Posts tagged Public Sector Workers
CALIFORNIA: Charter School Teachers Vote To Unionize (Commentary)
June 25, 2024 // Private sector employees have been most affected by these losses. While only 6% of these employees are represented by unions, 32.5% of their public-sector counterparts have these protections. One of the ways that right-wing politicians have tried to reduce these rates is to transfer education funds from public schools to privately run schools whose workers are not represented by unions. Since California voted not to allow school vouchers in 2000, Privatizer’s primary way has been through charter schools. This has been particularly true in Los Angeles which has more students in charter schools than any city in the country. Unions do not represent employees in most of these charter schools, but that is starting to change.
EXCLUSIVE: Powerful Union Suddenly Courting Republicans Spent Millions On Liberal Advocacy, New Report Reveals
June 20, 2024 // One of the biggest chunks of the Teamster’s advocacy spending, worth roughly $2.5 million, went toward “registered Democrats, Democrat Party-funded initiatives, Democratic campaigns and organizations that focus on advancing the interest of the Democratic Party,” according to the report. Recipients of union funds included The National Democratic Club, a social organization in D.C. where liberal elites meet to hobnob, failed Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ voting rights group, Fair Fight Action, and the inaugural committee of Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The over $2.6 million in political donations made by the Teamsters’ PAC this election cycle have also skewed heavily to the left, with the vast majority of their funds going to Democrats and Democratic-aligned PACs like the Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Unions must represent all covered workers, even nonmembers, Michigan Supreme Court rules
May 13, 2024 // Workers who disagree with their union’s political speech cannot be forced to subsidize that speech through dues or fees. Despite this, unions aggressively attempt to organize public sector workers, knowing that by doing so, they are choosing to represent members and nonmembers equally. By upholding a union’s duty of fair representation, the Michigan Supreme Court has ensured that these protections continue, and cut short union efforts to strongarm employees into membership.
Effort by Michigan House staffers poses test to Democrats’ pro-union credentials
April 1, 2024 // Each representative decides what to pay their workers Those who work in the Michigan Legislature describe it as a workplace defined by high turnover, unwritten rules and a lack of boundaries respecting staffers' time. All 110 state representatives manage their own offices. But unlike workplaces in the private sector, barring an expulsion, state representatives who are poor managers can only be fired by voters in their districts.
Union Power Slips as Percentage of Union Jobs Declines
February 6, 2024 // “Increasingly, Americans realize they can negotiate their own workplace terms without handing over part of their hard-earned paycheck to a union boss who probably doesn’t even know their name,” Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation told The Center Square. “Government employee unions are highly political organizations that aren’t held accountable to a profit-margin or a consumer base and government workers are seeing they get more value from keeping those union dues dollars in their pockets to put more gas in their cars and more food on their family dinner table.”
UTAH: Is it ‘union busting’? Bill moves to House floor, over worker objections
January 29, 2024 // The bill, which Teuscher called a “compromise,” would require labor unions that represent public-sector employees to recertify every five years, and would prohibit public employers from deducting union dues from paychecks unless union members “affirmatively” opt in every year. The bill, if enacted, would also prohibit unions or their members from using “public money or property from union organizing or union activity.”
Biden’s labor proxy war against DeSantis
November 22, 2023 // Su is abusing her discretionary power under the Federal Transit Act. Yet if her actions are allowed to stand, labor unions may come to regret it. Future administrations may interpret the “fair and equitable” provision to require that states enact policies like Florida’s. States such as California, New York, and Illinois may suddenly find themselves out billions of dollars unless they stop giving unions unfair advantages and start protecting public-sector workers’ rights. Those states would surely argue that the Federal Transit Act doesn’t grant the secretary of labor such sweeping authority, but if that’s true, then the Biden administration’s assault on Florida is equally wrong.
Opinion: Say it again, Supremes: Forced union dues in government are illegal
November 3, 2023 // Far from making sure that employees “clearly and affirmatively consent” before union fees are deducted from their pay, these states — under pressure from mobilized unions — deny them any independent workplace source of information about their right to refuse. Often new hires are simply given a dues-withdrawal form to sign along with all the other first-day paperwork. When disgruntled dues-payers later learn of their rights and seek to withdraw their agreement, they are routinely confronted with confusing rules intended to make it almost impossible to stop paying. The Freedom Foundation, a workers’ rights education and litigation institute, documents dozens of such cases in a recent Supreme Court filing.
City Workers Ditch Unions, Skip Dues, Following Supreme Court Ruling
November 2, 2023 // Pre-Janus, public sector employees had the option to explicitly opt out of union membership thanks to an earlier Supreme Court decision but still had to pay “agency fees” out of their paychecks to the unions. Union leaders, including New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee, warned before the decision of potentially large declines in union membership if signing up became optional. Any dramatic loss of dues-paying union members could threaten unions’ operations or even their ability to exist – a possibility on the horizon in some so-called “right to work” states.
Supreme Court ruled public sector workers cannot be forced to pay dues; unions take them anyway
October 28, 2023 // After the Janus ruling, Ms. Quezambra sought to invoke her rights to stop the involuntary union dues payments, demanding she be refunded going back to 2013. The union refused on the grounds that she had allowed the union to make the deductions. This was news to Ms. Quezambra. The union “presented Ms. Quezambra a membership and dues deduction authorization card containing a forged signature that she purportedly signed. Ms. Quezambra did not sign this card,” her complaint states.