Tag: Unions

Starbucks Announces Wage Hikes Amidst Labor Struggles

The Center Square
Outside view of Starbucks Coffee

Seattle-based Starbucks announced it will increase hourly wages next year as the coffee giant faces the dual pressures of unionization attempts and staffing shortages.

According to a press release from the company, starting in January of 2022, hourly employees with two or more years of service could see a 5% raise and those with five or more years of service could see a 10% raise.

By the summer of next year, the company says its average hourly pay will be $17, up from the current average of $14. Employees will make between $15 and $23 an hour across the country, depending on location and tenure.

The press release did not address what impact the moves will have on coffee prices.

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Ohio Probation Officer Claims Union Collected Dues Without Consent

The Center Square

A Cuyahoga County probation officer wants union dues taken out of her paycheck returned because she was never part of the Fraternal Order of Police Ohio Labor Council union.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Ohio on behalf of Kimberlee Warren against the Fraternal Order of Police Ohio Labor Council, claiming union officials violated her First Amendment rights as a public employee by continuing to collect union dues without her consent.

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Commentary: Biden’s Electric Car Plan Means Rigging Manufacturing to Favor Unions

RealClearWire
At NREL future research should focus on understanding consumer driving and charging behavior and the nuances determining the choice of residential charging infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles (PEV). Shown is in the Power Systems Lab in the Energy systems Integration Facility (ESIF)

In a highly orchestrated and publicized White House gathering this month, President Biden presented a detailed plan for the development of a U.S. fleet of clean, high-mileage electric automobiles that would reduce reliance on gasoline and generate thousands of good union jobs. It’s a new, government-encouraged, taxpayer-subsidized auto world. The plan calls for U.S. auto production to become 50% electric by 2030. Today, the electric share stands at a paltry 2%.

Top leaders from Ford, GM, and Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler), along with environmentalists and governors, were prominently invited to share in the announcement. Yet the absence of any non-union, America-located auto producers was glaring. There were no representatives from Hyundai, Nissan, or Toyota – companies that have long produced popular vehicles within our borders and recently expressed some support for Biden’s goal. Also striking was the absence of Tesla’s Elon Musk, the world’s acknowledged leader in the electric car and battery revolution. Tesla is an American firm, but it is not unionized.

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Commentary: How Unions Could Save America

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The general perception within Conservatism, Inc. and libertarian circles is that collective bargaining is a violation of the right of the individual to seek work without being compelled to join a union. That sounds good in principle, but there’s much more to the story.

A few years ago, the workers at a local grocery store chain in California went on strike. The reason they voted to strike was that management had implemented a new policy whereby most of the employees, including full-time career workers, had their hours reduced to fewer than 25 hours per week. At the same time, these employees had their health coverage taken away.

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Faculty Union Demands Mask Mandate in Florida Colleges and Universities

Grant Holcomb

The United Faculty of Florida is imploring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to impose a mask mandate on all of Florida’s colleges and universities.

Their basis for the request is rooted in the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July which said everyone should wear masks indoors. They called on the governor through a letter which said Florida’s colleges and universities should “follow CDC recommendations, including universal masking indoors and other common-sense measures, to limit severe illness and keep our colleges and universities open for learning.”

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Commentary: Unions Enforce Masks for the Public But Don’t Require Member Vaccinations

RealClearWire

Flight attendants’ and teachers’ unions whose members are on the front lines of disputed Covid safety protocols are ardent enforcers of mask mandates for the public but do not require their members to get vaccinated. Such inoculation is widely acknowledged as the most effective step in stopping the spread of the new Delta variant, while masking is viewed as of secondary importance, and many are highly skeptical of its effectiveness and critical of its inconvenience.

As the Association of Flight Attendants continues to urge federal authorities to allow flight attendants to police passengers for masking – a policy that has led to fisticuffs on some flights – the union has struck an agreement with at least one airline, United, to allow unvaccinated members to fly. American Airlines and Southwest Air say they also do not require their flight attendants or other employees to vaccinate. Flight attendants for both airlines are unionized.

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Tennessee AFL-CIO Rallies at Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty’s Nashville Offices for Bill Outlawing Right-to-Work

Bradley Vasoli
Tennessee AFL-CIO

Tennessee’s AFL-CIO chapter rallied Tuesday afternoon outside the Nashville offices of Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty in favor of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

The legislation would forbid states from maintaining right-to-work policies which allow workers who chose not to join a union to decline to pay union dues. The bill would also redefine many independent contractors as employees for purposes of collective bargaining—thus placing what many consider a heavy burden on freelancers—and would impose numerous other pro-union provisions. 

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Commentary: Unions’ Focus on Woke over Work Rankles Rank and File

RealClearWire

Los Angeles school teacher Glenn Laird has been a union stalwart for almost four decades. He served as a co-chair of his school’s delegation to United Teachers Los Angeles and proudly wore union purple on the picket line.

