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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 …
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Trump says labor law cannot prevent him from cleaning house at labor umpire agency
President’s Trump’s letter firing National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chairwoman Gwynne Wilcox and the NLRB’s general Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, makes the bold claim that…
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No, Virginia, there was no Amazon worker strike
The labor protests launched by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against Amazon over the Christmas holiday were nothing more than a hollow …
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Hawley offers gift to union leaders, not workers
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) reportedly has proposed a “pro-worker framework for the 119th Congress” that amounts to a watered down wishlist of items wanted by unions leaders.
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Trump follows Biden precedent in sacking NLRB general counsel
President Trump’s decision to fire National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chairwoman Gwynne Wilcox and general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is controversial and will likely be challenged…
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Trump’s new Schedule F executive order is smarter, but could still backfire
President Trump’s re-instatement of his “Schedule F” executive order, making it easier to fire career federal employees,…
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Trump picks gig economy fan for DOL’s number 2 spot
President-elect Donald Trump has raised more than a few eyebrows in the world of labor policy when he nominated the frankly…
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Nice dock. Big shame if you modernized it, Trump warns ports
President Trump has signaled that if East Coast dockworkers go on strike, he will back them instead of the ports. This increases the odds that…
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Schumer moves to lock in place Democrat-majority labor board
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is attempting to ensure that the Democrats retain control of the National Labor Relations Board, the…
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Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer is not qualified to be Labor Secretary
President-elect Donald Trump is considering Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) for the position of…
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Biden overtime rule overruled
A Texas court last week threw out the Biden’s administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules for overtime. The court said that the Department of Labor…
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NLRB moves to silence employers during union drives
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the independent federal agency that oversees union activity, ruled Wednesday in a case involving Amazon…
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Voters okay higher minimum wages, balk at more radical ideas
The ironic thing about Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ rhetoric is that it overlaps to a degree with old-school Democratic populism. This can be…
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The next president may face a ‘January Surprise’: Port strikes
The next president might face a test right as they are being inaugurated: a renewal of the International Longshoremen Association’s (ILA) strike against east coast…
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The origins and lessons of the ‘Satanic Panic’ of the 1980s
Moral panics are just one of those things that free societies seem to go through on a regular basis. The “satanic panic” was the big…
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Longshoremen stood down when they realized wrecking the economy wasn’t popular
Thursday’s announcement that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was ending its strike at east coast and Gulf of Mexico ports after…
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White House has several options in dockworkers strike, none of them good
President Biden likes to call himself “Blue Collar Joe” and declare his support for union workers, but his administration has been…
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The real issue in the port strike: Automation
Most news reports on the east coast dockworker’s strike are focused on the issue of wages, which obscures the real reason for the strike:…
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Teamsters non-endorsement: Outlier or sign of things to come?
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’s internal poll on who to endorse in the 2024 presidential election was so lopsidedly in favor of Republican nominee Donald…
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Teamsters’ non-endorsement exposes internal divisions
The announcement that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters will not endorse a presidential candidate this cycle is a sign of the internal struggles within…
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Removing taxes on overtime would have only marginal impact
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposal to remove the taxes on overtime would likely have little effect on the workers and the economy. It…
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Just 5 percent of private sector workers voted for their unions
Imagine if you lived in a country where a vote held decades previous determined which party held control of the government and people had little…
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Proof of price gouging is harder to find than Bigfoot
The concept of “price gouging” is a lot like Bigfoot. Lots of people think it exists and have been chasing it for decades. Yet actual…
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Labor issues
Labor Day was established in the late 1800s to celebrate workers and their achievements. Back then, manual labor was the dominant type of work for…
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Scrapping tipping taxes is now a bipartisan issue. Good.
Never let it be said that Democrats think that Donald Trump is always wrong. Vice President Kamala Harris recently endorsed an…
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The NLRB’s Orwellian ‘Fair Choice – Employee Final Voice Rule’
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees union elections, has a funny idea about what constitutes giving employees an honest say…
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Kamala Harris’s California quid pro quo for unions
Kamala Harris is now the Democrats’ likely nominee to succeed Biden and she may pull the administration’s already pro-union labor policy even further leftwards. A…
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NLRB backs down on Joint Employer
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has withdrawn an appeal of a district…
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Union leaders need Trump more than he needs them
Credit where credit is due, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien faced a tricky tightrope walk when he spoke before the Republican National Convention…
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The Supreme Court sends warning shot to NLRB
Only one of the Supreme Court’s cases this term dealt directly with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), but several addressed the broader question of…
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California’s Newsom grants exception to state law so restaurants can cope with other state law
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation over the weekend that exempted restaurants in the Golden State from…
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Biden’s pro-labor policies will linger past fall election
The Biden administration is trying to cement a pro-union labor policy into place for the next four years, even if likely Republican candidate Donald Trump…
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Even SCOTUS liberal wing skeptical of NLRB moves
The most notable thing about the Supreme Court’s ruling last week against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Starbucks Corp.
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Yes, make tipping tax-free
Republican candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to make tips tax-free is a good idea, and not just because it will be a…
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The inherent contradictions of unionized political campaigns
President Joe Biden is the first candidate expected to win their party’s presidential nomination with a unionized staff. Whether this is…