Posts tagged Department of transportation
Commentary: To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It’s on the Taxpayers’ Dime
June 29, 2023 // Despite public sector unions, and particularly teachers’ unions like Weingarten’s American Federation for Teachers, facing mounting scrutiny for their role in school closures and broader left-wing political activism, the practice of release time has garnered little attention.
Federal Employee Union Membership is Up 20%
March 29, 2023 // The task force asked federal agencies to foster collaborative relationships with their union partners, involve labor organizations in predecisional policy discussions, and remove barriers from unions trying to increase their membership or organize new bargaining units. The group recommended that the Office of Personnel Management instruct agencies to provide information on whether job openings are represented by unions and encourage agencies to provide unions more opportunities to communicate with new hires. In a blog post last week, the vice president’s office announced that just a year after agencies began implementing the task force’s recommendations, the initiative is already paying dividends: over the last year, nearly 80,000 federal employees have joined a union, increasing the total number of dues paying union members at federal agencies by 20%. And in the private sector, petitions for union representation increased 53% from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2022, while overall union membership grew by 273,000 last year.
BLET Members Vote ‘Yes’ on Nationwide Strike Authorization
July 14, 2022 // The National Mediation Board (NMB) on June 14 set in motion a 90-day-maximum time clock toward a national railroad shutdown. It released BLET and 11 other rail craft unions (bargaining in two coalitions collectively representing some 115,000 rail workers) from NMB-guided mediation with most Class I freight railroads and many smaller ones, ending attempts to negotiate, voluntarily, amendments to existing wage, benefits and work rules agreements. This triggered a “cooling off period,” which is set to expire at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 18, 2022. At that point, self-help is available to the parties, unless President Joe Biden appoints a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) pursuant to Section 10 of the Railway Labor Act. A PEB would halt any strike or lockout by the parties, and would investigate and issue a report and recommendations concerning the dispute. Dennis R. Pierce,
Editorial: Biden’s favors to unions keep costing taxpayers
March 16, 2022 // Pitching the executive order as a cost saver is disingenuous, as collective bargaining inherently drives up costs. It’s the same faulty logic used to defend prevailing wage laws that force union-level pay and benefits on publicly funded construction projects.
Biden task force releases report to strengthen labor unions
February 8, 2022 // “Today’s report from the White House task force is nothing more than pro-union propaganda and exemplifies how entrenched pro-union allies are in this administration," said Kristen Swearingen, chair of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which is composed of more than 500 business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Association.