Posts tagged top story
Nurses and teachers unions bankroll leftist candidates and causes
July 21, 2026 // Additionally, the AFT donated $150,000 to Gov. Tina Kotek’s (D-OR) reelection campaign on the eve of the May primary. Kotek then decided in June to opt Oregon out of the Trump administration’s school choice program, which would subsidize scholarships for K-12 students to cover the cost of private school tuition and homeschooling expenses. AFT has been lobbying Democratic governors to reject the education tax credits offered by the program, calling it a “private school voucher scheme.” Meanwhile, the Oregon Education Association declined to endorse Kotek, despite doing so in the past, out of frustration with the state’s school funding levels.
New Mercatus Liya Palagashvilli Report: Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of Independent Work
July 20, 2026 // A freelancer or solo business owner may earn income from multiple clients without any one client serving as the institutional provider of benefits. If AI expands this kind of independent knowledge work, then benefits should increasingly attach to the worker rather than to a single firm. Portable benefits would allow workers to maintain access to health benefits, retirement accounts, paid leave, and other forms of security across different work arrangements.17Contributions could come from multiple sources: the worker, firms, clients, platforms, customers, or government matches for lower-income workers. The goal is not to make independent work look exactly like traditional employment. It is to make sure that workers do not lose financial security simply because their income comes from contracts, clients, or a one-person business rather than from a firm. The second implication concerns unemployment insurance and income disruption. Traditional unemployment insurance is built around a clean layoff from an employer. But AI-related disruption may not always appear that way. A consultant may lose clients. A software contractor may face fewer projects. A designer may see rates fall. A worker may move from a salaried job into solo self-employment, not because work disappeared entirely, but because the organization of work changed. In these cases, the relevant question is not only whether an employer laid someone off. It is whether the worker experienced a meaningful earnings shock or transition.
LAUSD deadline looms to make painful cuts after county says board actions ‘erode confidence’
July 20, 2026 // The county rejected the plan, saying it lacked specificity and necessitates “an elevated level of fiscal oversight.” Among a list of eight acute budget issues, the July 2 letter faulted the L.A. Unified Board of Education for: Approving costly labor contracts exemplifying “mismanagement of the collective bargaining process.” A failure to carry out earlier approved budget cuts that “erodes confidence.” Raiding funds from a health benefits trust against “its own staff’s fiscal advice.” As a result of these and other district actions, Duardo said, L.A. Unified faces a cash shortfall of $231 million by November 2027, increasing to a $3.5-billion deficit by June 30, 2029.
Railroad, airline labor mediator fired by Trump drops legal fight
July 20, 2026 // The Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision expanding President Trump’s firing power has reached another agency: one that works out labor disputes in the airline and railroad industries. Deirdre Hamilton, a Democratic appointee to the National Mediation Board who had been contesting her firing, has now dismissed her legal challenge. A judge on Thursday ordered the case be closed.
A Union for Home Care Workers? Many Are Wary.
July 17, 2026 // New York Focus independently spoke to more than a dozen aides for this story, and eight were either against it or leaning in that direction. Saba Nakhai, 32, who cares for her mother in Westchester full time, told New York Focus that she doesn’t see a place for the union in her work. “Maybe if I was working at a corporation, I would want a union,” she said. “But here, who’s the enemy, my mom?” Saba Nakhai, a young woman, stands smiling behind and holds the arms of her older mother, who is seated and wearing sunglasses. The room seems celebratory; a cake is on the table in front of them, and pictures of Saba hang from the ceiling. Saba Nakhai cares for her mother in Westchester full time. | Courtesy of Saba Nakhai To win, 1199 must convince workers like Nakhai that they need an advocate — not against their patients, but against the sprawling bureaucracy that sets their wages and benefits. If it’s successful, 1199 — already one of New York’s political kingmakers — will become even more powerful. Its membership and dues revenue will balloon, enabling more organizing and lobbying.
Op-ed: Politics Has Taken Over My Union
July 16, 2026 // The UAW should focus on automotive job growth, not leftwing fads. As for Congress, lawmakers shouldn’t support any bill that lets unions put political ideology ahead of workers’ real needs. By taking contract votes away from workers and giving the final say to forced arbitration after the last offer from union leadership, the Faster Labor Contracts Act will surely worsen the kind of union politicization that already hurts workers like me.