Free Republic

At least some Massachusetts state employees who were fired after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, under Gov. Charlie Baker’s sweeping executive order last year, are being offered their jobs back. In two separate letters shared with MassLive, former MassDOT employees who were terminated due to the mandate were offered reinstatement to their former positions with “duties and responsibilities” the same as when they left. In the letters, MassDOT Chief Human Resources Officer Matthew Knosp wrote the department was making the offers, in part, because “high levels of immunity and availability of effective COVID-19 prevention and management tools have reduced...

This might come as a surprise, but 40% of California state employees are unvaccinated despite Gov. Gavin Newsom's directive to mandate the jab or be subjected to regular testing. Newsom issued this new directive in July following a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the time, he said, "We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it's going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant." Still months later, less than two-thirds of state workers, or 62%, were vaccinated, according to The Sacramento Bee. The figure is much lower than the...

PHOENIX -- Thousands of teachers in Arizona and Colorado descended upon their respective Capitols for a second day in a growing educator uprising. Educators in both states want more classroom resources and have received offers either for increased school funding or pay, but they say the money isn't guaranteed and the efforts don't go far enough. The walkouts are the latest in demonstrations that spread from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. Teachers said they won't return to work until they feel their message has been heard. Alexis Aguirre, a second-grade teacher in Phoenix, said living paycheck to paycheck has forced...

California's public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to know where their money's at," said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, a Republican. The two bills went down Wednesday on a party-line vote, after dozens of union members came out against the legislation....

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf raised the minimum wage by nearly $3 an hour, to $10.15, for state government employees and workers on jobs contracted by the state in an executive order he signed Monday. The Democrat’s move establishing the new wage minimum comes a year into his term, as a crippling budget gridlock with Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature has frozen the Capitol building. Wolf’s action will affect a few hundred state employees, mostly part-time clerical and janitorial workers who make somewhere between $8.77 to $10.06 an hour, according to union officials. It also will affect a narrow set of state contracts...

Tens of thousands of state workers stand to get extra money in the next couple months by cashing out some of their unused leave time – assuming the state can find money to cover it. California owes billions of dollars to state employees for unused paid time off, a largely unseen burden that isn’t regularly tracked or reported statewide. Last year the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said the state’s leave liability totaled $3.9 billion as of June 2012 – and it’s growing.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Rick Scott has quietly signed into law a bill allowing random drug testing of state workers. The governor's office announced the signing after normal working hours Monday night. The only suspense was when the Scott would sign the bill, not if he would sign it. The Republican governor already has tried to enforce random drug testing through an executive order. He suspended it, though, due to a court challenge. The new law also is certain to generate a lawsuit.

The stock market's summer slide took a toll on public pension funds, with the assets of the 100 largest ones down 8.5% in the third quarter of 2011, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday. The quarterly decline was the first since early 2010, and the steepest since the fourth quarter of 2008, when the asset total plummeted 13.5% at the height of the global financial crisis. The latest drop brought the value of investments and cash held by the biggest pension funds -- including the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System and the Los Angeles City...

Today wraps up a week of Capitol protests by the California Teachers Association and other groups that oppose cuts to the state's budget. Mark Paul, a former Bee editorial writer suggests that it refocus its efforts: Don't tell me that failure to extend the temporary taxes will result in big cuts in schools, including a shorter school year. Show me. Announce that, beginning Monday, every teacher in every school in the district of every Republican legislator who has failed to vote for the Governor's budget plan will be out sick. So will every other school employee. There will be no...

It’s going to be a very ugly day in Wisconsin. A crowd of 5,000 union protestors swarmed the state Capitol in Madison shattered windows and barricaded themselves inside amid calls for a “class war” after news got out that Senate Republicans had circumvented a Democratic blockade of a bill curbing state union power. “This is war. This is a class war that has been leveled against the working people of this country,” Moore told anchor Rachel Maddow. Some labor leaders are calling for a day of unrest and want teachers to again walk off the job in protest of the...

