Posts tagged condition of employment
Commentary: The Teachers’ Unions Are More Political than Ever
April 18, 2024 // Americans for Fair Treatment, a national nonprofit organization that educates public employees about their rights in a unionized workplace, recently released a report detailing the National Education Association’s (NEA) financial filings from Sept. 1, 2022, through Aug. 31, 2023. The NEA declared that its political spending totaled $50.1 million during the fiscal year, though the true number is much higher. During the most recent reporting period, the union disclosed that it spent “$126.3 million on ‘contributions, gifts, and grants,’ which is where most unions detail their charitable giving.” However, a closer look at the union’s “contributions, gifts, and grants” shows that the NEA is directing more money towards political causes than it reports.
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.
Rigged: The fight over a union election in New York City
April 3, 2024 // According to Local 983’s filings, Puleo in 2022 received $349,083 in compensation from the union, more than 10 percent of the $3.2 million Local 983 received from membership dues, meaning at least ten cents of every dollar members paid the union for representation went to him. Puleo gets an extra bump of $22,522 from the District Council, bringing total pay in 2022 to $371,605, putting his pay just above that of DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, and well above the compensation for Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Puleo and his union administration had won election in 2013 over long-time incumbent Mark Rosenthal. Rosenthal had been elected to union leadership in 1998 following a corruption investigation that revealed a “vast pig-sty of corruption, self-dealing, lavish party going, and vote rigging,” according to City Journal. The scandal within DC 37 saw union local presidents in handcuffs and DC 37 placed under trusteeship by AFSCME International. Rosenthal came in and cleaned house. When he was elected, it was the first contested election in 20 years and it was not without controversy, including accusations of threats and intimidation. Puleo won an election in 2013 over the aging Rosenthal, who since passed away in 2017, and has been at the helm of Local 983 ever since.
Op-ed: A right-to-work repeal warning from Michigan
February 29, 2024 // Yet Michigan should be a warning, not a beacon for other states. Evidence shows that reversing right-to-work is bad for workers, businesses, local economies, and even unions themselves. Michigan has already lost out on two major new plants from General Motors and Stellantis (Chrysler’s parent), which recently chose to invest across the state line in right-to-work Indiana. Michigan’s pain is Indiana’s gain. Approximately 150,000 Michigan employees have voluntarily left their unions since 2013. They will now be forced to pay their unions around $1,000 in annual dues, an especially painful tax given the current cost-of-living crisis.
Union Power Slips as Percentage of Union Jobs Declines
February 6, 2024 // “Increasingly, Americans realize they can negotiate their own workplace terms without handing over part of their hard-earned paycheck to a union boss who probably doesn’t even know their name,” Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation told The Center Square. “Government employee unions are highly political organizations that aren’t held accountable to a profit-margin or a consumer base and government workers are seeing they get more value from keeping those union dues dollars in their pockets to put more gas in their cars and more food on their family dinner table.”
Ban of BLM Apparel by Whole Foods Ruled Legal
December 29, 2023 // Administrative Law Judge Ariel Sotolongo ruled that BLM masks, T-shirts, and other apparel worn by Whole Foods employees during the 2020 riots was not protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act because it had little connection to the Whole Foods workers’ jobs. The NLRB General Counsel, who prosecutes unfair labor practice cases, had argued that workers wore the attire in 2020 to make black coworkers feel safe and supported amid a series of nationwide protests lead by BLM. The general counsel claimed banning the apparel violated workers’ rights to advocate for better working conditions. But Judge Sotolongo said that regardless of individual workers’ motivations, the general counsel failed to show that workers had a collective goal related to their employment.
COMMENTARY: By Ending Forced Representation, New Proposal in Congress Could Benefit Workers and Unions Alike
December 14, 2023 // Exclusive representation muffles the voices and denies the rights of at least a minority of workers, and imposes undue burdens on unions. Prioritizing workers’ choices and reducing government barriers to work pursuits are crucial to elevating workers’ voices, improving their well-being, and expanding their opportunities.
Wisconsin’s Anti-Union Model Faces Reckoning as Top Court Shifts
December 12, 2023 // “They’ve been trying to overturn it through the legislature and the ballot box and have been wholly unsuccessful,” said Brett Healy, president of the conservative John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, which estimates Act 10 has saved taxpayers $16.8 billion as of this year. Act 10 also made it easier for school districts to fire low-performing teachers and retain good ones, said Walker, now president of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative activist organization for youth. The former governor pointed to the state’s standardized test scores and graduation rates, which typically meet or exceed national averages. “We’ve seen tremendous success,” Walker added. “All the attacks they said at the time, how this would devastate schools, proved be just that—attacks. They don’t match reality.”
Opinion: NLRB says ‘common law’ — and common sense — defines joint employers
December 5, 2023 // The mandate, to take effect Dec. 26, says when two employers — think a local McDonald’s franchise and McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago — control a worker’s toil, from wages and hours to duties and work rules to hiring and firing to uniforms and training, then both are responsible for obeying or breaking Labor law. And that means it should be easier for workers to organize and bargain without being bounced from pillar to post when it comes to whom to bargain with. Using that same “basic common sense” explanation, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the new rule “an important win” for workers.
U.S. House Holds Hearing Today on Landmark Worker Freedom Bill
December 1, 2023 // The one-page bill, which is currently cosponsored by 117 members of the House of Representatives, would end Big Labor’s federally authorized power to force workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. Poll after poll demonstrates that 70% to 80% of Americans (or higher) consistently express support for the Right to Work principle that union membership and financial support should be the choice of every individual employee. Testifying before the Subcommittee alongside National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix were two employees who have successfully challenged illegal union boss practices with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.