Posts tagged AFSCME
Hundreds of Washington state Attorney General employees walk off job over proposed budget cuts
March 23, 2025 // “Any dollars cut from our funding impedes our ability to do our work, and it costs a lot more down the road,” Savage said. “That money now more than ever is necessary for us to protect not only Washingtonians but the most vulnerable within our populations.” The Attorney General’s Office has a budget of $671.5 million for 2023 to 2025, supporting a staff of 1,816 employees. Savage said the walkout was meant to send a clear message to lawmakers, who are ultimately responsible for finalizing the state’s budget. “We can’t strike like a typical government agency; we’re prevented from doing that,” she said. “The best we can do is a walkout to send a message to legislators that these cuts will cause more problems than they solve.”
The leader of a major government union outlines their strategy to battle Trump federal cuts—And says Elon Musk has ‘no clue’ about workers
March 16, 2025 // We’re filing these lawsuits—that's number one. We are pushing even though we understand that the climate here in Washington, D.C. is not the best. But we’ve still got to continue to go on the offense, as I said earlier. We are supporting the PRO Act, which would give workers the right to have a seat at the table to improve labor labor law in this country. We're doing the same thing with the Public Freedom to Negotiate Act for public service workers.
A History of Everything Leftist Unionism: The Old Left and the Reds
March 10, 2025 // American labor radicalism has come a long way from Soviet agents in the Congress of Industrial Organizations through the UAW-funded Students for a Democratic Society to today’s SEIU purple-shirted demonstrators and red-shirted UAW anti-anti-Hamasniks. As Big Labor has declined, what independence the labor movement had from the progressive Left has diminished to the point where, with rare divergences, it effectively has ceased to exist. The causes of the Long Decline are many, and the causes of Big Labor’s leftism are also many, ranging from financial incentive structures of union officials to the structure of collective bargaining. Today, organized labor is a full member of the Everything Leftist coalition, not just in economic issues and labor organizing but also in social and foreign policy.
Op-ed: Government Unions are Losing Money and Members—but Not Power and Influence
March 3, 2025 // Last year, the Harrisburg-based subsidiary of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—better known as Council 13—was in dire straits. Citing “serious financial problems,” AFSCME International took over Council 13 to right the ship on March 1, 2024. The news of the takeover must have blindsided AFSCME 13’s members. Before the announcement, Council 13’s required fiscal year (FY) 2022–23 financial disclosure was already months overdue, leaving members guessing about the true state of their union’s finances.
Unions sue over federal worker firings, alleging Trump administration misused probationary periods
February 20, 2025 // The unions allege in the complaint filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in California that the firings "represent one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
Chicago History Museum workers want to join an arts industry unionization wave
February 17, 2025 // Hannah Johnson, who works in member relations at the museum, is on the organizing committee. She said she and others at the Chicago History Museum have been inspired by cultural workers who have recently unionized, both locally and nationally. “We felt that now was a really good time to really seek out that sense of stability and security regarding our jobs, our wages and our benefits, and also request higher degrees of transparency from management,”
Sanders and Hawley’s Interest Rate Cap Would Ban Their Union Allies’ Credit Cards
February 10, 2025 // They should have checked with their union boss pals before taking such a position. Many major labor unions have deals with banks to offer branded credit cards as a member benefit. Some of them can charge interest rates in excess of the 25 percent rate Sanders finds extortionate, and nearly all of them charge higher than 10 percent. One of the most common credit card partnerships for unions is with Capital One, which offers a Union Plus Mastercard. It is marketed as “Built for Union Members. Backed by Union Members,” and accounts are limited to active or retired union members or their families.
Unions sue DOGE, Labor Department to block access to worker and Musk competitor data
February 6, 2025 // The lawsuit comes amid a swirl of controversy regarding efforts by Musk and members of his DOGE organization to cut federal spending, size down the federal workforce and readjust or outright close certain government agencies — efforts that have sparked an ever-increasing amount of litigation. Musk has moved to overhaul the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Education since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
OREGON: City of Portland delivers final offers to unions as strike threat looms
January 30, 2025 // The most significant issue preventing an agreement is the major monetary gap, with AFSCME requesting an increase of $28 million and DCTU seeking an additional $13 million beyond the city’s proposed budget. AFSCME, the city’s largest bargaining unit with over 1,000 members, has requested significant wage increases for a wide range of job classifications, such as water and police, and increased longevity pay.
REPORT: How government unions work against interests of private-sector unions, taxpayers
January 22, 2025 // First, there is no archetypal profit motive in the government sector. Congress passed laws promoting collective bargaining in the private sector to prevent the exploitation of workers by employers who were seeking to increase their profits through long work hours and poor working conditions.