Posts tagged fees
Elisabeth Messenger: Where Do Your Union Dues Go?
September 1, 2023 // I think when a union can stay very independent and hyper-local, it can be what it was meant to be, and that is a force to speak for all, to help all, to protect all, to raise all at the same time. But again, it’s only when it’s independent it’s not tied to a national, bloated corporate union. And it’s only when it’s at the local level.
JANUS V. AFSCME AT FIVE: GOVERNMENT UNION MEMBERSHIP AT RECORD LOWS
June 21, 2023 //
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.
Connecticut school bus driver files labor charges against Teamsters
April 6, 2023 // Mary Boland of New Milford, a driver for All Star Transportation since 2003, alleges the union never stopped deducting membership dues after she requested to be a nonmember in October of 2022 and that they never provided an audit. She is being represented by the National Right to Work Foundation, which provided legal counsel in the Beck decision in 1988. Boland was originally represented by Teamsters Local 677, which organized in 2006, but that union was disbanded and replaced with Local 671 in September of 2022. Boland had been paying fees, not full union dues, to Local 677 before it was replaced, according to the charges filed with NLRB.
Opinion: Florida Bill Would Make Government Unions More Transparent, Accountable
March 9, 2023 // The “Paycheck Protection Bill” includes language that would, among other things: prevent the state from deducting dues on behalf of unions from public employees’ paychecks, forcing unions to do their own billing and collections; require audits of unions representing public employees; require union membership cards to include wording echoing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which recognized the right of public employees to decline union membership, dues, and fees with no loss of representation or benefits; and, perhaps most significantly, the bill establishes a new threshold and closes some unintended loopholes in a 2018 law that forces certification elections in situations where more than half of the bargaining unit has refused to support the union. These elections allow all employees who are represented by the union an opportunity to vote on whether the union will be allowed to continue representing them.
AZ University Workers Ask for Better Pay, Working Conditions
January 3, 2023 // The United Campus Workers of Arizona group says contingent faculty make up the majority of all faculty appointments at both schools. Reed said that means being hired on short-term contracts with no guarantee of renewal. "There is a lot of precarity in these teaching positions," said Reed, "and that, of course, influences students' learning, so that students can't really count on having instructors teaching particular courses. There's just a lot of uncertainty." The union members want more job stability in the form of multi-year contracts, as well as paths to promotion. UCW Arizona is collecting signatures before presenting the petitions to each university's respective president and the Arizona Board of Regents
Michigan teachers unions continue to shed members
December 9, 2022 // The latest report from the state’s largest education union shows that the Michigan Education Association shed 1,000 members since the previous year, continuing a trend. The number comes from the LM-2, a financial report the MEA and other labor unions must file with the U.S. government. According to the report, MEA’s revenue decreased to $84.2 million, and its membership stands at its lowest in at least 22 years. Michigan has a right-to-work law, which prevents unions from getting a worker fired for not paying union dues or fees. When the law was enacted in 2012, the MEA had 117,265 members. The number has dropped consistently in the last ten years, reaching to 79,839, a 31.9% decline.
Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Bolster Union Power
September 13, 2022 // Twenty-seven states have right-to-work laws on the books which prohibit unions and employers from requiring workers to pay fees to a union. In practice, this means that workers who reap the benefits of being represented by a union can still decline to support the union’s work financially. This deprives unions of the funds they need operate—weakening their power to bargain for better conditions on behalf of their members. Rep. Brad Sherman,
Hundreds of Minnesota Mayo Clinic Nurses Seek Vote to Free Themselves of Unwanted Union ‘Representation’
June 27, 2022 // Brittany Burgess, a registered nurse of the Mayo Clinic, filed the petition. The request seeking to end MNA union officials’ monopoly bargaining powers at the Mayo Clinic was signed by more than two hundred nurses in the bargaining unit, well over the number needed to trigger an NLRB-conducted secret ballot vote to remove the union. Mankato, Minnesota Nurses Association, Brittany Burgess,
Workers shouldn’t be forced to fund union politics
June 2, 2022 // Without worker protections in Janus or right-to-work legislation, private-sector employees in Washington can be legally obligated to pay any union dues or fees. The Beck decision at least attempts to protect workers from financing politics with which they disagree. It will be interesting to see the court’s response to Zueger.