Posts tagged Texas
DOL gets flexible on overtime
May 18, 2026 // The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that workers be paid time-and-a-half once a work week exceeds 40 hours. However, employers may exempt workers classified as managerial who meet a salary threshold. In 2023, The Biden administration raised the income threshold from $35,500 to $44,000, and planned to increase it again to $59,000 annually by 2025. This was intended to expand the number of people receiving overtime. The administration’s union allies and labor-sympathetic lawmakers have long argued that companies abuse the exception by designating regular employees as managerial to get out of having to pay them overtime. Raising the threshold was meant to prevent this. This one-size-fits-all approach did not necessarily benefit all workers.
Federal union leaders rally Fort Hood workers amid fears over contract terminations, employee rights and future of federal unions
May 11, 2026 // Throughout the evening, union leaders urged employees to stay engaged, document workplace issues and continue paying union dues through AFGE’s e-dues system. Kelley repeatedly stressed that the union’s strength depends on worker participation. “The union is you,” Kelley said. “You make it a union.” He encouraged workers to recruit coworkers and continue organizing despite uncertainty surrounding bargaining agreements.
Opinion: As Trump slashes research, California devises a solution
May 1, 2026 // The University of California system alone — where the United Auto Workers union, the organization I lead, represents 60,000 workers, including academic employees and researchers — risks losing between $5 billion and $6 billion every year from the Trump administration’s cuts. The UAW represents more than 120,000 academic workers across the country,
Commentary: Unions make slight gains in South, mirroring national trends
April 29, 2026 // Southern states continue to lag significantly behind the rest of the country in union membership. Close to 4.9 percent of workers in the South belong to a union, and 5.9 percent of workers are employed in a workplace that enjoys union representation. That compares to 12.7 percent union density in the rest of the country, and 14 percent of non-Southern workers having union representation at their workplace. Labor’s modest gains come amidst a wide-ranging assault on worker protections under the Trump administration. Since coming into office, Trump has sought to strip collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers and eviscerated worker health and safety protections.
OPINION: Union Politics Is Poisoning Washington’s Business Climate
April 23, 2026 // Between 2021 and 2026, Washington fell from #16 to #45 in the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index, a dramatic drop that signals a rapidly deteriorating business climate. Meanwhile, the cost of living has surged. The Washington Roundtable now ranks the state among the five most expensive in the country. This did not happen by accident. It is the direct outcome of a policy agenda backed by union money and enacted by elected officials who benefit from it: higher minimum wages, expansive paid-leave mandates, new healthcare requirements, and an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
Opinion GOP’s fatal attraction to unions is the start of a bad romance
April 21, 2026 // Instead of offering flowers and chocolates, they aim to impress labor by slicing up the PRO Act and feeding it piecemeal to the rest of the GOP. The Faster Labor Contracts Act, sponsored by Hawley and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ), is the first portion. It would allow federal mediators to essentially write union contracts for newly organized workplaces, if businesses and unions can’t agree on terms within four months of a union’s workplace-election win.
ProPublica’s unionized staff vote to authorize strike: ‘We are ready to walk off the job’
March 22, 2026 // The unionized staff at ProPublica voted to authorize a strike Thursday evening, declaring they were "ready to walk off the job" in order to send a message to management.
Harris County becomes first in Texas to allow employees to organize with new ‘consultation policy’
March 19, 2026 // Harris County commissioners voted 3-1 Thursday to let many county workers choose a labor organization to advocate for workplace policy changes, elevate grievances and make recommendations to Commissioners Court. The "employee consultation policy" does not permit employees to engage in collective bargaining, which state law blocks most government employees in Texas from doing. Government employees in Texas cannot strike.
Debate grows as states consider teacher strike bans
March 9, 2026 // Many states are considering new policies affecting teachers’ ability to strike or participate in protests, and education officials and labor advocates continue to debate the legality of teacher strikes. The strikes are banned or heavily restricted in roughly 38 states and Washington, D.C.
Op-ed: Trump restores America’s control over Washington
February 12, 2026 // President Trump is all too familiar with this injustice. In his first term, senior bureaucrats repeatedly used their power to prevent his priorities from becoming policy. They slow-walked reforms at the Department of Education, refused to prosecute civil rights cases, and circumvented a federal hiring freeze—to name just a few examples. At the start of the second Trump administration, a poll found that 75 percent of federal managers who voted for Kamala Harris planned to disobey instructions they don’t like. But public servants are supposed to serve the public, even if they disagree with the party the public elected. In the private sector, workers could be fired for not doing their job. But until now, presidential administrations couldn’t hold senior bureaucrats accountable because federal rules made them effectively untouchable. While Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one at federal agencies, conservative career officials could also refuse to implement a liberal president’s agenda.