Does PERA create unrealistic expectations?
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Posted on August 22, 2011 at 2:24pm
The Legislature learns from its mistakes, heads off the union veto on tenure reform.
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Posted on July 12, 2011 at 1:05pm
Contrasting the oppression that unions face in Iran with the privileged position they have in the United States.
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Posted on July 7, 2011 at 2:38pm
A new civil rights campaign is launched in Michigan.
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Posted on June 30, 2011 at 6:27pm
No more directing government construction work to union companies.
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Posted on June 30, 2011 at 2:09pm
The Obama administration moves to silence employers.
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Posted on June 23, 2011 at 10:11am
"Union Conservatives" enter the fray.
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Posted on June 15, 2011 at 4:54pm
The SEIU's in-depth survey.
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Posted on June 1, 2011 at 5:30pm
Stephen Moore on RTW in Michigan
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Posted on June 1, 2011 at 10:45am
Tennessee tries a new approach to teacher unions: “collaborative conferencing.”
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Posted on May 25, 2011 at 4:01pm
The real price tag of Carpenters union corruption.
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Posted on May 19, 2011 at 10:05am
The Michigan Legislature can put an end to teacher strikes if it really wants to.
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Posted on May 16, 2011 at 11:58am
Can the UAW benefit from Japan's problems?
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Posted on May 11, 2011 at 11:10am
New Hampshire could become the 23rd right-to-work state.
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Posted on May 10, 2011 at 3:25pm
Public policy has largely become an exercise in cleaning up the messes that the unions have made.
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Posted on May 2, 2011 at 4:46pm
A new bill would take health care off the bargaining table smorgasbord.
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Posted on April 27, 2011 at 3:01pm
Don't like the emergency financial manager law? There's an alternative: Rein in government employee unions.
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Posted on April 20, 2011 at 4:09pm
Illegal strikes represent the ultimate abuse, and the ultimate failure, of collective bargaining in government. The Legislature should not flinch from taking privileges away from unions that abuse them.
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Posted on March 24, 2011 at 9:40am
The latest news on the union corruption front.
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Posted on March 18, 2011 at 10:07am
It was always hard to imagine how this could end well for Wisconsin’s public-sector labor unions.
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Posted on March 11, 2011 at 10:20am
The frustration over the Civil Service Commission’s recent actions is entirely understandable and healthy. But the real opportunities for the state to save money are elsewhere. It’s a measure of the depth of Michigan’s spending problem that the CSC is far from the biggest challenge confronting lawmakers and taxpayers.
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Posted on March 9, 2011 at 4:30pm
The Child Care Providers Together Michigan union, imposed on home-based child-care providers who run their own businesses from their homes, really accomplished little except to serve as a conduit through which state funds were redirected to a union.
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Posted on March 4, 2011 at 4:02pm
At a time when governments are struggling to balance their budgets, it is essential that the public have maximum control over spending decisions. The choices that have to be made are not the sort that should be made by unaccountable arbitrators. The time has come for repeal of PA 312.
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Posted on February 25, 2011 at 3:45pm
As unions in Wisconsin arrange sick-outs and their defenders in the Legislature flee the state, their reaction only buttresses the case for bringing an end to public-sector bargaining. After all, there is seldom much point in arguing with fanatics. Is bargaining with them likely to work any better?
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Posted on February 18, 2011 at 3:16pm
At a time where difficult budgeting choices are being made all throughout the state, it would seem that opening up construction to all contractors, not just union shops, should be a pretty easy call to make.
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Posted on February 18, 2011 at 12:15pm
There are a wide range of problems that stem from our unaccountable union culture, and radical union politics and job losses from unsustainable union demands may get the most attention. But plain old theft, sometimes petty, sometimes in the six-figure range, is a very real problem too. Union officials are not above temptation, and Michiganders would do well to keep that in mind.
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Posted on February 16, 2011 at 11:32am
Legislative interest in reining in government unions is a welcome development, but it will be up to the voters of Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to make sure their elected officials follow through.
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Posted on February 11, 2011 at 7:00pm
A friend of mine who works at a Kroger in metro Detroit passed along his thoughts on the "
Item Pricing" law, and I figure they're worth sharing:
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Posted on January 26, 2011 at 12:35pm
During 2010, unions lost 83,000 members in Michigan, a decline in membership of 11.7 percent.
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Posted on January 21, 2011 at 3:20pm
Secret-ballot votes aren't an "acceptable" method for workers to determine whether or not to unionize — they're a clearly superior method. The higher the stakes, the dirtier the campaign, the more valuable the secret ballot becomes. The UAW should simply accept that and move on.
