Posts tagged DOL
Feds warn Oregon, other states, on paying unemployment benefits to striking workers
January 15, 2026 // “An individual who is on strike must engage in activities that demonstrate to the state (unemployment insurance) agency that he or she is able and available for work and actively seeking work under state law,” Michelle Beebe, head of the U.S. Employment and Training Administration, wrote in a note to Oregon and other state agencies last week.
Op-ed: President Trump’s investing order puts workers first
January 12, 2026 // Trump’s executive order will help right this wrong by refocusing the advice that proxy advisors give to plan managers. So would Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) Restoring Integrity in Fiduciary Act, which would require retirement plan managers to focus solely on financial factors when making decisions on behalf of investors.
Iron Workers President Kyle Chasse to Serve 3 Years Probation
January 2, 2026 // On October 7, 2025, in the United States District Court for the District of Maine, Kyle Chasse, former President of Iron Workers Local 745 (located in Kittery, Maine), was sentenced to three years of probation. Chasse was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $10,533, a fine of $2,000, and a $1,300 special assessment. On June 26, 2025, Chasse pleaded guilty to 12 counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1343 and 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(3), respectively. The sentencing follows an investigation by the OLMS Boston-Buffalo District Office.
National Education Association spends on politics over teachers
December 23, 2025 // The National Education Association admitted the following in its recent filing with the U.S. Department of Labor: Just 10% of its spending was on representing teachers in 2025. It spent nearly 4X more on politics and “contributions” than it did on representing teachers. Hundreds of NEA’s own officers and staff pull in six-figure salaries. NEA spent millions on hotels, airlines and other expenses for unspecified purposes.
New Jersey: ‘Billions of Dollars’
December 22, 2025 // Gonzalez and Asaro-Angelo are not the only people who have used the word billions. At the federal level, U.S. Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia claimed in a January 2024 press release that misclassification was a nearly $4 billion per year problem—citing this research from, you guessed it, the Economic Policy Institute. But in December 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that since January 2021—after nearly four full years of the Biden administration prioritizing the issue of employee misclassification nationwide—it had recovered only about $41 million in back wages for some 28,000 workers.
Union Bosses Admit They Spent $1.8 Billion on Politics in the 2024 Election Cycle — The Real Number is Likely Over $28 Billion
December 19, 2025 // It is nearly impossible to produce perfectly accurate figures from the LM-2 because subsidiary unions file separate forms from the larger national unions they fall under, and transactions between these unions could be listed multiple times in the data. This only worsens the problems of inconsistent and potentially inaccurate reporting mentioned above. The LM-2 does not lend itself to a precise analysis of union boss spending, but it does give a sense of its scale. When sympathetic media outlets report unions’ political influence in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars that is a dramatic underrepresentation.
Commentary: The Hyperventilating Over the DOE Restructuring Is Ongoing
December 16, 2025 // Perhaps no one fully comprehends the DOE’s uselessness and waste more than former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. She contends that it shuffles money around, imposes unnecessary requirements and political agendas through its grants, and then shirks responsibility for evaluating whether any of what it does actually adds value. “Here’s how it works: Congress appropriates funding for education; last year, it totaled nearly $80 billion. The department’s bureaucrats take in those billions, add strings and red tape, peel off a percentage to pay for themselves, and then send it down to state education agencies.”
Largest Flight Attendant Union In The U.S. Faces Computer Fraud Allegations In Ongoing Skywest Unionization Lawsuit
December 15, 2025 // A federal judge has allowed a counterclaim accusing the largest flight attendant union in the United States of conspiracy to commit computer fraud to proceed following months of legal wrangling in a Utah District Court. The contentious allegations were made against the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) by a staff association representing crew members at the major regional carrier SkyWest, which provides services to the likes of Alaska Airlines, Delta, and United Airlines.
Largest US teachers’ union to host training that attacks Republicans as ‘racist and transphobic’
November 25, 2025 // America’s largest teachers’ union accused Republicans of promoting “racist and transphobic troupes” in teaching materials for an upcoming training program, according to documents obtained by a conservative activist group. The National Education Association is hosting a training from Dec. 2-4 at an undisclosed location called “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy” aimed at dismantling “strategic racism and transphobia,” the group Defending Education uncovered. The group released information on the training that is targeted for union staff and teams as part of the NEA UniServ and Organizing Training Program 2025–2026.
Education and Workforce Committee Passes 3 Bills to Expand Flexibility, Boost Earnings, and Hasten Back Pay
November 25, 2025 // On Thursday, the House Education and Workforce Committee passed three bills to boost flexibility, wages, and efficiency for workers. These three bills would modernize the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to provide flexibility for workers, simplicity for tipped employees, and more efficient resolutions to payroll errors. Importantly, none of these provisions will cost taxpayers a single dime because they simply remove unnecessary barriers to flexibility and higher pay. In fact, at least one of the bills would likely save taxpayers from unnecessary administrative costs.