Posts tagged police officers
Wave of California teacher strikes ‘is no coincidence’
March 4, 2026 // Thousands of California K-12 teachers have walked off their jobs or voted to strike in the past few months, as part of a strategic, statewide effort by the California Teachers Association to boost salaries and benefits — and get the public’s attention. “All these districts going out on strike — it’s not a coincidence at all,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “Everywhere in the state there are people with unmet needs. The conditions have been ripe for a long time.”
Va. leaders sound alarm on collective bargaining bill: ‘It will bankrupt local government’
February 13, 2026 // “This new bill wants to mandate collective bargaining and mandate what's called binding arbitration, which forces districts to pay a salary based on some unelected person who's an arbitrator who tells us what we have to do,” said School Board Chairman Babur Lateef. “And we don't agree with that. We don't believe that should be done for any school division in the state or any locality. We believe local governments should have the right to choose whether they want to collectively bargain or not, and it shouldn't be mandated. The current bill, as it stands, doesn't fund the mandate, so the state wants to mandate it, but they don't want to pay for it. If this bill passes, it will be the single largest tax increase in Virginia history, because all of the responsibility for these payments and salaries will be on the localities, local taxpayers, property taxes, and everyone in communities, and it will bankrupt local governments and bankrupt school divisions.”
20K NYC nurses warn they will go on strike in just 10 days amid high stakes dispute
January 5, 2026 // A spokesperson for Mount Sinai gave some clue as to the wage ask for that hospital. “After only a day of working with a mediator at one of our hospitals, NYSNA is yet again threatening to force nurses to walk away from patients’ bedsides – this time while continuing to insist on increasing average nurse pay by $100,000,” the spokesperson said. Any strike would be “irresponsible,” especially because the hospitals would have to spend tens of millions of dollars to bring in outside nurses, said Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association.
Proposal to allow Frederick city employees to unionize tabled
September 25, 2025 // Shortly before the Frederick City Council voted on Thursday to table an ordinance allowing employees to collectively bargain, Council Member Ben MacShane said, “It really feels like we don’t know what we’re talking about.” Council members spent a large portion of Thursday’s meeting discussing provisions like the number of unions allowed and whether the ordinance should stipulate the timeline of a unionization election.
Harvard Police Union Accuses University of Withholding Information
September 18, 2025 // The Harvard University Police Association’s complaint stems from a dispute last April between HUPD Captain John F. Fulkerson and former detective Kelsey L. Whelihan over the handling of a reported sexual assault between a Harvard undergraduate and non-student. After she said that Fulkerson mishandled the sexual assault case, Whelihan left the department this March. The University launched an investigation into the procedural handling of the response after the officers’ dispute — contracting investigators from the Ed Davis Company, a Boston-based private security firm, to compile the report. But when the HUPA requested a copy of the report in October, the University refused.
Most L.A. city employee layoffs averted by deals with unions
August 22, 2025 // The layoffs would have affected 222 civilian LAPD employees, such as clerks and administrative support workers. No sworn LAPD officers were slated to be laid off, but some would have had to do the work of the civilians who departed. "We are continuing to do everything we can to bring layoff numbers down and I want everyone to know that we are still working and anticipate this number to get even lower," Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. "These numbers are not final." Meanwhile, the Engineers and Architects Assn. authorized a deal for its 6,000 members to take as many as five unpaid vacation days — effectively furloughs — between Jan. 1 and June 30 next year, which could amount to about a 2% pay cut. The deal saved the jobs of 63 Engineers and Architects Assn. members who do not work for the LAPD, in roles such as city planner, analyst and civilian investigator.
THE BLUE DIVIDE
August 13, 2025 // The documents are an incomplete and opaque window into the finances for the Survivors’ Fund and Lodge 5, which are both 501(c) nonprofits. Another FOP nonprofit, the Home Association, operates the 7C Lounge, an expansive bar decorated in gleaming dark wood in the union’s 50,000-square-foot headquarters. A comprehensive financial picture of the nonprofits would be possible only by examining all credit card statements, receipts, and records. Those records are not publicly available, and even union members say FOP leaders have only allowed them to view a limited selection of documents.
VA severs ties with most federal unions, terminating worker contracts
August 7, 2025 // Veterans Affairs leaders on Wednesday announced plans to terminate nearly all of its collective bargaining contracts with federal unions, upending employment agreements for hundreds of thousands of department workers. The move affects members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
‘Trump and Musk are setting the example’: how companies are becoming emboldened to be more anti-union
April 10, 2025 // That tougher behavior under former president Ronald Reagan sped the decline of private sector unions. Today, just 6% of private sector workers are in unions, while 32% of public sector workers are. Anti-union ideologues are increasingly targeting public sector unions, which often support Democrats. “Because almost half of the labor movement is now in the public sector, the assault that we’re seeing now is really focused on the public sector,” McCartin said. “That really threatens to break the spine of the labor movement.”
NEW YORK: Town of Tonawanda Board alleges police officers participated in strike
February 24, 2025 // The Town of Tonawanda Board has alleged that Tonawanda police officers wrote fewer tickets or ignored violations as part of a three-week strike that began in mid-January. The board is expected to charge its police union on Monday with violating the state’s Taylor Law following an investigation that discovered the alleged strike. According to Town Supervisor Joe Emminger, the strike began in mid-January. Officials believe the alleged strike was a response from the police union after an officer — who has since resigned — was disciplined.