Labor Relations INK - Labor Relations News, Analysis and Insight
Labor Relations Ink May 2018
In this issue: Employees Or Not? Union Kryptonite Union Pension Turmoil SEIU Watch, Insight, Scoreboard and more… The bottom of each story contains a link to the individual post on our site. ********** Labor Relations Insight by Phil Wilson Do you prefer checkers or...
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Labor Relations Insight
by Phil Wilson Do you prefer checkers or chess? I much prefer chess. Last weekend I played in my first “over the board” chess tournament. As my kid told one of my friends, “Dad somehow figured out a way to become an even bigger nerd.” Ouch. If you’ve never played in a...
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Union Bailout Update
The last 30 days have been a slow month for news related to labor activities from the halls of power. After the Obama-era DOL suspended the practice of issuing opinion letters for wage and hour topics in 2010, the department has resumed the practice of providing...
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Employees Or Not?
The Gig Economy received mixed results in a pair of rulings on the west coast. A Seattle first-in-the-nation ordinance allowing drivers-for-hire to collectively bargain took a hit when an appeals court ruled against it. The ordinance was a Big Labor gambit aimed at...
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SEIU Watch
Corporate campaigns and ballot initiatives are tools used by Big Labor when they fail at grassroots organizing, and Dave Regan of the SEIU-UHW is the king of ballot initiatives. Over the last few years, he’s spent almost $30 million on 20+ initiatives, none of which...
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Union Kryptonite
Unions and accountability are like Superman and kryptonite. Mention adding an iota of accountability and union leadership writhes in agony, hoping to make it disappear just as quickly as possible. The Massachusetts State Police provides the most recent example. When...
read moreIt’s All Academic
Harvard University will bargain with its newly formed graduate student union. This move on the university’s part marks “the final and full validation of the organizing effort, ensuring Harvard will see a student union for the first time in history.” Columbia...
read moreUnion Pension Turmoil
Approximately ten percent of multi-employer pension plans are expected to become insolvent in twenty years. While this issue has been acknowledged for a while, we’ve seen little actually done to mitigate the dire effects on plan participants. However, a ruling was...
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Teamster Beat
Back in 2016, a corruption and racketeering probe into James Hoffa and top Teamster officials began. On April 30th of this year, it picked up some steam when attorneys for the Independent Investigation Officers filed an application to subpoena payment records from...
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Right To Work
The Missouri legislature has approved a proposal to move the public vote on right-to-work implementation from November to the primary ballot in August. The statewide vote will ask citizens to decide whether or not they wish to prevent the previously passed...
read moreAuto Workers
Late last month, General Motors eliminated an entire shift and laid off 1,500 workers at their Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant. Days later, a General Motors subsidiary, Lordstown GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, began hiring low-paid temporary workers. Upon hearing the...
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Labor Around The World
The past month has seen South Africa at odds over a proposed bill to initiate a minimum wage in the country. On April 25, thousands of workers protested the bill nationwide. While some unions support President Ramaphosa’s recognition of the minimum wage, others...
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SHRM Cites LRI Data in Ambush Election Comments to the NLRB
On the list of top priorities for the NLRB this year is a review of the Ambush Election Rule, an Obama-era piece of legislation that reduced the union campaign period from 37 to 23 days. Many have had a hard time reconciling the value of this rule in regards to a fair...
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Labor Relations INK April 2018
In this issue: Unions Seeking Another Entrée Into Politics Workforce Strategies Tug-Of-War Fight For Fifteen Insight, Scoreboard, SEIU Watch, Sticky Fingers and more… The bottom of each story contains a link to the individual post on our site. ********** Labor...
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Labor Relations Insight
by Phil Wilson When is a Union Not a Union? This week I attended and spoke at the Oklahoma HR State Conference. Every year this conference gets better and better. They have to if they're going to overcome people like me on the agenda! The kickoff speaker was "business...
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Union Bailout Update
The National Labor Relations Board is back to full strength with the confirmation of John Ring. Additionally, Ring replaces Kaplan as the board chair. Ring’s confirmation brings the board to a 3-2 Republican majority. NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb filed a motion...
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Unions Seeking Another Entree Into Politics
The foot soldiers of political campaigns are generally volunteers or low-paid employees, but a new union, the Campaign Workers Guild (CWG) is trying to change that. As you would suspect, Democrats are no more pleased with the prospect (despite campaign rhetoric) than...
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SEIU Watch
Washington State, the hub of many of the home health care workers that SEIU siphoned dues from for years, has passed a union-backed bill that will allow the state to hire a private company to help manage the growing caseload of home caregivers. Once these workers move...
read moreIt’s All Academic
Harvard graduate students have officially elected to join the Auto Workers union by a vote margin of almost 400. This comes after a 2016 NLRB ruling granting teaching and research assistants the legal status to organize. Georgetown University has also agreed to let...
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Teamster Beat
Teamsters Local 1108 is facing the largest decertification campaign of its kind. Roughly 600 pilots working for the private jet company OneSky Crew are petitioning for a decertification vote under the Railway Act. The “straw man” (or individual speaking on behalf of...
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