Posts tagged Public Sector
Michigan House votes to repeal Right-to-Work, restore prevailing wage
March 9, 2023 // The legislation, now headed to the Senate for final votes as early as next week, would end a 2012 law that prohibits compulsory union dues or fees. The House also voted to restore a construction-industry “prevailing wage” law the GOP repealed in 2018. Democrats touted the union-backed measure as a restoration of worker rights to collectively bargain for wages, benefits and workplace safety. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer supports the repeal, but in the past has blasted GOP efforts to make policy bills referendum-proof by including appropriations, decrying it as a form of legislative "abuse."
New York’s biggest labor actions of the past year
February 28, 2023 // Only one other state, Hawaii, has a unionization rate higher than New York’s 20.7%. In the public sector, just around two-thirds of New Yorkers are in a union. In 2022 alone, nearly 200 workplaces in the state filed for representation through the National Labor Relations Board. But, despite the hype and a 57-year high in Americans’ approval of labor unions, New York’s union participation (and the country’s as a whole) is still trending downward. In 2012, 23.2% of New York workers were union members, 2.5 points higher than it is today. CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies Labor Department Chair Ruth Milkman said that despite 2022’s historic union victories, many were with small firms. “So all this publicity and media attention to these iconic companies that have had some recent experience of successful unionization, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of the whole labor market in New York,” she said.
Opinion | Repealing Right-to-Work is a bad deal for Michigan autoworkers
February 3, 2023 // Michigan’s Right-to-Work law now only covers workers in the private sector. In Janus v. AFSCME, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of workers. Now all public-sector workers in the United States have their right to work guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Michigan cannot change that decision, so our Right-to-Work law only covers workers in the private sector. Do Michigan’s private-sector workers somehow deserve less freedom and protection than people who work for the government? Of course, the answer is no. We deserve those same rights, but Lansing politicians want to steal them away from us.
The Unionization Rate Went, Uh, Down?
January 26, 2023 // Meanwhile, unionization in the private sector is 6.0 percent (down from 6.1 percent in 2021). Perhaps this is because median weekly earnings among union members rose $47 in 2002, compared to a rise of $54 among non-union workers. This is the latest year in a declining union earnings premium that reached as much as 30 percent in 2007 but was just over 18 percent in 2022
Fairfax Co. first responders vote to unionize for the first time in 40 years
November 22, 2022 // Firefighters and paramedics in Fairfax County, Virginia, became the first group in 40 years to unionize Friday, after members totaled more than 3,300 24-hour days of mandatory overtime in just one calendar year. The vote was announced by the union in a press release, stating that the roughly 1,500 emergency personnel would be the first public sector employees in over four decades to enter a collective bargaining agreement. Until 2021, employees in the public sector couldn’t legally unionize. That changed in Fairfax County in early 2022, when the jurisdiction passed an ordinance that allowed state employees to collectively bargain.
Sacramento-area Pine Creek Care Center Nurses Overwhelmingly Vote to Oust Unwanted Teamsters Union
September 23, 2022 // Federal labor board data show that workers across the country are increasingly likely to be involved in efforts to remove unions from workplaces Just a month before Chand and her colleagues’ successful decertification vote, Foundation attorneys aided nurses at Mayo Clinic in Mankato, Minnesota, in their successful effort to throw out the unpopular Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) union from their workplace. About the same time, nurses from the St. James, Minnesota, branch of Mayo Clinic voted to decertify American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65 union officials by a nearly 9-to-1 margin, also with Foundation legal assistance.
Ohio: State of the Labor Unions
September 6, 2022 // The union membership rate in 2021 of public-sector workers (33.9%) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.1%). The highest unionization rates were among workers in education, training, and library occupations (34.6%) and protective service occupations (33.3%).
We’ve Beaten Down the Union ‘Dues Skim’ in Michigan Again and Again
August 11, 2022 // A few months later, Robert Haynes — a retired Detroit police officer — reached out to tell us that he and his wife Patricia were ensnarled in a similar scheme. Bob and Pat receive monthly Medicaid checks to take care of their two adult children. This dues skim resulted in an estimated 80,000 day care and home caregivers being forcibly unionized, with $35 million taken from their paychecks and given to unions. Harris v. Quinn, Bob and Pat Haynes,
Unions have enough power in Albany; legislative staff shouldn’t unionize
August 5, 2022 // But a legislative staffers union isn’t the answer to problems in Albany, and the simple reason is politics. Public-sector union officials who collectively bargain with the government are negotiating with the very people they help elect. Now add another layer to that – union officials negotiating with the people they help elect who then vote on the laws for the rest of the state. Imagine I’m a newly elected state senator. I won a hard-fought and ugly election against the incumbent, and now I’m reporting to Albany to set up my office and learn the ropes. Without unions, elected officials are free to choose their staff, and these staffers are at-will employees – meaning that if elected officials don’t feel their staff are trustworthy, or are doing a good job, they can terminate them. Upon arriving in Albany, I meet my new staff and am surprised to learn that because the collective bargaining agreement says so, my new staff is my former opponent’s old staff. The very staff that worked hard to ensure I wasn’t elected. Can I trust them? I now have no choice.
Most Unionized Occupations
August 2, 2022 // But unionization has been on a steady downward trajectory in recent decades. Workers in heavily unionized fields like manufacturing lost power amid the economic downturn and high unemployment of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Globalization and free trade agreements made it easier for employers to offshore jobs to less expensive labor markets, and automation and other technological advances have also decreased the number of workers in unionized jobs. Deregulation and other policy changes like right-to-work laws have decreased union strength. These shifts sharply cut down the share of U.S. workers in unions.