Forced-Dues State Households Have Less Real Income

Higher Costs for Consumers Translate Into Lower Living Standards for Employees and Everyone Else [download fact sheet here] In California, the erstwhile Golden State, K-12 educators obviously recognize that they don’t live so well relative to educators in other states. That’s why Big Labor-controlled California’s teachers are fleeing to other states in droves. From 2003…

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Wages Up in RTW States

Natalie Johnson has the good news about Right to Work states in the Daily Signal.   Private sector wages are not reduced in right-to-work states as union advocates have argued, according to a new report released Tuesday by The Heritage Foundation. James Sherk, a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation and the…

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More Official Time Cases in Pennsylvania

James Sherk and Nate Bohlander describe the case of the “missing” teacher. Missing from the classroom, that is, as this teacher currently takes care of union business full time but will enjoy all of the perksof a Pennsylvania teacher courtesy of the Pennsylvania taxpayer. This practice, known as “official” or “release” time, and is paid…

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James Sherk on Right to Work Laws

James Sherk, explains the value of Right to Work laws, and reviews campaigns for more laws across the country. He is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Eighteen-year-old Saira Blair recently made history as the youngest person elected to the West Virginia legislature. She may make history again as a lawmaker by securing…

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Union Shoots Down Higher Wages

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23 has taken Gian Eagle Foods to court over raises the grocery store gave some union members. James Sherk questions if unions really do speak for their members in The Foundry. Managers at the Giant Eagle grocery in Edinboro, Pa., wanted to reward hard work. So they boosted the…

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‘Unionized Firms Offer Performance-Based Pay Less Than Half as Often’ as Union-Free Businesses

Why Should the Government Prevent Union Members from Earning RAISEs? Most Americans who aren’t close observers of labor-management relations assume that, whatever other faults they may have, union officials can at least be counted upon to fight consistently for higher pay and benefits for employees. Unfortunately, this assumption is naive and incorrect.  As James Sherk…

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Sherk: A union of One; AFSCME Pulls a Fast One on Daycare Workers

James Sherk, in the Washington Times, makes excellent points about the political power unions possess, passing a law that would allow self-employed workers to unionize.  That’s correct – self-employed daycare workers.     Desperate times call for desperate measures, but the union movement has taken this saying to a new level. It has reacted to…

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Union Bosses Finance Politicians Because it Pays

James Sherk refutes Ezra Klein’s assertion that America has a “. . . deeply unbalanced political system . . .” by highlighting Big Labor’s ability to donate huge “in-kind” contributions and maintaining total control over politicians.  Read more at The Corner: The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein recently lamented that America has “a deeply unbalanced political…

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Union Membership Falls — Again

James Sherk, Senior Policy Analyst with the Heritage Foundation, explains why unions do not speak for their members, and consequently continue to lose members. The story is on National Review Online. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday that unions lost 400,000 members in 2012. Union membership fell from 11.8 to 11.3 percent of all…

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Workers Should Not Be Forced to Accept a Union’s Services

  Unelected Unions: Why Workers Should Be Allowed to – InsiderOnline  Well-intentioned critics of teacher union officials often complain that they favor the interests of educators over those of schoolchildren.  For several reasons, this is a flawed line of attack.  The key problem is its underlying assumption, shared by apologists for Big Labor control over…

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