Unions
June 13, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Until the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Janus case in 2018, citizens of a number of states, including Minnesota, were essentially taxed to support local teachers’ unions. In those states, no one could legally teach in a public school without paying the union out of his or her salary–which, of course, came entirely from taxpayers. That this situation was allowed to persist for decades should have been a scandal. Teachers’
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April 16, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota’s National Guard has done an admirable job of containing riots in Brooklyn Center and the surrounding area, to prevent an orgy of violence, looting and arson such as characterized the George Floyd riots last year. But many on the Left are unhappy that violence has been forestalled. Construction union workers gave National Guardsmen a key to the St. Paul Labor Center so they would have a place to stage.
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January 26, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The sinister role that teachers’ unions play in our society has come clearly into focus, as our children’s lives have been devastated by needless school closures across the country. These closures–still in effect in most places, despite all scientific evidence that they are both unnecessary and harmful–largely reflect the power of the teachers’ unions. They evidently want to get paid, without ever entering a classroom again. This video was produced
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December 7, 2020 — John Hinderaker
I won’t say that those who run America’s teachers’ unions hate children. I will only say that they act as though they hate children. The teachers’ unions are the number one obstacle to education reform, by far. They stand in the way of school choice, school safety, and virtually any attempt to improve teacher quality or reform schools in any way. They feed off of, and promote, incompetence and lack
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February 25, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
California law prohibits public officials from making statements that might “deter or discourage” public employees or applicants from membership in a public employee union. The law was passed in 2017 in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that compulsory public employee union dues are unconstitutional. This California law, Section 3550, is also unconstitutional. It censors viewpoints that are critical of public employee unions on the basis of a vague and
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November 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker
This is a great example of why we are so fortunate to have a Trump administration instead of a Clinton administration. It has to do with how severely disabled people are cared for. Some years ago, Republicans and Democrats came together with a good idea: severely disabled people, usually children, were being institutionalized at extraordinary cost. If those disabled people could be cared for at home, by mothers and others
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September 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The lefty Center for American Progress has shuttered its ThinkProgress media arm, and laid off the entire ThinkProgress “news”room staff. Now on the surface, this is astonishing. Most lefty “resistance” groups are thriving right now, because raising money with Donald Trump is really easy. Lefty groups typically thrive when there’s a Republican president, because we all know that conservatives are paranoi. . . oh, wait. . . Where was I?
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May 15, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The American labor movement was known, historically, for both political moderation and political effectiveness. But private sector unions are in a state of apparently terminal decline, as currently only 6.4% of private sector workers are union members. Perhaps shrinking membership and political clout explains why unions have become shriller and more radical. The AFL-CIO is a case in point. Yesterday, the AFL-CIO posted this bizarre tweet, which consists of a
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July 2, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The National Educational Association is the largest of America’s teachers’ unions. It is perhaps the #1 force for evil in our contemporary politics. Naive observers assume that the teachers’ unions represent children and their parents or, at a minimum, the average teacher. Sadly, this is not true. The NEA is a far-left organization that relies on state power to forcibly extract dues and “fair share” payments from innocent teachers, which
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June 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The Supreme Court has just issued its long-awaited ruling in Janus v. AFSCME 31, holding that public sector unions cannot compel the payment of agency fees from nonmembers. The ruling was 5-4, with Justice Gorsuch casting the vote that Justice Scalia would have cast in the case before the Court presenting the same issue at the time of Justice Scalia’s death. In an opinion by Justice Alito, the Court overruled
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January 31, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It may be hard for readers to believe this—and I do advise sitting down—but Gov. Jerry Brown is—relatively speaking, mind you—about the only adult in the room in Sacramento among Democrats. If you doubt me, just wait till we have a governor named “Gavin” next year (which California richly deserves), and you’ll see what I mean. Governor Moonbeam has actually vetoed a lot of bad bills that any other liberal
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November 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is in the vanguard of the “progressive” movement in America. As night follows day, or so it seems these days, the SEIU is also in the vanguard of sexually harassing its female employees. From Fox News, we learn: Another two union bigwigs from the nation’s second largest union, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) have been accused of sexual misconduct and abusive behavior toward
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September 28, 2017 — John Hinderaker
It didn’t make the biggest headlines, but the most important thing that happened today was the U.S. Supreme Court’s granting of certiorari in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31. I wrote about the Janus case here: The case raises issues substantially identical to those in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. In Friedrichs, decided last year, the Court split 4-4 following the death of Justice
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August 31, 2017 — John Hinderaker
A case titled Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31 is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition for a writ of certiorari. The 7th Circuit’s opinion in the case is here. It is widely expected that the Court will grant certiorari. The case raises issues substantially identical to those in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. In Friedrichs, decided last year, the
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February 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Iowa, like so many other states, has gone Republican. What happens when you have a Republican legislature and a Republican governor? The corrupt public sector union spigot gets turned off. Public sector unions in Iowa will have less authority to negotiate working conditions for teachers, nurses and correctional officers under a bill passed Thursday in the new Republican-controlled Legislature that critics say is aimed at crippling organized labor in the
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July 26, 2016 — Steven Hayward
One thing conspicuously missing from both party conventions is any talk of government debt and deficits. Even Democrats usually acknowledge grudgingly that our deficits are a time bomb waiting to go off, though this is usually in service of their Great White Whale obsession, which is to raise taxes on Great White Males. So it is with considerable interest that I note the increasing visibility of the real-time collapse of
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January 11, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Public sector unions are probably, nationwide, the number one obstacle to progress. Today a critically important case relating to public employee unions, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was argued in the Supreme Court. My colleague Kim Crockett, who works with me at the Center of the American Experiment, is a leading voice in Minnesota on employee freedom. She was at the Supreme Court this morning to support Rebecca Friedrichs and
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