Free Republic

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that pubic sector unions for state and local employees can’t force non-members to pay a “fair-share” union fee. In a 5-4 ruling Tuesday, the court said the extraction of agency fees from non-consenting public sector employees violates the First Amendment. The case centers on an Illinois law, similar to those in 22 other states, that allow public-sector unions to collect a “fair-share fee” from employees for non-political activities like collective bargaining, regardless of whether those employees belong to the union or not. Mark Janus, a state child support specialist at the center of the case,...

The Supreme Court was sharply divided Monday during high-profile arguments in a case that could deal a blow to public-sector employee unions across the country – and the justice seen as a key vote was not showing his hand. At issue are so-called “fair share” fees that nonmembers pay unions to help cover the costs of contract negotiations. Justices split on the issue 4-4 when it came up two years ago – but with Justice Neil Gorsuch now filling the vacancy left by the late Antonin Scalia, all eyes were on him Monday morning in Washington. Gorsuch, however, said nothing...

Land of leaving: Moving companies rank Illinois No. 1 for outbound vans Studies by two major American moving companies rank Illinois as the top “outbound” state of 2017. On Jan. 2, United Van Lines released its 41st annual National Movers Study and Atlas Van Lines released its 2017 Migration Patterns study. United based the study on its customers’ household moves made in 2017, and Atlas studied nearly 73,000 interstate and cross-border relocations of household goods from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 15, 2017. In both studies, Illinois was home to the highest rate of outbound moves in the nation. United’s...

The government, in collaboration with trade unions, has announced an ambitious plan to create 15,000 to 20,000 public sector jobs, according to various sources. Just about 7,000 roles will be created for general state administration, with an additional 3,360 roles to be added to the judiciary. The remaining more than 4,000 roles will supplement the national tax authority, the civil service and social security institutions, according to a report in El Mundo. …

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Public sector unions in Iowa will have less authority to negotiate working conditions for teachers, nurses and correctional officers under a bill passed Thursday in the new Republican-controlled Legislature that critics say is aimed at crippling organized labor in the state. The legislation, expected to be signed into law by Iowa's conservative governor, will prohibit workers from collectively negotiating over health insurance, extra pay and several other items currently covered by law. It's expected to be one of the most significant bills of the legislative session, in part because of loud opposition from Democrats and...

Union membership in Wisconsin has declined nearly 40 percent since legislation was passed that gutted collective bargaining for public workers, according to federal data. The percentage of public and private workers who were union members was about 8 percent, or 219,000 people, in 2016, down by 136,000 members from 2010 levels, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency’s report shows the percentage of Wisconsin workers in unions is below the national average of 10.7 percent, The State Journal reported. …

Almost a third of the workers for the local authority in a Sicilian town have been charged with aggravated fraud, after an investigation revealed they were skipping work in favor of activities such as shopping and massages. A total of 59 employees of the city authorities in Milazzo, one of Sicily’s major cities, were found to be leaving the office after clocking in, in order to undertake personal errands, Il Corriere reported. The prosecution said that the workers would also clock in for absent colleagues using their swipe cards, meaning some weren’t present for their entire shift. The investigation had...

My favorite criminals are those known in the literature — or at least in the movies — as “standovers,” criminals who specialize in victimizing other criminals. Examples of the type are Omar Little in The Wire, whose occupation is robbing Baltimore drug dealers, and the Joker in The Dark Knight, who loots and extorts Gotham’s mob bosses. The really bold ones who show up at large drug deals and rob both sides. The problem with the standover business model, obviously, is the same as the problem of scorched-earth banditry: It drives away exactly the sort of activity that the criminal...

State of Michigan employees took an average of 10.7 days of sick leave during the 2014 fiscal year, according to an annual report. Those 10.7 sick days are in addition to 18 days of vacation time the average state employee used. ForTheRecord says: According to the most recent available U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, private sector workers took on average 2 to 5 sick days a year in 2009. Leisure and hospitality and construction workers took 2 sick days a year on average while education and health services workers took up to 5 sick days a year on average.

For decades now, conservatives have pressed the case that public sector unions do not serve the common good. The argument is philosophical and practical at once. First, the state monopoly on certain vital services makes even work slowdowns unacceptable and the ability to fire poor-performing personnel essential, and a unionized workforce creates problems on both fronts. Second, the government's money is not its own, so negotiations between politicians and their employees (who are also often their political supporters) amount to a division of spoils rather than a sharing of profits. Third, these negotiations inevitably drive up the cost of public...

