Posts tagged International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Unions that paralyzed New York commute over pay spent millions on luxury travel, filings show
May 21, 2026 // The disclosures offer a window into how the unions spent money on travel, conferences and event venues during the same year they argued workers were being squeezed by rising costs. The strike disrupted hundreds of thousands of daily riders and cost the region an estimated $61 million per day. LM-2 forms are annual financial disclosure reports that labor unions file with the Department of Labor, detailing receipts, disbursements, officer payments and other spending. Fox News Digital reviewed 2025 LM-2 forms filed with the Labor Department by the five unions involved in the LIRR strike, identifying payments to hotels that market themselves as premium, resorts, casinos and restaurants where menu prices sit above typical casual dining costs.
Johnny Doc took the stand and asked a federal judge to release him from prison early to care for his ailing wife
May 20, 2026 // Dougherty, 65, was sentenced in 2024 to six years in prison after being convicted in separate trials — the first in 2021, after a jury found that he had spent years bribing former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon, the second in 2023 over nearly $600,000 he and others embezzled from the union. The former leader of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Dougherty was known as a gregarious and chatty political player, with influence from City Hall to Harrisburg. And some of those traits were evident during Monday’s hearing, including the fact that one of the spectators in a crowded gallery was his brother, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty. John Dougherty’s testimony was also reminiscent of the freewheeling style he displayed before he was incarcerated. He delivered long anecdotes about his wife’s condition, which dates back to 1999, and described ways in which he sought to care for her, including by living with her at rehabilitation facilities for years before his federal indictment.
Op-ed: Kathy Hochul and Bruce Blakeman must BOTH stand up to the union thugs threatening an LIRR strike
April 28, 2026 // To avoid a strike, the agency generously offered pay hikes of 4.5% in the fourth year, but the unions would have to agree to fix some perverse work rules to produce savings. Under one rule, for example, an engineer who operates a diesel train and an electric train on the same day must be paid for two days.
Long Island Rail Road Strike Looms, as M.T.A. and Unions Reach Impasse
April 13, 2026 // Five unions representing more than 3,500 workers have threatened for months to walk off the job unless they receive bigger raises than other divisions of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the railroad. The unions, which represent engineers, machinists, signalmen and other jobs critical to the rail operation, are seeking a retroactive 9.5 percent wage increase covering the last three years — the same offered to many other New York transit and civil servant unions. But they also want an additional 5 percent raise starting in 2026. The M.T.A. has argued that such a divergence in pay would upset the typical pattern for wage increases established with other groups, and would not be feasible unless the unions compromised on other aspects of the contract.
Opinion: Labor relations group: Big labor Virginia state senator spins anti-right-to-work fables
January 6, 2026 // Right-to-Work is overwhelmingly popular with the commonwealth’s citizens, and states with such laws typically enjoy far faster employment growth and substantially higher cost-of-living-adjusted disposable incomes than forced-dues states.
Unions Winning Nearly 80% of Elections, But Fewer Elections are Held
January 2, 2026 // Unions also fared more favorably in elections in which employees filed a petition to decertify (vote out) the union—unions won 41% of those elections. When the company filed a petition to vote out the union, unions won 78%, a remarkable win rate considering that the reason employers file such a petition is because of objective evidence of employee dissatisfaction with the union. Among the most prolific filers, the Teamsters saw 195 election petitions to a vote, winning 71% of the contests. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was an option in 152 elections and won 83% of them. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers won 89% of the 75 representation elections they contested.
Union Bosses Admit They Spent $1.8 Billion on Politics in the 2024 Election Cycle — The Real Number is Likely Over $28 Billion
December 19, 2025 // It is nearly impossible to produce perfectly accurate figures from the LM-2 because subsidiary unions file separate forms from the larger national unions they fall under, and transactions between these unions could be listed multiple times in the data. This only worsens the problems of inconsistent and potentially inaccurate reporting mentioned above. The LM-2 does not lend itself to a precise analysis of union boss spending, but it does give a sense of its scale. When sympathetic media outlets report unions’ political influence in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars that is a dramatic underrepresentation.
As an LIRR Strike Looms, the Empire Center Publishes the Disputed Contracts
September 14, 2025 // According to figures provided by the MTA, the engineers’ current average wage of $49.92 per hour is 7 percent higher than the industry norm. With overtime, LIRR engineers collected an average of more than $160,000 in 2025. The agency said negotiations have stalled because the unions are demanding 16 percent in pay raises over the next three years, which is 6.5 points more than what other MTA bargaining units previously agreed to.
Labor board denies union election for O’Connell Children’s Shelter residential staff
April 4, 2025 // “This campaign, it’s already been delayed by like six months, and at this point, if we were to appeal with all of the crazy stuff happening at the federal level and in the NLRB right now, due to the Trump administration, they’ve already got a backlog of appeals to go through, and we just don’t know how much time it could actually be and if it would be worth it,” she said. This was the fourth union campaign Smith said she’s worked and the first one where she’s seen supervisory taint stall unionization efforts. She and her colleagues were shocked by the decision.
Unionization effort fails at south Sacramento manufacturing plant
March 17, 2025 // Workers voted 838 to 538 against unionizing in an election Thursday. A Siemens spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning. The workers attempted to organize under the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 549 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, in a group called Siemens Workers United.