and TV shows to halt production. "It would allow individuals on strike who are not looking for work and were not let go through no fault of their own to claim unemployment insurance as if they were truly unemployed," California Chamber of...

22 Aug 202321 Democrat Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office is hoping to draw high-skilled workers and companies to the state and away from red states by marketing Michigan’s lax laws around abortion and LGBT+ issues as “freedom.” The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), through a public-private partnership with the governor’s office, launched a digital ad campaign last week promoting LGBT+ lifestyles and abortion as “reproductive freedom,” The Huffington Post reported on Sunday. The advertisements are targeted to half-a-dozen mostly southern states where Republicans have passed laws protecting the unborn and laws protecting children from gender ideology and women and girls’...