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 Unions: Obamacare Will ‘Shatter’ Our Health Benefits, Cause ‘Nightmare Scenarios’ Avik Roy Avik Roy, July 15, 2013, Forbes Labor unions are among the key...

That is, if anyone can actually compile accurate financial information. The state controller hasn’t produced a consolidated financial report for K-12 school districts and community colleges since 2000. The most recent data available from the state controller’s other “Consolidated Annual Financial Reports,” for cities, counties, special districts and redevelopment agencies, concern the fiscal year ended...

Below is the first organized compilation of documents showing what appears to be an aggressive, deliberate union campaign to impede government approval of solar thermal power projects in California. (Organized documentation of extensive union interference with government approval of more traditional solar photovoltaic power projects in California will be released soon.) These innovative proposed solar...

Teachers unions continue to use empty rhetoric to bash promising school privatization efforts. It is a given – and understandable – that teachers unions deplore vouchers or opportunity scholarships, arrangements whereby public monies are used to fund a private school education; it hurts their bottom line. With very few exceptions, private schools are not unionized,...

Without a single public hearing, the California Assembly passed Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 8 (ACA 8), the most egregious attack on Prop. 13 ever to come out of the Legislature. ACA 8 would repeal Prop. 13’s requirement that local “special taxes” (taxes intended for a specific purpose or purposes) be approved by a two-thirds vote....

Editor’s Note: A push to dramatically increase the minimum wage isn’t limited to Washington DC. Earlier this year, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Gruel promised to push for a minimum wage of $15 per hour in that city. This report by UnionWatch contributor Mike Shedlock explains the impracticality and unintended negative consequences of mandating a...

If the California Teachers Association and its parent, the National Education Association, represent Goliath, then ten teachers and a small union alternative called the Christian Educators Association International are fitting stand-ins for David. They’re taking on the CTA with a lawsuit aimed squarely at California’s “agency-shop” law, which they claim violates public school teachers’ First Amendment rights...

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. Under The Radar Case Could Yield Most Significant Labor Law Case of the Last Decade By Scott J. Witlin, July 2013, National Law Review Last...

The four day BART strike that ended on July 5th provided ample evidence of how public sector union power can inflate wages – and expectations – far beyond what the rest of us may consider normal or fair. In a July 1st editorial entitled “Striking BART workers out of touch with financial reality,” the Contra...

As charter schools have become more popular than ever, teachers unions dither about how to deal with them. Though there are now over 6,000 charter schools in the U.S., including 1,000 in California, it’s not nearly enough to satisfy demand, as parents have awakened to the fact that many traditional public schools aren’t doing the...