Posts tagged labor unions
Op-ed: Does Big Labor Truly Represent the American Worker?
September 3, 2025 // But recent Bureau of Labor Statistics reports indicate that less than one in ten workers, and less than one in 16 workers in the private sector, are union members. Meanwhile, almost half of union members work for state, local, and federal governments, even as less than 15 percent of all workers in the U.S. work for government. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that career path, the Union Membership and Coverage Database estimates that union members are more likely to be college-educated than the workforce as a whole.
Chairman Walberg Presses Largest Teachers Union over Pattern of Antisemitism
August 22, 2025 // The Committee on Education and Workforce (Committee) is investigating antisemitism at the National Education Association (NEA), which represents more than three million public school educators and administrators across the United States. Specifically, the Committee is gravely concerned about antisemitic content in the NEA’s 2025 handbook and the NEA Representative Assembly’s vote in July 2025 to ban materials by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This investigation will aid the Committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination within labor unions and to combat antisemitism in federally funded schools, are needed.”
MICHIGAN: Labor unions praise ‘responsible bidder’ ordinances while contractors warn of workforce shortages
July 30, 2025 // But contractors say some elements of the plan would unfairly impact local bidders. Jeremiah Leyba is the director of engineering for the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, which represents more than 500 companies in Michigan. He says not all contractors can easily access federal apprenticeship programs and also rely on trade school diplomas, community college degrees and industry certifications for workforce development. “The city of Lansing would be excluding bidders that are highly qualified, and with dwindling workforces across the state, it is an exclusion no municipality can responsibly afford,” Leyba said. Several localities in Michigan already have responsible bidder ordinances in place, including Jackson, Royal Oak and Detroit.
Supreme Court clears way for Trump to downsize the federal workforce
July 10, 2025 // The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued. “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement.
Michael Watson: Improving Union Annual Reporting
July 3, 2025 // Especially following the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which “collection” is funding what spending is important information for union members, and they deserve ready, single-site access. (Citizens United overturned a Taft-Hartley Act–derived ban on using union dues revenues for independent expenditures on behalf of candidates.) They should not need to cross-reference Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports and Labor Department reports to infer which pot of money paid for which spending. Instead, the Labor Department or Congress should revise the LM-2 form to require labor unions to specify the funding source, perhaps by adding a new schedule for expenditures to or by the “Separate Segregated Fund” (the technical name for the “second collection” pot of money) or by requiring specification of the source of funds for Schedule 16 and 17 expenditures related to politics and advocacy.
Los Angeles tourism industry and labor unions brawl ahead of 2028 Olympics
July 1, 2025 // After the city council passed a $30 minimum wage law in late May for workers in the airline, hotel and hospitality industries, a group of business interests — signed by players in the local hospitality industry and funded by major airlines and industry groups like Delta, United and the American Hotel & Lodging Association — launched a referendum effort to challenge the new law. “We’re giving everything we have to make this business work, to claw out of the hole that was created by COVID,” said Greg Plummer, a referendum proponent who runs a 250-employee concession company at LAX. “Our airports are still down substantially in traffic. Tourism is completely down, and the fires didn’t help … it gets to a point where it’s going to crumble a lot of small businesses.”
Democracy in the Workplace Is Under Threat
June 30, 2025 // The National Labor Relations Board, which the NLRA created, initially agreed with the majority-of-a-unit standard. In a 1936 decision involving Chrysler, the board rejected a unionization election in which only 125 out of an eligible 700 workers had voted. While 97 percent of the voting workers supported organizing, the board rightly concluded that a mere 17 percent of workers didn’t represent the views of the majority. The law’s text required that ruling. But the NLRB reversed course within months, giving a minority of workers the power to determine the majority’s future in a case involving newspaper workers. In a separate decision, the board declared that it couldn’t require a majority of workers to vote in favor of unionization, nor could it require the lower bar of a quorum. The NLRB, in the 1930s, defended its rejection of the law’s plain text by saying that, with a majority requirement, “the purpose of the [NLRA] would be thwarted.” But the board itself is doing the thwarting of workers’ rights and workplace democracy.
Labor Watch: Republicans and the Teamsters, a Bad Relationship
June 12, 2025 // By ingratiating itself with the intellectual successors of the Eisenhower-era “eastern Republican group,” both policy advocates like American Compass and officeholders like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the Teamsters hope to break the Taft-Hartley Consensus and secure major privileges for itself and all the other unions that are openly Everything Leftist. American Compass argues to force effectively every single American worker to accept a union contract and a union-dominated workplace, whether they want one or not. Sen. Hawley hopes to resurrect Barack Obama’s not-so-free-choice legislation. Sean O’Brien is more than happy to provide presenting sponsorships or small campaign contributions to his former adversaries as they make mistakes made first long ago. The rest should learn from history so as not to repeat it.
US labor unions fight to contain AI disruption
June 5, 2025 // The threat extends beyond manufacturing. The CEO of Anthropic, which created Claude as a competitor to ChatGPT, warned last week that generative AI could eliminate half of all low-skilled white-collar jobs, potentially driving unemployment rates up to 10-20 percent. "The potential displacement of workers and elimination of jobs is a significant concern not just for our members, but for the public in general," said Peter Finn of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, America's largest union.
Op-ed: ‘We win, they lose’ GOP should use Reagan’s approach with unions
May 23, 2025 // In the case of unions, that means fundamentally reforming the current labor model. This doesn’t mean going back to the bad old days, when unions were treated as a criminal conspiracy. But it does mean ending the legal favoritism that allows unions to coerce workers, control businesses and advance their selfish interests at the expense of everyone else. The Republican goal should be to make unions earnestly compete for workers’ support, with neither a monopoly in the workplace nor restrictions on workers’ ability to choose the union that’s best for them. When is the last time Republicans forcefully advanced such a principled vision? Even before the recent backsliding, Republican leaders rarely made the moral case against forced unionization. Sure, they broadly supported policies that would have empowered workers, and most Republicans still do. But with few exceptions, the party tip-toed around the real stakes. If union coercion is wrong, then anyone who loves freedom has a duty to fight it — without apology and without quarter.