Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

California Illinois

For decades, cold, hard data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have shown that states like New Jersey, Illinois and California are paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.

Year after year, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states than moving into them.  And the average tax filer moving out of a forced-unionism state has reported having an adjusted gross income (AGI) on his or her IRS form that is substantially higher than the average for a tax filer moving into a forced-unionism state.

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Commentary: Reforming Private Sector Unions

Unlike public sector unions, which are inherently corrupt and need to be outlawed, private sector unions have a vital role to play in American society. But these unions have become coopted by the same special interests they were originally formed to oppose. The political agenda of America’s unions is almost exclusively leftist, and being part of America’s institutional “Left” is not what it used to be.

The biggest misconception in American politics today is that the political Left is fighting corporate power. Leftists may still attack corporate profits and demand corporations pay their “fair share,” but on every major issue affecting the economic freedom and prosperity of working families in America, these presumed antagonists are actually in perfect alignment.

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Commentary: What Unions Don’t Want You to Know This Labor Day

A male doing electrical work with a ball cap and safety glasses on

This Labor Day, the Biden administration and Big Labor will no doubt tout the alleged successes of President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” push to increase unionization in the workplace and unions’ modest successes in breaking into a few big corporations. But those stories will also leave a lot out. They’ll leave out the side of the story that unions don’t want workers to know.

That side of the story includes the fact that unionization reached an all-time low of 10.1 percent in 2022 (and only 6.0 percent among private sector workers) as worker satisfaction reached an all-time high of 62.3 percent (according to The Conference Board’s measure, which began in 1987). It also includes the fact that while non-union wages increased by 24 percent over the past five years, union wages rose by less than 17 percent.

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Commentary: Unions Have Betrayed America

Anyone suggesting there is no role for unions in America today might first consider a fact of history: more than a century ago, when oligarchs and the companies they owned had treated workers as if they were livestock, reduced to living in squalid pens with rationed food and water, it was unions that organized these workers to resist. It was unions who gave these workers back their humanity, and negotiated collective bargaining agreements and laws that eliminated child labor, enforced workplace safety, established an 8-hour work day, paid overtime, health benefits, and retirement pensions.

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Biden Sets Leftist Tone for 2024 Re-Election Effort at Philadelphia Event

President Joe Biden held his first presidential re-election campaign event on Saturday at the Philadelphia Convention Center, making strong appeals to his left-wing base. 

Biden appeared alongside organized-labor activists and mentioned in the first few seconds of his oration that when he thinks of working Americans, he especially values the ones who associate with causes he finds politically congenial.

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Pennsylvania House Approves Forced-Unionism Amendment

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives this week passed a measure to enshrine forced unionism in the state Constitution. 

The proposed law is identical to an Illinois Constitutional Amendment enacted last year. It would prevent lawmakers from adopting a “right-to-work” policy protecting nonunion workers from being forced to pay union dues. It would also counteract any state statute that checks labor organizations’ power, thereby vastly increasing public-sector unions’ bargaining clout. 

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Pennsylvania House Committee Passes Forced-Unionism Amendment

A bill to enshrine union coercion in the Pennsylvania Constitution passed the state House Labor and Industry Committee 12-9 on Monday. 

The measure, identical to an Illinois constitutional amendment that Prairie State voters narrowly ratified last autumn, would prevent adoption of a “right-to-work” law saying nonunion workers can’t be forced to pay union dues. More broadly, the amendment would counteract statutes that check the power of labor organizations and, opponents fear, give public-sector union contracts primacy over state law. 

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Granite State Union Says No to Biden Re-Election Bid ‘At This Time’

In breaking with the Big Labor mothership, one of New Hampshire’s largest employee unions has announced it will not endorse President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign — at least not now.

Instead State Employees Association/Service Employees International Union (SEA/SEIU) 1984 says it wants to see competition for the Democratic Party’s nomination. 

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Pennsylvania Committee Considers Socialist’s Forced Unionism Amendment

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s new state House Democratic majority began considering a measure to enshrine forced unionism in the state Constitution. 

The House of Representatives Labor and Industry Committee took testimony on legislation identical to an Illinois constitutional amendment that Prairie State voters narrowly approved last November. Proposed by Representative Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), the Pennsylvania amendment would forbid lawmakers to enact a right-to-work law banning contracts that demand union-dues payments even from nonmembers. 

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Republican State Senator Proposes $15 Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Bill

Pennsylvania’s state Senate Republican Policy chair on Friday said he’s sponsoring legislation gradually raising the commonwealth’s minimum hourly wage to $15 and thence indexing it to inflation.

Senator Dan Laughlin (R-Erie), one of his chamber’s most moderate Republicans representing one of its most electorally competitive districts, said in a statement that he carefully mulled the issue before announcing his measure. The Keystone State’s pay floor rose to $7.25 per hour in 2008, matching the federal minimum wage, and the senator insisted now is the time for an increase, observing that 30 states now set their floors higher. 

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Pennsylvania Government Union Political Spending Skyrockets Even as Membership Declines

Even as Pennsylvania’s public-sector unions suffer net losses of members and dues, these groups continue to ramp up political donations, according to a new analysis by the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation (CF). 

According to the free-market nonprofit, spending from Keystone State government unions like the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 13 totaled $6.34 million in the 2011-12 campaign cycle. That amount steadily rose over all gubernatorial and presidential cycles and reached a record $20.2 million in 2021-22. 

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Gov. Shapiro’s Pennsylvania Budget Proposal Rewards Union Donors

Unions donated copiously to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) during last year’s gubernatorial campaign and they’ll reap a handsome reward if the legislature approves a particular item in Shapiro’s proposed budget. 

The Fiscal Year 2023-24 spending plan includes a $1,274,000 initiative to increase by one-third the number of labor law compliance investigators at the commonwealth’s Department of Labor and Industry. The text of Shapiro’s proposal expresses concern that more labor cases need to be probed and that businesses need more education on workers’ right to organize. 

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