Posts tagged Landrum-Griffin Act
Boilermakers members call for federal probe into KC-based union’s elections
February 24, 2026 // Filed by two members of Kansas City’s Local 83, the complaint was sent to the Office of Labor-Management Standards, an agency within the Labor Department. It alleges that the union’s election system locks rank-and-file members out of the process and ensures that those in power will remain in their positions. The action comes as a trial is approaching in a federal corruption case in which several former union executives — among them ousted International President Newton Jones — are charged with allegedly scheming to steal $20 million in union funds. The union’s executive council voted to remove Jones in 2023, accusing him of misusing union funds for personal gain, including funneling large sums of money to his Ukrainian wife for work she never performed.
Op-ed: Trump DOL Rule Would Reduce Union Transparency
July 2, 2025 // Keeping the reporting threshold at $250,000 in receipts is a good way to increase union transparency automatically. As that has become a smaller number in real terms over time, more unions have been subject to the highest level of scrutiny in their reports. Conservatives should applaud this win for public accountability. Instead, the Trump administration is looking to shield hundreds of unions from greater accountability by raising the reporting threshold. It’s not as though unions have been doing anything for Trump, as the AFL-CIO and government employee unions remain some of his top political adversaries.
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.
How the Mafia Infiltrated American Labor Unions
August 12, 2024 // While law enforcement agencies continue to monitor Mafia infiltration of labor unions, labor racketeering has become less prevalent than it was decades ago. In part, that’s because union membership plummeted after the McClellan Committee exposed the extent of labor racketeering. At its zenith in the mid-1950s, union membership comprised one-third of the labor force, but now union members only represent approximately 10 percent of American workers.
The FTC’s Indefensible Position on Collective Bargaining
April 19, 2023 // In remarks last week at the University of Utah School of Law, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya argued that independent contractors should be allowed to bargain collectively. He acknowledged that courts have always treated collective bargaining by contractors as illegal under federal antitrust law. But he claimed that these courts have made a mistake: in fact, Congress never meant to stop small contractors, like truckers or plumbers, from forming a union and bargaining together. Bedoya’s interpretation would upset a century of careful balancing between antitrust and labor policy. It would also expose the contractors themselves to serious risks of abuse. And it would undermine well-established rules against collusion, price fixing, and other restraints on trade. To see why Bedoya is so wrong, you have to understand labor law and antitrust law’s tangled history. Let’s start with section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Adopted in 1890, section 1 banned all contracts and conspiracies in restraint of trade. It did not, however, define trade restraints. Instead, it incorporated common-law standards. Under the common law, unions were treated no differently from any other combination of buyers or sellers. If they conspired to fix labor prices, they violated the law. And collective bargaining could be seen as one form of price fixing. As a result, the law sometimes treated unions as, essentially, labor cartels.
Biden administration channels the Grinch, snatching away union accountability from workers over the holidays
January 7, 2022 // President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor swiped away important union transparency and accountability measures on December 30 as many American workers celebrated time off between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.