Posts tagged House Education and Workforce Committee
Faster Labor Contracts Act passes House after GOP rebels join Democrats
June 10, 2026 // The bill, though, exposed a trend of more populist Republicans bucking House leadership and free-market conservative groups that had been traditional allies of the GOP. Steven Bernstein, co-chair of the Fisher Phillips law firm’s labor relations practice group, said in a statement ahead of the vote that the legislation if enacted would “lead to a sea change in the country’s well-established labor dynamic by taking away the rights of employers and unions to decide for themselves what goes into their initial collective bargaining agreements.”
Education and Workforce Committee Passes 3 Bills to Expand Flexibility, Boost Earnings, and Hasten Back Pay
November 25, 2025 // On Thursday, the House Education and Workforce Committee passed three bills to boost flexibility, wages, and efficiency for workers. These three bills would modernize the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to provide flexibility for workers, simplicity for tipped employees, and more efficient resolutions to payroll errors. Importantly, none of these provisions will cost taxpayers a single dime because they simply remove unnecessary barriers to flexibility and higher pay. In fact, at least one of the bills would likely save taxpayers from unnecessary administrative costs.
Federal probe demands Chicago Teachers Union explain missing financial audits since 2020
November 24, 2025 // The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is under investigation by the House Education and Workforce Committee for allegedly failing to show how it has spent union members’ money over the past five years, according to a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. The committee sent a letter to CTU President Stacy Davis Gates stating that evidence suggests the union failed to provide members with complete financial audits since 2020. "When unions flout these obligations, they betray the trust of the very people they are meant to serve … Every dollar paid by workers should serve their interests, not those of a select few operating in the shadows," the letter said.
House GOP panel accuses nation’s largest teachers union of exploiting members’ retirement benefits
September 29, 2025 // Committee Chairman Tim Walberg of Michigan and committee members Rick Allen of Georgia, Kevin Kiley of California and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina shared a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that showed retirement services provider Security Benefit paid the nation’s largest teachers’ union a $4 million annual “base fee” for the exclusive right to sell annuities and mutual funds to teachers in 2023-24. They noted that Department of Labor reports show the NEA receiving more than $61 million in “service level agreement” or “advertising revenue” since 2005, even as the union maintains in its 2024 SEC filing that it received “no dividends, royalties, profit, or licensing fees” from Security Benefit.
Walberg Presses Union Chapter on Hiring of Child Molester
September 23, 2025 // Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) sent a letter to the president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 87, Olga Miranda, demanding information on its hiring practices after reports that the chapter employed convicted child molester Noelia Linares. SEIU’s website highlights that it is the second largest union of public service employees with more than 1 million local and state government workers, public school employees, bus drivers, and child care providers. This letter comes after the SEIU national office failed to provide an adequate response to a June letter demanding answers regarding both local and national procedures and policies for the union’s hiring of registered sex offenders. Instead, SEIU’s response left it to SEIU locals to defend their own actions.
EXCLUSIVE: Congress Asks Union About Blunder That Reportedly Sent About $80 Million Down The Toilet
September 16, 2025 // United Auto Workers (UAW) has not disclosed what happened to $340 million it used to cover strike costs in 2023 while promising to reinvest the funds, the House Education and Workforce Committee told the union in a letter scheduled to be sent Thursday. The committee is requesting documents and information on the alleged blunder, which angry UAW officials claimed cost an estimated $80 million in potential gains, according to a Reuters report cited in the letter. Failing to reinvest the funds may have violated UAW’s fiduciary duty under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), ushered in higher dues, led to lesser strike benefits for members and made them miss out on stock market surges that followed President Donald Trump’s reelection in November, according to the letter.
The Importance of Protecting Portable Benefits
August 19, 2025 // The modern gig economy employs about 75 million workers. The provision of benefits is, of course, a positive for these freelance workers – so if businesses wish to provide them, they should be able to do so without fear of misclassification lawsuits. In short, Congress should consider these bills as a positive for both the millions of gig workers and the businesses that wish to provide them competitive benefits packages.
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.
Michael Watson: Improving Union Annual Reporting
July 3, 2025 // Especially following the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which “collection” is funding what spending is important information for union members, and they deserve ready, single-site access. (Citizens United overturned a Taft-Hartley Act–derived ban on using union dues revenues for independent expenditures on behalf of candidates.) They should not need to cross-reference Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports and Labor Department reports to infer which pot of money paid for which spending. Instead, the Labor Department or Congress should revise the LM-2 form to require labor unions to specify the funding source, perhaps by adding a new schedule for expenditures to or by the “Separate Segregated Fund” (the technical name for the “second collection” pot of money) or by requiring specification of the source of funds for Schedule 16 and 17 expenditures related to politics and advocacy.
Walberg, Allen Seek Feedback on Path to Give Rank-And-File Workers a Bigger Voice in Unions
May 28, 2025 // “Too often, rank‑and‑file workers lack the timely information and meaningful voice they need to hold elected leaders accountable for both fiscal and political decisions. Recent misconduct cases, ranging from embezzlement to unauthorized political expenditures, underscore the need for a modernized framework that prioritizes the rights of individual members to hold union leadership accountable and that provides individual union members with more control over how labor organizations operate.”