But Laird is now suing to leave UTLA and demanding a refund of the dues the union has collected since his resignation request. His turning point came in July 2020 when the union, the second largest teachers union in the country, joined liberal activists to demand that Los Angeles defund the police in response to Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

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Teacher Shares Behind-Scenes Look at How Unions Further Woke Agenda

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Brenda Lebsack

California teacher Brenda Lebsack says she began seeing “red flags” in her school district when she decided to become more involved with her union, the California Teachers Association.

After she began attending the union’s conferences in 2015, Lebsack says, she was alarmed to see that many of the topics weren’t academic but instead focused on social justice, human rights, and LGBTQ issues.

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Small Businesses Say Big Labor’s PRO Act Would Put Them Under

The Center Square
Rally goer holds up a "Small Business fighting for survival" sign

The Biden Administration sent some stock prices tumbling and left small businesses worried after taking sides on a hotly contested labor issue that critics say could threaten the jobs of millions of independent workers and thousands of small businesses.

In his address to the nation Wednesday evening, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass legislation that would ban the use of freelance workers in most instances.

A report from the freelance site UpWork found that about 59 million gig workers make up $1.2 trillion of the U.S. economy.

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Commentary: Amazon’s Rejection of Unions in Alabama Is a Big Loss for Big Labor

RealClearWire
Amazon workers

Big labor suffered a significant loss in its attempt to unionize employees at Amazon’s warehouse facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Of the workers eligible to vote, an embarrassingly small 16% voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. It was the most recent in a series of high-profile losses for labor including failed attempts to unionize factories for Volkswagen, Nissan Motors, and Boeing. In each case, union leaders bet that they could convince workers it was in their best interests to be enrolled in a union that would stand up to management over wages and working conditions. In each case, they lost.

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Rand Paul Introduces One-Page Bill Prohibiting Forced Unionization

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Republicans Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Joe Wilson reintroduced the National Right to Work Act on Wednesday, which would prohibit unions from coercing private sector employees from paying dues.

The National Right to Work Act is a one-page bill that doesn’t add to existing labor law, but removes language from past legislation, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson said Wednesday. The bill was originally introduced in 2019 with widespread Republican support on Capitol Hill, but never received a vote.

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Commentary: Unions Fight Return to Schooling

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Sacramento

The little-known Oakley Union Elementary School District, in the sprawling suburbs 50 miles east of San Francisco, isn’t accustomed to national attention. The school board’s hot mic moment, however, during a video call earlier this month created widespread and justifiable anger because it captured the arrogance, stupidity, and condescension that’s typical on some school boards — especially as officials drag their feet on reopenings.

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Commentary: America’s Union Agenda at a Crossroads

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The war for the soul of America is mirrored in the war for the soul of its major political parties. The establishment Democrats contend with a progressive insurgency and the establishment Republicans contend with a populist America First insurgency. But above all, the corporate bipartisan glue that connects the establishment Democrats to the establishment Republicans means they have more in common with each other than with their respective insurgencies.

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UVA Workers Union Launches Fund to Provide Employees with PPE and Help Potential Furloughs

Jacob Taylor

A campus workers union at the University of Virginia (UVA) has launched a mutual fund in order to provide university staff with personal protective equipment (PPE) and raise money in the form of an emergency fund for potential furloughs as in-person instruction began Tuesday.

The union, United Campus Workers of Virginia at UVA (UCWVA-UVA), announced the formation of the fund via press release.

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Three Major Unions Sue Michigan Over New Labor Laws

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Three of the country’s largest unions sued the State of Michigan on Thursday over new union regulations, which they called “anti-worker.”

The United Auto Workers (UAW), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) sued the state over new laws, according to a joint statement. In July, the four-person Michigan Civil Service Commission (MCSC) approved the law changes in a 3-1 vote mandating that union workers manually reauthorize their union membership every year.

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Right-to-Work Constitutional Amendment Heads to Tennessee House Floor

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A resolution to enshrine right-to-work protections in the Tennessee Constitution has advanced through the House committee process and is scheduled to be heard Monday on the House floor.

Tennessee already has right-to-work protections in law, which prevent a worker from being hired or fired based on choosing to join or not to join a union. Senate Joint Resolution 0648 would enshrine the protection in the constitution to make it more difficult to repeal in the future.

