Posts tagged federal law

    Opinion: Hochul must shame LIRR unions —by revealing their outrageous strike demands

    September 15, 2025 // The agency’s overtime spending regularly stands out by national standards (only periodically rivaled by the MTA’s other big rail outfit, Metro-North, which is stuck operating under the federal law that governs the LIRR). LIRR employees in 2023 made an average of more than $26,000 each in overtime alone.

    Congress Probes Powerful Teachers’ Union Brass Spending Funds On Limo Rides

    August 7, 2025 // The House Education and Workforce Committee inquired about public records showing that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) spent more than $100,000 on private limousine services since September 2023 in a Thursday letter to the AFT. Lawmakers have also received reports from unnamed sources that Weingarten, the union’s president, has paid for other conveniences such as a private driver, the letter says.

    New Game Plan: White House and Congress Move to Clarify Student Athlete Unionization Rights

    July 31, 2025 // The SCORE bill’s ban is broad. Its key provision says, in part: “no individual may be considered an employee of an institution, a conference, or an interstate intercollegiate athletic association based on the participation of such individual on a varsity sports team or in an intercollegiate athletic competition as a student athlete.” In addition, the bill blocks states from enforcing any law that “governs or regulates the compensation, payment, benefits, employment status, or eligibility of a student athlete (including a prospective student athlete) with respect to participation in intercollegiate athletics.” It specifically blocks any state law that “relates to the right of a student athlete to receive compensation or other payments or benefits directly or indirectly from any institution, associated entity or individual, conference, or interstate intercollegiate athletic association.”

    Michigan-Based Rieth-Riley Asphalt Worker Submits Legal Brief Urging 6th Circuit to Protect Workers’ Right to Vote Out Unpopular Union

    July 28, 2025 // While Kent and his fellow employees were eventually able to exercise their right to vote on the IUOE, the NLRB in 2022 dismissed his petitions and halted the election, declining to count the already-cast ballots just hours before the vote tally, calling it a “merit-determination” dismissal. This dismissal was based on unfair labor practice allegations the IUOE filed against Rieth-Riley management in 2018. But the NLRB never held a hearing on whether those alleged practices had any connection to Kent and his coworkers’ desire to oust the union. Kent’s brief urges the Sixth Circuit to use Rieth-Riley Construction Co. as an opportunity to invalidate the NLRB’s “merit-determination” dismissal policy. The brief also asks the Court to order the NLRB to take the long-overdue step of counting the ballots in Mr. Kent’s decertification election, so he and his coworkers can properly exercise their right to vote on the union.

    Rep. Allen, Vinnie Vernuccio: How to empower workers and improve unions

    June 26, 2025 // The ERA will protect workers’ rights while refocusing unions on their core mission of representing employees. It will give workers and entrepreneurs the confidence to champion their future and shape our economy for decades. The ERA protects and promotes the foundational elements of the modern economy. It ensures that workers of all backgrounds can continue pursuing their American dream by guaranteeing their right to decide how and when they work as independent contractors. That fundamental right has long been under attack and in danger due to conflicting federal laws, regulations, and rulings. The ERA also ensures that Americans can continue to pursue entrepreneurship through franchising by permanently clarifying the shifting and incompatible “joint employer” standards that have threatened this long-standing small business model.

    Power-Hungry and Petty: How Shawn Fain Runs the UAW

    June 25, 2025 // Fain had the union’s compliance director read the fabricated report of Mock’s alleged wrongdoing into the record at an executive board meeting in February 2024. Mock was never interviewed in the creation of the report, and did not know it existed until it was delivered in the meeting. Mock is a black woman. Fain coordinated with two other black women on the executive board, regional directors Laura Dickerson and LaShawn English, to strip Mock of much of her authority in the organization. Dickerson made the motion and English seconded it. The exact wording of the motion was scripted by Fain’s aides, text messages uncovered by the monitor revealed, and Dickerson said she had agreed to make the motion before the report was even finalized.

    Mills First Two Vetos Nix Farmworker Unionization and Indigent Defense Bills

    June 25, 2025 // “LD 588 is substantively identical to L.D. 525 in the 131st Legislature, a bill of the same name that I vetoed. Because the bill is unchanged, so too is my veto letter,” Mills wrote. “(It) would create a new legal framework governing labor-management relations in Maine’s agricultural sector. The bill would authorize agricultural workers to engage in certain concerted activity, and create a new regulatory structure for complaints, hearings and enforcement by the Maine Labor Relations Board. This is complex legislation with cross references to federal law, including the National Labor Relations Act.” Mills added that “against this background I cannot subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand. Now is not the time to impose a new regulatory burden on our agricultural sector, and particularly not family-owned farms that are not well positioned to know and understand their obligations under a new such law.”