Posts tagged Collective bargaining agreements
Bill Prohibiting Union Time on Taxpayers’ Dime Would Extend Trump EO to Entire Federal Workforce
April 10, 2025 // With the average federal employee receiving almost $163,000 in total compensation (including $106,400 in pay and $56,600 in benefits), the time federal employees spend working for their union can add up quickly. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability discovered that 1,030 Social Security Administration employees spent a total of 242,237 hours on official time in fiscal year 2023. This cost taxpayers $15.1 million, including $1.43 million to pay 14 employees who spent 100% of their time working for their union. Meanwhile, senior citizens across the country were struggling to get in touch with Social Security Administration employees and unable to get in-person appointments at their local Social Security Administration offices.
What does Djokovic’s players’ union exactly want from tennis organizers?
March 21, 2025 // The PTPA classified the four major events — Wimbledon, U.S. Open, French Open and Australian Open — as co-conspirators that fall under the ITF, rather than making them separate defendants. According to the filing, those four Grand Slam tournaments "generated over $1.5 billion collectively in 2024, while only paying between (10% to 20%) of revenue to players." But, Nassar said, "The Slams can't unilaterally fix the schedule. They can't fix anti-doping. They can't fix the medical issues. They can't fix the prize money conspiracy and price-fixing that exists at every other level at every other tournament."
State workers blast Ferguson’s furlough plan, calling it a betrayal
March 20, 2025 // Front-line workers and educators feel betrayed and frustrated that the man they helped elect wants to reduce their income while declining to endorse new or higher taxes on the state’s wealthiest individuals and largest corporations. “They feel they were lied to. We have to stop being the ones having the budgets balanced on our backs,” said Mike Yestramski, president of the Washington Federation of State Employees, following a rally Monday at the Capitol held by those pushing the Legislature to tax the wealthy and big businesses to erase the multi-billion dollar deficit. Yestramski called Ferguson a “pseudo Democrat” and added: “Budgets are moral documents. This is his moral test.
Act 10, Scourge of Wisconsin Teachers, Faces Uncertain Future in Court
March 4, 2025 // According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of union members in Wisconsin’s workforce fell by nearly half, from 14.2% to 7.4%, between 2010 and 2023 (since that figure includes workers from all sectors, the drop for government employees is likely much steeper). A report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a right-leaning think tank, showed that the total number of unions holding annual recertification votes across the state declined from 540 in 2014 to 369 in 2018. The largest teachers’ union in the state, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, experienced a dizzying loss of manpower and organizing heft. A 2019 study conducted by a pair of researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that WEAC was forced to restructure and cut its staffing by about two-thirds. The retrenchment was made necessary by a freefall in the collection of dues, the payment of which was made voluntary by Act 10. The loss of paid organizers could be offset, in part, by the efforts of teacher volunteers. But the union had no ready replacement for the millions of dollars in government relations funds that had suddenly evaporated; WEAC went from being one of the biggest lobbying forces in Madison to a second-tier player virtually overnight.
Op-ed: As unions fight reform, Trump should assert executive power
February 26, 2025 // Unfortunately, for decades, unions and their collective bargaining agreements have hamstrung presidents and the people they’ve chosen to run federal departments and agencies in all the wrong ways. Under a bill President Carter signed in 1978, the president cannot simply reject a proposed union agreement but must go before the Federal Service Impasses Panel, or arbitrator that can make him accept terms he doesn’t want. Also, union agreements prevent incompetent or unethical employees protected by a union from being fired or even having negative notes placed in their files without notice and an opportunity to bring grievance proceedings, where unions will back even the least deserving member to the hilt.
Trump moves to cancel recent union agreements with federal workers
February 3, 2025 // The memo cites a U.S. Department of Education collective bargaining agreement reached three days before Trump took office that "generally prohibits the agency from returning remote employees to their offices." Trump has signed an executive order that would require federal employees to work in-office five days a week, reversing a remote working trend that took off in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump Signs Order Ending Remote Work; Mandates Federal Workers Return To Office
January 20, 2025 // Union leaders express a strong commitment to retain remote-work options where necessary for some federal employees. Specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Social Security Administration have already agreed to remote work (telework) arrangements as part of their current collective bargaining agreements.
Key union vows to fight back after Trump says he would end remote work for federal employees
December 19, 2024 // Trump, who spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, called the deal "very terrible" and said it's interfering with his plans for how to handle the federal workforce, which include ending remote work. He said he would seek to challenge the rule in court. "If people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed, and somebody in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that, so that for five years people don’t have to come back into the office,” Trump said at his first post-election news conference.
Plaintiffs’ letter adds wrinkle to $2.8 billion NCAA settlement
December 12, 2024 // Although the letter lauds the terms of the settlement, House, Prince and Harrison warned that without player representation in negotiations with their schools and conferences, athletes would "inevitably remain in a vulnerable position" and the industry would remain mired in "continued litigation." They asked for the court to "lend its imprimatur" to athletes' efforts to collectively negotiate in the future through a players' association.
Judge finds Florida’s anti-union law union unconstitutional and ‘unreasonable’
November 12, 2024 // U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker ruled that public teacher union members in Pinellas and Hernando counties had been damaged by the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission after the passage of SB 256, which had a component banning payroll deductions for the purpose of paying dues. Hernando United School Workers and the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association argued that prohibiting payroll deductions was unconstitutional, violated their right to be free from the state impairment of contracts. The state argued the law was necessary to promote transparency and “allow union members to decide how to pay their dues and understand how much they were paying.”