Free Republic

Well, this is certainly interesting. A group of Democrats, led by Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have filed legislation designed to essentially gut the ability of individual states to pass right-to-work laws and hand back iron-fisted control of the workplace environment to labor unions. The fact that Democrats oppose right-to-work laws is nothing new, nor is the reality that labor unions fund a large part of their election efforts. But do you notice anything that those names I listed have in common? Every one of them has been repeatedly mentioned as a possible 2020 presidential candidate....

The liquidation of labor unions threatens to further weaken the entire system of protection of labor rights in the Russian Federation. On January 10, 2018, by decision of the St. Petersburg City Court, one of the strongest Russian trade unions was liquidated - the Interstate Trade Union Workers Association ( MPRA ). The union was accused of receiving foreign financing with simultaneous participation in political activities. The MPRA appealed the decision of the court and is awaiting further hearings. The judgment on the MPRA is not just a neutralization of the protest mechanisms before the elections. The extension of the...

Organized labor took off the gloves Monday, warning the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court that freeing public employees from mandatory union dues would lead to strikes and union violence. It was ugly. The Court heard oral arguments challenging laws in 22 states and the District of Columbia that force public employees to pay unions to represent them, even if they disagree with the union's demands and politics. Mark Janus, a child support specialist and public employee in Illinois, claims his First Amendment free speech rights are being violated when he is forced to pay money to a union --...

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in the case of Mark Janus, a child support specialist from Illinois, who is suing AFSCME because he has no interest in financially supporting the union’s political activities. Since Janus is not a member of the union, he doesn’t pay the same amount in dues as union members. But thanks to a Supreme Court decision in 1977, he is forced to pay the union “agency fees,” feeding the coffers of an organization he wants nothing to do with. The high court will determine whether these agency fees are unconstitutional. Since freedom of association is...

Canadian negotiators are demanding the United States roll back so-called "right to work" laws – accused of gutting unions in some U.S. states by starving them of money – as part of the renegotiation of the North American free-trade agreement. The request is part of a push by Ottawa to get the U.S. and Mexico to adopt higher labour standards under the deal

One group of negotiators spent all day Sunday working on the labour file, according to a schedule of the talks obtained by The Globe and Mail. One source familiar with the discussions said Canada wants the United States to pass a federal law stopping state governments from enacting right-to-work legislation; the source said the United States has not agreed to such a request. Canada believes that lower labour standards in the United States and Mexico, including right to work, give those countries an unfair advantage in attracting jobs.

Canada is demanding goodies from the United States Congress as part of the renegotiation of NAFTA.From The Globe and Mail: One group of negotiators spent all day Sunday working on the labour file, according to a schedule of the talks obtained by The Globe and Mail. One source familiar with the discussions said Canada wants the United States to pass a federal law stopping state governments from enacting right-to-work legislation; the source said the United States has not agreed to such a request. Canada believes that lower labour standards in the United States and Mexico, including right to work,...

Canada will enter talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with a goal to seek exemptions from Washington's Buy America directives, and push for stronger labor and environmental standards in the pact. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday provided broad outlines on what Canada's bottom line on Nafta renegotiations, which begin in earnest on Wednesday in Washington. ... She said local-content provisions, such as Buy America, "are political junk-food -- superficially appetizing, but unhealthy in the long run." Ms. Freeland said Canada also wants to make Nafta more "progressive," through tougher labor and environmental standards. On the...

In his commentary "Unions ignore long history of excluding minorities from jobs," Missouri Rep. Shamed Dogan (R) highlighted past discriminatory practices in organized labor’s history as reason for implementing our state’s currently pending "right to work" law, along with other anti-worker measures such as ending prevailing wage and minimum wage requirements. To claim that unions continue to exclude minorities and are detrimental to working people is ridiculous and erroneous in the face of the facts. The truth is, enacting right to work and other anti-worker laws would only hurt the minority communities Dogan seeks to protect, by lowering wages, reducing benefits and...

A veteran flight attendant at Southwest Airlines says she was fired from her job after speaking out about her faith and criticizing her union. Charlene Carter of Aurora, Colo., filed suit against the company and union in a Texas federal court. She said her employment was terminated after she expressed her religious beliefs regarding abortion in Facebook posts and messages to union president Audrey Stone.**snip** and activity in opposition to Local 556." Carter criticized the union for using employee dues to fly two dozen officials and flight attendants to attend January's Women's March protest.

