Posts tagged Harrisburg
LNP, WITF journalists to vote on unionizing
February 3, 2025 // Not everyone in the newsrooms is in favor of affiliating with a union. Michael Long, 51, an LNP | LancasterOnline deputy editor, said he will be voting no. “Across the board, unions decrease profitability,” Long said in an email to LNP | LancasterOnline colleagues. “And if you take away money from an organization that is already losing money, it will only hasten more layoffs.” When grievances occur, Long said in a followup interview, “there’s nothing stopping us from making concerted, good-faith efforts to address them ourselves with management.”
Opinion: These powerful unions helped flip the Pennsylvania House
May 4, 2023 // Union executives’ political spending continues to break records. For the first time in Pennsylvania history, government unions’ combined political action committee spending surpassed $20 million in one election cycle, more than triple what they spent a decade ago. By comparison, the record-breaking spending in the seven-way Pennsylvania Supreme Court race in 2015 reached a total of $15.8 million across all candidates from all parties. For the governor’s race alone, public sector union executives gave nearly $5.5 million in direct political contributions to Josh Shapiro’s campaign. Three unions in particular — the commonwealth’s largest teacher union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and two national unions representing state workers, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — reported more than $1 million each. It’s no coincidence that Shapiro must soon sit down and bargain with SEIU and AFSCME executives and that the PSEA expects huge returns in terms of state funding.
Harrisburg pizza shop shuts down; employees had filed to unionize
August 25, 2022 // Knead Pizza announced on social media sites its decision to shut both its original location in the Broad Street Market and Knead Slice Shop at the corner of N. 3rd and Boas streets. In addition, Knead, which was founded in 2016, was in the process of opening a third location on Cameron Street in Harrisburg.
More than 1,000 Pennsylvania workers quit AFSCME union in 2021
March 28, 2022 //
Stephen Bloom: Reforms would reduce corruption and restore workers’ rights
February 14, 2022 // It is illegal for any other organization or individual to use taxpayer resources for campaign politics, but government unions have an exemption from rules designed to prevent corruption. Thanks in large part to this special privilege, these unions are one of the largest, most powerful special interest groups in Pennsylvania.