California construction trade unions continue to protect the environment from the scourges of renewable energy and infill development. A chart below provides examples of their achievements for the planet in 2015. Meanwhile, 2015 ends with the annual chatter at the state capitol that “maybe next year” will be the year that the California legislature amends the California Environmental Quality...

The teachers unions’ fight against parental and teacher choice is not going well for them. Teacher union membership is dwindling. In fact, it has dipped below 50 percent nationwide, down from a high of almost 70 percent in 1993. Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, having  become “right-to-work” (RTW) states over the past several years, have given...

SEIU puts $3M into ballot fight with California hospitals By Kathy Robertson, December 22, 2015, Sacramento Business Journal In another sign that a 2014 truce is in danger, a powerful union for health care workers has launched a $3 million fund that could fund a new ballot battle with hospitals. Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers...

Teacher union leaders want to keep poorly performing public schools open, but kill off thriving charters and voucher schools. Just last week it was announced in New York City that three failing public schools would be closing. With a total enrollment of 217 students, there really was no other choice. Indeed, it was such a...

California’s construction trade unions greatly expanded their campaign in 2015 to get local elected officials to require construction companies to sign a Project Labor Agreement with unions as a condition of winning a public works contract. In 2015, 47 California local governments considered a union Project Labor Agreement mandate for future taxpayer-funded construction contracts. On a few occasions in 2015, Project...

California lags behind other states in transparency because it has not produced an on-line checkbook, showing detailed spending information by payee. The state does tell us how tax money is allocated by purposes (health, education, corrections, etc.), but it doesn’t tell us who receives this money.

As Dropout Nation reported last week, National Education Association has had to deal with declining rank-and-file numbers as well as prop up affiliates struggling with pension woes and other issues. None of this, by the way, includes the nation’s largest teachers’ union’s own virtually-insolvent defined-benefit pension. Yet as NEA has shown in its 2014-2015 financial...

Lincolnshire creates right-to-work zone that unions oppose By Russell Lissau, December 15, 2015, Daily Herald Lincolnshire has become the first town in the Chicago area to establish itself as a right-to-work zone, a move critics have assailed as anti-union. It’s also a move experts say is sure to face a legal challenge. To create the zone, the...