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In the News
NYC lifeguard ‘Boss of the Beach’ scores $570K pension on taxpayers’ tab: report
August 7, 2026 // Carl Campanile for New York Post
A controversial former Big Apple chief city lifeguard nicknamed “Boss of the Beach” raked in a staggering $570,419 pension last year, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit government watchdog. Ex chief lifeguard and union boss Peter Stein’s taxpayer-funded golden parachute comes after a longtime dual career where he also served full-time as a middle school gym teacher In Brooklyn — calling it quits while under investigation by the city Department of Investigation.
Trucking groups challenge bill that expands labor arbitration
August 7, 2026 // Noël Fletcher for Transport Topics
Representing American Trucking Associations as president, Chris Spear described the bill as government-mandated contracting instead of collective bargaining. He said if passed, the changes would eliminate employees from voting to approve an arbitration-imposed contract.
Dues and don’ts: Large union, SEIU, targets Target
August 6, 2026 // ELIZABETH NEW for Washington Policy Center
Target employees are not SEIU union members. So targeting Target is not about members’ wages or working conditions. I hope SEIU realizes that damaging a company that employs more than 400,000 employees could harm those employees and prospective ones.
SSM Health appealing certification of union vote at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison
August 6, 2026 // Joe Schulz for Wisconsin Public Radio
National Labor Relations Board staff certified the union election late last month after nurses voted 511-63 to unionize with the Service Employees International Union of Wisconsin. SSM Health filed objections to the election with the NLRB, but the labor board overruled the objections in their “entirety” because SSM provided “insufficient” proof.
Ride-Booking Unions Raise Specter of Same for Other Gig Workers
August 6, 2026 // Dana Wilkie for SHRM
Wilson called the effort in Massachusetts “a windfall for the union.” The union holds an exclusive franchise over every ride-booking driver in the state, and the law orders companies to deduct dues and hand them over, he said. “Dues are technically voluntary. But we know how ‘voluntary’ runs in right-to-work states, where unions still lean on the holdouts anyway: public free-rider lists, name-and-shame, peer pressure, the works. Expect the same here.”
Lewis Ginter CEO calls out union workers attempts to ‘smear and tarnish’ non-profit’s image amid labor contract dispute
August 6, 2026 // Jamal Williams for WRIC
To date, we have opted to provide minimal comments to the broader media about negotiations in order to protect the Garden and respect the negotiating process. However, given the impact of the Machinists’ actions this past week, I’d like to use this opportunity to share some facts about negotiations. The Machinists union is a large international organization representing nearly 600,000 active and retired members across aerospace, defense, airlines, shipbuilding, rail, transit, healthcare, automotive, and other large industries in North America. They are sustained by union dues collected by their members. We are either the first, or among the first, botanical garden and non-profit organization their local lodge has represented. In fact, unions in museums, gardens, zoos and cultural sites are rare and the Machinists has little experience supporting the nature of the work we do as a place-based cultural site.
Board Overturns ALJ Determination That Starbucks Threatened Worker
August 6, 2026 // Matt Bruenig for NLRB Edgea
The Board majority reversed an administrative law judge and dismissed a complaint alleging that Starbucks unlawfully threatened employees over their ability to pick up shifts at other stores based on union status. Starbucks employees are typically scheduled for fewer than 40 hours a week at their assigned “home store” and routinely “borrow” shifts at other locations to make up hours. In January 2022 the company rolled out an online tool called Shift Marketplace to facilitate this borrowing, and none of the training materials or guides limited borrowing based on whether an employee’s home store was unionized.
ABC News Digital Staffers Unionize Under WGA East Amid FCC Threats To Network
August 6, 2026 // author for IMBD
Staffers at ABC News’ digital outlets have unionized under the Writers Guild of America East. Wgae said Wednesday that it sealed the deal with the network to rep employees of ABCNews.com and ABC Network News’ Social Media Platforms. ABC News Digital’s roughly 50-member bargaining team voted unanimously to set WGA East as its collective bargaining rep. The unit includes digital reporters, editors and video producers and social media producers who contribute to the content and operation of ABC’s online entities
KEYT-TV News Crews Walk Off Job in Strike During Fiesta Week
August 6, 2026 // Lauren Bray for EdHat
News crews at Santa Barbara’s KEYT-TV walked off the job Tuesday night in a 24-hour strike, leaving viewers without local morning news coverage on the first full day of Old Spanish Days Fiesta and raising questions about the station’s ability to serve audiences throughout one of the region’s busiest news weeks. The strike, which began after the 11 p.m. news ended Tuesday and was scheduled to run to 8 p.m. Wednesday, comes after nearly two years of unsuccessful contract negotiations between the station’s unionized employees and management.
Second public defender union calls off strike
August 6, 2026 // Noah Powelson for Queens Eagle
The Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys – UAW Local 2325 union, which represents NDS staff, shared details of the temporary agreement with members on Tuesday. NDS also employs staff in Detroit and Texas, who were also on strike the past week.
