Blog
Official Time: Union Activity on the Taxpayers’ Dime
Government Executive summarizes the Office of Personnel Management’s report on the use of official time, whereby unionized federal employees carry out union business…
Blog
Activist Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law — For Now
Government employee unions and their allies have tried just about everything to stop the efforts by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislature…
Blog
NLRB Targets Boeing, Ignores Congress
It is now well known that the Obama administration is trying to use the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as a battering ram to…
Blog
Mark Haines RIP
Blog
The Politics of Public Pension Underfunding
To date, the debate over public pensions has focused largely on accounting methods — how best to estimate the level of current funding needed to…
Blog
Trumka’s Empty Threat to Democrats
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is warning Democratic politicians today: Push our agenda, or we won’t support you in the 2012 election. It’s hard to imagine…
Blog
Unionization by Regulation: House Oversight Committee Seeks Answers from Politicized NLRB, NMB
As unions continue to decline in their private sector membership, union leaders are seeking political solutions to their problems. President Obama will need organized labor’s support…
Blog
Senators Introduce Bill to Push Back against NLRB Overreach
Reacting to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) blatant efforts to promote organized labor’s agenda, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)…
Blog
Who’s Afraid of Walmart?
As surely as summer follows spring, it seems like every new Walmart store opening announcement in a major city is now followed by protests. The…
Blog
New CBO Pension Report: Underfunding Could Be Higher
That state and local governments face serious pension funding problems isn't a particularly controversial contention. However, the question of how much they're underfunded by is…
Blog
Political Bailouts for Underfunded Union Pensions
While the nation's attention has focused on government employee unions' fight to retain their collective bargaining privileges, unions in the private sector are in an…
Blog
Faulty Public Pension Accounting: A Problem too Big to Ignore
One reason the ongoing debate over collective bargaining for government employees has been so loud is that the stakes are so high -- for unionized…
Blog
UN Embarrassed as “Climate Refugees” Fail to Show
It’s hardly novel to compare global warming alarmism to a doomsday cult, but it’s hard to avoid the comparison whenever yet another doomsday scenario is…
Blog
Dulles Rail Union Giveaway to Increase Costs
An expensive rail line for passengers traveling in and out of the Washington, D.C. region's Dulles International Airport never struck me as a good use…
Blog
Thomas Sowell on the Value of Consumer Choice
One of Thomas Sowell’s greatest insights is that in public policy, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. That extends to deciding what to spend money…
Blog
Full Employment, Motherhood, and Apple Pie
These are not good economic times for labor unions, whose membership continues a long decline in the private sector. However, they remain a potent…
Blog
Harper’s vs. UAW
When can one expect leftists to oppose unionization of a business? When it’s their own. That’s the case at Harper‘s magazine right now, where some…
Blog
Will UAW Seek Foreign Help to Unionize American Workers?
America has a vibrant and successful auto industry — just largely outside of Detroit. For years, many foreign automakers’ American divisions have been successful at…
Blog
What Government Unions Want: One, Two, Many Californias
That the large Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections pose a setback for organized labor’s agenda is hardly news. What will be newsworthy is…
Blog
New York Snow Debacle Shows: It’s Government Unions vs. Taxpayers
The longstanding alliance between Democratic politicians and government employee unions has come under increasing strain, as I recently noted in a Washington Times op…
Blog
Union Holds New York Hostage
Public anger over New York City’s botched snow plowing effort this week has turned to the city’s sanitation workers union — for good reason.
Blog
Are Government Employee Unions Losing the Democrats?
Government employee unions have long been renowned as one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal and dedicated supporting constituencies. For years, Democratic politicians have supported…
Blog
Unions’ Shifting Lame Duck and NLRB Agenda
With Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives and a substantial number of seats in the Senate, organized labor’s hopes of seeing its legislative…
Blog
The TSA Can’t Help Being Annoying
With the holiday travel season approaching fast, public anger at the federal Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) increasingly invasive airport passenger screening procedures — full…
Blog
Will the NLRB Push Big Labor’s Agenda?
Organized labor expended enormous amounts of resources and effort to give Democrats control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. For this…
Blog
Election 2010: Union Losses, Worker Gains
Yesterday’s election results will make it much more difficult for organized labor to advance its agenda in Congress. This is good news for the American…
Blog
The Stealthy Public Pension Time Bomb
As state and local government budgets have come under increasing stress, greater public attention has come to focus on government employees’ compensation. This greater scrutiny…
Blog
Killed by Pension Accounting
Think accounting rules are a boring topic? You wouldn’t if the fate of your business rested on it. Indeed, a rule change may be coming…
Blog
Bootleggers and Baptists Everywhere
Bruce Yandle’s insight of how erstwhile alliances of “Bootleggers and Baptists” help drive state intervention into economic matters is extremely useful when looking at…
Blog
Senators Challenge Administration’s Big Labor Giveaway
Despite all they have gotten from the Obama administration, many union leaders have vented their frustration over Democratic lawmakers’ failure to enact the unions’ top…