Posts tagged collective bargaining agreement
The Texas Supreme Court recently handed a significant victory to taxpayers, and Louisiana lawmakers should take note.
July 29, 2024 // The court held that the CBA did not authorize union activities like lobbying, supporting candidates, or engaging in other partisan political activities while on release time. To allow this type of activity would violate the Texas Constitution’s Gift Clauses, which prohibit state and local governments from allocating public resources to private purposes. Release time is time spent conducting union business—lobbying, attending conferences, or negotiating collective bargaining agreements—for which the member is granted paid time away from the job he or she was hired to do. In other words, it’s a form of taxpayer funded lobbying.
Some Cannabis Employees Are Voting Out Their Union
July 18, 2024 // Decertification in the cannabis space can be seen as a sign that the industry has matured and is following trends in other sectors. It could also indicate that unions overpromised what they could get. As the industry matures and companies offer better wages, benefits, and working conditions, some employees have decided they don’t need a union.
LA-Long Beach port rail service and union reach agreement
July 16, 2024 // According to the railway, “The CBA extension sets competitive wage structures while maintaining the same lower-than-rail-industry employee contributions for health benefits, so that the PHL workforce receives fair compensation for their critical role in the nation’s supply chain at the busiest port complex in North America.”
Union votes herald a new era for workers in Washington Legislature
July 11, 2024 // One petition covers 82 legislative assistants, policy analysts and communications staff of the House Democratic Caucus. The other is for 32 legislative assistants in the Senate Democratic Caucus. Both seek to be represented by the Washington Public Employees Association. Under Washington’s law, employees of the Democratic and Republican caucuses in each chamber must be in separate units unless a majority of each caucus votes to be in the same unit. However, units can negotiate collectively on economic issues, like wages and benefits, with the employers, which are the chief clerk of the House and secretary of the Senate. When bargaining begins, several subjects are off-limits, such as the length of the work day during a legislative session, as well as in the 60 calendar days before a session and the 20 days afterward.
Con Edison, utility workers reach tentative deal averting strike
June 24, 2024 // The new deal includes higher wages for utility workers, an enhanced medical plan with minimal increases and faster wage increases.
Sierra Club floats ‘best and final’ contract offer to staff union
June 24, 2024 // The green group’s management and one of its employee unions, the Progressive Workers Union, have clashed over the specifics of a new contract since the previous agreement expired at the end of last year. Sierra Club’s leadership sent what it called its “best and final offer” to the union this week and is now asking the union to participate in mediation, where an independent party would work with leadership and the union to hash out areas of compromise.
Nurses union to pay HCA Healthcare $6.2M over 2020 strike
June 21, 2024 // A local unit of SEIU has been ordered to pay HCA Healthcare's Riverside Community Hospital $6.2 million for conducting a 10-day strike in 2020. An arbitrator last month ordered the payment after it was found last year that nurse labor union SEIU Local 121RN violated a collective bargaining agreement with the hospital by holding the strike in June 2020.
The Liberty Justice Center Sues Union for Forcing Jewish Lawyers to Support Speech They Consider Antisemitic
April 12, 2024 // Congress recently launched an investigation into the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys due to whistleblower reports of antisemitism by union members. The Liberty Justice Center is suing the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Legal Aid Society, and the City of New York on behalf of Mr. Levine and Mr. Popper, alleging that these defendants are violating the attorneys’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to subsidize political speech as a condition of employment. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling a person to subsidize a union’s speech. In Janus v. AFSCME, the Court held that a government could not force its employees to pay a union as a condition of their employment. And in Harris v. Quinn, the Court held that a government could not compel recipients of government funds, through a state program to provide services to other private individuals, to pay money to a union.
Dearborn schools responds to CapCon story on illegal contract language
April 4, 2024 // Steve Delie, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, thinks the contract poorly serves Dearborn employees. “Whether or not this language is enforced, it is still misleading,” he told CapCon. Keeping inoperative language in the contract is not the best practice, he said, as it requires teachers to be up to date on the latest legal developments. “School employees have a constitutional right to work without being forced to pay a union, and their contracts should clearly reflect that.”
Parents suing Chicago Teachers Union over COVID-19 strike
March 30, 2024 // Teacher strikes are illegal in eight of the 10 largest school districts in the nation, with Chicago being one of the two districts where strikes are allowed. Los Angeles Unified School District is the other, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. A spokesman from the Hughes and Suhr LLC law firm said in Chicago Public Schools, 76% of all students are classified as low-income. They said teachers earn nearly twice the average income of the families they serve and the timing and length of the strike was particularly egregious. Kugler said, in his opinion, CTU deserves punitive consequences. Before he left his position, Kugler was employed by the CTU for over 10 years, where he was part of the union while strike preparation was happening. He said there’s a process to strike.