“Unthinkable and intolerable.” So President Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered strikes by government employees. Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), has a different view. She called a strike to block Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (D) education reforms. Chicago Public Schools have a 40 percent dropout rate. Emanuel considers …
Beaten workers. Blocked deliveries. Late-night vandalism. The news surrounding the Goldtex construction project in Philadelphia reads like a script for The Sopranos. What is going on? In early March, Post Brothers Construction, owned by brothers Matt and Mike Pestronk, began converting a 10-story loft building into 163 apartments. They decided …
Over Thanksgiving weekend of 2006, airport screeners in Toronto began meticulously searching every carry-on bag by hand. The delays caused security lines to pile up. Passengers began missing their flights en masse. To break the bottleneck, supervisors allowed 250,000 passengers to board their flights with “minimal or no screening.” One …
Chef Daniel Boulud got one of his first tastes of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) when they inflated a gigantic cockroach outside of his upscale New York restaurant. The cockroach, used in conjunction with chants of “racist” to decry alleged differences in promotion by race, led to decreased business. Predictably, …
The RAISE Act would rewrite the National Labor Relations Act to make union rates only a minimum wage. If employers wanted to, they could always pay hard-working union members more. Unions would lose the power to turn down raises on workers’ behalf. The House Education and Workforce Committee held a …
President Obama repeatedly promised not to raise taxes on middle-class families. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that he already has. Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the President’s health care law on the grounds that the “individual mandate” is a constitutionally permissible tax increase. This violates Obama’s pledge. Middle-class families will …
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of nonunion workers in Knox v. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) significantly strengthens nonunion members’ First Amendment rights not to contribute to union political activities. California requires state employees who choose not to join a government union to nonetheless pay the union for expenses …
“Collective bargaining rights are under attack—again,” warns the SEIU. The union claims employees face a “federal attack on your rights at work.” How? From a bill that would let employers pay union members higher wages. Union rates are not just minimum wages. They also set maximum wages. Employers may not …
Union contracts do not just set the minimum compensation that workers can earn; they also set maximum wages. Employers may not pay employees more than their union has negotiated. Unions typically base pay on seniority and job classifications—not individual effort or productivity. Workers cannot bargain individually for more. By law, …
Engaged voters and policymakers have a number of things to ponder after the dust settles in Tuesday’s historic Wisconsin election. While Governor Scott Walker (R) easily survived the union-led effort to recall him, the real story may be how soundly the voters ratified Walker’s controversial policy changes. Walker ended collective …