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Commentary: Trump’s Big Win Over Public-Sector Unions

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by John W. York   Public-sector unions and their progressive allies just lost a major battle in their ceaseless legal campaign against this president. Last summer, one district court judge struck down nearly every provision in a package of executive orders meant to curtail the overweening power of federal employee unions. Almost a year later, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rightly overturned the decision. In fact, it determined that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee to the U.S. District Court for D.C., should never have heard the case in the first place. One of the biggest impacts of the executive orders is to sharply curtail a wasteful practice known by the Orwellian moniker “official time.” This practice allows federal employees to do union business instead of their actual job during their regular working hours, while being paid their regular wage. While official time was authorized by statute back in 1978, its use is now out of control. In 2016, the Office of Personnel Management found that federal employees spent a combined 3.6 million hours working on union business during the work day (though this is likely a significant underestimate). Indeed, thousands of federal employees throughout the government do nothing…

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Ohio Custodians Sue Kent State and Union for Illegally Deducting Fees

Anthony Gockowski

  A group of custodians at Kent State University are suing their employer and its union representatives, who have continued to illegally deduct dues from their paychecks after they resigned their membership. The custodians, Annamarie Hannay, Adda Gape, and John Kohl, are being assisted in their legal challenge by The Buckeye Institute and the Liberty Justice Center, which represented Mark Janus in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Janus v. AFSCME. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for government employers to withhold union dues from employees without their “affirmative consent.” As a result of that ruling, Hannay, Gape, and Kohl resigned their union membership and asked the university to stop deducting dues from their paychecks. The union, which happens to be the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said in response that members can only opt-out of union membership “once per year during a 15-day window preceding the anniversary of their signature on a union card,” according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs allege that AFSCME refused to honor their resignations outside of “arbitrary opt-out periods.” “AFSCME is putting money before workers. The union is violating workers’ constitutional rights by denying their resignations…

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Commentary: Teachers Unions Are Like Overbearing Mothers

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by Daniel Buck   Every year, the union reps make their rounds and talk to every teacher in the district. This year, my building’s representative sat in a student desk across from mine and asked if I had any feedback or thoughts I’d like to share. I summarized my discontent, to which she gave a thoughtful rebuttal. The conversation proceeded as expected – respectful but unfruitful. As she walked out, she apparently could not resist a quip: Since other teachers paid union dues, but I didn’t, she said, perhaps I should consider that I profit at my colleagues’ expense. That jibe is a common refrain in defense of unions. They provide a common good, the argument goes, defending worker rights and bargaining for compensation. Thus, I have an obligation to provide money from my paycheck. Another snide remark directed at me phrased it as “all the benefits I reap from the unions I so disdain.” It’s a deft little guilt-trip that crumbles with the slightest application of pressure. Needing to Be Needed In his book The Four Loves, while discussing familial love, C.S. Lewis provides a fictional anecdote that works to frame a rebuttal to this argument. I am thinking of Mrs. Fidget, who…

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The Financial State of Unions After Janus

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Mark Janus

by Brittany Hunter   The Supreme Court made history last summer in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) reaffirmed an individual’s First Amendment right to freedom of association. In a 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS ruled that labor unions could not force government employees to pay union dues. In the aftermath of Janus, labor unions have been holding their breath waiting to see how this landmark case would impact both their funding and their membership. Now, nearly a year later, reports filed with the US Department of Labor show that two giant public sector unions are reporting major decreases in agency payers, demonstrating just how significant a blow the ruling was to unions. The news should be celebrated as a victory over union intimidation; truly good ideas, after all, do not require force. However, despite the tremendous strides that have been made over the last year, the battle for the right to work has not been won quite yet. Janus and Agency Fees Prior to the Janus case, the courts ruled that government employees could not be forced to join labor unions. They could, however, be forced to pay union agency fees. A fundamental…

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Unions Have Lost Hundreds of Thousands of Members Since SCOTUS Decision on Forced Dues

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by Tim Pearce   Three of the largest public sector unions in the United States have lost hundreds of thousands of members and agency fee payers since the Supreme Court banned forced dues last year, according to data reviewed by the Mackinac Center. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 27, 2018, in the case Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ruled that forcing an employee to pay dues to a union in order to hold a government job violates that employee’s First Amendment rights. The court ruling freed millions of public employees from having to pay union dues and fees in order to hold a job working for the government. Federal filings reviewed by the Mackinac Center suggest that public sector unions have taken a significant hit from losing members and fee payers since the decision. Annual federal filings show that the National Education Association (NEA); American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have lost a combined 278,804 members and fee payers from each organization’s last report before the Janus decision to the first report after it. The NEA’s membership and fee-payer count dropped from 2,666,339 on…

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Union Power, Email Privacy in the Balance at New Supreme Court Sitting