Independent union files for recognition in Clovis Unified over CTA-backed group
August 6, 2026 // Lasherica Thornton for Ed Source
For years, the Association of Clovis Educators (ACE), backed by the California Teachers Association, and the unaffiliated Independent Clovis Unified Educators (ICUE) have sought to represent teachers in the district. Clovis Unified is California’s largest school district without a teachers union but could become the state’s largest independent union. The unaffiliated ICUE reportedly collected more than 50% of signatures from more than 2,000 teachers in Clovis Unified, The Bee reported. The group filed a union petition with California’s Public Employment Relations Board, a feat it nearly reached last year, according to The Bee. “Teachers are realizing, ‘It’s ACE or ICUE,’ ” Erin Dieterle Garcia, a founding teacher of ICUE, told EdSource in 2025 when ICUE was less than 75 signatures away from being able to file the union petition.
Op-ed: Faster Labor Contracts Act is bad for workers, good for union bosses
August 6, 2026 // Patricia Rucker for 16th district in the West Virginia Senate
Under current law, when workers vote to form a union, the employer and union negotiate a first contract through free collective bargaining. The FLCA inserts unrealistic Washington timelines and bureaucracy into this process. The bill passed the House after seven Republicans signed a discharge petition to bypass the Speaker and committee review to force a floor vote, all with no committee hearing, no CBO score, and no expert testimony. The bill is now before the Senate.
Bipartisan Bill to Accelerate Labor Contracts Roils Employers
August 6, 2026 // George Weykamp, Claire Bernard for Bloomberg Law
“The notion that I’m going to bargain a fresh contract and think of all the terms and conditions of employment that get woven into a contract, a contract that on the light side might be 10 or 15 pages single space and on the long side 50 pages, that’s just ridiculous,” he said. “People that have never bargained wrote this law.” The bill could also exacerbate timelines instead of accelerating them, as arbitrators and mediators become increasingly overwhelmed with an influx of contract disputes. That could be especially aggravated by ongoing staffing challenges at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said Steven M. Bernstein, regional managing partner and Labor Relations Group co-chair at Fisher & Phillips LLC.
Florida Imperial Dade Drivers Oust Teamsters Despite Attempt by Union Bosses to Overturn Workers’ Election Result
August 5, 2026 // Author for National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation
Drivers at Imperial Dade have freed themselves from the unwanted “representation” of Teamsters Local 385 union bosses. The workers’ effort was spearheaded by Lionel Powell, who filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), seeking a “decertification” election to end the Teamsters’ monopoly bargaining control over the workers. Powell’s petition was filed with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.
92-year-old freight company turns rival bankruptcy into profit
August 5, 2026 // Opeyemi Babalola for The Street
Yellow collapsed in August 2023 under a mountain of debt and a bitter dispute with the Teamsters union, in what industry observers called the largest trucking bankruptcy in American history, according to NPR. Yellow had taken $700 million in pandemic-era federal loans just three years earlier, according to CNBC. Customers had already started routing freight away from Yellow in the weeks before the filing, wary of a looming strike that never fully materialized.
School bus drivers in Duval County vote to strike ahead of start of school year
August 5, 2026 // Jackson Brown for First Coast News
A union representing 275 Durham School Services bus drivers in Duval County voted to go on strike Tuesday, threatening to impact school bus routes for Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) one week before the start of the school year.
Eric Carle Museum Staff Seek Union Vote
August 5, 2026 // Emma Kantor for Publishers Weekly
Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers has petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to allow employees at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., to vote on whether to unionize. The local represents museum, university, publishing, and nonprofit staff in New York and New England.
Illinois Federation of Teachers educators aren’t getting what they’re paying for
August 5, 2026 // Mailee Smith for Illinois Policy Institute
Less than 28% of IFT’s spending in 2025 was on representing teachers, according to the union’s annual report filed with the U.S. Labor Department. The rest was on politics, overhead and other union leadership priorities.
VA’s third attempt to scrap union contract heads back to court
August 5, 2026 // Erich Wagner for Government Executive
The American Federation of Government Employees on Tuesday filed its second motion asking U.S. District Judge Melissa Dubose to enforce her prior court orders after management said it would terminate the contract upon its scheduled expiration date of Aug. 8. The VA, for its part, argued that it is simply letting the deal expire. Though her injunction preserves the CBA only for “the remainder of the agreed-upon term,” the union said the VA issued a notice following the appeals court’s ruling in May seeking to begin negotiations for a new term. That action triggers a clause within the CBA—common across government—automatically extending the contract until the parties can reach a new deal.
Key parts of federal employee performance overhaul ‘non-negotiable,’ OPM says
August 5, 2026 // Drew Friedman for Federal News Network
But some aspects of performance management are still negotiable, according to OPM, as long as they remain consistent with both the final rule and any applicable laws. Those include employees’ informal requests for a reconsideration of their rating; rules on awards and recognition programs; and feedback procedures between supervisors and employees.