Free Republic

That federal hiring freeze which President Trump announced almost immediately upon taking office really has the public employee unions setting their hair on fire. This week there was a call to arms issued by Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, in which he declared that federal workers needed to take to the streets and loudly demonstrate their solidarity in protecting the status quo. Citing all sorts of liberal bogeyman visions, Reardon informed the workers that Donald Trump was definitely the enemy and a hard rain was going to be falling unless they were willing to fight.

All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state's lengthy pension code. The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis. Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes...

Cops booted an unruly group of city teachers union officials from a posh Albany eatery after they caused a ruckus over their dinner tab. Paul Egan, the union's political and legislative director, set off the fracas - claiming the quail he was served, and finished, wasn't large enough. Egan and about two dozen other members of the United Federation of Teachers spread over three tables at the swank bistro Marché inside 74 State, a boutique hotel down the block from the state Capitol. And with Egan apparently worked into a froth over the size of his quail in the $40...

Amid blind support for his left-wing ideology, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka forgot his claim to represent the “working man” and joined Wade Henderson, President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, in a letter this week to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, calling for the immediate stop of federal cooperation with Arizona law enforcement officials or, “be complicit in the racial profiling that lies at the heart of the Arizona law. [S.B. 1070]“ But Trumka’s ideology differs from his union members. Recognizing Trumka’s support for Amnesty as an opportunity to undermine employment opportunities for legal citizens while increasing...

Millions of British Airways passengers are facing Easter holiday chaos after militant union leaders announced a 'cynical' series of crippling strikes. Gordon Brown - who failed to condemn the walkouts - was under growing pressure over his links to the unions that bankroll the Labour Party. BA cabin crew will stage a three-day walkout on March 20, 21 and 22, followed by a four-day strike between March 27 and March 30 and more in April.

Ad Buy Is First Of 2010 Campaign Las Vegas - SEIU announced today that it has begun a new, aggressive television ad campaign in support of Senator Harry Reid's work on behalf of Nevada's working families. He has worked to bring Republicans and Democrats together to fix the economic mess that President Bush and his Wall Street cronies left working families as they rode into the sunset with billions in taxpayer-financed bonuses. Earlier this week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee went up with its first attack ad for Senator Reid's work to build a bipartisan recovery package that not only...

The executive board of the Service Employees International Union will take up a proposal Thursday to consolidate in a single local all long-term-care workers in California, despite the vehement protests of critics who say the change will weaken labor's hand. ... The idea is to move the 65,000 long-term-care workers of the 150,000 members of United Healthcare Workers-West in Oakland, San Jose's Local 521 and Los Angeles-based Local 6463 into a single group. Proponents say the concretion of wealth and globalizing corporate ownership requires unions to organize on a scale to compete with employers. Opponents, and in particular Sal Rosselli,...

Colorado's ballot just got a lot shorter. Union leaders agreed to pull their four ballot initiatives Thursday, hours before the deadline, in exchange for help from businesses for defeating three other amendments, numbers 47, 49 and 54. The pact calls for businesses to raise $3 million to help unions defeat the initiatives. Unions already have raised $6.7 million, and the $3 million from businesses would give the campaign more money than either of Colorado's two main U.S. Senate candidates has raised so far. The deal also represents a truce in the union-business battle that has raged throughout most of Ritter's...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Police on Tuesday detained the entire leadership of Zimbabwe's trade union umbrella organization to muzzle protests against worsening economic conditions, union officials said. News of the arrests of all the top leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions, representing 30 worker organizations with 1 million members, came in a statement expressing "utter shock and dismay" by the trade union congress in neighboring South Africa. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions had scheduled a midday march to "remind government and employers that workers are hungry, angry and tired." The South African statement said that those arrested included...

NEW YORK - Two executives of the International Longshoremen's Association and a reputed mobster who went missing mid-trial were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they helped the Mafia keep its grip on the New York waterfront. Supporters gasped and burst into tears as a federal jury in Brooklyn found union officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey not guilty of extortion and fraud charges. The jury also acquitted Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese crime family associate who had been accused of wire and mail fraud. But the victory may turn out to be empty for Ricci, who vanished in the middle...

Union Leaders Accused of Profiting From Insider TradingJeff Johnson, CNSNews.comThursday, Aug. 15, 2002 WASHINGTON – A non-profit group that fights forced unionization and illegal political uses of union dues filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint this week against a company that provides life and health insurance products to union members. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) alleges that Union Labor Life Insurance Co. Inc. (ULLICO) allowed top union leaders to profit from insider information through a "scheme" NRTW compared to the questionable accounting practices recently exposed at a number of U.S. corporations. The complaint was filed with the National...