Posts tagged Missouri
Ending the free ride: How school tax dollars subsidize union activity and politics in Missouri
February 26, 2025 // In 2018 and 2020, the NEA and MNEA together spent more than $3.2 million bankrolling high-profile Missouri ballot campaigns over legislative redistricting and government ethics. A component of their effort — which remains on the books to this day — was an amendment to the state constitution that strictly prohibits Missouri state lawmakers and candidates from engaging in political fundraising on state property. Despite seeking to enforce this principle on others, however, teachers unions like the MNEA are one of the few — if not the only — special interest groups that regularly abuse it by routinely taking advantage of taxpayer-funded school resources to support their own political agenda.
Eaton Employee Forces IAM Union Bosses to Abandon Illegal Termination & Fine Threats
February 24, 2025 // Robert Jacobs, an employee of power management firm Eaton Corporation at its Troy, Illinois, facility, has forced International Association of Machinists (IAM) union officials to back off their threats to fire him unless he paid hundreds in illegal fees they imposed on him after he exercised his right to end his union membership. Jacobs filed federal charges in January challenging the union’s so-called “reinstatement fee” threats at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He received free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
Minimum wage increasing in nearly half of states, including Nebraska
January 14, 2025 // The minimum wage will increase in nearly half the states this year even as the federal wage floor remains stuck at $7.25 per hour. In many states, the minimum wage is automatically adjusted upward as inflation rises. But voters in several states, including deeply red ones such as Nebraska, Alaska and Missouri, chose in November to significantly increase their minimum wages this year.
Over 9.2 million workers will get a raise on January 1 from 21 states raising their minimum wages
December 18, 2024 // Twenty-one states will increase their minimum wages on January 1, raising pay for more than 9.2 million workers by a total of $5.7 billion. In addition, 48 cities and counties will raise their minimum wages above their state wage floors, mostly in California, Colorado, and Washington.
A year later, where does the UAW’s southern organizing campaign stand?
December 11, 2024 // That's where many auto manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, are locating their plants in recent years, and that trend will continue if it means automakers can pay less for labor. In 2023, the UAW's membership shrunk to about 370,000 members, the lowest number since the Great Recession. "The rule in labor organizing is, you have to organize the critical labor market," Schurman said. But the UAW also must prepare to play the long game, even if it means losing elections on the initial try.
Missouri Republicans are reaching out to the state’s trade unions, but some workers are wary
October 10, 2024 // Bernie Ryan, an electrician with the St. Louis-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said fans of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump sometimes encounter hostility at worksites. He recalled a situation where a pro-Trump electrician received a chilly reception inside a construction trailer. “If you’re a Trump voter and an electrician, you would know just to keep his mouth shut and save it for at home,” Ryan said. “But there's other trades that are different from mine where it's more prevalent.”
Opinion: The Dangers of Union Expansion in Missouri
September 25, 2024 // Consider the fact also that the UAW has spent lavishly on travel, hotels, and executive salaries over the past several years. For example, from 2013 to 2018, the UAW spent $43 million on hotels and resorts and $4 million on restaurants and bars. Two past UAW Presidents have been convicted of felonies involving financial mismanagement. Meanwhile, current President Shawn Fain is under investigation by a federal court-appointed watchdog. Fain has been accused by two union officials of retaliating against them when they refused to take actions that would have benefited Fain’s fiancé and her sister.
Missouri lawmakers and teachers union demand a state audit of charter schools
September 14, 2024 // Fitzpatrick said previously his office’s audit of SLPS is part of a larger effort to inspect more schools in the state. The state auditor’s office is also investigating the Independence School District in Jackson County, the Kingston K-14 School District in Washington County and the Francis Howell R-III School District in St. Charles County. The auditor’s office said it is reviewing SLPS’ 2023-24 school year through July 31. Officials said that staff members are not limited to that time frame, but that they will work closely with the Board of Education throughout the process and will try not to overlap a separate third-party investigation into Scarlett’s hiring practices and other personnel matters that are currently in process.
Commentary: The Rise of “Pro-Labor” Conservatism
September 9, 2024 // Yet O’Brien’s move has attracted the attention of commentators from both sides of the political spectrum who see it as a bellwether. It is what conservative commentator Sohrab Ahmari has called a “brave gambit” and veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse dubbed a “huge gamble.” “A glacier of hostility has divided the GOP from organized labor for two generations,” Ahmari wrote in Compact. But the Teamsters president “took a pickaxe to that glacier” by speaking at the RNC. Ahmari attributes the rise of this strain of pro-labor, anti-union conservatism to Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a MAGA firebrand who has come out as perhaps the lone GOP senator to oppose right to work legislation, the anti-union laws on the books in 28 states.
Workers at GM battery plant agree to unionize
September 6, 2024 // The unionization majority at Ultium Cells — a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution. It was the first time workers at an automaker other than the Big Three had unionized in the South. Earlier this year, 30% of workers at a Toyota factory in Missouri said they had signed union authorization cards. It was the fourth non-union plant to join a growing movement of autoworkers who are attempting to replicate the record contracts the UAW won from the Big Three Detroit automakers last year, including 25% wage bumps.