NILRR CLIPSHEET July 24, 2015
www.nrtw.org, July 23, 2015
Seven workers at Mercy Memorial Hospital in Monroe, MI have won a settlement from Service Employees International Union Local 79 (SEIU) in a case challenging SEIU officials’ failure to obey Michigan’s new Right to Work law and accept the workers’ revocation of a union dues checkoff scheme.
All seven workers had been members of the union. In late November 2014, the monopoly bargaining agreement between Local 79 and Mercy Memorial Hospital expired. In the weeks just before and after the contract expired, all seven workers resigned union membership and attempted to exercise their new workplace rights under Michigan’s Right to Work law to refrain from paying Local 79 any fees as nonmembers.
workerfreedom.org, July 22, 2015
Dolores Huerta has been on the receiving end of some bad press lately. Huerta, the “Dragon Lady” of the grape-grower’s strike of 1965-1970 and co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), was caught on film bullying a female farmworker.
The video was taken at an Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) party in Sacramento at Leland-Stanford Mansion on June 24. It features Huerta repeatedly shoving Latina leader of the Gerawan farmworkers out of the path of Governor Jerry Brown. Silvia Lopez, the farmworker in question, had been invited by a representative from the Governor’s staff.
County GOP panel announces support of right-to-work
semissourian.com, July 20, 2015
The Cape County Republican Central Committee has announced its support of the measure known as right to work in Missouri.
How workers are winning in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin
New York Post Online, July 17, 2015
If there’s one thing workers value, it’s work. And on this score, Wisconsin’s Republican governor has delivered.
The Badger State’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 7.4 percent in January 2011 (the month of Walker’s inauguration) to 4.6 percent in May 2015 (the latest available figure).
Canada Passes Union Transparency Legislation
National Legal and Policy Center, July 20, 2015
Labor leaders, especially corrupt ones, resent it when outsiders inquire into how member dues are spent. As in the U.S., this is an observable pattern in Canada. And as in the U.S., widespread discontent has led to tangible reform. On June 30, the Canadian Senate voted 35-22 to approve a bill, C-377, to mandate union financial accountability. . .
The new law will force unions to make available to the public detailed data. Unions and political supporters are denouncing the legislation as an attack on workers’ rights, and vow to overturn it in court. Yet the weight of public opinion stands in the way – and with good reason.
WEAC Membership Down More Than Half to Below 40,000
MacIver Institute, July 20, 2015
Four years after the passage of Act 10, the state’s largest teachers’ union has seen membership drop by more than half to less than 40,000 public school employees.
The 2011 collective bargaining reforms championed by Gov. Scott Walker finally gave Wisconsin public employees – including teachers – the freedom to choose whether or not they wanted to join the union and pay dues. Based on the data, thousands of teachers made the decision that the union’s services were not worthy of the costly monthly dues.
Michigan bill to ban tax-funded ‘release time’ expected to pass
watchdog.org, July 21, 2015
Two bills, which ban union “release time,” are expected to pass the Michigan Legislature.
Release time is time a teacher or other education professional spends working for the union. A teacher may remain on the teacher payroll, funded by taxpayers, and may continue accruing benefits toward his or her tax-funded pension.
Teachers union caught breaking campaign finance laws, gets off easy
Washington Examiner Online, July 22, 2015
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Federation of Teachers coordinated in a deliberate attempt to break Philadelphia campaign finance law, according to a settlement reached Tuesday between the PFT and the Philadelphia Board of Ethics.