Posts tagged condition of employment
CELEBRATING THE HISTORIC JANUS DECISION FIVE YEARS LATER
June 27, 2023 //
JANUS V. AFSCME AT FIVE: GOVERNMENT UNION MEMBERSHIP AT RECORD LOWS
June 21, 2023 //
Commentary: Public Employees Opt Out of Their Union as Soon as They Know They Can
June 15, 2023 // To the surprise of no one — including, almost certainly, the unions themselves — the results of the media blitz simply confirmed what the Freedom Foundation has known since even before Janus. When public employees know their rights and have confidence that someone has their back, they opt out.
The Cyberpicket: A New Frontier for Labor Law
June 12, 2023 // a cyberpicket would alert potential customers to a labor dispute and put them to the choice of whether to continue transacting with the business. Instead of encountering rows of workers outfitted with signs and pamphlets, however, e-shoppers would come across a notification that materializes at a site’s landing page — the business’s “entrance.” The technology needed to implement a cyberpicket breaks no new ground. In fact, it’s already widely utilized by online businesses for compliance with the European Union’s (EU) “Cookie Law,” which requires that websites give visitors the right to refuse data tracking.14 So-called “consent banners” — now familiar fixtures for netizens across the pond15 — present a tried-and-true template for the cyberpicket. Not only is the cyberpicket a viable alternative to its in-person counterpart, it’s a right owed to employees of online businesses. This Note sharpens the concept of a cyberpicket by expanding on its legal justification, expected benefits, and possible challenges.
OPINION: Public sector union employees deserve more power over their leadership
May 15, 2023 // The attempt to alter the Pennsylvania Constitution by passing HB 950 will further diminish the rights of union members in favor of union executives. According to an analysis by the Commonwealth Foundation, government unions have spent more than $190 million on politics in Pennsylvania since 2007. In 2021-2022, government union PACs spent over $20 million in Pennsylvania, including $13.1 million directly to candidates and partisan PACs. More than 99% of the contributions to candidates for statewide office went to Democrats.
FEDERAL LAWSUIT AIMS TO SAFEGUARD PUBLIC EMPLOYEES’ ACCESS TO TRUTH ABOUT UNIONS
May 3, 2023 // Prohibiting the Freedom Foundation’s ability to access information about public employee orientation sessions is a violation of the organization’s First Amendment right to free speech. In denying the request, the defendants –LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho, general counsel Navera Reed, and, district litigation research coordinator Rita Gail Turner, cited California code § 3556, a wide-ranging California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown on June 27, 2018. The signing date was no accident: June 27 was the same day the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) that public employees cannot be compelled to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.
In NC, no worker has to join a union. My constitutional amendment will keep it that way.
April 21, 2023 // The ability to work freely without coercion is an integral part of our workforce ethos in North Carolina. We have been a right-to-work state since 1947, and the facts show that this status has benefited our workers and helped grow our economy. Right-to-work refers to the ability of workers to choose whether or not they want to join and pay dues to a labor union. In other words, workers are not coerced into joining a union by being required to pay dues as a condition of employment. Instead, people have the ability to choose whether or not they wish to join a union when seeking a job in which the employer is affiliated with a union. In the words of national labor expert F. Vincent Vernuccio, senior policy advisor with Workers for Opportunity, “Right-to-work simply means a union cannot get a worker fired for not paying them.”
The FTC’s Indefensible Position on Collective Bargaining
April 19, 2023 // In remarks last week at the University of Utah School of Law, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya argued that independent contractors should be allowed to bargain collectively. He acknowledged that courts have always treated collective bargaining by contractors as illegal under federal antitrust law. But he claimed that these courts have made a mistake: in fact, Congress never meant to stop small contractors, like truckers or plumbers, from forming a union and bargaining together. Bedoya’s interpretation would upset a century of careful balancing between antitrust and labor policy. It would also expose the contractors themselves to serious risks of abuse. And it would undermine well-established rules against collusion, price fixing, and other restraints on trade. To see why Bedoya is so wrong, you have to understand labor law and antitrust law’s tangled history. Let’s start with section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Adopted in 1890, section 1 banned all contracts and conspiracies in restraint of trade. It did not, however, define trade restraints. Instead, it incorporated common-law standards. Under the common law, unions were treated no differently from any other combination of buyers or sellers. If they conspired to fix labor prices, they violated the law. And collective bargaining could be seen as one form of price fixing. As a result, the law sometimes treated unions as, essentially, labor cartels.
When workers in Michigan had a choice, they left unions
April 17, 2023 // Although the state has seen a 20% increase in the number of jobs since 2012, union membership has declined by 26.4%. Some 143,000 members chose to leave their unions while they had the right. The state’s largest unions shed an additional 5,250 members last year, according to their Form LM-2 financial reports for 2021 and 2022. Freedom will come to an end for many workers. Employees at unionized workplaces will likely be forced again to pay union dues as a condition of employment. The American Federation of Teachers lost 15.3% of its Michigan members during the right-to-work era, the biggest percentage loss of any union in the state. Membership in the teachers union crashed from 20,063 to 16,994 between 2012 and 2022. AFSCME Council 25 had the second biggest percentage loss at 14.4%, losing 150 members.
Op-Ed: Loudoun County teachers deserve all the facts
April 11, 2023 // NEA president, Becky Pringle, makes over half-a-million dollars each year, and VEA Executive Director, Brenda Pike, has a total compensation of $225,861, which is nearly five times higher than the average teacher salary in Virginia. Loudoun officials have estimated the school district will spend over $3 million annually to fund administrative positions that earn more than two times the starting teacher salary. The teachers and school staff members are not winners in this scenario. As I see in heavily unionized states, today’s model of collective bargaining for public employees reeks of a Ponzi scheme with all the money going to the top and very little benefit trickling back down to local teachers.