Editor’s Note:  This post by Michael Shedlock explains quite well why significantly increasing the minimum wage is a terrible idea. If the union’s new “Fight for Fifteen” (dollars per hour) campaign were successful, it would increase unemployment, and unleash a round of price inflation that would in-turn require government entitlement payments to increase. This is...

Big Labor bosses are facing the increasing realization that their organizations are rapidly facing extinction. A trifecta of difficulties, consisting of recent revelations of the impact Obamacare will have on union costs and membership, the weakening of support for “Card Check” legislation, and the increasing popularity and passage of “Right-to-Work” laws have the Gasping Dinosaurs very nervous. Union...

Here are links to the top stories available online over the past week reporting on union activity including legislation, financial impact, reform activism, etc., from California and across the USA. Labor’s anti-Snyder campaign makes case for right to work By Henry Payne, August 20, 2013, Detroit News Last week, the AFL-CIO announced that it was...

Remember AB 340, the pension reform successfully pushed by Democratic Governor Brown, that even Governor Brown acknowledges is only a first step towards making public employee pensions financially sustainable? Well even AB 340 goes too far according to Obama’s new Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. As Dan Borenstein of the Contra Costa Times reports on...

It seems that some Republicans in competitive California state legislative districts have devised a strategy for political survival: join the Democrat leadership in supporting the union legislative agenda. And siding with the unions seems to reap campaign contributions, so why not? Ordinary Californians aren’t yet recognizing any clearly-defined Republican alternative plan for constructively governing California under...

Teachers unions’ goals are in direct conflict with those of school boards. Two powerful entities in public education have very different agendas. The teachers unions’ goal is to derive every benefit possible and to protect every last one of its dues paying members no matter how incompetent they are. School boards are governing bodies that...

Summary: Union leaders are increasingly distant from the everyday workers they claim to represent, with faster-growing pay and an entrenched ruling class, data show. Nepotism is in full force, union members complain, and the closest some second- or third-generation officials have been to a day on a job site is a class on labor relations...

For years, an unhealthy alliance between Democratic politicians and labor unions has taken its toll on our state’s budget and economy. When Republicans held the majority in the Legislature for the first time in decades, we enacted some important reforms, but there is still much to do. Unfortunately, Democrats, now back in the majority, proved in...

We’ve written before about the efforts of Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lure California businesses to his state, which elicited a scatological response from Gov. Jerry Brown. Relocation expert Joseph Vranich, who has done such a good jobassembling the list of California firms leaving the state, has a revealing column  chronicling a further list of governors poaching in the Golden...

Here are links to the top stories available online over the past week reporting on union activity including legislation, financial impact, reform activism, etc., from California and across the USA. Hayward, California: City workers begin three-day strike By Rebecca Parr, August 13, 2013, The Daily Review More than 200 municipal workers began a three-day strike...