Uncategorized | California Policy Center

Union Files Lawsuit Exploiting ObamaCare in California for Organizing Purposes

Add ObamaCare to the list of laws that California unions are exploiting for “corporate campaign” strategies to coerce labor agreements or exert pressure during labor disputes. On September 4, 2013, the National Union of Healthcare Workers sued the California Health Benefit Exchange to boot Kaiser Permanente from the list of 12 health plans approved for...

By Kevin Dayton

Union Strategy to Join Progressives & Environmentalists Will Backfire

Over the Labor Day holiday, Big Labor once again demonstrated how desperate it is to rebuild its diminishing membership rolls. Despite the fact the tactics they have been utilizing for the last 20 years are not working, they keep on using them. As Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over...

By Dave Bego

Union Watch Highlights

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. White House Considers Awarding Obamacare Subsidies, Intended For The Uninsured, To Labor Unions By Avik Roy, September 2, 2013, Forbes Now, according to Rachana Dixit...

By Editor

Oregon “Public Employee Choice Act” Aims for 2014 Ballot

An initiative that will permit public employees to not only opt-out of paying full membership fees, but actually allow them to opt-out of paying anything whatsoever to unions has been filed in Oregon. While public sector union membership is supposedly voluntary in most states that permit unionization of their public servants, the unions nearly always...

By Edward Ring

Union Watch Highlights

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. Union Support Of Minimum Wage Hike Is Self-Interested By Richard Berman, August 27, 2013, Investors Business Daily Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees...

By Editor

Lowering the Cost of Living is Better than Raising the Minimum Wage

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...

By Mike Shedlock

Unions Adopting New Strategies to Rebuild Membership

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...

By Dave Bego

Union Watch Highlights

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...

By Editor

Governor Brown Fighting Obama Administration to Defend Pension Reform

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...

By Editor

The Unions’ Own “1%”: Extravagant Pay, Nepotism, Government Indifference

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...

By Luke Rosiak

Maine Legislator Speaks Out Against Public Sector Union Power

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...

By Amy Volk

Union Watch Highlights

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...

By Editor

Why Bankers and Public Sector Unions are Allies, not Enemies

Earlier this week former state senator Gloria Romero published a lengthy article in the San Diego Union-Tribune entitled “Fixing California: The union chokehold.” Reprinted with permission on UnionWatch, it describes how public sector unions, virtually unopposed, have undermined the effectiveness and overpriced the costs of government at all levels in California. Romero, a liberal Democrat...

By Editor

The Public Employee Union Chokehold on California

I created a stir last year when I — the former Democratic Senate majority leader — endorsed Proposition 32, the ballot initiative that would have reigned in special interests, including enabling union members to bypass their own union executive boards and make their own choices as to how to direct their own union dues for...

By Private: Gloria Romero