Posts tagged Kamala Harris
Federal Employee Union Membership is Up 20%
March 29, 2023 // The task force asked federal agencies to foster collaborative relationships with their union partners, involve labor organizations in predecisional policy discussions, and remove barriers from unions trying to increase their membership or organize new bargaining units. The group recommended that the Office of Personnel Management instruct agencies to provide information on whether job openings are represented by unions and encourage agencies to provide unions more opportunities to communicate with new hires. In a blog post last week, the vice president’s office announced that just a year after agencies began implementing the task force’s recommendations, the initiative is already paying dividends: over the last year, nearly 80,000 federal employees have joined a union, increasing the total number of dues paying union members at federal agencies by 20%. And in the private sector, petitions for union representation increased 53% from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2022, while overall union membership grew by 273,000 last year.
White House touts ‘significant results’ of task force after 80,000 feds opt to join a union
March 21, 2023 // Federal unions saw a roughly 20% increase in bargaining unit membership governmentwide, with close to 80,000 feds joining a union between September 2021 and September 2022, according to a March 17 update from the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. The Biden administration credited the “significant results” to the work of the task force, a group that President Joe Biden created through an April 2021 executive order seeking to strengthen collective bargaining rights for federal employees. Following the initial executive order, the task force, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, laid out 70 recommendations to improve labor-management relations for the federal workforce. Similar to the first priority of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the task force said it aims to position the federal government as a model employer, including through worker empowerment.
The Unionization Rate Went, Uh, Down?
January 26, 2023 // Meanwhile, unionization in the private sector is 6.0 percent (down from 6.1 percent in 2021). Perhaps this is because median weekly earnings among union members rose $47 in 2002, compared to a rise of $54 among non-union workers. This is the latest year in a declining union earnings premium that reached as much as 30 percent in 2007 but was just over 18 percent in 2022
California Gov. Gavin Newsom approves farmworker unionization law
September 30, 2022 // The new law will allow farmworkers who provide much of the nation's fruits and vegetables to vote by mail in union elections as an alternative to physical locations. Proponents say that would help protect workers from union busting and other intimidation, while owners say such a system lacks necessary safeguards to prevent fraud. It will give owners a choice between “a flawed mail-ballot scheme or ... an unsupervised card-check scheme,” said the California Farm Bureau Federation in opposition before Newsom announced the agreement on additional safeguards. Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong,
Fact Checking Secretary Walsh
June 14, 2022 // Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will make some big claims at this morning’s Education and Labor Committee hearing. Education and Labor Committee Republicans is setting the record straight: Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, multiemployer pension plans, Federal Drug Administration,
President Biden says Amazon union organizer Christian Smalls is his ‘kind of trouble’ and ‘let’s not stop’
May 12, 2022 // The White House visit came as a swell of organizing sweeps across retail stores from Starbucks to REI to Apple. Biden has repeatedly declared that he intends to be "most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history.
NLRB stretches its wings under Biden’s appointees
May 10, 2022 // What Biden may ultimately hang his hat on are his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, where, in addition to swinging the board back to a Democratic-appointed majority, Biden booted GOP General Counsel Peter Robb and put in Jennifer Abruzzo.
Sanders’ pro-union budget committee hearing shows Democrats’ true agenda
May 6, 2022 // Ranking Member Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) observation during the hearing was exactly correct — under Sanders’s direction, the Senate Budget Committee has taken a dangerous and partisan turn. Instead of focusing on issues under jurisdiction, Sanders would prefer to use his chairmanship as a bully pulpit to push a pro-union agenda and target companies he dislikes for purely political reasons.
White House to host union organizers at Amazon, Starbucks
May 5, 2022 // The meeting is to discuss "their extraordinary efforts to organize unions in their workplaces, and how their efforts can inspire workers across the country to make the choice to join or organize a union," the official added.
Bernie Sanders Announces Wasteful, Politicized Senate Budget Hearing
May 5, 2022 // In reality, this hearing is designed to paint a single company in a bad light and gin up momentum for the nascent Amazon Labor Union (ALU). By any fair measure, this hearing is outside the Budget Committee’s jurisdiction and is part of a government-wide effort to expand organized labor’s power at the expense of American workers.