Posts tagged AFSCME
Commentary: California’s War on Goats Could Worsen the Wildfire Crisis
July 30, 2026 // State lawmakers intervened by passing legislation to allow goat herders to be paid the same alternative minimum as sheep herders until July 1, 2026. Now that the exemption has expired, goat herders must be paid according to traditional overtime rules. Given the 24/7 availability required for herding, this means that Golden State goat herders are now set to be paid $20,000 per month, which works out to $240,000 annually. (For comparison, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's salary currently sits at $245,000). An effort to extend the goat herding exemption beyond 2026 stalled in the state legislature due to opposition from labor unions. Goat-herding businesses have been left scrambling. Western Grazers, a company that deploys roughly 5,000 goats across Northern California, says the new rules push the annual cost of employing each herder above $250,000 once room and board, food, and other expenses are included.
Union workers rally with Yousef Rabhi at Ann Arbor city hall
July 25, 2026 // Mayor Pro Tem Travis Radina said the full-time salaried position in the city’s budget for the AFSCME union president is unique among city unions. Even the county’s larger union does not have a president position paid by taxpayers, he said. The position elimination was on the bargaining table since the beginning of the contract negotiations, before Kastner was elected president, because the city has not been able to get contractually mandated reporting about how the time is being spent, he said. Since salary increases for all AFSCME members seemed to be the union’s priority, the city considered the position elimination again because the savings it could generate could be redistributed to give all other AFSCME members an extra 1% increase, Radina said.
1-in-3 reject union membership in AFSCME Council 31
July 21, 2026 // AFSCME Council 31’s questionable spending could be driving workers away. The union’s report with the Labor Department reveals that: Just 20% of its spending was on “representational activities” in 2025. It spent a record-high $3.4 million on politics that year. Nearly half of its own officers and employees made over $100,000.
Op-ed: Union transparency rules are only as strong as their enforcement
July 12, 2026 // Only after Ormond and Bilodeau sued their unions to compel them to follow the law did the agency finally start doing some of that “paperwork.” Last month, the department sent public-sector unions in the state a notice reminding them to follow the law, and it created an apparently new online portal for them to file the required financial reports. The department’s official guidance also said that unions must provide employees with hard copies of the reports and hold a meeting to discuss them.
Maryland board rules state violated bargaining agreement with union
July 6, 2026 // The Maryland Public Employee Relations Board said the Department of Budget and Management failed to bargain in good faith with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 3 when it denied access to information about telework eligibility. The board, in a ruling issued Wednesday afternoon, ordered the state to provide the requested information in 14-days. The decision marks another bump in what has been an uneven relationship between Democratic Gov. Wes Moore and the union that represents 50,000 workers statewide — more than half of those working in state government positions.
Tension with unions shadows Moore’s run-up to 2028
July 2, 2026 // Another state labor leader said of Moore: "He's been godawful, and I think it's been a combination of, like, he has bad politics, and his administration just doesn't seem to function very well." Multiple union officials told us that it can be difficult to reach the governor's team, including Dyana Forester, Moore's senior director of labor relations. Forester said her personal and work phone numbers "have always been public. Labor leaders call me at sometimes 5 a.m. in the morning till 10 o'clock at night." She added that the state AFL-CIO leadership advised Moore's team not to submit a questionnaire because "we were unlikely to secure an endorsement."
Opinion Editorial Board: Ohio can hire goats if it wants to
July 1, 2026 // Humans domesticated goats about 10,000 years ago, but Harmon is against them, too. The common denominator is that neither goats nor computers pay union dues. If the city believes it can get a job done for $2,900 worth of goats rather than more expensive options that the union would accept, it should be able to hire the animals without a second thought. Not all subcontracting decisions are smart, of course, but they shouldn’t be disqualified just because union bosses aren’t getting a cut.
Opinion: Retirement Board, city unions prioritize members over taxpayers
June 23, 2026 // It was ironic. Some of the same union members that Lang could have legally laid off but instead saved their jobs by slightly reducing their pay, those same folks turned around and sued him. “Rocking-chair money,” Lang called the wages that the city workers demanded for not working.
Over 80 University of Maryland workers laid off amid budget concerns
June 6, 2026 // The school was one of two in Prince George's County that warned of job cuts after reporting financial struggles following Maryland's approved education budget for FY 2027, which began on June 1 and included an additional roughly $370 million in funding for schools statewide. For UMD specifically, leaders projected a revenue decrease of $15 million, with energy costs increasing by $18 million tallied onto more than $104 million in cumulative reductions to its state-funded base budget, according to a statement.
Wexner Center for the Arts Workers Call for Institution to Be Renamed Over Top Funder’s Epstein Ties
May 27, 2026 // WWU members cited as precedent for removal of Wexner’s name from the institution’s moniker and buildings the removal of the Sackler name from the galleries at the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Ohio State has an established procedure for requests regarding space and entity names,” an Ohio State University spokesperson told Artforum. “Students, faculty, staff and alumni can submit requests online, and each request receives full consideration.”