Posts tagged Arizona
ALEC Releases 4th Edition of “States That Work” Labor Policy Rankings
September 14, 2026 // “States That Work shows that the states giving workers the greatest freedom to earn a living are also creating an environment where businesses and families can thrive,” said report author and ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Director Alan Jernigan. “From protecting Right to Work to removing unnecessary licensing barriers, states have a clear roadmap for expanding opportunity without growing government.”
Banner Health challenges union vote, alleges election was tainted by coercion
September 14, 2026 // Banner Health is asking federal labor officials to invalidate a recent union election involving physicians, nurse practitioners and other medical staff, alleging the union unlawfully interfered with the vote. According to a motion filed Thursday by Banner Medical Group Inc., the union allegedly promised free legal counsel to employees if they signed union authorization cards. Banner argues the alleged conduct created an atmosphere of coercion and interfered with employees' free choice.
Tucson arts workers ratify first union contracts
September 10, 2026 // Workers at The Loft Cinema and Arizona Theatre Company ratified their first union contracts, while True Concord musicians await bargaining talks.
Report: The Battle for Worker Freedom: Grading State Public Sector Labor Laws
September 10, 2026 // Union executives are prioritizing recruitment. The fastest-growing category of public sector labor legislation expands collective bargaining into new workplaces. On the strength of these new laws, union executives are slowly replacing their membership losses since 2018. From 2018 to 2025, the country’s four largest government unions report a net decline in membership of 87,919, or 1.3 percent. However, they also report a collective gain of 232,502 members, or 3.5 percent since 2024. This report awards full letter-grade increases to Idaho (now A) and Louisiana (now B) due to their adoption of pro-worker labor reforms this past legislative session. However, the drops in grades—Nebraska (D), Nevada (D), and Rhode Island (F)—are the result of these states prioritizing union executives over workers and enacting laws helping unions recruit, politick, organize, and strike. Thirteen states now have an “A” or “A+” grade—up from twelve in the previous edition of this report—while six states earned an “F”—up from five over the same time period. Overall, the research finds 25 states fall below a “C.”
Labor Day: Americans Flee Forced-Unionism States and Move to Right-to-Work States
September 6, 2026 // Among the top ten growth states in the U-Haul index, nine have a Right-to-Work law that protects workers from being forced to pay dues to union bosses as a condition of employment. -Among the bottom ten states in the U-Haul index, NONE has a Right-to-Work law. All are forced unionism states. -Of the 25 top ranked cities in the U-Haul Growth Index, 24 are located in Right-to-Work states.
Teachers unions lose another fight against school choice
August 26, 2026 // Why are teachers unions so hostile to school choice? Because it threatens the system from which they derive their power, in which all but the wealthiest parents are trapped, and prey to an unresponsive monopoly, while union leaders collect dues regardless of educational outcomes. School choice gives families a way out and, more importantly, introduces competition into a system unions have spent decades trying to control. Parents and children need elected officials willing to resist unions, and they need institutions such as the Goldwater Institute willing to fight when unions turn to courts and ballot campaigns to take choice away. Arizona’s victory should be a model.
Union Attack on School Choice Fails Miserably
August 20, 2026 // In a major victory for school choice, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that Proposition 212, the anti-school choice measure funded by out-of-state special interests, failed to turn in enough valid signatures to appear on this November’s ballot. “Despite spending an unprecedented amount of money in an effort to deceive voters into restricting school choice, the unions could not convince even a small fraction of Arizonans to sign their petition,” said Victor Riches, President and CEO of the Goldwater Institute. “Instead, they had to resort to unlawfully collecting thousands of signatures to try to game the system and dupe their way onto the ballot.”
Commentary: When driverless vehicles are attacked, look for the union label
August 10, 2026 // The news website TechCrunch has reported that CARS is registered to an employee of Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno LLC, a labor-side lobbying and government affairs outfit with offices in New York and DC. The firm’s clients include the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Transport Workers Union, the Transportation Communication Union, and the Garage Employees Union, among other labor groups. The unions likely oppose driverless vehicles because you cannot unionize machines. (Not yet, anyway. Perhaps we shouldn’t be giving them ideas.) They may also be trying to protect traditional cab drivers and city bus drivers, who are often unionized, from competition from the new technology. Never mind that driverless vehicles will provide new options for DC residents, who can’t always get cabs or buses when they need them.
Ride-Booking Unions Raise Specter of Same for Other Gig Workers
August 6, 2026 // Wilson called the effort in Massachusetts “a windfall for the union.” The union holds an exclusive franchise over every ride-booking driver in the state, and the law orders companies to deduct dues and hand them over, he said. “Dues are technically voluntary. But we know how ‘voluntary’ runs in right-to-work states, where unions still lean on the holdouts anyway: public free-rider lists, name-and-shame, peer pressure, the works. Expect the same here.”
Teachers union uses felons to attack school choice in Arizona
July 28, 2026 // The Goldwater Institute’s complaint meticulously challenges the validity of more than half of the union-backed initiative’s signatures. If their challenges succeed, the union could be left with fewer than 200,000 signatures — considerably below the ballot threshold. According to Goldwater, most of the Protect Education Campaign’s signatures are invalid because they suffer from a variety of legal defects. Many signatures were not from registered voters. Others are invalid because the signature gatherer failed to fill out the initiative paperwork properly, such as listing a false address, failing to provide an ID, or failing to notarize the document. Tens of thousands are duplicates.