Free Republic

Another official at the Service Employees International Union has been ousted following accusations of sexual assault. Pedro Malave was first fired from a local Boston-area SEIU chapter in 2014, only to be later rehired at two other local chapters in California, the labor website Payday Report reported last week. Politico‘s Morning Shift newsletter flagged the report on Monday and confirmed that the locals dismissed Malave after they learned of his past alleged conduct. In the summer of 2014, the Boston-area 32BJ SEIU Local 615 investigated Malave, then the assistant director, after a co-worker, Daria Alladio, accused him of sexual assault....

While not on a par with what is happening in Hollywood, the SEIU has its own sexual harassment scandal going on. Buzzfeed reports that one union leader has been fired and another resigned after complaints about their interactions with female staffers..... More than a dozen current and former staffers interviewed by BuzzFeed News said complaints about top-level staff on the Fight for 15 were an open secret, and that complaints about abusive behavior by organizers who reported to top strategist Courtney led to no action. In October, the union suspended Courtney, following his marriage to a union employee. Sources said...

At the 2017 AFL-CIO Convention, the delegates passed a resolution calling for the creation of a Workers' Bill of Rights. Speaking in support of the resolution, President Richard L. Trumka said: Sisters and brothers, working people need a bill of rights. A collective bargaining agreement for America. This will serve as a platform for our members to rally around. It will give prospective members a clear statement of our values. And it will provide political candidates and elected officials with a litmus test for our support. We simply refuse to accept the reality of struggling to make ends meet in...

Scott Courtney, an executive vice president at Service Employees International Union, has resigned, according to a statement Monday from SEIU spokesperson Sahar Wali. "This morning, President Mary Kay Henry accepted Scott Courtney's resignation as an elected officer and member of SEIU. This comes a week after she suspended him from his assigned duties based on preliminary information that surfaced through an internal investigation launched to look into questions about to potential violations of our union's anti-nepotism policy, efforts to evade our code of ethics and subsequent complaints related to sexual misconduct and abusive behavior towards union staff," the statement reads....

WASHINGTON — AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s decision to end vital health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act:“With this decision, the president has ushered in the era of Trumpcare, under which Americans will have fewer coverage choices and face skyrocketing premium costs.“By sabotaging the health care system just as open enrollment is set to begin, the president has all but guaranteed that insurers will abandon the market and working families will bear the brunt of the pain.“Americans will go broke, get sicker or worse because of this decision. There is no reasonable justification...

In an otherwise predictable New Jersey election season, the state’s largest public sector union has come out behind a Trump-supporting Republican facing an incumbent Democrat. The New Jersey Education Association, which is New Jersey’s top political spender, is backing Republican Fran Grenier against Steve Sweeney, the Democratic state Senate president and New Jersey’s second most-powerful elected official. The controversial endorsement has angered liberal allies, but the union remains unapologetic in its message: Democrats cannot take teachers for granted. It’s a contentious move, but one that is unlikely to change the ultimate outcome of the election. Democrats are expected to control...

Internet giant Google is sponsoring an event honoring Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest abortion provider.Google is a Platinum ($25,000) sponsor of the Center for Community Change’s “Community Champions Awards” event, which will be held Thursday, October 12, at the Howard Center in Washington, D.C., a Google spokesperson confirmed to CNSNews.com on Monday.The annual event honors “Heroes on the Front Lines of Resistance,” the Center’s website says: “Too frequently, we focus only on the final outcome of a campaign instead of taking a moment to honor the often-unsung heroes behind the scenes. The Community Change...

If you’ve ever seen Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or Meet The Parents—two films I can think of from the top of my head that show flight attendant abuse (for lack of a better word)—you know that the job is difficult. Heck, forget the movies, I’m sure there has been some instance in which an unruly passenger just lays into a flight attendant. And then there are cases where the flight attendants are just as curt and surly towards the passengers. Well, for one Southwest flight attendant, Charlene Carter, she found herself out of a job because she was pro-life and...

The reason for truck drivers not showing up? The Puerto Rican Teamsters Union, Frente Amplio, is refusing to move the product. Report: Puerto Rico Teamsters Union, “Frente Amplio”, Refuse to Deliver Supplies – Use Hurricane Maria as Contract Leverage… Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment: …They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as...

Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment: …They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed. “It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to...

The reason for truck drivers not showing up? The Puerto Rican Teamsters Union, Frente Amplio, is refusing to move the product.

Professional NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick can't find a team to call home in the National Football League, but that didn't stop the NFL Player's Association from celebrating his charity work this week. The official player's union of the NFL named Kap as the organization's Week 1 "Community MVP" on Friday. He received the honor "for his commitment to empowering underserved communities through donations and grassroots outreach," the NFLPA announcement notes.

#DefendDACA : Educators Urge Congress to pass the Dream Act of 2017 NOW.

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...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the following statement on today’s announcement that the Trump administration will terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program: President Donald Trump’s move to terminate DACA and strip work authorization away from 800,000 productive members of our society is cruel and wrong. Ending DACA will increase the pool of vulnerable workers in our country and embolden employers to retaliate against working men and women who dare to organize on the job or speak out against abusive working conditions. This indefensible act will make our workplaces less fair and less safe and will undermine our freedom...

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...

As temperatures plunged from 94 degrees into the 60s on a recent August evening, Lodi grower Brad Goehring dispatched his crew of Mexican workers into a field to pick Pinot Gris. The grapes were finally sweet enough, and the 2017 wine harvest had begun. Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to step up deportations of undocumented immigrants, there’s little evidence of field workers being rounded up in California this year. “We haven’t heard of a single ICE raid in California fields,” said Goehring. An estimated 70 percent of California’s roughly 600,000 farm workers are undocumented, according to United Farm Workers Vice...

The president of the AFL-CIO stepped down from a council advising the White House on Tuesday, hours after President Trump reiterated that both sides were to blame for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacist groups rallied over the weekend. "President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement. He announced that both he and AFL-CIO leader Thea Lee would step down from Trump's Manufacturing Advisory Board. "We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups."...

United Auto Workers (UAW) president Dennis Williams called the bribery allegations brought against the widow of a former union executive "appalling," adding that they may have led Nissan workers to reject unionization, but denied that they reflect the larger organization.In July, the Department of Justice indicted Monica Morgan, the wife of the late UAW vice president General Holiefield, and former Fiat Chrysler vice president Alphons Iacobelli for funneling $1.2 million from a worker training center to pay off Morgan's mortgage, buy luxury cars, and pay for personal travel. The indictment came just one week before the UAW held a historic...

On Friday, the United Auto Workers failed in yet another attempt to organize an auto plant in the South. This time it was a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Unlike in the 2014, when workers at a Chattanooga, Tennessee Volkswagen plant narrowly rejected the union, Friday's result was a 62 percent to 38 percent shellacking. Coverage of the UAW's defeat at the Associated Press overnight was reasonably measured, with one exception: a barely mentioned and completely unexplained Fiat Chrysler-UAW corruption scandal in Metro Detroit which influenced the voting. Reporter Jeff Amy's dispatch shortly after midnight Saturday morning (also saved here...