Posts tagged personal contact information
A Union for Home Care Workers? Many Are Wary.
July 17, 2026 // New York Focus independently spoke to more than a dozen aides for this story, and eight were either against it or leaning in that direction. Saba Nakhai, 32, who cares for her mother in Westchester full time, told New York Focus that she doesn’t see a place for the union in her work. “Maybe if I was working at a corporation, I would want a union,” she said. “But here, who’s the enemy, my mom?” Saba Nakhai, a young woman, stands smiling behind and holds the arms of her older mother, who is seated and wearing sunglasses. The room seems celebratory; a cake is on the table in front of them, and pictures of Saba hang from the ceiling. Saba Nakhai cares for her mother in Westchester full time. | Courtesy of Saba Nakhai To win, 1199 must convince workers like Nakhai that they need an advocate — not against their patients, but against the sprawling bureaucracy that sets their wages and benefits. If it’s successful, 1199 — already one of New York’s political kingmakers — will become even more powerful. Its membership and dues revenue will balloon, enabling more organizing and lobbying.
Op-ed: 8 years after Janus, unions are still trying to keep workers in the dark
July 6, 2026 // The National Education Association’s headquarters dues revenue fell from $370 million in fiscal 2017 to an inflation-adjusted $310 million five years later — a decline in real terms of about 16 percent. Nationally, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show public-sector union density slid from 33.9 percent in 2018 to 32.2 percent in 2024, before edging back up to 32.9 percent last year. States that gave workers more direct control over their own dues saw the effect even more clearly. After Florida ended government payroll deduction of union dues in 2023, the Florida Education Association lost more than 20,000 members in a single school year. When workers must actively choose to pay, rather than having dues quietly deducted by default, a meaningful share of them chooses not to.
Op-ed: Local control in jeopardy if Virginia mandates collective bargaining
March 29, 2026 // Virginia used to prohibit collective bargaining for state and local employees. In 2021, Democrats changed the law to allow local governments to engage in collective bargaining. Fewer than 20 jurisdictions have chosen to do so, and it hasn’t gone well where it’s been tried. That’s why unions made this bill their top priority during the legislative session. It requires collective bargaining for wages, benefits and working conditions for state and local government employees.
Commentary: Another favor for unions — at the expense of taxpayers, workers
February 11, 2026 // Personal contact information that is required to be transmitted on a recurring schedule includes an employee’s name, work and personal emails, cell, work and home phone numbers, home addresses, date of hire, job title, rate of pay and work site. This is not a one-time compliance task. Even if the data exists, the mandate is a recurring export, verification and delivery obligation that consumes staff time and taxpayer money. This bill looks small on paper, but it creates a very real, ongoing workload for public employers.