Free Republic

While everyone is distracted with the Pelosi Reid Obama artery–choking, cardiac arrest, Pork Barrel Spending Bill, congress is sneaking-ly trying to pass the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. Left-wing environmentalists are behind this bill to purposely undercut current progress toward affordable domestic energy. Essentially they will be stealing 300 million barrels of proven oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from any future use.

Senate approves restriction on foreign hires The Senate voted Friday to restrict the hiring of foreign workers by banks that are receiving government bailout funds while undergoing vast layoffs. The legislation by Sens. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would require the banks to seek American workers before turning to foreign nationals when they're hiring. It aims to prevent replacement of Americans by foreigners working under the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to bring in workers for high-skilled and advanced-degree jobs. The measure has a two-year life and if signed into law would apply to the...

“We know from polling that 77 percent of Republicans, 82 Percent of Democrats believe in protecting private ballots,” …. “The difference is, are these federal Senators and Representatives going to stand-up for workers rights in their state, or will they simply be pandering to the unions that gave over $600 million to the left this past cycle.”

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama, commencing face to face consultations with congressional leaders Monday, is embracing an unexpectedly large tax cut of up to $300 billion. Obama said the country faces an "extraordinary economic challenge." Besides $500 tax cuts for most workers and $1,000 for couples, the Obama proposal includes more than $100 billion for businesses, an Obama transition official said. The total value of the tax cuts would be significantly higher than had been signaled earlier.

Farm worker advocates and opponents of illegal immigration are blasting one of President George W. Bush's "midnight regulations" that will make it easier for agricultural employers to hire foreign workers. They say the changes undermine worker protections, exploit immigrants and set wage levels so low that domestic workers cannot compete with foreign workers for jobs. The regulation,which makes changes in the U.S. Labor Department's H-2A Temporary Agriculture Worker Program, allows agricultural employers to hire temporary foreign workers if not enough domestic workers are able or willing to fill farm jobs. The changes also promise to reduce paperwork and make processing...

Farmers would have an easier and cheaper time securing foreign guest workers under pending Bush administration rules. The controversial changes to the so-called H-2A guest-worker program could cut wages and speed worker recruitment. They also would relax requirements for providing foreign workers with housing and transportation. "The Department of Labor is going to weaken oversight and enforcement," Bruce Goldstein, the executive director of the Farmworker Justice Fund, charged Wednesday. A Labor Department spokesman said Wednesday night that the final rules would be made public Thursday and published in the Federal Register on Dec. 18, which means they'd take effect two...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2008 – The Defense Department has launched a year-long pilot program to recruit about 1,000 non-U.S. citizen health care workers and language and cultural specialists for service in America’s military, a senior DoD official said here today. The new program targets people who don’t have “green cards” but do have visas and work permits. Those the military hopes to attract legally live and work in the United States and have capabilities highly valued by the military, Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, told Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service reporters. “These are...

This is old but........We need a chuckle today! Video: Pelosi hired illegal immigrants for Napa Valley vineyard...

Indianapolis - Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd. The line was long and the crowd was angry at times. "I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker. A former spokesman for the Obama campaign said 375 people were hired as part of the Vote Corps program and...

The Alliance for Worker Freedom is dedicated to combating anti-worker legislation and promoting free and open labor markets. Their researchers and policy analysts have compiled a matrix that compares the two candidates.

Corporate India is in shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi. Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, a manufacturer of car parts that has its headquarters in Italy, died of severe head wounds on Monday after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said. The incident, in Greater Noida, followed a long-running dispute between the factory’s management and workers demanding better pay and permanent contracts. It is understood that Mr Choudhary, who was married with one...

Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi. Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds on Monday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.

The chief executive of a company in Greater Noida, just outside Delhi, was on Monday beaten to death by a group of dismissed employees inside the office premises after a meeting called to resolve dispute between them and the management failed. L K Chaudhury, the CEO and managing director of Italian electronics company Gradiano, in Udyog Vihar, Greater Noida, was beaten to death by the agitating workers, senior superintendent of police (Noida) R K Chaturvedi said. Chaudhury was rushed to Kailash hospital where he was declared brought dead. About 34 people, all from the company's management, were injured in the...

OMAHA, Neb. — Officials at a meatpacking plant in Grand Island fired at least 86 workers Friday after they walked off the job amid a dispute over prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the company said. However, a Muslim leader and one of the fired workers disputed the plant's numbers, saying 150 people had lost their jobs at the JBS Swift & Co. facility, which employs about 2,500 people, not including management. About a fifth of them are Muslim. JBS Swift spokeswoman Tamara Smid, who confirmed 86 firings late Friday, said the action was taken against employees who...

Or 20 reasons why Pelosi and gang need to be “booted”.

DULLES, Va. - Forty-two men in the U.S. illegally have been rounded up and arrested at Dulles International Airport. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested the illegal aliens Wednesday morning on airport grounds at a checkpoint established to verify the identity and immigration status of workers entering a service gate. Most of the men were working construction projects at the airport. Mark McGraw, special agent in charge of ICE's Washington field office, says it's important Homeland Security knows who enters sensitive areas like airports, military bases and power plants. "This operation illustrates ICE's ongoing efforts in partnership with federal...

JAKARTA - A new report on the abuse of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia cites the case of an Indonesian woman, Nour Miyati, who had her fingers and toes amputated as a result of being starved and beaten on a daily basis. Her case, tried in a Riyadh court, was later dropped. The case, according to the report released yesterday in Jakarta by Human Rights Watch, is hardly unique: the study found that thousands of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia each year face similar abuses, including lashings, unpaid wages, forced labor, and slavery-like conditions. "In the best cases, migrant women...

SAN DIEGO - An apparent blast rocked a Hilton hotel under construction today and a fire official said a dozen workers were injured. Two of the injured were in critical condition, eight had serious injuries and two had minor injuries, said fire spokesman Maurice Luque. Injuries ranged from burns to impacts of flying debris, he said. However, the building did not burn, he said. About four lower floors of the waterfront skyscraper near the San Diego Convention Center showed serious damage and debris littered a driveway beneath the area.

The funds that pay pension and health benefits to police officers, teachers and millions of other public employees across the country are facing a shortfall that could soon run into trillions of dollars. But the accounting techniques used by state and local governments to balance their pension books disguise the extent of the crisis facing these retirees and the taxpayers who may ultimately be called on to pay the freight, according to a growing number of leading financial analysts. State governments alone have reported they are already confronting a deficit of at least $750 billion to cover the cost of...

Topeka, Kan. and Washington - At its best, America's infrastructure has powered our economic prosperity, created well-paying jobs, and served the public interest. Today, however, it has fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair. The Minnesota bridge collapse last summer brought home the urgency of repairing and modernizing our nation's system of highways, bridges, tunnels, power plants, transmission lines, and airports. But doing so will be prohibitively expensive. Current plans seek to exploit the nation's need for private profit. But there's a better source of capital at hand: public pension funds. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6...