Posts tagged Franklin D. Roosevelt
Stacked Deck: How the NLRA Favors Organized Labor and Fails Workers
March 4, 2026 // Today we find a law of unintended consequences. The interests of the workers are often buried under legal precedents and arcane labor rules that make it hard, if not impossible, to make informed decisions regarding unionization. Moreover, the NLRA’s legal landscape is unpredictable and so complex that only the largest employers have a chance of successfully navigating it.
Opinion: Did Biden save unions? Now we have numbers.
February 23, 2026 // Local government employs more union workers than any other industry, by a lot. State government is the next largest employer. The category education and health services comes next, and even though it’s counted as a private industry, most of those jobs are closely connected to government programs. The federal government has more union members than the entire manufacturing sector.
You paid $181 million for union bosses to negotiate against you in 2024, but the Trump administration is doing something about it
February 19, 2026 // Even the “usual” topics of labor-relations negotiations are not part of federal bargaining. As Molly Conway, who served as Chief of Staff to the Department of Labor in the first Trump administration, wrote in a primer for the Institute for the American Worker: Management rights and any matters “specifically provided for by Federal statute” are not bargainable. This includes pay, health insurance, retirement, and certain workplace insurance (e.g., workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance), among others. [citations omitted]
Trump Hasn’t Undone Workers’ Union Rights Op-ed: Maxford Nelsen
January 2, 2026 // The presidents of both the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Government Employees both praised the House vote as necessary to “restore” federal workers’ “union rights.” But nothing in Mr. Trump’s order limits federal employees’ right to form or join a union. It simply eliminates the legal obligation of certain federal agencies to negotiate their “personnel policies, practices and matters . . . affecting working conditions” with unelected special interests. The distinction matters, as unions admit in other contexts. South Carolina, in which state and local governments can’t engage in collective bargaining, still has a teachers union that is quick to remind teachers that they can join and fork over dues money.
WSJ Op-ed: Republicans for Federal Worker Collective Bargaining
December 15, 2025 // The 20 GOP union abettors are Don Bacon (Neb.), Mike Bost (Ill.); Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie (Pa.); Gabe Evans (Colo.); Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Michael Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.); David Joyce and Michael Turner (Ohio); Thomas Kean Jr., Christopher Smith and Jefferson Van Drew (N.J.); Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zachary Nunn (Iowa); Pete Stauber (Minn.); David Valadao (Calif.) and Derrick Van Orden (Wis.). Many of these Republicans represent swing districts, but making government less efficient and responsive to the American people is unlikely to help them win re-election.
Editorial Board: America’s veterans deserve better care than government unions provide
December 8, 2025 // The smarter approach would be for Congress to affirm Trump’s decision to strip collective bargaining rights while dispensing with his flimsy national security justification. Consider the legacy of pro-union President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who opposed collective bargaining and strikes for federal employees. As Roosevelt and other pro-union leaders understood in the 1930s, collective bargaining is carried out against an employer. The government’s employer is the public. Allowing unelected labor union bosses to negotiate against the public’s elected representatives to determine how the government gets run is undemocratic.
MAXFORD NELSEN: The Other Education Choice: Freeing Teachers from Monopolistic Unions
November 17, 2025 // Public-sector collective bargaining tends to crowd out the interests of students, families, and taxpayers in education policymaking, but teachers unions’ power comes from subjecting teachers to a monopoly system of workplace restrictions. While individual educators now have the legal right to forgo union membership, state policymakers have many opportunities to improve educators’ ability to exercise that right. To level the playing field and increase teachers unions’ accountability to the public and their own members, policymakers should consider reforming or replacing collective bargaining in public education.
Editorial: Unions share blame for layoff fallout
November 1, 2025 // "To date, the Stamford law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell has been paid $50.8 million for representing the unions and the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, according to the state comptroller's office," Mr. Hughes wrote. "The settlement set attorney fees at 17.5% of the total damages each class member receives," extrapolating "to roughly $290 million in compensatory and economic damages." Union attorney Jonathan M. Levine figured the actual payouts amounted to between $190 million and $215 million.
This Federal Bureaucrat Allegedly Lied About Taking Money From His Union
September 27, 2025 // The indictment, obtained by The Daily Signal, also alleges that Lendo “did take and carry away, with intent to steal and purloin, money from one or more bank accounts, of a value exceeding $1,000” between July 18, 2014, and July 30, 2021. Lendo was no longer serving as president of the union in May, according to the Department of Labor. As recently as August, Lendo listed the VA as his employer when giving $150 to the AFGE’s political action committee.
Op-ed: Trump Is Right to Take On the Federal-Worker Unions
September 4, 2025 // Today, only 6 percent of private sector workers are union members. Virtually the only unions that are growing are public sector unions — such as the teachers’ unions. Today, more than one in three government workers in the U.S. belongs to a union. But over 85 percent of those work at the state and local level — not in the federal government. That makes it vital for states to follow President Trump’s lead — along with that of states like Wisconsin — and end collective bargaining for their public employees.