Posts tagged Public Employees
Opinion: Loudoun County School Board Should Be Wary of LEA’s Collective Bargaining Push
March 20, 2023 // In states like Illinois and Michigan, collective bargaining allows teachers to show up for work intoxicated and avoid discipline. In Connecticut, collective bargaining made it possible for a state hospital employee to fatally abuse a patient and then get his job back …caring for more vulnerable people. New York holds perhaps the most chilling example of the harm that befalls students and the community subject to collective bargaining: a union used taxpayer dollars to protect a teacher who admitted to repeatedly sexually abusing students. Collective bargaining locks public employees into multi-year contracts that ensure limited job advancement, teachers are taken out of the classroom to do union business on the taxpayer’s dime, and individual freedom is stifled. After all, when you are represented by a union, you give away your voice and your power to that union.
OP-ED | Connecticut Lawmakers Block Pro-worker Reforms
March 16, 2023 // House Bill 5343 would have given public employees, like my fellow teachers, the right to vote at least every four years on whether to keep or replace their unions. A good union, a strong union — a union in spirit — that serves its members well would earn their votes and the supreme compliment of being recertified, while a weak or corrupt union that loses its members’ trust would be entitled no longer to a monopoly on bargaining power. Workers could choose a better one. Apparently, this simple democratic notion scared Big Labor so much that the majority party in Hartford has made sure that it won’t see the light of day. House Bill 5343 will receive not even a public hearing … because why would legislators listen to real public servants in an open forum when they can listen to the soothing white noise of union lobbyists instead?
Opinion: Florida Bill Would Make Government Unions More Transparent, Accountable
March 9, 2023 // The “Paycheck Protection Bill” includes language that would, among other things: prevent the state from deducting dues on behalf of unions from public employees’ paychecks, forcing unions to do their own billing and collections; require audits of unions representing public employees; require union membership cards to include wording echoing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which recognized the right of public employees to decline union membership, dues, and fees with no loss of representation or benefits; and, perhaps most significantly, the bill establishes a new threshold and closes some unintended loopholes in a 2018 law that forces certification elections in situations where more than half of the bargaining unit has refused to support the union. These elections allow all employees who are represented by the union an opportunity to vote on whether the union will be allowed to continue representing them.
Opinion: Collective Manipulation; Whether in courts or in legislatures, public employee unions need to be reined in.
February 22, 2023 // The book contains countless examples of collective bargaining agreements effectively allowing employees to get away with gross misconduct and preventing managers from sanctioning them for lackluster work. An EPA employee was caught surfing porn in his cubicle at work and was paid for nearly two years before agreeing to retire. An IRS agent systematically denied benefits to African immigrants, repeatedly made discriminatory remarks in the office, and tried to run another employee off the road. His union lawyers got him a deal that left him with a clean personnel record when he left the agency, allowing him to get a job with the Forestry Service. “As a practical matter,” Howard writes, “almost no public employee can be dismissed without a massive managerial commitment,” and even that commitment does not guarantee success. California has 300,000 teachers and only about two or three a year lose their jobs because of poor performance. At the federal level, more employees die at work than face termination for poor performance. Public sector unions provide more than direct financial contributions to political campaigns. Howard recounts how they recruit and train candidates, manage phone banks, lead door-to-door canvassing drives, staff campaigns, and run ads. Such union political activity makes them larger and more influential than other political interest groups. The protracted legal battles former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker faced after he proposed reining in public-union power supports Howard’s thesis that union power is formidable. Walker beat a union-led recall effort against him, but union opposition to modest changes led to electoral annihilation in New Jersey in the 1990s.
Oregon senators want taxpayers to stop paying long-distance commuting costs of remote workers. Union leader says think again
February 13, 2023 // Oregon lawmakers are wrestling with whether to continue paying state workers who’ve chosen to live in far-flung states including Hawaii to travel back to the state for periodic in-person check-ins. Before the pandemic, it was not unusual for a small segment of state workers to live just outside Oregon’s borders, in Washington, Idaho, California and Nevada. But they were expected to show up at state workplaces on their own dime.
City Workers Losing Patience With Slow Crawl to Union Contracts
January 31, 2023 // Most city employees are now working under expired labor contracts that lapsed as far back as 2020 — frustrating rank-and-file union members whose anticipated pay raises are tied up in an escalating battle over proposed changes to retired colleagues’ health coverage. Nearly all of the city’s roughly 300,000 unionized staff are working under expired collective bargaining agreements. They include members of the city’s largest public sector unions, District Council 37 (DC37) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Administrative workers, school crossing guards, teachers, police detectives, sanitation workers and health technicians are among those eager to bargain for raises as well as potential new benefits, such as flexibility to work remotely.
UNIONIZE MANAGEMENT? WASHINGTON STATE IS CONSIDERING IT.
January 19, 2023 // WMS employees earn up to $300,456 per year, more than three times the salary of the average working Washingtonian and 23 percent more than the highest-paid state department secretaries. Historically, the Legislature has consistently increased the salaries of WMS employees at the same rate it has increased wages for union-represented state workers. In terms of compensation, the only reason it would be in the interest of WMS employees to unionize would be to attempt to secure wage increases larger than those negotiated by the unions representing general government civil service employees. But given that state funds are finite, this necessarily pits managers’ interests against those of the employees they supervise.
Michigan Right-to-Work Repeal Bills Are Unconstitutional
January 19, 2023 // “A state legislature cannot overturn a U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of First Amendment rights,” said Patrick Wright, vice president for legal affairs at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “These bills show a grave lack of understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the rights of public employees. This attempt to put forth blatantly unconstitutional legislation is concerning.” The Mackinac Center is also opposed to House Bill 4005, which would repeal right-to-work for private sector employees. Senate Bill 5 and House Bill 4004
Forgery Cases Give Supreme Court Opportunity to Hold Unions Accountable for Shady Tactics
January 18, 2023 // aken collectively, the forgery cases clearly suggest a coordinated strategy on the part of unions panicked into breaking the law at the prospect of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money when members they’ve spent decades preying on discover that the power to decide about workplace representation has always been in their own hands. The Supreme Court made its intentions in Janus crystal clear. Public employees have an iron-clad First Amendment right to keep their jobs even if they choose to have nothing to do with a union.
Forgery Cases Give Supreme Court Opportunity to Hold Unions Accountable for Shady Tactics
January 11, 2023 // Taken collectively, the forgery cases clearly suggest a coordinated strategy on the part of unions panicked into breaking the law at the prospect of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money when members they’ve spent decades preying on discover that the power to decide about workplace representation has always been in their own hands. The Supreme Court made its intentions in Janus crystal clear. Public employees have an iron-clad First Amendment right to keep their jobs even if they choose to have nothing to do with a union.