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In the News
Teamsters president notes ‘positive change’ with growing Republican union support in Senate testimony
October 9, 2025 // Eric Revell for Fox News
Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the complexity of collective bargaining agreements means that both workers forming a union and the employer need ample time to consider their implications for the future of the company and its workforce. "When you have a first contract, especially if you have a company that has never been involved in negotiations or a union, that it's the first time that they're representing workers, they need to understand all the issues," she explained. She also said contracts like the United Auto Workers union's agreements with automakers such as Ford can run thousands of pages when accounting for memorandums of agreement, with several hundred items covered under the bargaining agreement.
Federal Judge Denies Anonymity To Fired Civil Servants Suing Over Mass Firings
October 9, 2025 // Leslie Bolden for Tampa Free Press
A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has denied a request from five former federal employees, who claim they were improperly terminated during a "mass firing" in February 2025, to proceed with their lawsuit anonymously. The plaintiffs, identified only as Civil Servants 1 through 5, are suing the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), alleging the agency unlawfully closed thousands of prohibited personnel practice (PPP) complaints filed by probationary employees without considering the individual merits of each case. They contend this action undermines workplace protections and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
Video: Union president says federal government employees are “very traumatized” by the shutdown
October 9, 2025 // Everett Kelley for CNN
Everett Kelley, President of the American Federation of Government Employees, joined CNN's Pamela Brown to discuss how government employees are feeling about the ongoing shutdown in light of threats the Trump administration has made over their jobs
White House may nix pay for workers furloughed during shutdown
October 9, 2025 // John T. Bennett, Jessie Hellmann for The Hill
Mark Paoletta, the OMB general counsel, wrote that the 2019 law is “not self-executing” and requires further appropriations to pay furloughed workers as part of stopgap legislation to end the funding lapse. The memo, which is labeled “pre-decisional and deliberative,” says that the requirement for “excepted” employees to keep working creates “binding legal obligations” to pay those workers. On the other hand, Paoletta writes there is no such obligation for furloughed workers who were “not performing services for the government” during the shutdown.
A third of Colorado Springs School District 11 teachers strike
October 8, 2025 // Mackenzie Stafford for KRDO
"CSEA is throwing a temper tantrum because they've lost power," said Jason Dudash with the Freedom Foundation, "Most teachers are still in the classrooms, they're happy with this new arrangement not being any longer beholden to the union." Counter protestors argue that if the teachers on strike cared about the students, they would be in the classroom.
VOLUNTARY RECOGNITION IN POLICE COMMANDERS’ BID TO UNIONIZE
October 8, 2025 // author for Pittsburgh
Today, Mayor Ed Gainey and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police’s 12 Commanders are pleased to announce that the Administration has agreed to voluntarily recognize the commanders in their effort to form a union. The Commanders unanimously opted to form a union with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
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