Posts tagged New Jersey
Kim Kavin: The Tangled Web
May 23, 2025 // I know how most writers’ minds work. I have a well-honed instinct for spotting a thread I should pull on because the facts might be tangled up in some kind of web. This hyperlink in Newsweek was a different kind of typo. The words “2020 analysis” actually did lead to a report about independent contractors—one that was written not in 2020, but instead in 2009. A wrong hyperlink of that nature is a red flag to any decent editor that there’s probably an association in the writer’s mind between the words in the hyperlink and where that link goes. Any experienced editor will pull on that thread to figure out if there’s an actual problem with the facts.
Committee on Education and the Workforce: Hearing Recap: “Empowering the Modern Worker”
May 21, 2025 // “The way people do work in America is changing,” said Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chairman Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) when he opened today’s hearing that discussed legislative solutions to protect independent contractors’ status and allow them to pursue certain benefits if they so choose.
NJ Transit, engineers’ union reach deal to end strike and resume service Tuesday
May 18, 2025 // Neither Murphy nor the engineers' union shared the specific details of the agreement. “While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month
Federal mediation board calls NJ Transit, engineers’ union to D.C. to try to avert strike
May 13, 2025 // Absent a contract, Congress could intervene in different forms, such as forcing a deal or preventing a work stoppage. If a strike occurs, NJ Transit plans to spend $4 million a day for supplementary bus service and beef up its current routes, but that would help only about 20% of rail riders. Freight railroads and Metro-North riders who use west-of-Hudson service through NJ Transit territory would also be affected.
Investor group urges Ford to address claims of ‘union avoidance’ at Kentucky battery plant
May 8, 2025 // A nonprofit faith-based group that seeks to leverage its investing to advance human rights, racial equity and “the common good” is calling on automaker Ford to address claims of anti-union activities at the BlueOval SK battery plant in Kentucky. The letter from Investor Advocates for Social Justice details the group’s concerns over “strong indications that BlueOval Kentucky is engaging in union avoidance activities,” ranging from disseminating “anti-union flyers and media” to the United Auto Workers (UAW) telling the Washington Post that anti-union consultants have been brought in to persuade workers against unionization. The UAW launched a campaign last year to unionize the BlueOval SK battery plant in Hardin County, and workers at the plant in January asked the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. The BlueOval SK battery plant, one of two planned at Glendale to produce batteries for electric vehicles, is jointly owned by Ford and South Korean company SK Group.
NJ Transit CEO rails against union as strike looms
May 8, 2025 // The NJ Transit Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen could strike as early as May 16 if the two sides do not reach an accord. They’ve remained at odds over the level of wage hikes, with engineers seeking increases that would bring their average salary to $190,000, while the agency has pushed for a contract that would bring that wage up to $172,000. “If there’s any citizen, private or government, in this environment who’d get a $25,000 pay raise and say, ‘No, no, that’s not good enough,’ does that sound like a group of people who are grounded in reality, or more importantly, on what is actually happening in the world we live in?” Kolluri told the Assembly’s budget committee. In written responses to questions asked through the Office of Legislative Services, NJ Transit warned it could face cost increases as a result of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, though it said it lacks the information needed to gauge the impact tariffs would have.
Teamsters: South Jersey cannabis workers unionizing in Mays Landing
May 7, 2025 // Teamsters set out about three years ago to unionize the cannabis industries. It has recorded more than 30 collective bargaining agreements among workforces in California, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Massachusetts and Michigan. “This is inherently a core industry for our union,” union spokesman Matt McQuaid said this week. “If you look at most of the core segments of the cannabis supply chain — agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and retail — these are all jobs where the Teamsters have represented workers for decades.”
Commentary Kim Kavin: Worse than California’s AB5
May 6, 2025 // They tried, and failed, to do just that back in 2019-20 with legislation that mirrored California’s disastrous freelance-busting ABC Test law. Independent contractors from all across New Jersey cried foul. Our elected officials ultimately decided this policy was a bad idea for the Garden State. Trenton bureaucrats are now moving to impose this ABC Test interpretation on us all anyway, through rule-making, in their final months of having power before this fall’s election.
In unusual move, doctors vote to unionize at N.J. healthcare giant
May 5, 2025 // A group of doctors who work for both RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers University voted to unionize earlier this week, union officials said. The physicians — who work for Rutgers 10% of the time and RWJBarnabas 90% of the time — were hired as “clinically focused university practitioners,” or CFUP. They are both physicians and faculty members at the state university.
NJ Transit warns commuters to prepare as engineers’ strike looms
May 4, 2025 // New Jersey Transit says the union wants a salary of $190,000 a year. The union says base pay is $89,000. The head of the union says his 425 members are paid 20 percent less than other regional train engineers.