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Pardon me boys, is this the Special Interest Express?
The Washington Post published a smart editorial on Monday on why the proposed Railway Safety Act is a bad idea. The legislation is…
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Déjà vu all over again as Trump administration move to protect freelancing
The Department of Labor has proposed a new worker classification rule to replace the previous administration’s 2024 rewrite. This new version would…
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Yes, Trump has shrunk the government
President Trump’s big jobs boast in his State of the Union address Tuesday was that under his watch every job created in the US…
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Freelancers want to be free
The labor movement has been trying for years to organize gig economy workers, claiming that they are traditional employees being exploited by their bosses. The problem is that gig employees don’t view themselves that way…
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Yes, executive branch employees should answer to the executive
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued a new rule that has some in Washington aghast. The rule says that executive…
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Courts reject states’ efforts to take over union law enforcement
A California court late last month struck down a law that would have allowed the Golden State to usurp the role of the National Labor…
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Court rejects New York bid to take over federal labor enforcement
An effort by the New York legislature to usurp the role of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the main federal labor law enforcement agency,…
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New York, California make a play for federal labor law enforcement
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the main federal labor law enforcement agency, currently lacks a quorum to act. Ordinarily, that type of federal…
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Impasse over NLRB nominee may be just what unions want
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee yesterday approved one of President Trump’s nominees to serve on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the main…
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Next BLS head needs be an innovator, not a loyalist
President Trump nominated E.J. Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) because he wanted someone to modernize and update the agency’s methodology.
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The White House’s new visa fee is another tariff
President Trump’s announcement that H1-B visas will now require a payment of $100,000 is best understood as an extension of his…
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Progressive states plan end run around federal labor law
The five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the main federal labor law enforcement agency, is currently down to just one member and therefore lacks…
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BLS data is faulty, not rigged
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has struggled in recent years to produce an accurate measure of the national employment situation. President Trump…
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How to end the ‘free rider’ problem with union representation
Congressman Rick Allen (R-GA) has re-introduced the Employee Rights Act, legislation that would codify several individual workers’…
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California’s fast-food minimum wage is super-sizing job losses
Minimum wage increases would be a fine idea if they worked the way that their fans assumed that they did: increasing the take-home pay of…
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Supreme Court likely to decide fate of federal unions
A matter likely to end up before the Supreme Court soon is the right of federal government employees to form unions. Whether they retain that…
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‘With you or without you’ – The growing rift between unions and Democrats
A rift is growing between the Democratic Party and the labor movement. It was caused in large part by the party’s inability to move the…
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The flaw in Justice Kagan’s defense of the NLRB
Justice Elana Kagan authored a lengthy dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday granting the Trump administration’s request to keep the Gwynne Wilcox,…
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Initiative 82 will hopefully get 86’d
The city of Washington, DC has belatedly realized that passing a law whose purpose is to make a product or service more expensive will cause…
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CEI suggests DOT put the brakes on train two-person crew rule
The Transportation Department recently asked the public for comments on how to reduce the regulatory burden. One thought that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)…
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Trump’s tariffs: Look for the union label
One of the biggest boosters of President Trump’s tariffs has been the United Auto Workers (UAW). The venerable union wants to see domestic factories expanded…
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Why government reform may hinge on ending federal unions
President Trump’s executive order ending collective bargaining for a wide swath of federal cabinet agencies and other government entities is a laudable attempt…
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Trump’s push to remake the NLRB
Things are a bit topsy-turvy currently at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees labor-management disputes in…
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Five ideas for Secretary Chavez-DeRemer
President Trump’s newly-confirmed labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has been viewed with suspicion by many on the free-market right. She can rectify that…
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Hawley’s bill speeds up union elections by removing guardrails
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) thinks workers are having too hard of a time forming unions. His solution to that is to fast-track the process…
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Chavez-DeRemer exemplifies Trump’s complicated relationship with unions
The Senate confirmed former Oregon Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer in a 67-32 vote Monday as President Trump’s new labor secretary. CEI and others…
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You want hiring freezes with that? The effects of California’s minimum wage increase
California officially raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour last April in an attempt to help the state’s working poor. What those folks…
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White House requires federal agencies to disclose time spent working for unions instead of taxpayers
The Trump administration has restored reporting and transparency requirements for so-called “official time,” the practice where government workers are allowed to act exclusively on behalf…
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Trump labor department pick signals pro-market stance on joint employer, independent contract rules
Keith Sonderling, Trump’s pick to deputy secretary of labor, the department’s second-ranking position, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this…
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Trump labor secretary pick backs right to work, disavows past support for union-tilted PRO Act
President Trump’s pick to be labor secretary, former Oregon Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, disavowed her past support for the union-tilted …