Posts tagged Worker Centers
Why is DOL Letting Front Groups for Big Labor Avoid the Law?
October 17, 2024 // An explanation of why OLMS chose the specific worker centers that it listed in section 030.613 of the Manual. An explanation of the methodology that OLMS used in evaluating each of the worker centers listed in section 030.613 of the Manual and OLMS’s analysis for each. An explanation of the circumstances in which OLMS initiated its analyses for the worker centers listed in section 030.613 of the Manual.
Podcast: Rich Lowry with guest Vinnie Vernuccio; How Unions Are Failing American Workers
July 31, 2024 // National Review's Rich Lowry is joined by Vinnie Vernuccio, President of the Institute for the American Worker, to discuss how unions have reduced worker freedom, the underhanded tactics unions use to gain power and stifle dissenting voices, how the government enables unions, and how Americans can use free market principles to restore workers' rights and bring about positive labor reform.
Op-Ed: To win the South, unions should embrace right to work
April 30, 2024 // Workers might even be more inclined to back a union if they knew that the union leadership had to be mindful of the members' concerns. And if a union has so few paying members that it collapses, then maybe it should fail. That lack of support indicates its members didn't see much value in it. It remains to be seen if unions like UAW can learn to live with right to work laws in the first place or if they try to fight them. Union leaders by and large hate the laws precisely because they give them less control over the members and potentially leave the unions in a weak financial state.
Workers United Has an Alter Ego
April 4, 2023 // Workers United is the largest shareholder of “union controlled” Amalgamated Bank, and is frequently described as its majority owner given its unique control of the bank. Amalgamated reports investments to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that go against both the union and the bank’s self-proclaimed values. Both Workers United and the bank have put forth an image of progressive values and social responsibility. This image has helped Workers United popularize some of its major organizing campaigns, including efforts to organize baristas throughout the country.
In Michigan, a Modicum of Justice for a COVID-Exploiting Teachers’ Union
March 21, 2023 // According to a January 2022 Freedom Foundation report, labor unions and related organizations procured some 223 loans totaling $36.1 million during the period between the passage of the CARES Act in March 2020, which created the PPP program, and the American Rescue Plan in March 2021, which modified it. Leading recipients included teachers’ unions, government employees’ unions, and AFL-CIO advocacy groups. As the Freedom Foundation asserted in its report: The ineligible loans diverted resources away from the purpose of the PPP, namely helping businesses keep employees on payroll. Further, given that union revenue derives primarily from dues deducted from members’ paychecks, direct support to unions was unnecessary; to the extent the PPP loans to businesses allowed union employees to keep working, it also allowed unions to continue collecting dues from their paychecks.
COMMENTARY America’s seeing a historic surge in worker organizing. Here’s how to sustain it
September 7, 2022 // Likewise, strikes by public-sector workers in the 1960s produced state-level statutes endorsing collective bargaining. Similar policy changes will be needed to sustain contemporary worker efforts, both by fixing the basics of existing labor law to ensure that workers who want collective bargaining are successful in achieving contracts, and by opening up labor law to new forms of worker voice in workplace affairs and corporate governance. But legal changes won’t lead the process. As in the past, policymakers will respond to pressure for change coming from the workforce, a broad base of public interest groups, and ultimately some in the business community.
What a Surge in Union Organizing Means for Food and Farm Workers
March 25, 2022 // By organizing with the Warehouse Workers for Justice, many were able to get their jobs back and have their demands met. “What’s really interesting is that there’s a huge movement right now for worker centers and unions to work together ... to essentially surround the industry,” Oliva said. “So if an employer busts the union, the worker center emerges. If the worker center is unable to organize the workers, the union organizes them.”
SEIU DROPS ITS FRONT IN UNIONIZING STARBUCKS
March 7, 2022 // Proponents had insisted that the movement, which now extends to 103 stores, was a homespun phenomenon arising spontaneously throughout the chain’s domestic arm. The narrative held that the baristas-turned-organizers were union neophytes who discovered they shared a desire to have more say on the brand’s direction and store operations, without any choreography from an outside labor force. Few reports even mentioned that the activist employees were receiving advice or financial support from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) through its Workers United affiliate.
Unregulated Organizing: Analysis of the Worker Center Movement
November 18, 2021 // A newly released report by the Institute for the American Worker (I4AW) provides an analysis of worker centers and how they manage to avoid legal requirements placed on labor unions but operate in a similar manner.