Posts tagged Josh Hawley
UTAH, Opinion: Republicans Need to Learn Government Unions Can’t Be Trusted
March 3, 2025 // On Feb. 14, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law I sponsored banning public-sector collective bargaining. This makes Utah the best state in the nation for protecting taxpayers and ensuring that government employees can negotiate their own employment terms. But this victory came only after fruitless attempts to work with government unions—efforts that exposed their pattern of saying one thing while doing another. In early 2024, I introduced a bill that would have required public-sector unions to hold regular recertification elections. As I argued at the time, unions representing teachers, firefighters and police should have to prove continuously that they represent a majority of workers. Taxpayers, too, have a stake: If a union doesn’t speak for most employees, why should the rest of the state be on the hook for its demands?
Sanders and Hawley’s Interest Rate Cap Would Ban Their Union Allies’ Credit Cards
February 10, 2025 // They should have checked with their union boss pals before taking such a position. Many major labor unions have deals with banks to offer branded credit cards as a member benefit. Some of them can charge interest rates in excess of the 25 percent rate Sanders finds extortionate, and nearly all of them charge higher than 10 percent. One of the most common credit card partnerships for unions is with Capital One, which offers a Union Plus Mastercard. It is marketed as “Built for Union Members. Backed by Union Members,” and accounts are limited to active or retired union members or their families.
Hawley Sells Moreno on Government Control of Private Contracts
February 7, 2025 // PunchbowlNews has reported that Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) is cosponsoring one of the bills based on Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) recently released legislative framework implementing a “new direction” for Republican labor policy, which ironically appears to consist entirely of provisions stolen from Senator Bernie Sanders’ (D-VT) Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act (S 567, HR 20, 118th Congress) and Senator Markey’s bill that brings the warehouse sector under government control and creates a new subagency at the Department of Labor (Warehouse Worker Protection Act, S 5208, 118th Congress). The framework is expected to be broken down into five pieces, and Moreno is reportedly cosponsoring the legislation that would implement government control over management-union contract negotiations. The legislation, the Faster Labor Contracts Act, requires employers and unions to begin negotiating collective bargaining agreements within 10 days after a union wins a representation election and execute their agreement within months
Republicans Should Support Workers — Not the Failed Union Model
February 6, 2025 // Senator Hawley’s proposal would prevent workers from hearing both sides before a unionization election, which they would need to make an informed decision. Employers would be prohibited from holding meetings with workers. Unions would also be able to force ambush elections, depriving workers of time to do their own research and make up their minds. And, like the PRO Act, the proposal would even give unelected federal bureaucrats the power to force union contracts on workers, employers, and even unions.
While Sean O’Brien Attacks Credit Card Companies, Teamsters Make Millions from High-Interest Card
February 5, 2025 // O’Brien is likely fine with this apparent hypocrisy because the Teamsters get paid handsomely by Capital One to promote the card. Disclosure forms filed with the Department of Labor show that the Teamsters received from Capital One $1.28 million in 2023, $1.52 million in 2022, and $1.5 million in 2021.
Scoop: GOP fight coming over labor unions
January 31, 2025 // The senator pitched his bill at a dinner Tuesday night with Teamsters president Sean O'Brien and a small group of Republican senators — Roger Marshall of Kansas, Jim Banks of Indiana, and Ohio's Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, sources familiar said. "We look forward to advancing meaningful legislation for working people this Congress," Hawley's office told Axios.
COMMENTARY: The SEIU and the Teamsters Changed to Lose
January 16, 2025 // Give O’Brien credit as an adversary; he is at least trying something new, even if it is for the same old Big Labor policy program of forced dues, forced representation, rigid work rules, and government control of the economy. His shift in tone—only tone—has already paid dividends for him and his fellow union bosses, including such left-wing luminaries as Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, in the coming second Trump administration.
Republican Senator Surprises Employers By Releasing Framework for Pro-Labor Bill: 7 Key Sections to Track
January 15, 2025 // Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) “Pro-Worker Framework,” revealed on January 10, calls for pro-labor changes historically advocated for by Democrats and mirrors many aspects of the proposed PRO Act that has been long championed by labor leaders. Is this the beginning of a true labor revolution that will upend the traditional status quo, a plan destined to go nowhere, or something in between?
Missouri Republicans are reaching out to the state’s trade unions, but some workers are wary
October 10, 2024 // Bernie Ryan, an electrician with the St. Louis-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said fans of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump sometimes encounter hostility at worksites. He recalled a situation where a pro-Trump electrician received a chilly reception inside a construction trailer. “If you’re a Trump voter and an electrician, you would know just to keep his mouth shut and save it for at home,” Ryan said. “But there's other trades that are different from mine where it's more prevalent.”
“Warehouse Worker Protection Act” Reintroduced with Bipartisan Support
October 2, 2024 // The bill imposes restrictions on employers’ use of productivity quotas to measure workers’ performance or output and includes substantial notice requirements to workers on the use of such quotas, discipline for failing to meet the quotas, and workers’ rights under the act, among other things. It mandates breaks for covered workers and recordkeeping obligations for employers. The WWPA also requires the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue two new rulemakings and creates a new category of unfair labor practices under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). It also expands the federal bureaucracy by creating a Quota Task Force as well as the Fairness and Transparency Office within the Department of Labor. This legislation is a thinly-veiled attack on large companies like Amazon that the Democratic Party and labor organizations do not support. The original sponsors of the WWPA were Senators Markey, Bob Casey (D-PA), and Tina Smith (D-MN). The cosponsors now include Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Hawley, Alex Padilla (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Peter Welch (D-VT).