Posts tagged Arkansas
Opinion: Union Leaders Aren’t Fooling Anyone on Labor Day
September 6, 2023 // the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has formed a so called “Lavender Caucus” to advocate on its behalf for pro-LGBTQ legislation; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) issued a resolution demanding stricter gun control laws; the National Education Association (NEA) quietly published a gender ideology resource guide, “Schools in Transition,” in 2015 that laid the groundwork for some of the craziest positions on gendered bathrooms, high school sports and pronoun usage confounding parents and teachers across the country; NEA President Becky Pringle in 2022 issued a statement on behalf of her union excoriating the U.S. Supreme Court for its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the abortion question back to the state; and, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) President Cecily Myart-Cruz in 2021 asks her union to issue a resolution condemning the state of Israel for its “war crimes” against the Palestinians.
This Labor Day, ask yourself: Are unions living up to their promises?
September 4, 2023 // Good people across the country may believe that handing more power to public sector union executives will fix teacher shortages or improve ineffective government programs. Instead, these good people should reflect this Labor Day and ask themselves whether public sector unions have lived up to these promises over the past 50 years. They should also ask how we can hold union executives accountable and improve how public sector unions work. Unfortunately, anyone trying to advance ideas to improve public sector unions soon discovers union executives aren’t interested. Public sector union executives will go to war to ensure they keep their power — even at the expense of the employees they purportedly represent.
Red States Lead the Way on Protecting Workers
May 5, 2023 // It’s not just school choice and tax cuts. Red states have also made 2023 a banner year for labor reform, the best in years. Credit goes to governors and lawmakers who want to empower workers, save money for taxpayers, and make their states more competitive and responsive to citizens’ needs.
Arkansas teachers freed from compulsory union membership; what about Kansas?
April 28, 2023 // K.S.A. 75-5501 currently has an unconstitutional minimum 180-day dues-withholding requirement with no provision for employees to resign and stop paying dues whenever they wish. The Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) only allows teachers to resign and stop paying dues in August. Restrictions of this nature effectively make union membership compulsory. There have been several attempts to protect public employee rights in the Legislature, but teachers’ and other public employees’ rights are still not recognized in Kansas, but legislators are not giving up.
Four states advance bills prohibiting union dues deductions
April 21, 2023 //
ARKANSAS BILL WOULD END GOVERNMENT COLLECTION OF UNION DUES FROM TEACHERS’ PAYCHECKS
March 28, 2023 // Just weeks after passing the largest education reform in state history, Arkansas lawmakers are now considering a bill that would better protect both taxpayers and teachers in the Natural state by preventing government employers from deducting union dues or political contributions from public school employees’ paychecks. “Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken major steps to make good on her promise to be the education governor that others should aspire to,” said Rusty Brown, southern director for the Freedom Foundation. “The governor has already signed into law the largest teacher salary increase in state history, moving Arkansas from having some of the lowest teacher salaries in the country to among the five highest in the nation. I defy any teachers’ union to show where they’ve done the same.”
A nationwide flood of complaints to C-SPAN wasn’t what it seemed
February 20, 2023 // Host Pedro Echevarria frequently protested that the board member and his business in Pennsylvania had nothing to do with C-SPAN’s programming or the news of the day, but to little avail. What one caller from Kansas termed “these Allan Block people” kept flooding the lines.
After right-to-work’s anniversary in Arkansas, Fayetteville Starbucks becomes the state’s first location to unioniz
December 1, 2022 // Arkansas' right-to-work law turned 78-years-old on Nov. 7, and a little over a week after its anniversary, a Fayetteville Starbucks became the first location in the state to unionize. Although right-to-work effects how unions function, other factors like deindustrialization impacted the state's labor movement.
19 Republican governors oppose proposed Project Labor Agreement rule
October 31, 2022 // Nineteen Republican governors wrote a letter to President Joe Biden (D) on October 17, 2022, opposing a proposed federal rule to mandate the use of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for federal construction projects. The letter was signed by governors from Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. The proposed rule follows an executive order that was signed by Biden in February 2022 that aimed to require PLAs for large-scale construction projects. A group of Republican governors wrote a letter in April 2022 opposing the executive order, arguing that it granted a monopoly to unions and discouraged competition. The proposed rule would amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to implement the executive order and mandate the use of PLAs for federal construction contracts exceeding $35 million.
Virginia Drops from A+ to C in Worker Freedom — Largest Decrease in the Country
October 31, 2022 // Virginia plunged from an “A+” ranking in 2019 to a dismal “C” this year. This was due to what the report called “[t]he most dramatic government union victory of the post-Janus legal frontier” – Janus being the 2018 Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME declaring everything government unions do is political, and public employees have a First Amendment right not to subsidize this political activity. It essentially brought right-to-work provisions to public employees across the country. The Battle for Worker Freedom in the States: Grading State Labor Laws