August ended on a high note for a free market conservative think tank that helps public employees opt out of their unions.
Maddie Dermon is director of communications at the Freedom Foundation, just coming off a record week for opt-outs.
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In a statement released Tuesday, Governor Glenn Youngkin committed to see through his plans to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria, Virginia with a new sports and entertainment district complete with new facilities for the teams to play.
Youngkin made the declaration after a breakdown of negotiations with two major unions resulted in their opposition to the arena, and after Virginia Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) successfully stalled a Senate bill necessary for the arena project to begin and now controls the fate of the House version of the bill after it landed in the Senate Finance Committee she chairs.
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From Boston to Los Angeles, teachers’ unions and their progressive counterparts have quietly devised an unprecedented method to bypass the legislative process by embedding unrelated policy issues deep within the intricate terms of teacher contracts.
This new, covert strategy, hidden in plain sight, allows state and municipal officials to create sweeping policy changes that evade the scrutiny typically associated with customary legislative procedures, which include publicly available draft legislation, committee hearings, amendments and comprehensive floor debates.
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The groups that helped buy liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are on the attack as talk of impeaching the newly elected jurist heats up.
It’s the latest fight in a pitched battleground state battle over judicial bias, recusal and the “will of the people.”
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This Labor Day, the Biden administration and Big Labor will no doubt tout the alleged successes of President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” push to increase unionization in the workplace and unions’ modest successes in breaking into a few big corporations. But those stories will also leave a lot out. They’ll leave out the side of the story that unions don’t want workers to know.
That side of the story includes the fact that unionization reached an all-time low of 10.1 percent in 2022 (and only 6.0 percent among private sector workers) as worker satisfaction reached an all-time high of 62.3 percent (according to The Conference Board’s measure, which began in 1987). It also includes the fact that while non-union wages increased by 24 percent over the past five years, union wages rose by less than 17 percent.
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President Joe Biden held his first presidential re-election campaign event on Saturday at the Philadelphia Convention Center, making strong appeals to his left-wing base.
Biden appeared alongside organized-labor activists and mentioned in the first few seconds of his oration that when he thinks of working Americans, he especially values the ones who associate with causes he finds politically congenial.
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A Biden administration official is a major donor to an organization that characterized Christian charter schools teaching a classical education as “far-right” ideologues attempting to advance “Christian nationalism.”
The Department of Labor’s Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs Thea Lee and her partner Mark Simon gave at least $5,000 in 2022, the highest level of sponsorship, to the Network for Public Education, a left-wing activist group focused on promoting public schools, according to the organization’s sponsors page. The Network for Public Education released a June 2023 report which notes that “right-wing ideology” is growing in charter schools that teach a “classical” or “traditional” education.
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On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s new state House Democratic majority began considering a measure to enshrine forced unionism in the state Constitution.
The House of Representatives Labor and Industry Committee took testimony on legislation identical to an Illinois constitutional amendment that Prairie State voters narrowly approved last November. Proposed by Representative Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), the Pennsylvania amendment would forbid lawmakers to enact a right-to-work law banning contracts that demand union-dues payments even from nonmembers.
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U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is urging fellow members of Congress to pass a measure to raise taxes on corporations with operations in low-tax foreign countries.
The legislation, called the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act, would effect American participation in a global minimum tax, a major Biden-administration policy priority. In 2021, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined 130 nations to negotiate a framework to equalize corporate taxation so companies could not escape high taxes in their home countries. Two months ago, all 27 member states of the European Union agreed on a plan for their involvement in such a system.
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A coalition of free-market associations sent an open letter on Tuesday to Ohio’s state lawmakers encouraging them to enact universal occupational license recognition, meaning the Buckeye State would honor professional certifications issued in other states.
Message signers included leaders of Americans for Prosperity-Ohio, the Buckeye Institute, the Goldwater Institute, the National Taxpayers Union and Americans for Tax Reform. The organizations observed that the state’s population is declining and that it will continue to do so if pro-market reforms aren’t made to attract new workers, including universal license recognition. Numerous states, including Arizona and North Carolina, generally accept credentials obtained elsewhere by people moving into those states.
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Speaking on Friday at the groundbreaking of Intel’s new semiconductor factory in Licking County, Ohio, President Joe Biden said that “it’s time to bury the label ‘rust belt…’” when describing the region in which he stood.
The ‘rust belt’ is a term often used to denote an area extending from western New York through the midwest that saw heavy industrial activity from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, particularly concerning steel production and automobile manufacturing. The region suffered significant economic decline by the late 20th century and many communities therein have struggled since.
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On Friday, Connecticut’s House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting companies’ management from requiring workers to listen to discussions regarding labor organization, politics or religion.
The AFL-CIO, to which more than 200,000 Connecticut workers belong, lauded the move in favor of the policy — known as a “captive audience” restriction — which no other state except Oregon has enacted. Union leaders have denounced the kind of meetings banned by the legislation, complaining that such events are unfairly used to inveigh against union-organization efforts.
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Richard Trumka, the leader of the AFL-CIO has died. He was 72.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, reportedly fighting back tears, announced Trumka’s unexpected death on the chamber floor early Thursday afternoon. Politico is reporting that Trumka is believed to have died as the result of a massive heart attack.
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It is no coincidence that what finally broke the Soviet Union was a Catholic trade union — a group of shipyard workers, led by an electrician and motivated by a faith that their oppressors deemed an opiate.
Christianity and its sweeping social vision enlivened the workers in Gdansk and their entire nation and, a decade later, a totalitarian superpower claiming to speak on behalf of all workers around the world had vanished. The forbidden revolution of workers bound together in solidarity around a shared vision of dignity, work, and the common good did what tanks and armed divisions had failed to do: it ended communism and gained freedom for millions.
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North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper recently said that a $15 minimum wage is an ‘admirable goal’, however, wants to see “how high we can get it.” WRAL reported: Gov. Roy Cooper called Wednesday for an increase in North Carolina’s minimum wage and said it need not be the $15-an-hour phase-in many Democrats have called for. “We need to work with the General Assembly to see how high we can get it,” Cooper told WRAL News. “$15 is an admirable goal.” According to the WRAL report, Governor Cooper made these remarks “in a morning speech to the AFL-CIO and from a brief conversation with WRAL News afterward.” The report by WRAL also states that Cooper “endorsed, in broad strokes,” the AFL-CIO’s legislative priorities and that he said that the AFL-CIO’s priorities list “align with the mission” he has established. It’s unclear exactly what “mission” Cooper is referring to, however, a set of incremental wage hikes he appears to endorse combined with the tax hikes he has called for would likely torpedo the promises made in his “jobs plan.” “What we need is a leader with a laser focus on creating good paying jobs and lifting wages,” Cooper’s campaign website reads.…
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Some of the nation’s largest labor unions have pledged to fight hate and violence in response to the events of Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees announced contributions to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. Following President Donald Trump’s response to the violence, numerous business leaders…
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