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In the News
Senator Tim Scott Reintroduces the Employee Rights Act to Empower American Workers
October 8, 2025 // author
“The Employee Rights Act is the most comprehensive labor legislation of this Congress, from protecting the secret ballot and unionization elections, to safeguarding workers from harassment and protecting their privacy, to putting workers in control of their own destiny. It truly puts the American worker first. We applaud Senator Scott for his steadfast leadership and support of worker freedom,” said F. Vincent Vernuccio, President of the Institute for the American Worker. This legislation was cosponsored by Senators John Barrasso (R-WY), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), John Hoeven (R-ND), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Jim Risch (R-ID), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
UMWA President Jerry Kerns II Faces Embezzlement Indictment
October 8, 2025 // author for National Institute for Labor Relations Research
Jerry Kerns II, President of UMWA Local 1582, will have to face a courtroom after being indicted on one count of embezzlement.
Commentary: When fighting Trump, take union claims with a grain of salt
October 7, 2025 // Jarrett Skorup for Washington Examiner
Government unions faced another momentous reform seven years ago when the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME. The court held that public sector workers have a First Amendment right to completely withdraw from union membership and dues. In essence, the court created a nationwide right-to-work law for all public sector workers, including teachers, police officers, firefighters, and all other federal, state, and local government workers. No longer would they have to join or pay a union to keep their job. Government unions hated this ruling, of course. In a desperate attempt to sway the Supreme Court, union-paid prognosticators predicted massive negative economic effects if the court ruled against unions.
Why some federal workers aren’t scared by the threat of shutdown layoffs
October 7, 2025 // Andrea Hsu for NPR
NPR has not learned of any layoffs due to the shutdown since congressional appropriations lapsed on Oct. 1, although many federal agencies have filed reorganization and reduction-in-force plans with the administration as a result of a February executive order and subsequent guidance directing them to do so.
Marriott, Hilton workers strike in Philadelphia
October 7, 2025 // Jenna Graber for Hotel Dive
Union employees at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown and the Hampton Inn Philadelphia Center City are calling for higher pay and improved benefits.
Trump administration ‘co-opted the voices’ of Education employees in shutdown blame game, union lawsuit alleges
October 7, 2025 // Sean Michael Newhouse for Government Executive
Furloughed Education Department employees reported that their out-of-office email messages were modified to emphasize that Senate Democrats voted against a GOP government funding measure.
Tens of thousands of healthcare workers are set to stroke against Kaiser Permanente next week. If the strike happens, it would be the largest ever against Kaiser.
October 7, 2025 // author for Star 94.1
Fox 5 reports thousands of frontline registered nurses and healthcare workers would strike for five days at more than two dozen hospitals and clinics across California and Hawaii.
Hundreds Of Unpaid TSA Agents Are Calling In Sick—Expect Longer Airport Security Lines
October 7, 2025 // Suzanne Rowan Kelleher for Forbes
A notice on the MyTSA app, which travelers use to monitor TSA wait times at airports, says it is “not being actively managed” due to the lapse in funding. There is a similar notice on the TSA website. Shuker told Forbes he would expect a higher number of TSA employees to call out sick on busier travel days such as Sunday, Thursday and Monday. “If you were planning like stress day or a mental health day or an ‘F you’ day, you wouldn’t pick Tuesday because it's the lightest day of the week and the easiest to work,” Shuker told Forbes.
Newsom signs bill giving 800,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in California the right to unionize
October 7, 2025 // TRÂN NGUYỄN for Yahoo
California is the second state where Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize as independent contractors. Massachusetts voters passed a ballot referendum in November allowing unionization, while drivers in Illinois and Minnesota are pushing for similar rights.
Sun Country and its fleet employees reach tentative agreement on first union contract
October 7, 2025 // Bill Lukitsch for The Minnesota Star Tribune
Sun Country Airline’s 240 ground workers who handle luggage and guide airplanes at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are on track to ink their first-ever union contract. The Minneapolis-based leisure airline and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement Thursday. Workers soon will vote on whether to ratify it.
N.J. teachers sue NJEA over wasteful Primary 2025 spending
October 7, 2025 // Matt Rooney for Save Jersey
“I never agreed to bankroll a politician,” added Pocklembo, a 30-year veteran teacher. “It’s an obvious conflict of interest when the union president benefits from backroom deals to fund his own campaign with members’ money. It makes the union look shady and it undermines teachers’ trust.” “By diverting members’ mandatory dues to its president’s gubernatorial campaign, while giving them the impression that funding the union PAC was purely optional, our teacher clients allege that the union broke the law and breached its fiduciary duty,” said Nathan McGrath, general counsel for the Fairness Center which is representing DuPont and Pocklembo in their litigation. “This lawsuit seeks to hold the union and Sean Spiller accountable for self-dealing instead of serving members’ best interests.”
