Posts tagged Republicans
Kim Kavin: Intent to Reconsider
April 8, 2025 // The federal government has indicated in court that it may rescind the Biden-Harris administration’s independent-contractor rule and undertake the process of new rule-making. Yesterday, the U.S. Labor Department filed a status report in one of several lawsuits against the Biden-Harris administration over its independent contractor rule. This status report was filed with regard to the Frisard case, whose plaintiff is represented by Liberty Justice Center and the Pelican Institute.
Op-ed: Rantz: Seattle unions planning ‘fight-back training’ to push back against Trump’s immigration plan
March 31, 2025 // “This training seeks to equip labor and community organizers and advocates with the necessary information to navigate escalating attacks on immigrant workers and their families and equip them with tools to fight back,” the event page reads. “It includes Know Your Rights information, best practices for unions to implement, model contract language, as well as specific guidance related to a range of policy changes and enforcement actions we must expect as part of the mass deportation agenda.”
Sherrod Brown, weighing his political future, launches pro-worker organization
March 26, 2025 // But Brown said the institute is not political or partisan. Its first national poll did not mention his name but rather explored how politicians talk about the economy. The political dialogue is “fundamentally flawed” and “doesn't reflect the reality of workers' lives,” he said. Brown, 72, is weighing whether he'll run for office ever again, he said, after losing his bid for a fourth term to Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno last year. Before that, the Ohio Democrat had spent three decades in Congress and consistently won statewide elections even as the former bellwether state turned reliably Republican in the era of Donald Trump.
Unions prepare to fight Ohio bill that bans university faculty from striking
March 24, 2025 // The bill that would ban most mandatory diversity training in higher education is headed back to that chamber to approve changes the House made before passing it mostly along party lines. Republicans have said Senate Bill 1 would combat what they see as liberal indoctrination at public universities. But labor unions are ready to fight it. "This is really the the most significant undercutting of collective bargaining since that was attempted with Senate Bill 5 back in 2011," said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union which represents K-12 teachers as well as some higher education faculty. Senate Bill 5 sought to restrict collective bargaining rights for 400,000 Ohioans in public sector unions, including teachers and law enforcement. Unions came out in force against it and then mounted a campaign to repeal the law, submitting a record 1.3 million signatures to put it on the fall 2011 ballot. Nearly two-thirds of voters approved overturning it.
Bill to remove Colorado requirement for second vote to unionize passes House committee
March 17, 2025 // Mabrey emphasized the fact that five former U.S. secretaries of Labor wrote to Colorado Governor Jared Polis in support of the bill in early February, saying the requirement for a second vote creates “an unnecessary barrier” to unionization. Polis has suggested that he will not support the legislation unless a compromise arises. At a press conference Thursday, Polis told reporters the bill is about “the right of workers to have a say on whether they’re forced to pay union dues,” and that a second election provides that. He said he will support a solution that presents “a way of organizing that’s more stable,” though he would not state directly whether he would sign the bill as is.
Commentary: Freelance Busting: The Ratio Reality
March 11, 2025 // Democrats, led by Senate and House Minority Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, just reintroduced the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Named for a former head of the AFL-CIO, this bill, H.R. 20, does the same thing that California Governor Gavin Newsom claimed AB5 would do. The PRO Act aims to reclassify independent contractors as employees as a way to empower union organizers. As Jeffries put it in Congress: “When our unions are strong, the United States of America is strong.” Republicans, led by Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, put forward the Modern Worker Empowerment Act. This bill, H.R. 1319, aims to stop California’s experiment from spreading. It would protect everyone’s freedom to be our own bosses. As Kiley put it: “California’s disastrous AB5 law wreaked havoc on independent workers, stripping them of their ability to work on their own terms and forcing businesses to cut off contractor relationships. Shifting federal regulations threaten to impose similar uncertainty nationwide, putting millions of workers at risk.”
Senate confirms Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor secretary
March 11, 2025 // “The American people demand and deserve change after four years of economic heartache under the ‘most pro-union administration in American history.’ Unfortunately, Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s record pushing policies that force hardworking Americans into union membership suggests more of the same,” McConnell said. “Most Americans believe joining a union should be a personal choice – not a mandate – which is why more than half the states, including Kentucky, have adopted right-to-work laws.”
How New York Can Prevent Another Prison Worker Strike
March 7, 2025 // The governor should hold both sides to account. She needs a handshake deal with lawmakers to restore some of the discretion that prison superintendents previously wielded to impose solitary confinement in the most extreme cases. Such an agreement can be codified in the forthcoming state budget. In return, state law should require every DOCCS employee to wear a body camera whenever in the presence of an inmate and give the department more latitude in curbing the arrival of drugs and contraband. Finally, Hochul needs to identify and terminate the strike’s instigators. Any capitulation, real or perceived, will tempt other public employees to instigate their own illegal strikes—though some of damage in this regard has already been done.
Freedom Foundation Applauds OPM Directive to Report on Government Union Work
March 5, 2025 // In Nov. 2023, the Freedom Foundation reported that OPM had not only stopped reporting on the amount of official time used by federal employees — as it had done under presidents of both parties since the late 1990s — but had taken down the page on its website housing years of reports on the use and cost of official time to taxpayers, all while promoting expanded use of taxpayer-funded union time. The following month, citing the Freedom Foundation’s investigation, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and nine other Republican U.S. Senators sent an oversight letter to OPM demanding to know why the webpage was removed and whether OPM would publish any further updates on taxpayer-funded union time. After Biden’s OPM director responded that her agency had no intention of restoring the official time webpage, much less conducting another study on the costs of taxpayer-funded union time, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) introduced the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act, which would require each federal agency to track and annually report the amount of time its employees spend on union business and the cost of such official time to taxpayers.
UTAH, Opinion: Republicans Need to Learn Government Unions Can’t Be Trusted
March 3, 2025 // On Feb. 14, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law I sponsored banning public-sector collective bargaining. This makes Utah the best state in the nation for protecting taxpayers and ensuring that government employees can negotiate their own employment terms. But this victory came only after fruitless attempts to work with government unions—efforts that exposed their pattern of saying one thing while doing another. In early 2024, I introduced a bill that would have required public-sector unions to hold regular recertification elections. As I argued at the time, unions representing teachers, firefighters and police should have to prove continuously that they represent a majority of workers. Taxpayers, too, have a stake: If a union doesn’t speak for most employees, why should the rest of the state be on the hook for its demands?