Posts tagged firefighters
VA severs ties with most federal unions, terminating worker contracts
August 7, 2025 // Veterans Affairs leaders on Wednesday announced plans to terminate nearly all of its collective bargaining contracts with federal unions, upending employment agreements for hundreds of thousands of department workers. The move affects members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Unveiling Financial Transparency Failures in Labor Organizations
July 24, 2025 // In 2024 alone, the DOL recorded 177 union enforcement actions involving fraud, embezzlement, wire fraud, and falsified records. These are only the crimes that rise to the level of federal prosecution. Far more ethical violations, financial misuses, and questionable behaviors fall below the radar leaving union members in the dark and are quietly buried through internal repayments, hush resignations, or legal threats — all without any formal DOL investigation or public accountability. Despite 16 years as a union official, I did not become aware of the existence of LM-2 financial disclosure filings until our local filed a lawsuit against our state affiliate. Imagine that: even as a union president and past treasurer, I was unaware that both our state and national unions were required to submit LM-2 forms to the Department of Labor. If someone like me — deeply engaged in union governance — was kept in the dark, how can we expect average members to know their rights, much less exercise them?
Union warns Trump’s rapid changes for wildland firefighters will be ‘disastrous,’
June 27, 2025 // The Forest Service said no full-time wildland firefighters were removed from their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s workforce reductions. But as wildfire season ramps up, the Forest Service is now asking 1,400 former employees with “red cards” — or those who are qualified wildland firefighters despite it not being their main job title — to come back to their jobs temporarily to help with response needs. In the meantime, NFFE is opening the doors to more feedback from its membership to better understand the pitfalls and the opportunities of consolidating the federal programs.
Grand Forks International Airport Firefighters Vote to Unionize for Expected Benefits
May 23, 2025 // At a Thursday, May 15, Airport Authority Board meeting, it was announced that the firefighters had voted to unionize. Among the benefits that led them to make this decision, according to Burrows, were additional training opportunities, additional health benefits, access to an international peer group, the ability to support research regarding firefighter safety — such as cancer and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — as well as the ability to participate in charitable events like the Fill the Boot campaign and Toys for Tots.
SeeThroughNY Updated With 1,000+ Latest Union Contracts
May 18, 2025 // New York’s most comprehensive online database of state and local government union contracts has been updated with the latest collective bargaining agreements for local teachers, police, firefighters, libraries, and public authorities. Among the 1,006 new local government and school district public employee union and employment contracts on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website, are 126 public school teacher association contracts, 124 Superintendent contracts, 95 police contracts, and 18 firefighter contracts.
The AFL-CIO Doesn’t Need To Lobby — It Has Its Own Caucus Now
May 6, 2025 // It was billed as a press conference announcing a new legislative caucus — but the real headliners weren’t the lawmakers. When more than 30 Democratic legislators gathered on April 30 to unveil their “Blue Collar Caucus,” they quickly stepped aside and handed the microphone — and the spotlight — to Connecticut AFL-CIO President Ed Hawthorne and Building Trades President Joe Toner. The union bosses weren’t just there to show support — they were the main event, delivering lengthy remarks packed with labor talking points, many of which now appear in the caucus’s legislative agenda and are posted proudly on its website.
LA firefighters union leaders suspended after audit finds $800,000 in undocumented spending
May 6, 2025 // A more extensive audit was ordered, revealing that Escobar had spent more than $300,000 on his union credit card between July 2018 and November 2024. Kelly said there was no way to determine that the funds were used for “legitimate union expenditures.” Auditors had warned union leadership in March 2024 there were “significant deficiencies” in the local's financial practices. Escobar spent more than $70,000 without submitting a single receipt that year. A former treasurer, Domingo Albarran, was also found to have spent more than $300,000 over about five years without documentation of the expenditures, according to the letter.
LAFD union boss who blamed lack of funds for limited response to wildfires took home $500,000 in pay and overtime
May 1, 2025 // But even as Escobar was denouncing reductions in workforce and budgets, he was pulling in more than $500,000 a year. He had also helped secure four years of pay raises for the city's 3,300 firefighters with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. He saved the cushiest carve-outs for himself and other top union leaders, a new report from the Los Angeles Times claimed. Most of the union's top brass padded their paychecks with overtime on top of six-figure union stipends.
‘Trump and Musk are setting the example’: how companies are becoming emboldened to be more anti-union
April 10, 2025 // That tougher behavior under former president Ronald Reagan sped the decline of private sector unions. Today, just 6% of private sector workers are in unions, while 32% of public sector workers are. Anti-union ideologues are increasingly targeting public sector unions, which often support Democrats. “Because almost half of the labor movement is now in the public sector, the assault that we’re seeing now is really focused on the public sector,” McCartin said. “That really threatens to break the spine of the labor movement.”
Trump signs executive order to end collective bargaining at agencies involved with national security
March 27, 2025 // President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions in agencies with national security missions across the federal government, citing authority granted him under a 1978 law. The order, signed without public fanfare and announced late Thursday, appears to touch most of the federal government. Affected agencies include the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security.