Posts tagged New York
Commentary: Private Schools Are No Threat to Democracy
September 1, 2026 // A New York State teachers’ union president invokes old arguments against religious education to derail a scholarship program that would cost the state nothing.
Mamdani Clashes With Teachers Union, Citing Fiscal Constraints
August 30, 2026 // Michael Mulgrew, the president of the 200,000-member teachers union, threatened an “all-out war” if Mamdani tried to stop the legislation in a New York Times interview earlier this summer. “It’s always surprising when you see a big rift between the teachers unions and Democratic politicians, especially a pretty far-left Democratic politician,” said Michael Petrilli, president of Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education reform think tank. “Conventional wisdom would say that Democratic politicians try not to get sideways with important parts of their constituency and the teachers unions are such an important base.” The fight has also exposed the realities Mamdani faces now that he is in office to follow through on campaign promises when faced with fiscal constraints.
Commentary: And Now, Chicago
August 28, 2026 // These “core services” bills are yet another variation on trying to achieve the goals that unionists detailed in 2018, when they called for “admittedly radically different” policies to try and shift entire industries into unionizable employee status. You don’t have to be a genius to anticipate that more “core services” bills are about to pop up in more cities soon.
Autism Therapy’s Latest Labor Challenge — Unionization
August 27, 2026 // Should unionization in states with a more progressive bent, such as California, New York, New Jersey or Oregon, take off to a meaningful degree; this would create “no-fly zones” for dealmaking. Already, the M&A pro said that these organizations are increasingly unattractive because of their strict and complicated regulatory systems. At the site level, increased wages from union activity may put specific locations in jeopardy if a company is not able to command commensurate increases in reimbursement from health plans. Strikes may also threaten the clinic’s viability. “By the time they end up negotiating a contract with the union, the center’s already dead,” the M&A pro said. “The center just died on the vine, and there was nothing left for them to argue over.”
This Mamdani-Backed Bill Would Kill Jobs, Boost Unions, and Make Deliveries More Expensive
August 25, 2026 // The misleadingly named "Delivery Protection Act" would require companies like Amazon and FedEx to directly hire employees for last-mile delivery, rather than contracting this service out to subcontractors.
Three Takeaways From Our Investigation Into a Shady New York Union
August 21, 2026 // Our investigation into the union — International Brotherhood of Trade Unions, or IBOTU — found that it enriches its leaders at the expense of its members, who are low-wage workers in grocery stores, ambulance companies, and home health care, among other industries. The union has repeatedly been targeted by federal regulators for labor law violations, and some of its leaders have been arrested for criminal activity. IBOTU is also a family business: three of its current top officers married the founding president’s daughters. All three currently make about $1 million per year.
Mamdani goes after Amazon — and shows off his stunning hypocrisy
August 20, 2026 // While Mamdani seeks to prohibit Amazon’s delivery contracting model, his administration used an outside company to supply 109 temporary professionals to handle homeless services under an $8.46 million renewal that ran through June 30. It also renewed an $11 million citywide trucking contract that supplies outside drivers and labor. In both cases, private companies employed their own workers who then performed the necessary work — the same model that Mamdani condemns at Amazon.
NY drops union deal on latest I-81 contract to better chances with Trump
August 19, 2026 // New York state will not require contractors on a $2.1 billion Interstate 81 contract to hire union workers for the first time on the largest ever transportation project in the state. The DOT has dropped the project labor agreement it used for the first half of the I-81 project as a preemptive measure to get approval from President Donald Trump’s administration, state and federal officials said.
Freelance Busting: The “Core” Concern
August 18, 2026 // Take one look at the actual language of New York City’s Delivery Protection Act, and even a non-lawyer like me can see that it portends something eerily similar to California’s AB5. The slope is slippery. This bill’s language could be used in the future, with just a bit of alteration, to force union-ready employment status on all kinds of people who are currently earning some or all of our income as our own bosses
New Jersey Revives the Fight To Reclassify Gig Workers as Employees
August 18, 2026 // All of these laws are designed to apply employee-style rules to gig workers, even if broad reclassification had failed to take off legislatively across the country. Yet recent rule making from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development shows that stringent ABC tests are unfortunately far from dead.