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U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading By Terence P. Jeffrey September 10, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math. Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will count for 40 percent of a...

School was out in Chicago on Monday and parents scrambled for child care after public school teachers staged the first strike in a quarter century over reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and endorsed by President Barack Obama's administration. Some 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third largest school district were involved, leaving parents of 350,000 students between kindergarten and high school age to find alternative supervision.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is leaving Charlotte on Thursday and will not attend President Obama's acceptance speech. Trumka is leaving early in order to avoid the travel crush at the Charlotte airport on Friday, according to a spokesman for Workers’ Voice, the AFL-CIO’s super-PAC. But there have been tensions between the Obama administration and organized labor for some time. Spokesman Eddie Vale said Trumka and others union officials' absence was not related to labor’s frustrations with Democrats. “Nope, this has nothing to do with that,” he said in an email. “We're looking forward to Obama accepting the...

Former Los Angeles Lakers Coach Phil Jackson once referred to Sacramento as a "cowtown," but Gloria Romero, a pro-labor Democrat who served as California's Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2008, takes exception to the belittling description. The capitol building in Sacramento, she says, has "the eighth most powerful economy in the world under that dome," and it operates not unlike other wealthy kleptocracies. "There's no other way to say it politely. It's owned." Topping the list of proprietors is the California Teachers Association, which she calls the most muscular union and political player in the state. Then there are...

Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer. Yet even with a department so bloated that it has a horseshoer and no horses, the local union president said it is "not possible" to eliminate positions. Union rules have turned the department into a government jobs program, some critics say...

A majority of people netted in the 2005 unionization of home health care workers are relatives or friends taking care of loved ones, according to a study being used by supporters of a potential ballot proposal that could lock the scheme into the state constitution. This is significant because one of the main reasons unions use to explain their existence is the protection of workers who are members. In this case, those workers are being protected by the Service Employees International Union against the people for whom they work — mainly their own family and friends. In 2005, the SEIU...

A former rising star within the Service Employees International Union has been charged with bilking his ex-employer, one of the nation's most powerful labor groups. Tyrone Freeman, 42 years old, who once led a large Los Angeles-based local representing low-wage health-care workers, was indicted Tuesday on 15 criminal counts, including mail fraud and the embezzlement of $100,000.

WASHINGTON, DC - Project Veritas, the group headed by James O'Keefe and known for their undercover video operations on ACORN, NPR and voter fraud, has released a new video that exposes waste and corruption behind stimulus-funded "Green jobs." "The purpose of our investigation is to illustrate that many of the jobs being championed -- and funded -- by the Obama administration are merely paper positions that come at great expense to the American taxpayer," says O'Keefe. "Digging holes just to fill them up again is not meaningful work, nor does it produce economic output for a recovery. Giving people jobs...

Americans have a “right” to full employment, housing, health care, collective bargaining and protection against old age, sickness and unemployment, according to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Trumka says Big Labor intends to push both the Democratic Party and the GOP to adopt what he called “The Second Bill of Rights” at presidential nominating conventions this summer. “America’s Second Bill of Rights is a broad-based statement of what the American people need and what they deserve. If some of it sounds redundant, it is because we once took many of these rights for granted,” Trumka said last Thursday at the National...

Press release from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (AP story below): Washington, DC (June 21, 2012) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 today, siding with nonmember California state employees challenging a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) political fee charged to them without notice and opportunity to opt out.   The case concludes a prolonged legal challenge affecting some 36,000 California government employees initiated by eight California civil servants who filed a class-action lawsuit with free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.   In 2005, SEIU officials imposed a “special assessment” to...

To his sworn enemies, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker's victory last Tuesday over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett by 53 to 46 percent has been as hard to spin as it has been to accept. There's no getting around it: The unions lost. It was public-sector unions who led the effort to recall Walker following passage by the legislature last spring of a fiscal reform plan that included tough limitations on union bargaining power. Unions and allied groups by this January had gathered nearly a million signatures to put the recall on the ballot. During the entire campaign, some 50,000 volunteers...

The spin from the left on the morning after their disastrous Wisconsin recall election failure is that Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), who walked away with the election, did so because he spent oodles of money. Politico’s takeaway: “Money shouts.” “Walker wins one for the plutocrats,” trumpeted Joan Walsh of Salon.com. “Outspent 7-1, Democrats couldn’t beat Scott Walker with a strong ground game.” Media Matters’ favorite Washington Post columnist, Greg Sargent, cited the Citizens United decision allowing corporate political spending no less than five times in his recap of the election – despite the fact that not one dollar spent in...

