Labor Related Articles
In a video conference at the Laborers’ International Union of North America this week, Hilary Clinton declared states’ Right to Work Laws wrong for workers and wrong for America. Right to work laws give employees the right to work without being forced to join a union and currently, 26 states have these laws, including two Midwest states Clinton needs to win the election. Read more about it here.
21 States have sued the Labor Department to block its new overtime rule. The 30-page lawsuit, filed in a Texas court, asserts that the rule will allocate funds to paying overtime and salaries, rather than allowing States to determine their best policies and priorities. The lawsuit also contends that the 10th Amendment prevents the White House from decreeing how the States should pay their workers. Read more about it here.
A Houston jury today ordered the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to pay Professional Janitorial Services (PJS) Houston $5.3 million in damages for making false claims about the company’s business practices and treatment of PJS employees.
The successful lawsuit is part of a plan to project PJS employees from forced unionization. Read more about it here.
It’s no easier for state employees to get rid of a union. A group of personal care assistants in Minnesota is trying to leave the Service Employees International Union-Healthcare Minnesota. Personal care assistants, who get Medicaid funds to look after disabled and sick people, are paid by the state of Minnesota.
In 2014, 3,500 workers chose to be represented by the SEIU. Minnesota is taking 3 percent (up to a maximum of $948 a year) out of the paychecks of those who voted for the union and sending the funds to the SEIU.
Read the full article in US News: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-17/leaving-a-union-should-be-easier-for-employees
Does the union really think these PCAs are stupid?
The state can increase the subsidy, and has done so periodically for years without the union. The so-called “paid time off” the SEIU claims to have secured for these brave women (and they are mostly women) is also a crock: Who can take time off caring for a sick child? It’s not an assembly line.
Indeed, the collective bargaining contract puts mandatory limits on their hours. As noted in a Daily Caller profile of Kris Greene, a Minnesota PCA who has cared for her daughter for 24 years:
The union…has made it so home health care workers cannot work for more than 40 hours a week, which is nearly impossible for those taking care of loved ones.
Read the whole article by Matt Patterson here.
The National Labor Relations Board has made that task much more difficult. In Graymont PA, Inc. 364 NLRB No. 37 (June 29, 2016), the Board held that an employer must meet a very high level of specificity in a management-rights clause before the Board will find that the union unequivocally waived its right to bargain over the action in question. Read more about it here.
Articles by the RWP Team