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by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court will convene Tuesday for its February sitting, in which the justices will consider major cases involving the First Amendment, union power, and email privacy. The cases raise the prospect of serious political and diplomatic repercussions, placing the justices at the center of a bitter partisan brawl and a sensitive question of foreign affairs. The signature case of this month’s arguments is Janus v. AFSCME, which the justices will hear on Feb. 26. Though officially a First Amendment question, Janus is the apex of a decades-long dispute about the power of public sector unions and their Democratic patrons. As such, it has decidedly partisan implications. Some observers fear a ruling against the union would deal the deathblow to the political and financial influence of organized labor, prompting charges that the lawsuit is a poorly concealed, Republican attack on a powerful liberal constituency. The case was brought by an Illinois state employee named Mark Janus, who pays compulsory fees to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), despite the fact that he is not a member of the union. He argues these fees subsidize political speech and association with which he disagrees,…

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School Discipline Policy Belongs at the Local Level, Not Washington

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classroom

by Jonathan Butcher   Teacher unions and progressive special-interest groups cried foul earlier this year when the White House suggested that federal directives on school safety could be rescinded. But if a recent hearing held by the Federal Commission on School Safety is any indication, state and local policymakers don’t need Washington to micromanage student discipline policies. These state and community leaders’ testimonies indicate they are acting on their own to try and make students and schools safer. In 2014, the Obama administration’s departments of Education and Justice issued a “Dear Colleague” letter to public schools that contained specific instructions on how schools should deal with school safety and student discipline. The letter says schools should limit student engagement with law enforcement and says suspensions and expulsions (exclusionary discipline) should only be used as a last resort. The agencies also said school personnel should sign a memorandum of agreement with local law enforcement indicating that all involved will try to limit exclusionary discipline. The letter has attracted public attention after the tragic events of Feb. 14 in Broward County, Florida. The gunman that took the lives of 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had been subject to disciplinary rules that mirror…

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MERIT Act Passes Out of Committee, Proceeds to House Floor

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Barry Loudermilk

By Natalia Castro   The MERIT Act is finally moving forward. After a passing vote in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the MERIT Act will be moving onto the House floor in the coming weeks for a vote. Congress can take a major step in answering the people’s calls to “drain the swamp” by moving forward with this legislation. The only way to drain the swamp is to fire the swamp, and the MERIT Act will empower managers to remove poor performing employees that are preventing our bureaucracy from working for the people. When Georgia Republican Representative Barry Loudermilk introduced the Modern Employment Reform, Improvement, and Transformation Act of 2017 (MERIT Act) it was attacked by unions who maintain an unabridged desire to protect employees from any form of repercussions for their actions. It makes sense unions are scared. Thanks to union litigation, the federal government termination rate, including layoffs and firings, is a mere 3.37 percent, compared to a private-sector termination rate of over 17 percent. Unions have made the firing process for poor performing employees timely and complex, causing managers to prefer transferring poor performing employees rather than going through the process to dismiss them. But moving an employee does not remove the problem.…

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Professional Educators of Tennessee: SCOTUS Janus Decision a Victory for Workers’ First Amendment Rights

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Mark Janus

The U.S. Supreme Court announced a 5-4 decision on Wednesday in Janus v. American Federation of State, Country, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, that reaffirms the First Amendment, especially people’s freedom of association. The ruling today eliminates compulsory unionism, which requires individuals to join a union as a condition of employment.  It will influence the cycle where government unions collect compulsory fees from government workers and then use it to help elect pro-union politicians to achieve and maintain political power — who then empower and enrich the government employee unions. “No American worker should be forced to become or remain a union member,” JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, told The Tennessee Star after the decision was announced. Bowman added: People should be free to join, or not join any organization or union they want, without losing their job or be forced to pay for political agendas with which they disagree based on political or ideological purposes.  The Janus Decision will not create drastic structural changes to unions.  It will simply make them more accountable to their own members.  And in the case of teacher unions, this greater accountability should focus on making the quality of education…

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Bo Carr Commentary: Tennessee Quietly Removes Important State Employee Benefit

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By Bo Carr   There is much discussion about healthcare nationally and regionally as questions surround the future of the Affordable Care Act (Obama-care), state expansion of Medicaid, strategies to solve the opioid crisis, and the shuttering of area hospitals.  But December 31, 2017 marked the end of a benefit for state employees, leaving educators, in particular, uncovered and with few options. Most teachers do not realize that Medicare and other major medical insurance policies do not cover the custodial care most seniors will require, like home health care, respite care, adult day care, assisted living, nursing home, or hospice care.  Tennessee’s Dave Ramsey writes in his blog, “As people age or become ill, they sometimes need help doing daily tasks like getting dressed, bathing and more. Long-term care (LTC) provides people with those services—but it’s expensive. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the estimated cost for end-of-life care in 2016 ranged between $217,820 and $341,651. Most health and disability insurances won’t cover long-term care, but long-term care insurance will.” Teachers accessing the state’s 2018 health benefits website, partnersforhealthtn.gov, will find group insurance plans like major medical, dental, and disability. Long Term Care, which was once an affordable, accessible plan available…

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