Posts tagged Josh Shapiro
PENNSYLVANIA: Shapiro Appoints Teachers’ Union Fox to Oversee PA’s Pension Henhouse
November 30, 2023 // espite that huge infusion of money, however, the plan reported a $40 billion deficit, and retirees had not seen a benefit increase in nine years. Meanwhile, according to The Inquirer, PSERS “is still paying lawyers to deal with the fallout of a scandal touched off by an exaggerated profit report and scrutinized land deals. More than $6 million has been paid already, and ongoing litigation suggests an internal probe that coincided with investigations by federal authorities left some unanswered questions. The PSERS fund is also offloading $1.4 billion in “directly owned real estate,” some of it priced at a loss, but officials wouldn't say how much of the proceeds would go to the agency or how it might be reinvested.”
Opinion: Radical Unions Elected Biden, Chaos Ensues on International Front, but Others Bank on Same Formula
October 26, 2023 // Additionally, Biden unveiled a $400 billion American Jobs Plan designed to force thousands of Medicaid home healthcare providers back into the union membership they declined following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Harris v. Quinn. Unofficially, Biden waited weeks to survey the damage in fire-ravaged Hawaii and still hasn’t visited East Palestine, Ohio, where a 38-car train wreck last February created a huge hazardous waste disaster. But he saw fit to wade into a private-sector labor dispute by siding with the striking United Auto Workers and became the first sitting president in history to join a picket line.
Commentary: Dem Governors Buy Union Backing — Just Like Biden
August 30, 2023 // In the backrooms where such deals are cut, buying a politician’s favor is called “influence peddling,” and President Biden, for all his seeming cognitive lapses, has been playing the game with ruthless aplomb for decades. Now he may be handing the baton to a younger, faster competitor. Recent history has shown the presidency itself can be bought if you control a big enough infusion of someone else’s dues dollars — and the promise to pay it all back with interest from the public treasury.
OPINION: Pritzker risks bankrupting Illinois to curry favor with Big Labor
August 14, 2023 // Members of AFSCME Council 31 eagerly voted in local union meetings over the past two weeks to ratify the contract, which negotiators had tentatively agreed to on July 1. And who could blame them? The contract also includes a $1,200 “stipend” paid to every worker merely for ratifying the contract. Pritzker, a Democrat, included these bonuses in his last contract negotiation in 2019, ostensibly to compensate workers for the financial “hardship” of being state employees under his Republican predecessor, Bruce Rauner. Predictably, such payoffs have now become standard operating procedure. The governor celebrated his and AFSCME’s windfall by tweeting out, “Illinois is a pro-worker state through and through.” The pronouncement was eerily reminiscent of Biden’s one-time campaign promise to become the “most pro-union president you ever saw.”
Despite President Joe Biden’s repeated boasts, union membership continues to fall
July 18, 2023 // Union members do not always agree with Democrats on policy matters. Biden's own green energy agenda is coming up against labor resistance, with organized auto workers prepared to strike over the hazards and lack of benefits in electric vehicle production. Biden must also work to keep blue-collar union members from slipping into the Republican column as candidates like former President Donald Trump play up American manufacturing and the virtues of import tariffs. But more recent headlines showcase unions fighting their traditional battles over pay, benefits, and worker protections.
Gov. Shapiro, Choose School Choice Over Union Power Grabs
May 18, 2023 // Government union PACs spent more than $20 million in Pennsylvania during the 2021–22 election cycle. More than 92 percent of those contributions went to Democratic candidates and causes. The money helped Democrats gain a majority in the state’s House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. House Democrats, plus one lone Republican, have now backed the top priority of union executives. House Bill 950, a proposed constitutional amendment that would impose union mandates on employees who do not necessarily share the political agenda of union leaders, passed 102 to 99 on May 3. The bill takes its inspiration from a law out of Illinois that prohibits elected officials from advancing right-to-work initiatives that safeguard First Amendment rights. Josh Shapiro, the commonwealth’s Democratic governor who took office in January, has been a consistent opponent of right-to-work laws. However, he has not yet publicly commented on the push for union mandates in the current legislative session.
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.
Pennsylvania Government Union Political Spending Skyrockets Even as Membership Declines
March 23, 2023 // “At a time when government unions are losing membership due to partisan political spending, government union executives have really decided to double down on the partisan political spending,” CF policy analyst Andrew Holman told The Pennsylvania Daily Star. “The recent data shows this. They’re using millions of dollars collected with taxpayer resources to fund these political-advocacy activities and I think that, really, members of government unions need to be aware of where their money is going and what their unions are advocating for.” Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro is a prime example of a Pennsylvania pol enjoying overwhelming advantage in this political-spending category. Government unions bestowed over $5.5 million on his 2022 campaign while state Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) garnered a mere $1,000 from these associations while running against him. Public-sector labor money was only slightly less lopsided between the candidates for lieutenant governor: Democrat Austin Davis raised $77,000 from these groups while his GOP state House colleague Carrie Lewis Delrosso got only $1,550 from them.