Posts tagged Alabama
America Doesn’t Have Enough Weapons for a Major Conflict. These Workers Know Why.
October 28, 2025 // Historically, in the fight against their bosses, unions have had only one real weapon to wield: their numbers. The primary goal of a labor strike is to blockade production and inflict pain on the company so that it will negotiate better terms. But in Orlando, it was hard for the union to enlist enough workers for the fight. Florida is a “right to work” state, meaning that union membership is optional. Workers in an organized factory are free to return to their stations and get back to work, leaving everyone else on the picket line to fight for a contract that would eventually apply to everyone.
Op-Ed: Instead of subsidy fights, Georgia should allow ‘portable’ benefits
October 20, 2025 // Meanwhile, other states have taken the lead on the matter. Utah, Tennessee and Alabama have all formally recognized portable benefits as a form of independent contractor compensation. Georgia can be next by passing a safe harbor portable benefits model, which will cost the state and federal government zero taxpayer dollars. It simply clarifies that companies can contribute to portable benefits accounts if they want and doing so is not evidence of an employee/employer relationship.
The UAW Is Still Fighting to Unionize Auto in the South
October 18, 2025 // Daniel Kopp At the time of your election in 2024, you had a rather supportive National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Biden administration. This is no longer the case, as Donald Trump is starving it of resources. Has that influenced your strategy at Mercedes? Jeremy Kimbrell You don’t change your strategy, because organizing is organizing. Workers have to have courage. You have to understand that the risk will never be zero. Inherently, you hope and expect that the risk is limited.
Dollar store workers fight to improve jobs, even without a union
October 17, 2025 // In 2022, Williams joined an organization that seemed, to him, like his best shot: Step Up Louisiana. Like several successful campaigns before it, Step Up organizes workers to improve their jobs, but stops short of calling for a union under the National Labor Relations Board. The approach, sometimes referred to as “premajority unionism,” is a natural fit for places like the South, with histories of public hostility to unions. Today, suggest experts, it may also be workers’ best bet for building power amid the hostility of the Trump administration.
Labor Unions Are Chipping Away at Worker Freedoms One Bill at a Time
October 14, 2025 // The so-called Faster Labor Contracts Act is one of the first steps in this new tactical departure. The legislation would force employers to begin bargaining with a new union in just ten days. If the two parties don’t reach an agreement in 90 days, the government forces mediation. One month after that, the matter goes to binding arbitration, meaning an outside arbitrator will dictate wages, benefits, and workplace rules for years to come. That’s not worker freedom. It’s top-down federal control. Americans recognize proposals like this for what they are: a Washington power grab. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey released just two weeks ago found that 90% of voters oppose government-mandated union contracts without worker approval.
Editorial Board: Volkswagen Gets What It Paid For
October 7, 2025 // 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.
Shawn Fain, Who Pledged to Reform U.A.W., Faces Internal Dissent
September 16, 2025 // The dissident workers’ main complaints about Mr. Fain are rooted in internal union matters like budgets and his treatment of other union officials, rather than in grand philosophical disagreements about labor and political issues. The people seeking to oust him say that he has spent too much of the union’s money on organizing campaigns in the South and other initiatives they consider misguided. They contend that he has improperly stripped two board members of critical duties and say he failed to prevent a Michigan-based automaker from laying off thousands of workers.
Amazon Teamsters Face New Challenges in NYC
September 10, 2025 // “The Cemex decision does two key things: one, institutes a new modified…doctrine that facilitates card check recognition; and two, lowers the threshold for when the Board will issue a bargaining order without holding an election,,” the law firm said in the post. The Teamsters spokesman said the union has had successful card check actions at more than 20 DSPs But in February, NLRB Acting General Counsel William B. Cowen issued a memo withdrawing earlier guidance on several earlier legal opinions, including the Cemex decision. That would seem to shut off the NLRB–which currently does not have a quorum but is awaiting Senate confirmation of two White House nominees–from approving a card check filing as a means to gain union recognition by Amazon or any employer…unless a full Republican-majority NLRB rules Amazon is a joint employer with the DSPs.
Georgia sets the national standard for pro-worker leadership
September 2, 2025 // Rep. Rick Allen, from Georgia’s 12th congressional district, recently re-introduced the Employee Rights Act—the single most important pro-worker in America today. The Employee Rights Act is full of reforms that would protect and strengthen workers’ rights. Building on Georgia’s state policy, it would require the secret ballot for all unionization elections in America—no more card check. It would also protect workers’ privacy by letting them determine what personal information unions can access. And in the 26 states like Georgia with right-to-work laws, the Employee Rights Act would let workers who opt out of union membership negotiate their own contracts—something they’re currently banned from doing.
Op-ed: Ohio needs to wrest control of public schools from the teachers’ un
August 25, 2025 // Bureaucratic schools where merit doesn’t matter. Unions have used their clout, including their ability to elect pro-union school boards, to secure lengthy, incredibly detailed employment contracts that advance their interests while tying up school leaders with red tape. These contracts include job protections (even for incompetent teachers), onerous procedural hoops that schools must follow to evaluate or discipline an employee, and benefits that exceed what many private sector employees enjoy (e.g., generous healthcare, even for retirees, and paid leave). Moreover, following a union-supported state law, these contracts require Ohio teachers to be paid according to rigid salary schedules that reward seniority and degrees instead of classroom effectiveness and individual talent—a merit-based approach to compensation that has proven to benefit students in the (few) places where it has been tried. Escalating spending.