Last year, West Virginia became the 26th state to enact Right to Work legislation. The bill was enacted over the veto of then-governor Earl Ray Tomblin, as I discussed in this piece. Organized labor almost invariably launches desperate legal challenges when states enact RTW and West Virginia was no different. The state’s AFL-CIO looked around for a friendly circuit judge and found one in Kanawha County’s Jennifer Bailey. The argument they presented was that the RTW law would do them “irreparable harm” and should be stayed pending a challenge to its constitutionality. The unions argued that the law is unconstitutional...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — United Mine Workers Union President Cecil Roberts says the West Virginia Supreme Court stepped beyond its authority in its decision on the attempted overturning of the state’s right-to-work law. Y “They basically told her (Kanawha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey) how to rule, which is not what they should have done. They, as they say, ‘got over their skis on this,'” Roberts said. UMWA President Cecil Roberts was a guest Thursday on 580 Live on 580 WCHS Radio in Charleston. Roberts gave his take on the case during an appearance Thursday on the talk show 580-Live on...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Supreme Court has overruled a lower court injunction that blocked West Virginia’s right-to-work law, chastising a circuit judge for the pace of decision-making and for issuing the injunction in the first place. The state’s unions failed to establish the likelihood of success based on the merits of three constitutional claims, wrote Justice Menis Ketchum in the court’s majority opinion. The state AFL-CIO issued a statement noting that the Supreme Court ruling applied specifically to the injunction, saying unions will continue to fight during a broader hearing in circuit court and anticipating an eventual appeal of...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It’s possible there could be additional delays before a decision is made on the constitutionality of the West Virginia Workplace Freedom Act following an hour of oral arguments Tuesday before the state Supreme Court. Justice Margaret Workman questioned the decision by the office of state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to bring the right-to-work law to the Supreme Court before there’s been a full hearing on the merits of the case in circuit court. “I just think you all are taking a shortcut coming up here wanting all of the answers without the lower court having made any...

The basic case for right-to-work is simple: Forcing workers to pay money to a union they don’t support is wrong. This is why polling consistently shows that Americans overwhelmingly support right-to-work, including strong majorities of independent, Republican and Democratic voters. There are other reasons to support right-to-work, too. Workplace freedom is an economic engine, with private-sector job creation rates in right-to-work states double those in forced-unionism states between 2006 and 2016. Plus, right-to-work laws make union officials more accountable to rank-and-file members. Without right-to-work, employees must pay up or be fired. With voluntary dues, workers can withhold financial support from...

In the middle of August, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO union hierarchy, exercised expert -- and malicious -- timing to embarrass the President Donald Trump. But Trumka never would have had the opportunity without White House advisors’ assistance. Back in January, Trumka and his deputy chief of staff, Thea Lee, had happily accepted invitations from the Trump Administration to serve on the newly-established Presidential Manufacturing Council and Policy Forum. Apparently, at least some Trump advisors thought it was a good idea to solicit the advice of a man who had, just a few months before, publicly denounced the...

I believe every citizen deserves the right to work and the right to organize and I don't believe these rights should be mutually exclusive I come from a union family. I grew up in a union home. The good pay and benefits gained by one of America’s greatest unions provided for my room and board every day that I lived at home. My father and my uncles were all proud union members. My brother and some of my best friends spent their entire careers as union workers and the unions are providing them with generous pensions and great benefits. I...

AFL-CIO group paid D.C. consultants $431,114 for grassroots petition effort Union activists, with the help of a Washington, D.C., firm, reportedly have enough signatures to block Missouri from implementing its right-to-work law and force a ballot measure on the question in 2018. Missouri AFL-CIO President Mike Louis said that the We Are Missouri movement, which shares headquarters with the union, has gathered almost 300,000 signatures supporting the ballot measure—three times more than the 100,000 needed to force an election. The union plans to deliver the signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State's office after assembling at the state capitol on...

In a test of labor’s ability to expand its reach in the South, workers at a Nissan plant in Mississippi have overwhelmingly rejected a bid to unionize. Out of roughly 3,500 employees at the Canton-based plant who voted Thursday and Friday, more than 60 percent opposed the union. It was an emphatic coda to a yearslong organizing effort underwritten by the United Automobile Workers, which has been repeatedly frustrated in its efforts to organize major auto plants in the region.

Early this year, Missouri became the 28th state to enact a Right to Work statute, thereby preventing workers from being fired just because they won’t pay dues to the union that officially represents them. (It’s worth noting that very few of the workers who are in unions have ever had the opportunity to vote yes or no on union representation, a point Akash Chougule of Americans for Prosperity makes in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, “A Union Card Shouldn’t be an Heirloom.”) As has been the case in every instance when a state has adopted Right to Work in recent...