Posts tagged police
Miami-Dade teachers’ union faces potential decertification
November 17, 2023 // As of last week, only 58.4% of United Teachers of Dade members were paying dues to the union, short of the 60% required by most public sector unions under a new state law. On Friday, the union was set to send a snapshot of membership to the Public Employee Relations Commission, or PERC, the state agency that regulates public employee unions.
Despite arrest, corruption charge, Miami police union still all in on Diaz de la Portilla
October 19, 2023 // A month after Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla was arrested on charges of trading a vote for hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations and gifts, it hasn’t cost him the support of Miami’s men and women in blue. In June, Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police announced it was putting its considerable political heft behind Diaz de la Portilla, a former state representative who was once chosen politician of the year by the union. And Monday — a month after Diaz de la Portilla’s Sept. 14 arrest — the union’s president made it clear that as far as he was concerned, nothing had changed. “There are two kinds of people that are always presumed guilty before innocent, cops and politicians,” said FOP President Felix Del Rosario.
Orange County’s Police Unions Are Increasingly Electing, Unseating Their Own Bosses
August 30, 2023 // But in both Anaheim and Santa Ana, the police unions account for some of the largest political spending on citywide elections. And in both cities, the result has been massive raises for police officers, despite concerns from some residents that such raises were fiscally irresponsible – forcing Anaheim residents to dip into their general fund reserves in 2020. At the county, big Sheriff Deputy raises created conditions where critical investments in public health couldn’t be made, an impact largely unnoticed by the public. Until the pandemic arrived.
San Francisco restaurant bans armed officers, police union responds
August 28, 2023 //
Police unionization looms, accusations swirl in Key Colony Beach
August 11, 2023 // It’s been several months since the Key Colony Beach police force, a team of five, filed interest cards in early May to begin the process of unionizing. Public employees’ right to unionize is written into the Florida Constitution in its very first Article in Section 6. Since then, little has occurred to either accelerate or slow the process. However, Andrew M. Axelrad, General Counsel for the Dade County Police Benevolent Association (PBA), who is handling the union efforts, said by phone that the situation should be crystallizing soon.
Termination risks, collecting unemployment: A look at workers rights amid a ‘summer of strikes’
August 7, 2023 // More than 200 strikes have occurred across the U.S. so far in 2023, involving more than 320,000 workers, compared with 116 strikes and 27,000 workers over the same period in 2021, according to data by the Cornell ILR School Labor Action Tracker.
As Florida’s new union law goes into effect, it’s ‘do or die’ time for labor
July 10, 2023 // In the face of the double-whammy law — creating a new process for paying dues while simultaneously requiring more people to pay dues — public labor unions are launching all-out campaigns to get their numbers up. “Are we at 60%? No. I can't give you a definitive number,” said Se’Adoria “Cee Cee” Brown, the president of AFSCME Local 199. “However, I can say that there has been a push and we've signed up 700 new members since we started this whole campaign, and when folks realized, ‘Hey, this is real.’” The Local 199 chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union represents about 7,500 employees of Miami-Dade County: transit officials, animal services, staff at the Medical Examiner’s Office, administrative clerks in the court system.
Florida teachers union sues over DeSantis’ new union restrictions
May 17, 2023 // Under the new law, union dues will no longer be automatically deducted from paychecks. Those wishing to be a part of the union need to mail in a separate check to pay their monthly dues. Unions can also be decertified if less than 60% of eligible employees are members.
WGA Strike Shuts Down ‘Billions’ Amid Skirmishes, Cries Of “Scabs” Outside NYC Studio; Teamsters Refuse To Cross Pickets At ‘American Horror Story’ Filming
May 8, 2023 // Back in New York City, there also were smaller skirmishes in Brooklyn, with handfuls of picketers briefly surrounding and blocking production workers as they wheeled plastic bins filled with pieces of furniture across a cobbled street. “This is the point of a picket line,” one protestor pleaded with a middle-age woman trying to steer a bin around him with help from a private security guard. She eventually slipped through, with grudging assent from the picketers and the same “scab” refrain following her. The WGA said Wednesday that stagehands and truckers represented by IATSE and the Teamsters did not cross a picket line at another production facility, Silvercup Studios, in Queens, while protesters were on site there. It added that traffic in and out resumed once the protestors departed, in what union representatives called a work slowdown, not a full shutdown, at the site.
Supreme Court gives New Jersey, shipping industry and unions a win in New York ports case
April 19, 2023 // The Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey can withdraw from the Waterfront Commission Compact it had with New York to police corruption in the shipping industry in the waterways the states share. All nine of the Supreme Court’s justices voted in favor of the ruling, which dismissed arguments by New York in favor of forcing New Jersey to stay in the compact. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.