Editorial Board: Volkswagen Gets What It Paid For
October 7, 2025 // Editorial Board for Wall Street Journal Opinion
Company culture is one part of the story. The German auto maker is used to working with unions back home, which take part in its governance and are usually less combative than their American peers. But politics may also have pushed VW to roll over. Thirty-three Senate Democrats wrote a letter in January 2024 to every non-union auto maker in the U.S., suggesting the companies would lose electric-vehicle subsidies if they opposed union campaigns. VW, which builds an electric SUV in Chattanooga, may have decided that fighting the union would be the costlier move. Now the EV subsidies are going away in any case thanks to the GOP budget bill and Trump Administration orders.
Frozen feud: How Trump and the Supreme Court helped put historic Whole Foods union bid on ice
October 7, 2025 // John Kruzel, Daniel Wiessner for Reuters
When the NLRB will regain members depends on how quickly the Republican-led U.S. Senate moves to confirm two nominees picked by Trump in July, Boeing's chief labor counsel and an NLRB career staffer. A Senate committee is set to hold hearings on Trump's nominees on Wednesday. An NLRB spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about the delays. William Cowen, the board's acting general counsel, in an August press release addressing efforts in several states to pass new labor protections said the agency's work has "largely been unaffected" by the lack of quorum.
Labor Law Reform Part 1: Diagnosing the Issues, Exploring Current Proposals
October 7, 2025 // author for Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee
Boeing St. Louis to train permanent replacements as machinists strike enters third month
October 6, 2025 // James Drew for St. Louis Business Journal)
The company announced Sept. 4 that it was starting the process to hire permanent replacement workers for manufacturing jobs to replace union members who have been on strike at the three defense plants in the St. Louis area for 60 days. The International Association of Machinists Union District 837 has about 3,200 members who manufacture munitions, assemble fighter jets and other aircrafts and make composite parts for the Boeing 777X commercial aircraft.
AI Needs Data Centers—and People to Build Them
October 6, 2025 // Mark P. Mills for City Journal
That brings us to the second tool for expanding the skilled workforce: convincing more people to pursue a career in the trades. Here, policymakers should tap into the vast potential workforce among young men released from prison for nonviolent offenses by expanding inmates’ access to vocational education. Only a small fraction of this group currently receives such training. And to train more would-be tradesmen in general, we need to make training more effective—and more interesting. Technology can help here, too. Leading construction-equipment makers already use virtual reality and augmented-reality systems for their training simulators. Tests show VR training significantly improves users’ training-completion and employment outcomes.
Pratt & Whitney Employee Slams IAM Union With Federal Charges For Imposing Illegal Post-Strike Discipline
October 6, 2025 // author for National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
Union officials insulted worker for wanting to resign membership and keep working, incorrectly told workers P&W was “closed shop”
Commentary: Trump gave the Labor Department more control over career-technical education. Will students benefit?
October 6, 2025 // Kalyn Belsha for Chalkbeat
In May, Trump officials signed an interagency agreement that maintains the Education Department’s oversight authority for career-technical education, but hands over the day-to-day operations to the Labor Department. That includes distributing over $1 billion to states in Perkins funding, which pays for CTE programs in K-12 schools and community colleges, making compliance monitoring visits, and helping states and schools with technical questions. High-ranking Democrats in Congress have said this transfer of funds and responsibilities is illegal, and the proposal should have gone to Congress. Others in the career and technical education field say the Education and Labor Departments already work closely together and this move isn’t necessary to improve collaboration.
Santa Ana Councilman Calls on State Attorney General to Probe Police Union Spending
October 6, 2025 // Hosam Elattar for Voice of the OC
Santa Ana City Councilman Ben Vazquez is calling on the State’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to thoroughly probe how Santa Ana’s police union spent taxpayer dollars over the last decade to see if there has been any misuse of public dollars. It comes as the city’s police department faced a host of accountability questions this past summer and as city officials brace for an expected deficit in a couple years that city staff project will be tens of millions of dollars deep. Vazquez says he is requesting the investigation after a city audit found officials overpaid $3.4 million for officers’ health benefit plans in 2023 despite the union’s health benefits account operating at over $608,000 deficit.
Milford MA cancer nurses seek election to unionize. Why that can’t happen right now
October 5, 2025 // Norman Miller for The Milford Daily News
Registered nurses at the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center at Milford Regional Medical Center are seeking to unionize. The effort has been delayed because the National Labor Relations Board is closed due to a government shutdown.