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Posted on January 21, 2011 at 11:21am
Gov. Snyder in his State of the State speech gave us no idea what his goal is for employee benefits or how to reach it. If there's one thing a manager should know, it's that if you fail to set a target you're guaranteed not to hit it. Let's hope he sets it in March. Preferably early March.
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Posted on January 20, 2011 at 10:09am
Forced to make a snap decision with little guidance, a legislator could do a lot worse than to find out what proposal government union officials object to the most and vote for that.
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Posted on January 19, 2011 at 9:25am
The union establishment's position of influence and privilege is liable to become more and more precarious unless they can re-establish themselves in the private-sector workforce — which may be why a labor board appointed by an administration that benefited mightily from union support is going to great lengths to help unions out in any way they can.
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Posted on January 12, 2011 at 4:50pm
A weakened union that is overly compliant with the company's priorities is what used to be known as a "company union," and unionists used to treat them with suspicion if not contempt. But that was when the union movement was a genuine worker movement.
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Posted on December 17, 2010 at 2:16pm
Rick Snyder has yet to tackle collective bargaining directly, but he has taken a pretty firm line on government employee benefits something that’s bound to make union officials in Michigan uncomfortable.
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Posted on December 15, 2010 at 10:30am
Leaders of our fellow upper-Midwestern states are starting to zero-in on government employee unions. It will be interesting to see if Michigan's incoming governor takes a stand on this issue.
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Posted on December 13, 2010 at 4:43pm
Government employees have every right to lobby and hire lawyers, but the public is not obligated to give in to their wishes or pay for those lobbyists and lawyers.
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Posted on November 29, 2010 at 8:00am
The notion of "fundamental privileges" that government cannot withdraw without causing some sort of "disruption" is antithetical to republican government, though it would fit well in a feudal society, with its complex web of privileges and obligations that tied individuals to their stations in life.
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Posted on November 23, 2010 at 3:10pm
A UAW Local's bookkeeper cut herself an extra paycheck every week for four years. It would seem union financial reporting standards could afford some tightening up.
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Posted on November 17, 2010 at 12:07pm
Snyder has promised “customer oriented” government. If he wants to influence how state employees do their work on a “retail” level, or address state employee compensation, he will need to pay attention to this panel, be patient and put serious thought into his CSC appointments when they come up.
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Posted on November 16, 2010 at 2:16pm
Government employee unions have morphed into a permanent, taxpayer-funded lobby for big government. Any movement, like the Tea Parties, that wants to reduce the scope of government will need to confront and defeat government employee unions — and if they are to have any lasting success, it will be essential that government employee unions lose taxpayer funding.
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Posted on October 28, 2010 at 4:34pm
Well-meaning progressives may hope that the teachers unions will embrace reforms at some point, but by now they should realize that the chances of that happening are infinitesimal. Failing that, they face a stark choice between allowing public schools to continue to fail, or confronting a teachers’ union movement that is both one of their most important creations and most generous political benefactors. Davis Guggenheim has shined a light on the progressives’ predicament. It will be interesting to see how they handle it.
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Posted on October 14, 2010 at 8:10am
The problem isn’t individual teachers, it’s a larger system that protects mediocrity and incompetence, and elevates political correctness over the fundamentals of reading, writing, math, science and history. And teachers unions like MEA have been both the strongest defenders and the largest beneficiaries of this system.
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Posted on October 8, 2010 at 2:30pm
Taxpayers and students won a small but potentially very important victory Friday when administrative law Judge David M. Peltz found that the Legislature did not give unions the authority to sidetrack privatization of non-instructional services by school districts.
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Posted on October 4, 2010 at 4:34pm
Federal labor law isn’t supposed to provide for workers to be unionized after the company makes an agreement with a union. Union representation is supposed to be the workers' own choice.
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Posted on September 28, 2010 at 10:35am
Posted on September 23, 2010 at 3:43pm
If anyone in Lansing is serious about helping Detroit, this would be a good time for a bill that would suspend collective bargaining for government employees in the city, so that Detroit's leadership can make the tough choices and make the most of the resources it has.
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Posted on September 10, 2010 at 2:45pm
Last Sunday, The Grand Rapids Press released a
new study on the likely effects of a right-to-work law on Michigan’s economy as part of its ongoing “Michigan 10.0” series.
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Posted on September 8, 2010 at 8:05am
A new poll shows 51 percent of likely voters in Michigan support right-to-work.
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Posted on September 3, 2010 at 3:58pm
New non-union auto jobs in right-to-work Mississippi pay $15 an hour and even in a tough economy they are
relatively easy to find.
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Posted on August 27, 2010 at 11:19am