Posts tagged Public Employees
Florida Continues to Lead the Nation on Labor Reform and Worker Freedom
December 10, 2024 // In 2023, Gov. DeSantis led the effort on a transparency bill (SB 256), otherwise known as the Teachers’ Bill of Rights. Our organization, Workers for Opportunity, was proud to help support this legislation through testimony before the Florida Legislature, newspaper essays helping explain the legislation and other advocacy efforts. We also utilized educational materials provided by The James Madison Institute.
Labor’s Future After Wisconsin Anti-Union Law Struck Down
December 5, 2024 // For that reason, the law’s categories of general and public safety employees, and its public safety employee exemption, were unconstitutional, Frost wrote then. Frost reiterated that ruling Monday. “Act 10 as written by the Legislature specifically and narrowly defines ‘public safety employee,’” Frost wrote. “It is that definition which is unconstitutional.”
Florida teachers union loses 20,000 members after government stops collecting dues
December 4, 2024 // In its annual Form LM-2 filed in November with the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), the FEA disclosed having 111,133 employed, dues-paying members as of August 31, 2024, down from the 131,510 “active members” the union reported a year earlier. The precipitous decline far exceeds typical annual fluctuations in the union’s membership numbers and comes in the wake of Florida policymakers’ adoption of a package of government union reforms in 2023 championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis with the support of the Freedom Foundation and other conservative groups.
COMMENTARY: You Can’t Support Trump and Government Unions
November 21, 2024 // Trump and his allies have talked endlessly about the need to take on the “deep state” or “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. Sometimes such talk veers into conspiracy-theorizing, but it’s certainly true that many federal bureaucrats are opposed to Trump and their obstruction can prevent him from governing as he was elected to govern. For years, conservatives have been raising the alarm about the constitutional problems that an entrenched, unelected administrative state presents when it hinders the elected leaders from making decisions. Government unions stand in the way of making many reforms to the civil service that Trump would like to see.
Back-to-Back Opt-Out Milestones Suggest Record Year in New York
September 17, 2024 // Last year, the Freedom Foundation helped a record 1,351 New Yorkers take control of their paychecks by saying “no more” to government unions that don’t represent them. In 2024, we’ve already assisted with 1,025 opt-outs — and it’s only September! With nearly 76% of last year’s total and four months to go, the Freedom Foundation is expected to surpass 1,500 opt-outs in New York by year’s end. July 2024 marked New York’s best month ever for opt-outs, only to be outdone by August. These back-to-back record months prove that now, more than ever before, public employees are taking action to keep union dues in their own pockets instead of funding Big Labor’s ideological agendas.
Government Unions are Down — But Not Out
September 10, 2024 // For nearly a decade, the Commonwealth Foundation has tracked state-by-state changes in labor laws. Every two years, the Commonwealth Foundation releases its research on the ever-changing legal landscape for public sector unions, assessing each state’s efforts to promote public employees’ rights or cave to unions’ entrenched influence. This fourth edition examines government unions’ attempts, following Janus, to hold onto and expand special legal privileges under state laws. The research also highlights the states reining in government unions’ power and influence by empowering workers.
Back to school, back to the union? Commentary
September 9, 2024 // Union membership is a personal decision, and for a variety of reasons, thousands of Minnesota educators across the state have said no thanks to what the union is prioritizing. Just as educators encourage their students to be independent thinkers and hold true to themselves, so too should educators be trusted by their colleagues to make decisions that are best for them and their families. The right to say “no” to union membership is just as important as the right to say “yes” to it — but educators first need to know they actually do have a choice. And it’s important that respect exists for that choice.
Labor unions lose 63,000 members under new state law
September 5, 2024 // The largest losses of union representation in Florida due to SB 256 come from those employed by the state government — more than 43,000 state employees have lost their unions. The second largest loss of union representation comes from university and college professors, specifically unions that represent adjunct and part-time faculty. Municipal employees from cities large and small follow. WLRN is using public records to maintain a database that shows the full extent of the fallout of the law.
Beleaguered CUNY Professors Appeal to SCOTUS for Relief from Union They Claim Is Antisemitic
August 6, 2024 // The cert petition says the heart of their complaint is the question, “Can the government force Jewish professors to accept the representation of an advocacy group they rightly consider to be anti-Semitic?” They claim that various Supreme Court rulings, including Janus and NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., articulate their First Amendment right to “eschew association for expressive purposes” and “boycott entities to express a message.” The petition charges the lower courts have misinterpreted Knight, saying that ruling “did not sanction a state forcing Jewish faculty members who are ardent Zionists to accept the representation of a union that supports policies they consider anti-Israel,” and urges the Court to grant to petition to “clarify Knight and make clear that the First Amendment protects individuals’ right to dissociate themselves from advocacy groups that support policies contrary to their deeply held beliefs.”
WISCONSIN: Unions respond to Act 10 decision
July 11, 2024 // The 2011 law created two categories of public workers — public safety employees, and general employees. The law prohibited unions representing general employees from collectively bargaining for any benefits outside of raises that would be capped to inflation. The judge ruled that the state Legislature did not have a "rational basis" for how it created those different categories, and the law is unconstitutional because of that.