While the media breathlessly covered the final two weeks of this year’s term at the U.S. Supreme Court, an important anniversary quietly came and went — the fourth year of freedom from forced union participation by public-sector employees.
On June 27, 2018, the justices banned mandatory union membership, dues and fees for government employees, overturning more than 40 years of court precedent that required government employee union participation as a condition of employment.
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Hawaii Governor David Ige announced Wednesday that state employees might have to take pay cuts.
“Let me be very frank with you, due to this crisis, the main sources of state revenue have been drastically reduced,” he said. “State government needs to look very different going forward.”
The Democratic governor said he has had ongoing discussions with union representatives and state legislators, but no decision has been made yet.
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by Tim Pearce Public education employees such as teachers and janitors are quitting jobs in record numbers, an uncommon trend in a profession that often rewards longevity, The Wall Street Journal reported. Many industries in the past year have seen a historically high rate of workers quitting. A tight labor market and sluggish wage growth are making job transfers less risky and long-term unemployment less likely for most Americans. People working in the public education sector are still less likely to quit their jobs than the average worker across all industries. Roughly 0.8 percent of public educators quit in the first 10 months of 2018 versus a rate of 2.4 percent across the American workforce in 2018, WSJ reported Friday. The rate of people quitting public education positions has nearly doubled since 2009, however, when jobs in the steady field were prized in the unsteady labor market rocked by a recession. The current rate of quitting is also at its highest since the Department of Labor began tracking the stat in 2001. A December EdChoice survey indicated public educators may be growing more unsatisfied with their jobs and careers. “During the recession, education was a safe place to be,”…
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by Molly Prince Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas revealed Wednesday that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan advised GOP House members to run on a platform against President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. “Just a few weeks before the election, we were told by Paul, by our elected leaders that, gee, the only way we can keep the House majority is just all of us start running against the president,” Gohmert told guest host Derek Hunter during an interview on WMAL. “Fortunately, we had enough people one after another on the call that pushed back so hard they backed off of that.” Gohmert explained that Trump is still getting used to the dichotomy between the public and private sector, especially when it comes to handling members who claim to support him politically, yet refuse to further his agenda. “He wants to work with people over here on the Hill, and he’s just not used to, in the private sector, having people that are reputedly on his side conspiring to keep him from getting what he promised,” said Gohmert. “And that’s what we’ve seen.” “In the private sector, Trump knew if somebody that was on his side undermined him, there’d…
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by Ted Yanez In most states, people tend to worry about things like education or the economy. In Oregon, public pensions are suddenly at the forefront of political discussions. Why? Because the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) in Oregon is more than $25 billion in the hole. Of course, Oregon is hardly the only state deep in the red. California’s CalPERS unfunded liability is more than $333 billion. In case you’re not sure what an unfunded liability is, it’s the amount a state owes public retirees but doesn’t have the money for. I recently finished a two-month research project with State Representative Mike Nearman (R-Independence) in the Oregon Legislative Assembly to figure out how to explain what’s going on to the voters. While PERS is at the forefront of the minds of those “in the know,” most voters can’t explain how Oregon’s problem got so bad or what is even being done about it. That’s where I came in; Rep. Nearman wanted information for a video to explain this to voters. Why Pensions Are Out of Control Part of the problem in Oregon is how apathetic lawmakers have become. In 1994, voters narrowly approved Measure 8, which required anyone accumulating…
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Compensation for federal, state, and local government employees cost U.S. taxpayers $1.9 trillion in 2016. This amounts to an average of $15,176 from every household in the United States. President Trump recently moved to rein in some of these costs by canceling pay raises for federal civilian employees, who received $331 billion in compensation during 2017. Some politicians and an association of federal employees have criticized Trump for this action, saying that federal workers are underpaid and deserve a raise. However, a broad range of studies have found that most federal civilian employees are paid better than comparable workers in the private-sector. Trump’s Action and Criticism of It When private-sector incomes rise, federal law generally requires across-the-board pay raises for most federal civilian employees. The law gives added raises to federal workers in certain localities if their compensation is lower than private-sector workers in those areas. The law also allows the president of the U.S. to overrule these raises, and President Trump recently did so, writing: We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases. … Specifically, I have determined that for 2019, both across the board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at…
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