Posts tagged Biden administration

    Agencies to soon detail how they will overcome unions, office space issues to bring all staff in-person

    January 29, 2025 // Federal agencies have two weeks to submit their plans to ensure as many employees as possible are reporting to their offices or duty stations, the Trump administration said on Monday, calling on executive branch leadership to “expeditiously implement” the president’s directive to limit telework.

    The Changes Begin: Trump Administration Takes Slew of Actions in the Labor and Employment Field

    January 28, 2025 // President Trump did not take immediate action to fire the General Counsels for the EEOC and NLRB, moves that had been widely anticipated for his first day in office, although those actions are expected soon. Once made, the moves will further shift those agencies away from their Biden-era policies toward, to some extent, more business-friendly approaches with some significant caveats evident in the President’s initial Executive Orders.

    Amazon’s Fight With Unions Heads to Its Grocery Aisles

    January 27, 2025 // Rob Jennings, an employee in the prepared foods section of the Philadelphia store, has worked there for nearly two decades. He said he noticed a series of changes after Amazon bought the chain in 2017: a program that offered employees a portion of the store’s budget surplus was scrapped, part-time workers lost health insurance, staffing levels started to decline. Even though Whole Foods had never been a worker paradise, Mr. Jennings said, “I have a fantasy about bringing back all the things they took away.”

    Teachers’ union holds anti-Trump webinar

    January 26, 2025 // One speaker also said that teaching “social and racial justice” is teaching “true history,” according to Parents Defending Education. The Oklahoma Education Association, the state affiliate of the National Education Association, is Oklahoma’s largest teachers’ union.

    ‘We Are Hopeful’ Q&A with Patrice Onwuka and Kim Kavin

    January 24, 2025 // Congress should consider enshrining the Trump-era definition for independent contractors, and/or consider ways to get ahead of the opposition to flexible work. The Employee Rights Act was a federal bill that, among many pro-worker provisions, sought to protect independent contractors as a counter to a national ABC Test in the now-defunct Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Portable benefits also provide a pathway for companies to provide independent contractors with workplace benefits without triggering a reclassification.

    Trump’s new Schedule F executive order is smarter, but could still backfire

    January 23, 2025 // The American Federation of Government Employees said that re-issuing the executive order was “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.” The ink on the order was barely dry when the National Treasury Employees Union sued to overturn it.

    Clock ticks for NJTransit, engineer’s union to reach labor deal

    January 22, 2025 // The agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen are in a two-month-long cooling period. The two sides have been locked in ongoing talks for more than four years without success, leading to former President Joe Biden calling in two presidential emergency boards to help break the ice. The first board sided with NJTransit but recommended that the agency raise its initial wage offer. A second board is set to release its own recommendations on Wednesday.

    Competitive Enterprise Institute Opinion: Time to End the ESG Shakedown

    January 21, 2025 // Any agency that is not charged by Congress with pursuing those specific goals should not have staffers assigned to those goals. The Environmental Protection Agency is the place for climate policy; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the place for workplace discrimination claims. The executive branch does not need an infinite regress of staff, in each agency, assigned to advance every progressive policy priority under the sun. New leaders at the independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, will receive less direct instruction from the new president. Still, they will have broad discretion to set the agenda at their respective agencies for enforcement, future rulemakings, and repeals. SEC chairman-designate Paul Atkins, for example, will have the ability to fully reverse the pro-ESG mission creep seen over the last four years. He can, instead, focus the SEC on such charmingly old-fashioned goals as encouraging capital formation and new investment opportunities rather than micromanaging the board decisions of every public company in America.

    DOJ Attorney Challenges NTEU Union Bosses’ Attempt to Grab Control Over Justice Department Divisions Ahead of Admin Change

    January 20, 2025 // Morrison’s filings come after a unionization campaign during which DOJ management and NTEU union officials unilaterally “agreed” that the CRT and ENRD were work units appropriate for unionization, even though they are not appropriate bargaining units under longstanding FLRA precedent. Morrison’s Applications for Review argue that this and other legal issues with the proposed work units invalidate an FLRA Regional Director’s earlier decision to push forward the unionization process.

    Report Shows Extent of Tax Dollars Spent on Public-Sector Unionism

    January 17, 2025 // The results of the 2024 presidential election were a repudiation of Biden’s “most pro-union administration in American history,” in favor of one that sides with actual workers, as opposed to union bosses. Congress has every right to demand oversight over the expenses of the executive branch, especially when taxpayer dollars are funneled to union bureaucrats that are working in the interests of themselves and not the American people.