RACINE - The campaign for Racine Republican State Senator Van Wanggaard has not conceded victory to Democrat John Lehman in a recall election, but has said they are not yet asking for a recount.“We know that there are a number of outstanding absentee ballots, voting irregularities, and that there were problems across the county in the unofficial tally of ballots,” said Wanggaard in a statement. “People across the state and country have asked that I immediately ask for a recount. However, we all know that the best decisions are made when well-rested and after consideration of all options.”Lehman unofficially won the...

Anyone who claims that teachers unions exist to improve public education is misinformed or lying. The unions have become blatantly political organizations that spend most of their time and resources trying to maintain their domination of public schools and school budgets. When an occassional reformer, like Wisconsion Gov. Scott Walker, comes along and questions their self-serving agendas, they turn into political assasination machines. And they are not ashamed to use taxpayer-funded schools to push their agendas. The latest evidence comes from Milwaukee Teachers Education Association President Bob Peterson, who boasted this week about his union's efforts to sway voters, including...

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Fearing their own bargaining rights could be stripped away, members of New York’s powerful unions piled onto planes to Wisconsin in an effort to topple GOP Gov. Scott Walker in tomorrow’s recall election. Dozens representing, among others, health-care Local 1199 East, building-service Local 32BJ and Local 726 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, are knocking on doors, making calls and handing out fliers to support Democrat Tom Barrett over Walker. And members from around the country of the Transport Workers Union are badgering voters in the Badger State by cold-calling them using an online phone bank. Many Wisconsin...

De Pere - Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, appearing at the same Brown County dairy breakfast as his opponent, Gov. Scott Walker, said Sunday the governor's reforms were not working for the middle class. "It's so important to have a governor focusing on jobs here," he said. "Scott Walker's reforms are not working for the middle class. They may be working for the wealthiest people in the state, but for those students struggling to get out of college with mountains of debt and their tuition rising, it's simply not working." Barrett and Walker were within a few dozen feet of each...

A pro-Walker Marine vet got into a few confrontations at Democrat Tom Barrett’s rally today with Bill Clinton in Wisconsin. The Franklin Center has video. They couldn’t handle the truth. So, union cops were called in and dragged him out of the rally and arrested him. They didn’t like what he was saying. The Marine is predicting a 10 point win for Scott Walker. I second that.

Name-calling is the coward’s way to avoid intelligent discourse. Liberals are notorious for responding to just about anything or anyone with whom they disagree using ad hominem rebuttals to discredit their opponents. Rather than exercising brain cells to engage in scholarly debate, most liberals will leapfrog over the subject at hand and conjure-up a baseless and unrelated charge that makes about as much sense as calling Bill Maher a patriot. If you are a pro-capitalist, you are a fascist. If you are a Christian, you are an extremist. If you are a Mormon, you are a polygamist. If you reject...

Union Statistics: What You May Not Know | LaborUnionReport.com Monday, May 28th, 2012 HomeLaborUnionReport Updates DAILY NEWSGeneral NewsProject Labor AgreementsPublic Sector UnionsUnion BossesUnion HypocrisyUnion OrganizingUnion StrikeUnion Violence Legal UpdatesNLRB Watch National Right to Work Political Updates EconomyEnvironmentalismHealth CareImmigrationMarxism/Socialism Union Corruption Union Corruption Report The Blogroll Filed Under:  LaborUnionReport Updates Union Statistics: What You May Not Know September 15th 2011   ·   1 Comment Tweet Sharebar Tweet The folks at UnionFacts.com have a ‘vital statistics‘ page that provides some good information about unions that many Americans may not know. Here is just some of the information:Financial Information Annual Dues Paid to Unions: $8,217,838,676 Total...

Top union officials are lashing out at Washington Democrats, claiming they haven't done enough to help them unseat Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Wisconsin's recall election. President Obama has been silent on the race since his campaign released a statement endorsing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) immediately after his primary victory two weeks ago. The Obama campaign is helping Barrett with get-out-the-vote operations, but the president has not publicly mentioned the race. The Democratic National Committee has been similarly tight-fisted. The DNC sent out a fundraising email for Barrett, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) will be in Wisconsin...