Posts tagged labor unions
Unions make gains in Colorado
February 22, 2023 // On January 31, 2023, a proposed bill entitled “Public Employees’ Workplace Protection” (SB23-111) that would give public unions more power and influence in the workplace. The sponsors are State Senator Robert Rodriguez (D) and State Representative Steven Woodrow (D). The legislation would impact public employees such as county or municipal workers, general assembly staffers, school district employees, higher education employees, public defenders’ officers, University of Colorado and Denver hospital authorities, fire authorities, and members of board of cooperative services. Multiple unions have already endorsed the bill. The Communications Workers of America 7799 (CWA), which is affiliated with AFL-CIO and represents public defenders, education employees, healthcare employees, and library workers, said the bill would protect workers from retaliation from employers.
GOVERNMENT UNIONS: AMERICA’S LARGEST, MOST TOXIC, PUBLICLY FUNDED LOBBY
February 20, 2023 // Collectively, labor unions throughout the country spent more than $778 million on political activities and gifts to political organizations in 2021 alone, and it wasn’t even an election year. Current reporting requirements make it impossible to determine precisely which of those dollars originated in the private sector rather than the public, but we know that roughly half of all the union members in America work in government, with the other half employed in private industry.
Opinion: Union partisanship puts conservatives in a bind
February 1, 2023 // A bill under consideration in the legislature, HB 216, would address these problems by requiring government employers to annually notify employees that union membership is optional, allowing public employees to cancel dues deductions from their paychecks at will, and creating a process to challenge unconstitutional provisions in union collective bargaining agreements. Like any other business, unions function best when they’re accountable to their clients, but accountability only exists if customers have the option to leave.
The never-ending strike
January 6, 2023 // The average strike lasts just over 40 days, according to Bloomberg Law. But some last much longer. In Brookwood, Alabama, coal miners have been on strike for over 600 days, and they don't have any intention of backing down anytime soon. Today, Stephan Bisaha of the Gulf States Newsroom joins us to explain how global macroeconomic forces can converge to keep a labor strike going for so long, and what it takes to sustain it.
Year in Review: Worker strikes surged in 2022 amid new unionization wave
December 27, 2022 // There were 374 worker strikes in 2022, according to researchers at Cornell University, a hefty 39% increase from the year before. There were several factors at play in the growth, a major one being that workers had far more leverage this past year due to mass labor shortages. Healthcare workers made up a big contingent of the organized labor movement in 2022. In September, 15,000 nurses in Minnesota staged a three-day walkout in what was likely the largest private-sector nurse strike in the country’s history. There were several other strikes by healthcare workers over the past year as well.
Opinion: The NLRB Requests More Funding, But Does It Really Need More Money?
December 16, 2022 // The Chair and General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently penned a letter to congressional appropriators, pleading for additional funding for the agency in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill, which Congress has not yet passed. The letter notes that its funding has remained at $274 million since 2014, but whether that should justify additional funding is worth scrutinizing. The NLRB letter declares that the agency needs “additional funding in FY2023 to simply maintain current operations without any investments in critical infrastructure and cybersecurity needs.” It further states that “we will be forced to reduce our operational capacity, including likely furloughs of the dedicated career employees at the agency, unless Congress provides funding to cover these costs.”
Michigan teachers unions continue to shed members
December 9, 2022 // The latest report from the state’s largest education union shows that the Michigan Education Association shed 1,000 members since the previous year, continuing a trend. The number comes from the LM-2, a financial report the MEA and other labor unions must file with the U.S. government. According to the report, MEA’s revenue decreased to $84.2 million, and its membership stands at its lowest in at least 22 years. Michigan has a right-to-work law, which prevents unions from getting a worker fired for not paying union dues or fees. When the law was enacted in 2012, the MEA had 117,265 members. The number has dropped consistently in the last ten years, reaching to 79,839, a 31.9% decline.
History in the making as Schofield Home Care workers vote majority to unionize
December 7, 2022 // The employees of the Schofield Home Health Care in the Town of Tonawanda have won the vote to unionize with 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
A new union is born in the South
December 1, 2022 // USSW workers and staff are bullish on their new union, believing that its fusion of labor and human rights organizing will help them secure livable wages, stronger safety protections, control over their work schedules, and new respect for the African Americans and Latinos who make up the majority of their members. They are encouraged by the growing public approval for labor unions and the increase in worker protest during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among essential or frontline workers. They are also building off of nine years of organizing through Raise Up — the Southern expression of the Fight for $15 and a Union and an affiliate of the sprawling Service Employees International Union. Raise Up veterans like Gas and Smalls, and the Durham, North Carolina-based Ieisha Franceis and Jamila Allen, will be critical to the USSW's success. Beginning in September 2020 and continuing over the next year, Franceis and Allen led three walkouts that forced their employer, Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, to agree to their demands for raises, paid leave for employees in quarantine, and new sanitation procedures. Franceis was initially hesitant about striking, but she trusted the much younger and more soft-spoken Allen, who had been meeting with Raise Up organizers for a year and gently prodding her coworkers to take collective action.
Teachers Unions Spent $22 Million Backing Massachusetts ‘Millionaire’s Tax’
November 14, 2022 // "The MTA has coughed up $13.3 million for the so-called Fair Share Amendment, while its national counterpart, NEA, has doled out $7.2 million," the Globe reports. "Which begs the question: What do the teachers want?" The constitutional amendment is an attempt to undermine the state's flat income tax system. Chris LaBella,