Posts tagged New Deal
Eaton Worker’s Federal Complaint Sheds Light on Union Fee Threats in St. Louis
August 29, 2025 // Another critic, the nonprofit Institute for the American Worker (I4AW), highlighted the LMRDA’s origins in addressing labor corruption and stressed the importance of robust financial reporting. I4AW expressed concern that the current proposal focuses too heavily on reducing paperwork rather than preserving oversight. They recommended reconsidering OLMS’s 2020 proposal, which raised thresholds more moderately and introduced a “long form” LM-2 for the largest unions. I4AW also cited recent criminal convictions for embezzlement and financial misconduct involving union officials whose unions would have benefited from the proposed threshold increase, underscoring the need for strong reporting to prevent abuse.
Free the Economy podcast with Vinnie Vernuccio of the Institute for the American Worker
March 27, 2025 // Our interview for Episode 116 of the Free the Economy podcast is with Vinnie Vernuccio of the Institute for the American Worker. We talk about labor unions, independent contractors, right-to-work laws, port automation, and the future of the American workforce. Free the Economy is hosted by Richard Morrison. Our co-producer and editor is Destry Edwards. Keep up with new episodes by following us on Twitter at @freethe_economy and read our episode summaries, with links to the stories we cover, at cei.org/blog.
Opinion: Better Capitalism Will Reduce The Need For Unions
January 17, 2025 // But now, slowly but surely, we see the pendulum starting to swing again. A new generation of corporate leaders increasingly recognize the downsides of shareholder primacy and the benefits of multi-stakeholder capitalism. Some companies are moving away from treating workers as replaceable widgets — as pure cost centers — and increasingly see them as the key to improving productivity and innovation, which are now the key drivers of long-term profit. Some notable examples in recent years include Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Costco, Best Buy, and JP Morgan Chase.
Op-ed: Biden’s Last Labor Stand: Honoring the First Female Secretary of Labor While Propping Up His Failed One
December 17, 2024 // Biden even attempted to appoint a radical progressive incompetent to the post of United States Secretary of Labor and as much as bragged about this in this speech. What Biden failed to note is that Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su was never confirmed by the Senate, because she is that incompetent. Yet, Su was there anyway, praised and introduced by the first female president of the AFL-CIO, Liz Shuler, who credited Su with turning "the Department of Labor into a true House of Labor." A house of labor that has tacitly excluded and targeted the more than 64 million independent professionals and small businesses; but, apples and oranges.
Commentary: Did Labor Unions Bring Us the Weekend?
September 24, 2024 // I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the shortening of the American workweek. Still, I’m not the only one who has noticed this. I surveyed economic historians and asked whether they agreed with the proposition that “the reduction in the length of the workweek in American manufacturing before the Great Depression was primarily due to the efforts of labor unions.” Only 5 percent agreed, and an additional 25 percent agreed but with conditions, while the vast majority — over 70 percent — disagreed. Another question asked whether the reduction in the workweek was “primarily due to economic growth and the increased wages it brought.” The profession answered with a resounding “yes,” with less than 20 percent disagreeing.
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 Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
August 11, 2024 // The effect of sectoral bargaining on union corruption would be unclear. Scholars of union corruption have blamed enterprise bargaining combined with union monopoly representation for America’s unusually high levels of labor racketeering. There is truth to this, but it is also not the case that American unions involved in industries with more-sectoral-style approaches are “cleaner.” The New York City garment industry, which was exempted from various Taft-Hartley regulations on union conduct, was believed by the federal government to have been Mob influenced as recently as the 1990s. More recently, the United Auto Workers, which conducts a sort of pseudo-sectoral bargaining with the unionized Detroit Three automakers by “patterning” its contracts, was forced into a regime change after the largest union corruption scandal of the 21st century. Putting more power in the hands of America’s long-standing class of union officials, who are known for having their hands in the cookie jar, certainly is not an obvious approach to reducing or surveilling corruption in organized labor.
Op-Ed: Union membership is now political. So can the government still require people to associate with a union?
July 10, 2024 // Since then, employees have argued that exclusive union representation does violate the First Amendment. Exclusivity saddles them with the “services” of nakedly political bargaining agents. Lower courts have turned those arguments aside mostly because of an older case, Minnesota Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, which suggested that exclusive representation was okay in the public sector. Knight seemed to say that when the government bargains about working conditions, it can choose its own bargaining partner. And if it chooses one exclusive union to bargain with, that choice burdens no one’s associational rights. But whether or not that’s what Knight meant, the decision has no bearing on private-sector bargaining. In the private sector, the government does not choose its own bargaining partner; it imposes one on private parties. And some of those parties object to their unions’ political views—views that are increasingly central to unionization itself. So private-sector bargaining raises a different question: can the government force private citizens to associate with a union when that union’s core purpose is increasingly political? (Elsewhere, I have argued at greater length that it cannot.)
Parity in Labor Transparency
April 24, 2024 // The institutional left has sought to reward Big Labor by making union organizing campaigns shorter, or bypassing them with “card check.” Big Labor knows that the dynamics of union organizing rely on labor unions being able to make their pitches to workers from trusted positions without skeptical responses from other workers or employer representatives. And they only need to win the vote once to start collecting dues and engaging in compulsory bargaining. As long as government-recognized and government-empowered compulsory union bargaining exists, the government require workers be given all the information before deciding whether to form a union and bargain collectively. The SALT Act would accomplish this needed reform.
Commentary Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Membership Decline
March 23, 2024 //