In fairness to the public sector column, government is always coming up with innovative ways to confiscate our money.

If you think the Obama administration has been characterized by a big expansion of government employment, you're wrong.Bill McBride at Calculated Risk has updated his charts of public sector payrolls under President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors.Calculated Risk As you can see, it's not even close.Obama in the dark blue line has seen a sustained and violent slump in public sector employment since he became president, and we're not even close to closing the gap.Reagan had a brief decline in public sector employment, but it came back fast. All the other presidents saw only gains on this measure.

Chelsea Clinton, from her $10.5 million perch on Gramercy Park, declares that she finds it impossible to care about money. Bill and Hillary Clinton, shuttling between their multimillion-dollar homes — Chappaqua, Washington, the $200,000-a-month rental in the Hamptons — denounce the wicked rich and protest that they are not “truly well off.” A professor of poverty and left-wing activist at the University of North Carolina School of Law is paid $200,000 per annum to teach a single class; anti-inequality crusader Elizabeth Warren was paid $350,000 per annum to teach a single class and thinks deeply about the plight of the...

<p>It’s been quite a week for ObamaCare, and we’re not even to the end of it yet. First we find out that the White House missed half of the statutory deadlines in the bill and still has almost half of them left unaccomplished. Next, UPS canceled spousal coverage because of the ACA, which will save it $60 million in costs, and CNBC described how employees might start petitioning their bosses to drop health insurance in order to score taxpayer-funded subsidies. The AFL-CIO in Nevada finally discovered what a bad deal they’re getting, and Gallup confirmed that the more people know about ObamaCare, the less they like it.</p>

Amid the recent hubbub over municipal bankruptcies and rising public-employee pension costs, pay for state and local government employees has gotten a great deal of publicity. Lost in the press attention, however, is that federal-employee compensation remains a problem, too, and new data again indicate that Washington, D.C., may be overpaying for the two million workers it employs. In a 2011 AEI paper with Jason Richwine, I concluded that federal workers receive salaries and benefits around 37 percent higher than do private-sector workers with similar levels of education and experience. This prompted congressional requests for the Congressional Budget Office to...

President Barack Obama—citing the job losses since he took office—said “the economy would be much better off,” unemployment would be 6.5 percent and the national deficit would be in decline if there were more federal, state and local government workers. “If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5,” Obama said. “Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue.” …

Broke Detroit's Pension Fund "Trustees" Use Public Funds To Fund Hawaii Trip Tyler Durden 05/25/2013 12:46 -0400 "When you have city employees, police, and firefighters have taken pay cuts, it doesn't look good," is the somewhat understated response from Detroit's emergency manager to the city's latest debacle. Amid the deepening financial crisis the crumbling region faces, four trustees of its public pension funds spent $22,000 of retirement funds to attend a conference at Waikiki Beach, Honolulu. "It's one of these things we trustees must do to stay on top of the field," is how one of the trustees defended the...

May 16, 2013 Dear : The VEA Fund for Children and Public Education Executive Committee (VEA Fund) and The VEA Fund Directors, your elected representatives from across Virginia, have offered recommendations for the June 11 Democratic primaries. The Democratic Party is choosing Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General candidates in an open primary on that day. Republican Candidates are being chosen by a convention this Saturday in Richmond. Regrettably, none of the Republican candidates chose to complete the candidate questionnaire required to gain a recommendation. In Virginia voters do not register by party, so our primaries are open. Any voter can...

More than two years after Scott Walker’s showdown with organized labor in Wisconsin, the official numbers for the state’s public sector union membership are in — and they are down. Way down. According a Labor Department filing made last week, membership at Wisconsin’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 40 — one of AFSCME’s four branches in the state — has gone from the 31,730 it reported in 2011, to 29,777 in 2012, to just 20,488 now. That’s a drop of more than 11,000 — about a third — in just two years. The council represents city...

The Chicago Transit Authority, one of the largest employers in Chicago, has a dramatic racial imbalance in its workforce, records show. Data obtained by WND through a Freedom of Information Act request reveals that whites and Hispanics are vastly underrepresented in the Chicago Transit Authority workforce.