California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment have reached a tentative labor agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown. Here are the highlights: * 3% increase to employee pension contribution * 4% increase to top of salary step for all classes * All employees to receive 1.73 hours of additional leave * Contract protection, which ensures that should any other bargaining unit currently without a contract receive a better overall compensation package, members would be entitled to the difference.

SACRAMENTO -- As the debate over state pensions simmers in Sacramento, an appeals court Wednesday overturned part of a negotiated increase in retirement benefits for several thousand regulatory workers, saying the Legislature never approved the full increase or its estimated $40 million cost. The case involves 3,500 to 4,000 employees whose union, the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association, reached an agreement with then-Gov. Gray Davis' administration in 2002 to reclassify them as "safety members" of the state's retirement system in July 2004. That entitled them to higher pensions - 2.5 percent of their pay, instead of 2 percent, for each...

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of the American labor movement, was a man of strong character. Although he had a lock on labor's vote, he expressed caution about public sector unions. Roosevelt reasoned: "... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations ... The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for ... officials...

French senators examine controversial legislation designed to overhaul France's pension system on Tuesday even as trade unions vow to continue organising strikes and street protests against government plans. Unions have staged three days of protest in less than a month, and have vowed to continue demonstrations and strikes, but the government was unbowed on the law's fundamentals after the latest rallies. The bill has already been passed by the lower house of parliament and will be examined from October 5 by the upper house, where it is expected to pass albeit after some noisy discussions. The leader of the Socialist...

PHILADELPHIA - Faced with deep budget deficits and overextended pension plans, state and local leaders are increasingly looking to trim the lucrative retirement benefits that have long been associated with government employment. Public employees are facing a backlash that has intensified with the nation's economic woes, union leaders say, because of their good job security, generous health-care and pension benefits, and right to retire long before most private-sector workers. The move to curtail retirement benefits for public-sector workers is fueled both by stark budget realities and by the resentment felt by private-sector workers who have seen their pay diminish in...

Millions of public sector workers will have to pay more into their pensions and retire on less in a purge on ' unsustainable' gold-plated funds. Teachers, NHS staff, local government workers and other state employees are then expected to be switched away from final salary schemes into less generous ones based on career average earnings. But the reforms will pitch the coalition into a major battle with militant public sector unions. Leaders are already threatening a wave of strikes as they fight to protect their workers’ pay and perks. Six million state employees enjoy generous pension schemes that are now...

California’s public pension crisis is a lot worse than anyone suspected and threatens to bankrupt the state if investment rates fail, says a report released today by the California Center for Public Policy. The report says that the state’s tax-paid pensions have made defacto millionaires out of most of California’s employees by the time they reach their late 50s. “Whether the standard is salary, working conditions, benefits or especially pensions, public employees in California receive compensation far in excess of what workers in the private sector do,” says the report. “It is illiberal and unjust.” State public employees are among...

As part of a lengthy corruption investigation, federal authorities have been examining $150,000 in consulting fees paid to a disgraced former Los Angeles labor leader under a confidential agreement signed by Andy Stern, then president of the powerful Service Employees International Union, according to documents and interviews. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles had considered filing embezzlement charges against Alejandro Stephens, who headed the SEIU local for county government workers, in connection with the payments. They say the FBI and U.S. Labor Department investigators are focusing on whether Stern or other SEIU leaders expected Stephens to perform any work...

Sacramento — Scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California's most vulnerable residents as part of the government's home health aide program. State and county investigators have not reported many whose backgrounds include violent crimes because the rules of the program, as interpreted by a judge earlier this year, permit felons to work as home care aides. Thousands of current workers have had no background checks. Advocates and unions note that nearly half of the 400,000 employees of the In Home Supportive Services...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The California Supreme Court says furloughs of state workers can resume while it reviews whether governors have the authority to mandate unpaid days off. The announcement Wednesday was a victory for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has sought to save the state money by imposing another round of furloughs. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear says furloughs for about 150,000 state workers will begin Friday.