Posts tagged Virginia Foxx
Hearing Recap: “Investing for the Future: Honoring ERISA’s Promise to Participants”
May 3, 2025 // The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee held a hearing examining the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Left’s efforts to manipulate ERISA plans to push a radical political agenda. These benefit plans hold an estimated $14 trillion in assets and benefit 156 million workers, retirees, and dependents.
Legal documents say union funneled $1.8M into lost trust fund
April 2, 2025 // A subsequent internal forensic audit uncovered credit charges totaling upward of $400,000 for personal frivolities for local and state union leaders. A $12,000 Rolex, tickets to a Miami Dolphins game, $3,000 bar tabs and luxury golf trips were among the charges listed in court filings. Five top union officials were faced with forgery and theft charges
Backgrounder: Executive Order: Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
March 31, 2025 // The practice of “official time” is when unionized federal employees perform union-related activities, rather than their actual public service duties, while being paid by taxpayers. The Federal Unions EO requires that agencies, upon termination of an applicable collective bargaining agreement, reassign any workers who performed “official time” to positions where they perform solely agency business. It also contains language regarding existing grievance proceedings and allows for the head of each agency to submit a report to the President within 30 days highlighting any agency subdivisions that were not covered but should have been covered under the Federal Unions EO.
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.
Chairman Walberg Calls on DOL IG to Investigate EBSA’s Power Abuse
January 23, 2025 // “As we saw in the first Trump administration, career bureaucrats have sought to undermine the goals of the President and his cabinet Secretaries. We know of cases where bureaucrats have leaked sensitive information or are working with plaintiffs’ attorneys to skew court cases against employers. The Committee’s oversight work recently brought to light how [EBSA] is abusing its authority to secretly share information with class action law firms. This is a blatant abuse of the law, and our Committee will hold EBSA accountable.”
Report Shows Extent of Tax Dollars Spent on Public-Sector Unionism
January 17, 2025 // The results of the 2024 presidential election were a repudiation of Biden’s “most pro-union administration in American history,” in favor of one that sides with actual workers, as opposed to union bosses. Congress has every right to demand oversight over the expenses of the executive branch, especially when taxpayer dollars are funneled to union bureaucrats that are working in the interests of themselves and not the American people.
(I4AW) Report Shows Extent of Tax Dollars Spent on Public-Sector Unionism
January 17, 2025 // After the last official report was compiled in 2019, the OPM stopped reporting the hours and costs involved in union-related “official time” despite repeated calls from House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx for President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order to be honored. Pushback continued in 2023 when Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) directed a letter to the OPM querying why the website reporting page went missing in July of that year, only to be told the site was undergoing “maintenance”. In March of last year, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced legislation entitled the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act which called on a return to reporting on the part of the OPM regarding time spent on collective bargaining. In August, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill entitled the No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act to curtail union activities by federal employees during work hours. All these attempts to increase transparency for taxpayers were roadblocked by Democrats in Congress and even now, the site still has not re-emerged – making I4AW’s report even more critical.
Foxx: Block on ‘Big Labor’ a commonsense move by U.S. Senate
December 18, 2024 // "Thankfully, his colleagues had enough commonsense to stop a move that dramatically undercuts the will of the voters, and I look forward to the Trump administration enacting a truly pro-worker agenda." Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the Senate come January, ending Schumer's time as leader. Foxx herself is also changing positions; she will be succeeded by Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., as chairman of the Committee on Education & The Workforce in the U.S. House.
I4AW Presents Defender of Worker Freedom Award to Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Virginia Foxx for Championing Workers Over Special Interests
December 13, 2024 // “Sen. Cassidy and Chairwoman Foxx boldly support free-market labor policies that lift up workers, drive the American economy and shine light on the misuse of taxpayer funds,” - I4AW President F. Vincent Vernuccio
I4AW Presents Defender of Worker Freedom Award to Rep. Virginia Foxx for Demanding Oversight and Transparency in Support of Workers
December 13, 2024 // “We need vigilant watchdogs like Rep. Foxx to ensure that the American workplace is an equal playing field for workers and entrepreneurs to prosper.” -I4AW President F. Vincent Vernuccio.