Big Labor’s number one priority in the 111th Congress was the Employee Free Choice Act. Also known as check, the law would have allowed union organizers to publicly solicit workers’ signed union authorization cards. If a majority of a company’s workers signed cards, then all workers would be forced to …
Unions have become famous — or infamous — for fighting against layoffs for any reason. Teachers unions have made it next to impossible to fire bad teachers. The union movement went ballistic when D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee laid off teachers who performed poorly in the classroom. They spent …
Michael Kinsley once observed that “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” By that measure Michael Gittings, the treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 711, committed an enormous gaffe when he appeared in a recent Daily Show segment. Gittings’s Las Vegas–based union is protesting Wal-Mart …
Managing the city of Bell, California, is apparently twice as challenging as being President of the United States. The Los Angeles Times reported on July 15, that Bell’s soon-to-be-former Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 a year. Bell is not exactly a wealthy metropolis. It is a small, predominantly …
Despite mounting state budget crises and growing public discontent with government unions, the House of Representatives added the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act to the Afghanistan war spending bill. What does this bill have to do with the war or public safety? Nothing. The bill would be more accurately named …
The economic effects of prolonged unemployment insurance (UI) have become a controversial topic recently. Conservatives have pointed to a raft of economic studies to demonstrate that, in addition to the benefits they provide, extended UI benefits also come with an economic cost – lengthening the amount of time that those …
Liberals, and especially unions, frequently claim that raising the minimum wage helps workers and the economy. They contend that if people earn more money through a higher minimum wage, then they will be able to spend more as well, creating more jobs, and making everybody better off as a consequence. …
Special interest handouts are not a pretty sight. Perhaps that is why lawmakers buried their latest one inside the bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. Unfortunately putting handouts out of sight does not make them any better for the economy. At issue is the fierce competition between FedEx and the …
