Posts tagged Kansas
Over 600 workers begin strike at 2 GE Aerospace facilities
September 2, 2025 // The Boeing engine supplier will continue to provide benefits to the striking union members at its sites in Ohio and Kentucky in accordance with the law, according to the company’s website.
Boilermakers sue ex-president, demand he repay union nearly $500,000 he ‘misused’
August 3, 2025 // The Kansas City-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is suing the president it ousted two years ago, demanding that Newton Jones pay back nearly $500,000 of union money it says he misused. Filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the lawsuit says Jones has ignored the union’s order to reimburse the money he’s accused of taking.
General Motors to park $4 billion in its U.S. manufacturing plants over two years
June 11, 2025 // "The new investment will give GM the ability to assemble more than two million vehicles per year in the U.S." the company said in a statement. The announcement comes after GM's (NYSE:GM) recently revealed plan to invest $888 million in the Tonawanda Propulsion plant outside Buffalo, New York, to power GM's next-generation V-8 engine.
Over 1,000 dairy worker Teamsters vote to authorize strike in Colorado, California, other states
June 4, 2025 // The union says just one or two of these strikes could cause supply chain issues. "We know how much money DFA makes, and we know what we deserve," said Peter Rosales, a Local 630 shop steward at Alta Dena Dairy in California. "This company is only successful because of us, and we take pride in our work. All we're asking for is our fair share."
Goldwater Backs Proposal to Rein in Federal Bureaucracy
June 1, 2025 // Goldwater Institute submitted a formal public comment to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in support of a Trump Administration proposal to reclassify thousands of federal employees with policy-influencing roles to at-will employment status. The Institute’s comment makes clear that this is an encouraging step forward to ensure accountability in government, and when necessary, rein in abuses in the federal bureaucracy. States like Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, Utah, and Florida have classified state workers as at-will employees for years. As the Institute noted in its letter, “oversight and accountability are central features of efficient management practices for government employees,” both at the state and federal levels.
Michael Watson: The Union and the Republican Prize Patrol
May 19, 2025 // But as “the union that rules New York” waves goodbye to its self-interested longtime boss, allow me the opportunity to give a brief history lesson, one that should serve as a warning to those Republicans and conservatives who hope to appease unions into political dominance. Because even as he was launching the political careers of leftists like former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), Gresham and his predecessor Dennis Rivera played union whisperer to a now-deceased faction of New York State politics: the Republican “Prize Patrol.”
New Trump civil-service reform rule nearer to going into effect
May 7, 2025 // According to former Department of Labor official Vincent Vernuccio, who is now president of the labor nonprofit Institute for the American Worker, OPM may amend the rule or issue it as it’s proposed, which could happen within the next few weeks or months. “So, you’re talking about 50,000 federal employees—about 2% of the workforce who will become ‘at will’,” Mr. Vernuccio said. “These are still career employees,” he said. “They still have protections. They’re not changing that. It’s just that if they are in a policy-influencing position, they’re ‘at will’, and they can be removed if they’re throwing sand in gears of policy.” He added, “And if they simply don’t want to do their jobs and they don’t want to implement the policies that the people’s duly elected representatives have implemented, they can be removed.”
Backgrounder: Trump Civil Service Reform Proposed Rule
April 27, 2025 // On April 23, 2025, OPM proposed a new rule to improve accountability for federal career employees, especially those in policy roles. The rule implements President Trump’s Executive Order 14171, which he signed on his first day in office. Executive Order 14171 explicitly directed OPM to render civil service regulations implemented during the Biden administration inoperative, citing the President’s authority to manage the executive branch. Among other things, the rule would create a new job category called Schedule Policy/Career in the excepted service for policy-influencing positions, making them at-will employees and, therefore, meaningfully accountable for their performance and conduct.
LETTER: Congress must reject proposed job-killing labor legislation
April 20, 2025 // However, a new threat to Kansas business owners has emerged in the form of a legislative framework that the Institute for the American Worker has dubbed the “PRO Act Lite,” modeled after the failed policies of Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressive lawmakers. While it may come with a new label, the substance remains the same. This proposal would drive up labor costs, stifle economic opportunity, and make it significantly harder for employers to create jobs.
Marshall mum on Senator Hawley’s Pro-Worker framework
March 11, 2025 // According to Vincent Vernuccio, president of the Institute of the American Worker, the Pro-Worker Framework has been largely lifted straight from the PRO Act. “I mean, now I guess the question is, do you refer to most of these provisions as the PRO Act, or do you refer to them as the Pro Act and the Hawley framework?” Vernuccio said in a phone interview. “Because it looks like Senator (Josh) Hawley from Missouri is copying and pasting a bunch of sections into his new framework.” Vernuccio said only one bill related to this has been introduced so far — the “Faster Labor Contracts Act S.844,” which, among other things, deals with government-imposed contracts by binding arbitration — but the Framework has several other provisions indicating that the concepts are copied and pasted directly from the PRO Act.