Posts tagged American Enterprise Institute
When New Jersey Hiked Minimum Wages, Fast Food Prices Rose
January 14, 2025 // Today, New Jersey's minimum wage is a little more than $15 per hour, thanks to a provision that automatically raises the minimum wage along with inflation. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's minimum wage is $7.25, which is the federally mandated level. Interestingly, the study found that menu price hikes did not occur immediately after the minimum wage increases. Rather, it took an average of about six weeks for menu prices to rise.
Opinion: What Buc-ee’s Can Teach Us About the Port Strike
October 12, 2024 // They care most about sheer numbers, from which both union dues and political power—and thus the leaders’ incredibly high salaries—are derived. So, they’ll fight like hell to keep the people they have, even as doing so contradicts not only the economics—and real-world lessons like Buc-ee’s—but also our current labor market reality, in which workers, not jobs, are increasingly scarce. In that world, it makes oodles of sense to embrace automation and other productivity enhancements, whether at the ports or anywhere else, and any other benefits are just the barbecue sauce on top. In the union’s world, however, the system’s working perfectly, and the government-protected sauce already flows.
Teamsters President Speaks to Republican Convention, but Union Gives Almost Exclusively to Liberal Politicians and Causes
July 17, 2024 // On June 20, the Center for Union Facts released a report detailing how the Teamsters use their members’ dues. Their study found that “the Teamsters union and its locals send a significant portion of its members’ dues to left-leaning political advocacy, typically without the consent of its membership.” Between 2019 and 2022, the union spent over 99% of member dues on left-of-center causes, initiatives, and entities. Over this time frame, “the Teamsters sent over $9 million to left-leaning advocacy, while only directing $57,050 toward bipartisan efforts and $7,877 toward GOP-led initiatives and campaigns.”
Biden, Trump battle for blue-collar voters as steel merger looms
June 30, 2024 // But Rudy Sanetta, a maintenance worker at US Steel, prefers Trump on the economy and because of his stance on gun rights. "I like him for his resistance to the politicians," Sanetta said of Trump. "The other guy, I have no confidence." Working class voters "are the most pivotal because they're the ones who have actually demonstrated that they're willing to select either Trump or Biden," said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
COMMENTARY: What Big Labor Doesn’t Want You to Know This Labor Day
September 5, 2023 // "Yet, instead of adapting and finding ways to still provide value to workers, unions have maintained strictly seniority-based compensation structures and rigid workplace rules that reduce workers’ productivity, pay, and flexibility. That ends up hurting workers who desire autonomy and flexibility. For example, young workers who are parents typically lack the seniority needed to choose the hours they want. And workers who want to put in extra effort to earn a pay raise have little incentive to do so because most union contracts prohibit employers from giving employees performance-based pay raises or bonuses that exceed the union-negotiated pay scales."
Noncompete clauses ‘chill’ worker rights and are usually illegal, NLRB lawyer says
May 31, 2023 // General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, appointed by Biden in 2021, wrote that noncompete clauses — which generally prevent people from immediately moving to one of their employer's rivals — "tend to chill" workers' rights under federal law, specifically Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the ability to collectively organize and agitate for improved working conditions. A person barred from moving to another company in their chosen profession, at least for a set amount of time, is less likely to fight for change at their current employer, Abruzzo argued in the memo, issued Tuesday, knowing that could well make them a target for termination; employers likewise have little reason to fear that disgruntled workers will be snatched up by a competitor, thus reducing the latter's bargaining power.
Opinion: DO TEACHERS REALLY NEED A UNION?
August 11, 2022 // After wading through all the leftwing blather, I can’t help but wonder why any conservative, libertarian, right-leaning, centrist or apolitical teacher would continue to belong to a teachers union. In California, when a teacher joins a local union, she typically forks over about $1,200 yearly. If the union is an NEA affiliate, $768 will go to the California Teachers Association and $204 will be sent off to NEA command central in D.C. The remaining $200 or so stays at the local level. Much of the money that goes to CTA/NEA is spent on leftwing politics, and every penny of the unions’ income is tax-free. Barack Obama, Becky Pringle, Robert Pondiscio, RJ Martin, OpenSecrets.org, Caroline Hoxby, Mike Petrilli, Fordham Institute,
Dems, union leaders responsible for school lockdowns face few repercussions, despite evidence that kids harmed
August 3, 2022 // According to data released last month by the National Center for Education Statistics, 70% of U.S. public schools have reported an increase in students seeking mental health services since the start of the pandemic. A study published by the conservative think tank Just Facts reported that the mental stressors brought about by school closures will destroy seven times more years of life than lockdowns saved. A study by the American Enterprise Institute also found that nearly 1.3 million students have left public schools since the pandemic began, and schools that stayed remote longer saw even more students leave. The World Bank reported last month that the school closures will cost this generation of students $21 trillion in earnings over their lifetimes, which is far more than the $17 trillion estimated in 2021.
Build a Charter School, Get Sued by the Teachers Union
July 19, 2022 // If you’re in search of proof that lecturers unions don’t care in regards to the pursuits of schoolchildren, you will discover it within the impoverished Bronx neighborhood of Soundview. A college constructing on Beach Avenue has been shuttered for nearly a decade, and the United Federation of Teachers is suing to maintain it closed. On Aug. 22, a brand new constitution highschool, Vertex Academies, will start lessons right here. In the native faculty district, solely 7% of scholars who enter ninth grade are prepared for school 4 years later. For black college students, the determine is 4%. The new faculty guarantees to ship “a high-quality education to 150 minority students from low-income backgrounds” in its first yr, says founding principal Joyanet Mangual. Justice Sotomayor, Public Prep, lottery, State University of New York, Jay Lefkowitz, Kirkland & Ellis, Milken Institute in California, Brooklyn Tech, Arthur Andersen, framework of family, religion, education and entrepreneurship, New York City Charter School Center, International Baccalaureate, Catholic faculties, Vertex, New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute