Posts tagged pension funds
Editorial Board: Americans approve of unions. They just don’t want to join one.
September 9, 2026 // Gallup says 71 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, near a record high. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 10 percent of American workers are in labor unions, near a record low. What gives? The first issue is that Gallup wasn’t asking whether respondents wanted to join a union themselves. In 2022, Gallup found that unions had the same approval rating as they do this year, but it also asked nonunion workers how interested they were in joining.
CT worker unions to test gubernatorial contenders on key issues
August 17, 2026 // The governor, who won a Democratic primary Tuesday by a 2-1 margin and is favored in early polling to win a third term in November, and Fazio are meeting with representatives of 45,000-plus unionized state employees at a closed-door forum at Charter Oak International Academy in West Hartford. Previous contracts establishing long-term benefits have been set in increments of 10 or even 20 years, raising the stakes for labor and the state.
Unions’ Capital Activism Harms Members
July 16, 2026 // A new Mackinac Center study, “Unions and ESG: From Worker Representation to Shareholder Activism,” shows how activist investing by organized labor slows the economy, weakens the financial system, and directly harms union members. The most common vehicle is ESG investing, in which shareholders pressure publicly traded companies to enact certain environmental, social and governance policies. While ESG advocates often present the movement as a benign effort to make companies more socially responsible, unions use it to advance their political and organizational self-interest.
Shrinking unions grasp hold of power through ESG activism
May 11, 2026 // Under the ESG pretense, unions are pushing shareholder resolutions that would ditch secret-ballot elections at companies. That’s a key labor demand because it enables unions to harass and intimidate workers into publicly signing cards in favor of unionization. Unions also push shareholder resolutions ordering companies to adopt “non-interference policies,” ensuring a business can’t talk to its employees about the downsides of unionization. Practically, unions promote these policies in two significant ways. The simplest approach is to use their own pension funds, which invest hundreds of billions of dollars, to demand that the businesses they invest in adopt pro-union policies. Union officials are also appointed to pension boards, where they directly support activist investment strategies based on ESG. Public pension plans have great clout thanks to the trillions of dollars at their disposal, enough to take significant ownership stakes in banks or investment funds. Either approach lets organized labor push shareholder proposals that tilt the scales in unions’ favor.
Unions Leverage Retirement Funds for Political Agendas
May 5, 2026 // The new report “Unions and ESG: From Worker Representation to Shareholder Activism,” explains how organized labor backs Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing principles. Under ESG principles, fund managers no longer make investment decisions based solely on financial returns for their clients, instead considering unrelated environmental and social issues such as climate policies and corporate diversity efforts.
Michael Watson: Big ESG’s Big Partner: Big Labor
April 20, 2025 // Unions’ principal interest in the ESG activism movement is on the “S” or “social” prong of the acronym. Both unions themselves, like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and critics of unions, like the Institute for the American Worker, will argue that Big Labor views ESG as a category for advancing union organizing and other core union priorities. Proxy Preview shows unions and union-aligned groups (like city and state pension funds and the largely union-owned and union-controlled Amalgamated Bank) pushing shareholder resolutions demanding that companies “adopt a noninterference policy respecting freedom of association” or “respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining”—euphemisms for neutrality in union organizing. Under a neutrality agreement, the employer agrees not to present its views on the potential consequences of union organizing to employees, and it may agree not to confirm union majority support by a government-supervised secret-ballot election, instead using public union-card signatures (known as “card check”).
The Teamsters’ Trojan Horse
April 16, 2025 // Hawley may believe that Sean O’Brien and his Teamsters Union speak for a new faction of a political coalition he hopes to one day lead. But in an era when fewer than 6 percent of private-industry workers are unionized, O’Brien does not. For that reason, organized labor comfortably lives in the house of the political left — no matter what rhetorical blandishments union bosses like O’Brien contribute in Republican Party meetings, no matter what chump change union PACs give Republicans like Hawley who abandon the party’s traditional labor policies, and no matter what union members like the majority-pro-Trump Teamsters might want their dues to do.
Act 10, Scourge of Wisconsin Teachers, Faces Uncertain Future in Court
March 4, 2025 // According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of union members in Wisconsin’s workforce fell by nearly half, from 14.2% to 7.4%, between 2010 and 2023 (since that figure includes workers from all sectors, the drop for government employees is likely much steeper). A report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a right-leaning think tank, showed that the total number of unions holding annual recertification votes across the state declined from 540 in 2014 to 369 in 2018. The largest teachers’ union in the state, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, experienced a dizzying loss of manpower and organizing heft. A 2019 study conducted by a pair of researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that WEAC was forced to restructure and cut its staffing by about two-thirds. The retrenchment was made necessary by a freefall in the collection of dues, the payment of which was made voluntary by Act 10. The loss of paid organizers could be offset, in part, by the efforts of teacher volunteers. But the union had no ready replacement for the millions of dollars in government relations funds that had suddenly evaporated; WEAC went from being one of the biggest lobbying forces in Madison to a second-tier player virtually overnight.
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.
Has Pushback to Full of ‘S’ Labor Unions Finally Arrived?
June 10, 2024 // Written by I4AW’s Sam Adolphsen and F. Vincent Vernuccio, the study warns that the initial “Environmental” focus of ESG is being supplanted by labor leaders, who are focusing on the leftist acronym’s “social” component in order to intimidate companies and force membership growth: With help from the whole of Biden’s big government, Big Labor is replicating the ESG strategies used by environmentalists and other activists. These groups aim to cajole fossil fuel-producing companies and other businesses they consider socially unacceptable into abandoning profitable business ventures. The tactics of the Big Labor plan call for hijacking the shareholder resolution process through proxy voting and shareholder activism to force pro-union policies. Unlike typical shareholder proposals, those supported by Big Labor do not seek to advance shareholder value. Instead, they seek to increase union membership and strengthen Big Labor’s power.